CHILDLIKE BELIEFS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 963, 7 June 1883, Page 4

CHILDLIKE BELIEFS.

In a ; leading article > the' Melbourne ‘Argus makes the following remarks : Appppgst, die most characteristic features'of every age are its pet heresies, and some of those of the present day are of so charmingly naive 'and delightfully irrational a nature that the. world would be a duller and more commonplace world if it missed them. One of them is that > strange religion of'the Pyramid Revelation school, of which, the most prominent, representative is, Professor Piazzi Smyth, the Astromer Royal for Scotland. The Jenets of this singular faith /are thaplhe Gf e at Pyjtmid * was built several thousand years ago, under explicit Provi-' dential directions, for" the '’purpose, among others, of supplying accurate standards of the British inch and the British bushel measure. These miraculously revealed dimensions were then sealed up, and remained? hidden for thirty centuries, till ages after they had been independently discovered by unaided human reason, they were found there by the exercise of almost superhuman ingenuity, and by the performance of most intricate calculations, by Mr Symth and his followers. All this seems to indicate a strange course of about way of reaching an end, which, when if & attaihed, wi’ find ‘had beeh arrived at before by a much simpler method. But the*ufterly unreasonable and paradoxical „■ .character ; of> the M c&r&OJtd - the mincfe of the harmless sect who hold person who would dream of apply- ! d - hard reason to so sweetly childlike,a,-belief Afo&her^4? tfreSd 1 Yaiths 6f the nursery is that of, the.j Apglpplsraelites, who firmly hdtdtlie principle of the “ Nineteen " —is itT tions of the English nation with .the, Lost Tribes of Israel.” In this blameless creed we catch again a breath of freshness from the days of infancy. It would be idle to contend against this innocent system of belief.'' To point out that it is supported by nothing like evidence, whiles elPbxisting evidence is dead it,,-would be considering it m.mm seriously. It affords deiighf 6 iii%iiy worthy .people who are not accustordetPtb troilßle'themselves about evidence, and the existence of such a sect supplies green oasis to moderq {life; when we are -so heavily overridden by scientific thought, thi^i^s p , p£ i systems ,of posTtiy# ; jpjbrlosFppijiyl . ? ;