PORTRAIT OF THOMAS PAINE.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 571, 4 October 1851, Page 4

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS PAINE.

There is a great deal of stern, manly truth told by tbe secular press. Whether it be through deference to a general public sentiment favourable to morality and religion, or from an increasing conviction of the vital importance of biblical principles, it is certain that tbe popular press is assuming a higher tone in tbe discussion of great moral questions, and is lending its influence to the diffusion of Christian knowledge, as nevpr before. It thus contributes powerfully to the removal of danger from scepticism among the cultivated, reading classes. Infidelity is in a good degree made to slink into the narrow channels of its own creation, instead of flaunting its blnsphemips in tbe face of the community, as in its palmy days. Even journals of loosest morality, and farthest from the support of evangelical views, deal with infidelity and its champions with just and unsparing severity. The recent anniversary of the birthday of Paine having been seized upon as the occasion for rallying the j discomfited adherents of the drunken blasphemer, one of the most widely circulated of tbe secular journals thus draws the portiaic of the " unbonoured and unwept" champion of unbelief: " Paine sat down in (he French prison to which his brother infidels had most causelessly consigned him, to overthrow the religion of the Bible, without a copy of that book at band —without having ever carefully or j dispassionately considered its claims, to credence, or tbe ' evidences which sustain them—assuming that such add such were the doctiines of Christ, because somebody said so; and that Christ was an impostor, because those doctrines did not square with his notions of reason and divinity. The tone of his work is presumptuous, scoffing, ribald, dogmatic, insolent. It is as much as to say,' T, Tom Paine, know every thing, and whoever dissents from my doctrines must be 'a knave or fool — there is no third choice.' Such a work could have but these effects—to encourage lewd, reprobate boys in pursuing the course dictated to them by tlieir fierce, unregulated passions, on which the religion of the Bible was the only practical check; and to impel devout, reverent, exemplary Christians to a deeper dislike of infidelity in all its forms, judging its intrinsic character by this God-defying manifestation."