PUBLIC MEETING.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 387, 11 August 1876, Page 3

PUBLIC MEETING.

CO-OPEBATIVE STOKE AND BAXEEY. A meeting of those favorable .to.the formation of "a Co-operative' Store and Bakery" Company was held in the Water Works ' Office 'on Wednesday evening last. Mr. George was : elected Chairman. The meeting, he said, was called to form a Company under the co-operative principle. It was for the gentlemen present to give there ideas as to whether a Company could be formed. The object was to procure provisions, to be supplied at the lowest possible prices. They were all aware that they were now paying very exorbitant prices, and he did not believe that there were many who could afford to pay the prices at present charged. Mr: WV H. Ash was appointed Secretary pro. tem.

Mr; DoiSNKiiir' thought it would be best to start abakery first. The, Ciii-IKMAN, said a , general store ■was his idea, which would of course in-; elude a bakery. ; Mr Donn ELiiY, being called on, thought the* bakery'should be first' started, and the, results watched, and, if it paid, go on with the store. ' • ' !

Mr. M'Geegob said that i e a store ■were started the bread- could be well sold fur<9d. per loat' casli, and lOd. booked. It was remarked that if the bakers could afford to take bread to the Sludge Channel, a distance from the town, and sell it for 9d. >or 10d., they could well afford to sell it for the same in Naseby. Mr. M'Guegou said a co-operative store he had been acquainted with was a most- prosperous affair, He suggested that if the Company was started credit should be very limited ; and that, in the case of shareholders who were customers, credit should, not be given over the unpaid value of their shares. Mr. Donaldson suggested that credit sll'cffild "ncit be given ' to aiiy biit shareholders, who would be amenable to the idea suggested by Mr. M'Gregor. Itesolved - " That a Company be formed."

Mr. W. Shiles proposed, Mr. Davidson seconded, and it was carried — "That the nuit.e of the company be the Mount Ida Co-operative Store and Bakery Company, Limited, Eegistered." 1 Mr. M'Gbegok proposed, Mr. Dor naldson seconded, acd it wa3 carried " That the nominal capiital of the Comr pany be £looo,,divided into 500 shares of £2 eaicli." Mr. A. White proposed, Mr. Donaldson seconded, and it vras carried—" That ss. per share be paid on application, ss. on allocation, and the balance, if required, be paid, ,2s. 6d.,pcr share on one month's notice." ■ The gentlemen then present resolved themselves into'a Provisional Committee till next meeting, which was fixed for ."Wednesday evening next —tha Secretai'y to procure all possible information as to the working of co-operative stores in the interval. , A vote of thanks to the Chair concluded proceedings. There were a nnirber of gentlemen present, and flu rcuifh unanimity prevailed throughfut.

HISTOB Y ofthe CuNFLICT between RELIGION ajs-d SCIENCE. By John William Draper, M.D., LL.D. Part II; You have the character of the book in the first or second statement. Take the second—" Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Greecp was fast outgrowing her ancient faith " (p. 1). . Had he said a few of the more enlightened were growing dissatisfied, with the ancient faith, this would have been true. But certainly the great body of the people were as strong in their allegiance to the ancient faith as ever they were. Of this we have abundant evidence in any of the many independencies. Take Athens for instance. We . quote from Dr. Smith's history—- " After.the Persian wars—in the beginning of the fifth century—the Acropolis had ceased to be inhabited, and was appropriated to the Worship of Athena, and the other guardian deities of the city. It was covered with the temples of gods and heroes." The Parthenon or house of the virgin Athena, the great 'goddess of Athens, was. finished in B.C. 438. It contained a colossal statue ot the virgin goddess, executed by Phidias. This statue j stood forty feet high, and the weight of solid gold employed in the robes and ornaments was forty-four talents, or over £IO,OOO worth. Another bronze statue of the same goddess, also the work of Phidias, in. another part 6f the Acropolis, stood seventy feet high,. In another place, on the same hill, was the temple of ;Ercctheus, or Poseiden, and this was probably completed in 363j B.C; Have we here any evidence that Greece was fast outgrowing her ancient faith? .; All these temples, and many others we have no time to notice, were dedications to the ancient religion, and, considering the immense cost at which they were erected, you would" infer the existence of a pretty strong attachment to the religion, such as it was. But we have stronger evidence still. Anaxagoras, the philosopher of the fifth century, " was indicted of impiety, for disputing' the existence of a j hundred gods, with morals and passions somewhat worse than those of ordinary human nature," and, had he not fled from Athens, his rashness might nave cost him his life. Phidias, the prince of sculptors, venturing to introduce portraits of his patron} Pericles, and of himself,, among the gods in the frizes of the Parthenon, was arrested, and he died in prison before his trial came. It is true there was another charge against him—that of peculation—but the impiety was considered a graver charge. Alcibiades fell under a similar charge; l The statues of the god Hermes to be met 'with at .every door, corners of streets, &c.—were found one morning in May, 415, 8.C., to have been.,all mutilated during, the night. The city was soon in a great state, of excitement. . Many were arrested, and condemned to,death as accomplices. Alcibrad.es was accused as being the prime actor, but; ; ,managing .to. escape, lie-was tried ,in his absence, found guilty, and condemned to death. Then again we find that the Athenians, among whom science and philosophy had' the first place, putting, in 396 8.C., one of. their wisest men to death because lie would not .worship the gods. whom the city worshipped, find because he introduced new divinities of his own, and corrupted the mind;of the youth. Socrates had to die, because he was supposed to be sapping the foundation of the a!ncient faith. The ancient faith must then have been pretty vigorous. Four centuries after this, when Paul the Apostle visited Athens, the centre of Grecian culture," he found the " city wholly given to idolatry," The ancient faith did not even then die. We are told that there were in j Greece as many as'26o oracles, and that the most famous, the Delphic, its voice was last heard in the days of Julian the Apostate, nearly four centuries after the birth ot Christ. Verily "the ancient faith must have died a vigorous dtfath. If Dr. Draper meant'to say that belief in the'ancient faith was dying' out among the poets, historians, and philosophers, he should have said so. This much even is not correct; for "the philosophers af'erwards transferred the abode of the gods to the planetary spheres, to which they likewise transferred the name Olympus," and filled this region with gods, ; as heretofore. But still this might be what he meant, for we find him a little farther on saying (p. 3), "In their secession the philosophers and the historians were followed by the.poets." We are curious to kndw who were the philosophers and historians iEschyles and Euripides, .the,poets men-, 1 tiouedfollowed. ''Can the Jiving follow the! unborn ? ' The great phi'lpaop'heWofGreece are Plato-, Aristotle, Zeho, and Epicurus, not one|ot vvhom wereborn before the death. ofJEscliyles. There would have been more truth in the assertion had he said—the philosophers ; and historians followed the poets in their secession from the ancient faith. • This might be true; the other statement is not. . It is the looseness of the language we find: fault with. Take another statement a few pages further on (p. 14)| " But now] the. worshipper of the vile Olympian divinities, whose obscene lives must have been shocking to every pious man, was brought in contact with a grand, a solemn, a consistent religious system, having its foundation on. a philosophical basis." We need not say the italics are ours. liemembcr lie is writing of thd invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great, made in the last years of the fourth century, and he chooses to be more explicit still (p. 14), "At the time of the Macedonian expedition Persia recognised one universal Intelligence, the Crea- , tor, Preserver, and Governor of all things, the most holy essence of truth, the giver of all good. He was not to be represented by any image or any graven form." The coloring is high. Who could have, after that, expected this (p. 32), " Again and again had Persia changed her nation T al faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism ; then under new political influences she had adopted Magianisin. .She had wor : shipped fire, • and kept her altars burning on mountain tops. She had adored the sun. When Alexander came she was fas\ falling into Pantheism." According to the author's own statement Persia had then loft the simple and spiritual Monotheism of Zoroaster far behind. The Macedonians, to make his first statement true, must have seen the buried dead, and | heard them discourse of the holy essence of God. It is of a piece with the author's manner ot writing that he gives us no definition of science—the all-important word of his work. We might do him injustice, and yet we are constrained to believe that he makes science to be synonymous with heathenism and paganism. We have tried to make out somo distinct idea iii his deyevipii -.n of the museum of the Ptolemies, >i.nd the nearest to a definition

are these words—science is "irterature, mathematics, astronoroj r , medicine" (p. 20). Then again we find that the word science is taken to express the best results of scientific ieffort—the worst;and the failures are entirely omitted.. The description of the Ptolomean museum is grand! The colors are not spared, ancl you would imagine that science had much . better times of it then, than .it .has. ever Had siuce. In the museum men of all shades of opinion found a learned Elysium, amid .books, " sculptured apartments, choicest statues, and pictures." To believe him, never has the world seen anything of the kind before or «incc Verily it would have been grand to have been an old Aristotelian, undisturbed by Christianity, and surrounded by the hea thenism of antiquity. Much is made of the library attached to the museum, and our author gravely'tells us that it contained'in its best days 400,000 volumes. "From," we are also informed, "probably inadequate accommodation," another " was established in the adjacent quarter, placed in the Serapeion, or temple of Serapis," and this one contained eventually J300.000 volumes, making the grand total of books to which the philosophers of Alexandria had access 700,000 volumes. We ask pariieular attention to this additional library—called :also the Daughter—because it comes up again. We naturally ask where the author : got his figures? We do not say, out of his. imagination, where he gets, most of his historical facts—we dp not „?i excuse him of this. We choose to let''the ' Edinburgh Keview' answer our question (No. 283, Libraries Ancient and Modern), "The statements as to the number of volumes in the Ptolemean library at Alexandria are very various, ranging from 100,000—at which it is rated by Eusebius—to 700,000, at which it is fixed by : Aulus Giilliu-f.- Sensca gites the in term-- > diate number 400,000. All these statements, however, are of a date long poste- 1 rior to the time, which they regard." We must lift the curtain. Our author has • thrown over his facts, and let the light in! Another statement, from the same article from whitlv we have quoted, bears also upon the question, " The learned reader need not be reminded how wide is the difference between the ancient" volumen," or roll, and the'" volume " of the modern book-trade, and how .much smaller the amount of literary matter which the former may represent. Any single " book " or "part" of a treatise would anciently have.been called" volumen," and would reckon as such in the, enumeration of a collection of bonks.: The Iliad of Homer, which in a modern library may form but a single volume, would have counted as twenty-four volucnina at Alexandra." We now leave the reviewer and our author together to make up the correct and reliable estimate of the mental pabulum in . the Alexandrian libraries. It was very : scientific to make such assertions without any-qualification* in a book which prided ■ itself'.upon: being so impartial. - j The spconcl chapter treats of the;origin of Christianity. In its first, pages we have a description of the religious condition of the lioniah republic at the coming of Christ, and this is the most accurate ■ we have yet met with. • But when 'the author comes to speak of Christianity his . statements are as egregiously defective as they were overdone in his treatment of ! the orjgin of science. —We are, sqrnewhat horrified at the manner, in which he speaks of our Saviour and of Mahommed. The ! comparison is highly instructive (p. 36), "In one of the eastern Provinces, Syria, some persons in ver} r humble life had associated themselves together for benevolent and religious purposes. The doctrines they held were in. harmony with that sen timent of a universal brotherhood, arising from the coalescence of the con-' quered kingdoms. They were doctrines inculcated by Jesus." In chapter iii. Mahommed's life is given, written upon the usUal style of making'the best of contained-excntuaily- r 300,000--'Polu-»es-- 7 --- everything. He:enlarges upon the virtues, the excellencies, and the prudence of the man, and then, ' with a "profound bow, asks (p. 84), "Shall .we we speak of this man with disrespect? His precepts-are at this day the.religious guide of one-third of the human race." So ignorant of Jesus, no wonder he is so ignorant of -the doctrines ofthe gospel—(p. 38) " For many years Christianity ma- , nifested itself as a system, enjoining three things—toward God, veneration; in personal life, piety; in social life, benevolence. We would, like to know when ] these years were. -The statement is extremely vague, ,audi must, if rhistory is; true, be'false. Christianity, was 'from the' first more than this,-is more still, and never could be -so. little .without,ceasing: to, exist. We have a brief garbled statement of th? persecutionof tlie' Cirnstians! under Diocletian (in p. 38). - He really puts it mildly, and apologises so much for - The.real factsar<>,these — Galerius, one.of the Cajsars, and son-in-law of Diocletion, as nearly, as 298, "commanded that all soldiers in Ins army should take part iri the measure by which he : obliged all Christians to leave the ranks." This was the mutiny of which Dr. Draper makes so much. Galerius, through craft, next prevailed upon Diocletian, the Emperor, " to disregard what had formerly been the causes of his toleration." "Diocletian, by no means averse,to persecution in itself, was.'at last moved to order one on an extended scale. "The persecution set on foot extended over almost the whole empire. Whatever tortures or modes of death ingenuity could devise were put in requisition." The prosecution then begun lasted eight years. " During those eight years of unceasing and unprecedented persecution. Christains had given the highest proofs of nigral heroism,, and of enthusiastic readiness to suffer as martyrs.'.' f Dn Draper does not mention this. It is, of t course, 'foreigh to his'design. We com|mend his generosity. . , . We find him.next ,going to Tertullian, a Church Father who wrote in the begin- '• ning of the third century, for an nocouu t of Christianity in-its best'days,--now understand how. Draper no!t' know anything about the peculiar doctrines of the gospel. One of the Church's most learned historians says of Tertullian (Dr. Cunningham's Historical Theology), " He lias b°en regarded as marking a pretty distinct era in the declension ofthe purity of evangelical doctrine and evangelical feeling in the early church." " Tne general truth is, "that- he gives j less prominence than any preceding writer to the peculiar principles of evangelical truth." The author of the book goes back to the fourth century before Christ to find t ie first origin of science. He takes up Tcrlulliau, who wrote in the third century after Christ, for an account of Christianity in its purer days. We

woul'd "have Tfad 'rlTor^liSp«f°<)f' hi.-*""befffk - liad lie read the ]S t mv Ttwt.inieijt, and found there what Christianity was in its purest day.s. , (To be continued ) .-' .: ■