THE EAST.
From Turkey we learn that Reschid Pasha, whose dismissal was noted in our last, has been received to favor again, and restored to office. The Sultan has lately shown his magnanimity to rebels against his authority, by bestowing upon Aziz Bey and his brother Ahmed Bey, rebel Kurdish chiefs, near Bagdad, conquered by the Sultan, and brought to Constantinople six months ago, a pension of three thousand piastres a month. This clemency to political offenders is said to be common with the Turkish Sovereign. The Turkish Government has recently forbidden the loan of money to farmers at more than eight per cent. interest: it also forbids the payment of all engagements hitherto made at higher rates. A third bridge has just been finished across the Golden Horn. A splendid ball was given at the close of the Carnival by the British Embassador, at which about eight hundred persons were present.
In Persia the recently dismissed Grand Vizier, Mirza-Taghi-Khan, has been put to death, by having his veins opened in a bath, and his treasures have been seized by the Shah.
From India we have news of further difficulties between the English and the Burmese. Previous advices stated that Commodore Lambert had complained to the King of Ava of the conduct of the Governor of Rangoon in refusing compliance with certain demands of reparation for injuries sustained by the British. The King professed a ready submission to the Commodore's requisitions, but his sincerity was doubted, and Commodore Lambert consequently resolved to remain with his squadron, for some days longer, in order to test the truth of his suspicions. Scarcely had the new Governor or Viceroy been placed in authority, than he commenced a series of annoyances against all British subjects, which rendered it imperative on the part of Commodore Lambert to seek an interview with him, which was not only refused, but all communication between the shore and fleet strictly prohibited. In this war-like aspect of affairs many of the British took refuge on board the English vessels, while those who remained behind desirous of securing their property, were cast into prison. The fleet remained at anchor for twenty-four hours on the opposite side of the river, when intimation was received from the Viceroy that he would fire on the squadron should the Commodore attempt to move down the river. On the 10th of January the Fox was towed down, and anchored within a few hundred yards of the stockade erected by the Viceroy, when the steamer having returned to bring away with her a Burmese man-of-war, was fired on, which was immediately returned with great vigor. The enemy dispersed after some three of them were slain. The squadron then proceeded on its course, and the river ports of Burmah were proclaimed to be in a state of blockade. Commodore Lambert then proceeded to Calcutta for further instructions. Another campaign was therefore deemed unavoidable, which, it was supposed, could not be commenced before October.
Editor's Table.
Credulity and skepticism are often, in fact, but different aspects of one and the same state of mind. No man is more credulous than the infidel in respect to all that would make against the truth of Christianity. Hindoo legends, Chinese chronologies, unmeaning Egyptian hieroglyphics, are suffered at once to outweigh the clearest declarations of that volume which alone sheds light on history, and solves the otherwise inexplicable problem of our humanity.
Nowhere is this remark more strikingly exemplified than in the pretensions of what may be called the pseudo-spiritualism of the day. Men whose credulity can not digest the supernatural of the Bible are most remarkably easy of belief in respect to spiritual rappings, and spiritual table-liftings, and spiritual communications in Hebrew translated into ungrammatical and false-spelled English. Prophecy and inspiration are irrational; the belief in a Divine regenerating influence on the human soul is superstitious and fanatical; but clairvoyance and clairvoyant prevision, and mental alchemy are embraced without difficulty, by the professors of this more transcendent faith. They see and feel nothing of that grandeur of conception, that holy seriousness, that impressive truthfulness of style, that superhuman elevation above all that associates itself with the absurd, the grotesque, the low, and the malignant—in a word, those traits which every where characterize the miraculous of the Scriptures, and have ever awed the most thoughtful into a recognition of its reality. And yet some of these lecturers and professors have even the impudence to baptize their naturalistic jargon with the name of spiritualism, and while treating the human soul with less reverence than is justly due to the lowest form even of vegetable life, dare to talk of the moral uses of their pretended science, as though it had any more place for the word and the idea than might be found in the jerking automaton of the toy-shop.
Sometimes the pretense can be characterized by no milder term than mocking blasphemy. One of these impostors, who has made some noise lately, is said to have accurately foretold the words and ideas of a discourse which was to be delivered by another person on a subsequent day. It was no hypothetical prediction, grounded on a scientific calculation of assumed causes and effects, but, in fact, a clairvoyant prevision, not from any Divine impression (an idea which this blasphemous pretender is known wholly to deride), but from a transcendent subjective state of his natural intelligence. And yet some who are known to believe only in an ideal Christ, and an ideal resurrection, are not ashamed to signify a half assent to this monstrous assertion of one of the highest conceivable attributes of the Almighty. Every one who thinks at all must see that here there is no possible middle ground. It is this claim, awfully profane and daring as it is, or a downright imposture.
There is nothing derogatory to the human mind in the belief of the marvelous. In fact, such belief is an element of its higher life. The wonder is, that there is not more of it. But no degree of evidence can justify us in giving credence to the absurd. The ridiculous is ever proof of the presence of falsehood. The higher we rise in the scale of truth, the more do we find ourselves ascending into a region of seriousness. An impression of a sterner reality, of a deeper interest, of more dread importance, of a more solemn consistency, accompanies every genuine advance. Truth, as it grows purer and clearer, is ever found to be more and more a fearful thing—joyful, indeed, and soul-inspiring, yet finding the very fullness and solidity of its joy in that graver element which gives it its highest and most real interest for the human soul. A faith that has no awe proves itself a delusion. A religion that has no fear, or is not deeply solemn, is a contradiction in terms. For the absurd and the ridiculous even pure falsehood is too stern a thing. They have their existence only in that grotesque mixture of truth and error, in which the distortion of the one concealing the malignity of the other gives birth to all revolting and ludicrous monstrosities.