People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — Mr. Remsbury on Thomas Paine. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Remsbury on Thomas Paine.

The Christian. We heard Mr. Remsburg on Thomas Paine the 19th ult. The lecture was exceedingly good rhetorically. We were glad to see that a goodly number of the Christians of Rensselaer were present. God’s people are not afraid of investigation. We still believe that truth shall make people free, but we don’t believe that Mr. Paine is so vilified from the pulpit as Mr. H. would have us believe. If that doctrine, much courted by skeptics, The Survival of the Fittest, is true, and Thomas Paine was the fit subject of such a eulogy as was given by Mr. H., the world will give him due memory without special effort from our lecturers. Christianity neither stands nor falls on either the truthfulness or the falsity of the proposition, “Thomas Paine was one of earth’s greatest benefactors and has been treated as a villain.” It stands with the truthfulness or falls with the falsity of this proposition, “Jesus is the Christ the Son of God.” If skeptics would successfully assault Christianity, let them show the world that Jesus was an impostor, and that the Bible is a fable. If the Bible was not written by the ascribed authors and at the accepted times of their composition, let us know when and by whom they were written. Let them explain how the Bible anticipated science for so many centuries if it was not written according to the directions of Jehovah. Also prophecy and its fulfillment is a fortress that, if taken by the enemy of Christianity, is an .eternal yielding of a strong hold. Suppose T. Paine has been vilified by preachers and suppose that there are many professed Christians who are tyranical, superstitious and wicked, does that change the fact that Geo. Washington was the first president of the U. S. No. neither does it change the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is God’s book, or that the church is of divine origin. Christians take affirmatives on these proposb tions, and as a ruld skeptics do not listen to the arguments made in support of them. We venture the assertion that not one skeptic out of a hundred is posted on the evidences of Christianity. It is not honesty to condemn that of which we are ignorant, neither is it prudence to destroy what is doing good without building up a substitute that .will do more good. Let Christ's enemies give us a better ideal and substitute a better morality than that found in the Bible when they wish to destroy it. In the meantime we will hold fast to the Christian system. Oh J that men would cease to judge and condemn Christ and Christianity by the mistakes of Christians.