THE DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2196, 16 January 1886, Page 2

THE DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP.

[By Mr Gladstone,]

Under the title of " The Dawn of Creation and of Worship." Mr Gladstone contributes.to the November number of the "NineteenthCentury' a deeply-interest-ing and critical examination of the arguments against primitive revelations arid other truths contained in Drßeville's "Prolegomena to'the History of Religions." MrGladstonediscourseslearnedly, aitf demolishes triumphantly Dr Reville's Homeric heresies,. He attaches'great importance to the Homeric poems, because he contends that many important pictures and indications contained in them supply evidence- that cannot be confuted, uoUnly of an ideal, but of an historical relationship to the Hebrow traditions—first and mainly, as. they are recorded in the BookT.of Genesis; second, as less authentically to bo gathered-from the later Hebrew learning; and third, as illustrated ;from extraneous sources..' Moreover, Mr Gladstone holdsthat" any attempt to expound the Olympian mythology of Homer by simple reference to a solar theory, or-even to nature-worship in a larger sense, isi simply a plea for a verdict against the evidence," But to the large mass of tho people the chief interest in Mr Gladstone's paper will be found in its eloquent vindication of tho Biblical cosmogony and of revealed religion in general. He owns his surprise not only at the fact, but at the manner in which in this day writers, whose name is legion, unimpeached in character and abounding in talent, not only put away from them, but castjnta the shadow, or into the very gulf of negation itself, the conception of a Deity—an acting and ruling Deity-of tho belief which has satisfied the doubts aiid wiped away the. tears and found guidance for the footsteps of so many a weary wanderer on earth, which, among the best and greatest of our race, has been so long cherished by those who had it, and so longed and sought for by those who had it not, We might suppose that if at length we had discovered that it was m the light of truth untenable that the accumulated testimony of man was worthless, and that his wisdom was but folly, yet at least the decencies of mourning would be vouchsafed to this irreparable loss. Instead of this, it is with a joy and exultation that might almost recall the frantic orgies of'tho Commune that this, at least at first sight, terrific and overwhelming calamity is accepted anl regarded as a gain for those who believo that the old foundations are unshaken still, and that the fabric built upon them will look down for ages upon the floating wreck of many a modern and boastful theory. It is difficult to seo anythine but infatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to tho. notion that to substitute a blind mechanism for the hand of God in' the affairs of life is to enlarge the scope of remedial agency; that to dismiss the highest of all inspirations is to elevate the stream of human thought and life; and that each of us is to rejoice thatour several unitsaretobe disintegrated at death, into countless millions of organisms, for- such it seems is the latest " revelation" delivered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi. Assuredly, on the minds of those who believe, or else-on the minds of those who after this fashion disbelieve, there lies some judicial darkness—a darkness which may be felt. While disbelief in the eyes of faith is a sore calamity, this kind of disbelief which renounces and repudiates with more than satisfaction what is brightest and best in the inheritance of man is astounding, and might be deemed incredible. Nay, some will say,' rather than accept the flimsy and hollow consolations which it makes bold to offer, might.we not go back to solar adoption, or with Goethe, to the hollows of Olyinpus?-' Exchange.'