Man is beginning to find that he must take care of himself; that special providence is a mistake. This being so, the old religions must go down, and in their place man must depend upon intelligence, industry, honesty; upon the facts that he can ascertain, upon his own experience, upon his own efforts. Then religion becomes a thing of this world—a religion to put a roof above our heads, a religion that gives to every man a home, a religion that rewards virtue here.
If Mr. Newton's sermon is in accordance with the Episcopal creed, I congratulate the creed. In any event, I think Mr. Newton deserves great credit for speaking his thought. Do not understand that I imagine that he agrees with me. The most I will say is that in some things I agree with him, and probably there is a little too much truth and a little too much humanity in his remarks to please the bishop.
There is this wonderful fact, no man has ever yet been persecuted for thinking God bad. When any one has said that he believed God to be so good that he would, in his own time and way, redeem the entire human race, and that the time would come when every soul would be brought home and sit on an equality with the others around the great fireside of the universe, that man has been denounced as a poor, miserable, wicked wretch.—New York Herald, December 13,1888.
AN ESSAY ON CHRISTMAS.
MY family and I regard Christmas as a holiday—that is to say, a day of rest and pleasure—a day to get acquainted with each other, a day to recall old memories, and for the cultivation of social amenities. The festival now called Christmas is far older than Christianity. It was known and celebrated for thousands of years before the establishment of what is known as our religion. It is a relic of sun-worship. It is the day on which the sun triumphs over the hosts of darkness, and thousands of years before the New Testament was written, thousands of years before the republic of Rome existed, before one stone of Athens was laid, before the Pharaohs ruled in Egypt, before the religion of Brahma, before Sanscrit was spoken, men and women crawled out of their caves, pushed the matted hair from their eyes, and greeted the triumph of the sun over the powers of the night.
There are many relics of this worship—among which is the shaving of the priest's head, leaving the spot shaven surrounded by hair, in imitation of the rays of the sun. There is still another relic—the ministers of our day close their eyes in prayer. When men worshiped the sun—when they looked at that luminary and implored its assistance—they shut their eyes as a matter of necessity. Afterward the priests looking at their idols glittering with gems, shut their eyes in flattery, pretending that they could not bear the effulgence of the presence; and to-day, thousands of years after the old ideas have passed away, the modern parson, without knowing the origin of the custom, closes his eyes when he prays.
There are many other relics and souvenirs of the dead worship of the sun, and this festival was adopted by Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and by Christians. As a matter of fact, Christianity furnished new steam for an old engine, infused a new spirit into an old religion, and, as a matter of course, the old festival remained.
For all of our festivals you will find corresponding pagan festivals. For instance, take the eucharist, the communion, where persons partake of the body and blood of the Deity. This is an exceedingly old custom. Among the ancients they ate cakes made of corn, in honor of Ceres and they called these cakes the flesh of the goddess, and they drank wine in honor of Bacchus, and called this the blood of their god. And so I could go on giving the pagan origin of every Christian ceremony and custom. The probability is that the worship of the sun was once substantially universal, and consequently the festival of Christ was equally wide spread.