Gems.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 October 1883, Page 7

Gems.

, He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and snarpens our siiiii, our antagonist is our helper. Burke. Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy. Self-command is the main elegance.—Emerson.

Do not unto another what thou wouldst not have another do unto thee ; this is the whole law, the rest is but commentary. Hillet. . Wishing, dreaming, intending, murmuring, and repining, are all idle and profitless employments. The only manly occupation is to keep doing. Major Tucker, the leader of the Salvation Army in India, was put in prison because the commissioner was profoundly grieved that the people were addressed as sinners.

It is one of the most curious of moral fadts that a stupid man, although he would indignantly rejedt the idea of his own stupidity, is always suspicious of the orthodoxy in his own belief of a man whom he feels to be intellectually cleverer than himself.—Saturday Review. J

. heaven, we are told, there is more joy over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine who haven t gone astray. It is just the other way here below. There is more joy over one righteous man who goes astray than oyer ninety-and-nine thousand sinners who have kept at it all their lives.—Boston Transcript. -A- member of the Paris Ecole Pratique d’ Acclimation has discovered a species of spider on the African coast the firm and long web of which resembles yellow silk very closely, and is said to be almost as good as the product of real silk worms. The syndicate of the Lyons silk merchants has closely investigated the matter, and the result is reported as highly favorable. There seems to be no difficulty in the way of acclimatising the new silk producer in France. The Saturday Review says :—“ Mr. Palmer has some amusing stories to tell us illustrative of the popular Russian view of English religion. Thus a Russian employed as doorkeeper at an English chapel, on being asked how soon the service would be over, replied, ‘ I think it will soon be over, for a long time since they sat down to sleep.’ Again a Russian lady pitied the English as being worse off than any other class of religionists • ‘even the _Lutherans have Luther, and the Calvinists have Calvin, though they don’t know how to use them ’ but the English have no saint to help them, so they must certainly go to a bad place.” Oblivion is infinitely preferable to the Christian theory of a future state, for, if we become insensible to happiness, we are also beyond pain. Death will be an eternal, dreamless, unconscious rest. According to Christian teachings, on the other hand, ninety-nine of every hundred human beings are consigned to a never-ending torture of indescribable horror. If my wife, if my children and friends, are doomed to endless torment, there can be no heaven or happiness to me ; all the crowns of glory, all the golden harps, all the songs of heaven’s hosts, could not bring me a single hour of happiness, much less the eternity of enjoyment that is promised to the < faithful.—Dr. Arter, in “ The Bible; Is it of Divine Origin ! ” The Constantinople correspondent of the New York Tnbune writes : One hears a great deal in America about religion that has no trade-mark of good deeds. But the full capability of the race in this respedt can only be seen under Eastern skies. Here, you can see a man who thinks no more before committing robbery than before picking a ripe plum from the tree man who can kill a neighbour with as clear a conscience as he can wish him good morning,—a man who can tell to a hair the number of blows with a club that will kill and the number that will merely stun, and who understands how to pad a club with sand so that it will kill without breaking the skin ; and you will find the same man talking to you about love to God and about dilligence in prayer, producing conscientious scruples about eating his mutton unless it has been butchered in a peculiar way, groaning in spirit when by accident he kills a flea, and calling a servant to remove a bedbu^ from his wrist lest his own less skilled fingers might 1 V o,vn less skilled fingers might mangle the gentle insedt. b 6