Correspondent.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3667, 27 September 1880, Page 2

Correspondent.

(To the Editor of the ETONINGt Stab.)

Su, —As some of your casuistical correspondents seem to think that I hare no devotion, and that my writings are unfit for the perusal of young persons, I propose that they should select from my correspondence such passages as they may deem indecent or corruptive of good manners, and print them in one or two columns of your paper, as an advertisement in juxtaposition with a selection that I will make from the infallibly inspired scriptures; leaving the public to judge which of the two manifests the most proper notion of propriety, decency and morality. Before continuing and completing the subject of my letters, it may not be superfluous to answer the question so often put—l almost think ironically— as to what could usefully and beneficially supersede the Scriptures. Seeing that Sceptic merely contends for the removal of that which is false and corrupt from, and the thorough expurgation of the scriptures, and further, that this has taken place over and over again, the answer is that the revised and truthful edition of the Scrip* tures should supersede, as it will do, the present incorrect version. But how. comes it that the people have been for so many years, and are at the present time, contented with a mutilated edition of the Bible P Is it because they are ignorant or indifferent to the contents of the 14 books, viz., from the 3rd book of Esdras to the 2nd book of Macoabees? Most part of Bibles published are never read, and seldom read intelligently—they serve as an ornament and as an outward sign of sanctity, and in the majority of cases would be no more missed than the 14 books that are absent from their present Bibles. The public teachers and readers keep certain passages of the Bible before the public, who become as used to the sound of it as they do to the parish bells, and as they would to the reading ani"*» moral teaching of Senica Plato and other philosophers. There are many moat vitally important subjects upon which the public mind needs education, and from a due understanding and practise of which much sound good would come. Men have yet to learn the true meaning of civilization, the arbitrary division classes, the causes of necessity and ignorenee, the need of moral cultivation, the nature of duties and power of wealth, manufactures and commerce, the causes and preventions .of poverty and misery, the relative positions of rich and .poor, the proportions of prodnce and labor. These and kindred subjects would in time, by wise and gradual teach men to rescue themselves from most of the evils that they now endure, and for which merely passive submission is taught in the Scriptures. Our race has as yet had no sound conception of those higher and noblier scientific principles on which society has yet to be built. Let no man be led away by false prophets, of which there has been and always will be many. Man in the gross is not a thinking, animal, or he would not be caught by visionary hopes and fears by schemes and prophesies. The professional prophet is always more speculative then scientific. Prophecy in the present day is the science of exigencies, speculation and chance.—l am, &c, SoBPTICt