Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1883 — De La Matyr. [ARTICLE]

De La Matyr.

The Rev. Gilbert De La Matyr, the brains of the Greenback party of Indiana, preached at the M. E. Church Sunday morning: delivered his justly celebrated lecture on “Daniel the Prophet” at the same place Sunday evening, and spoke upon the subject of “Monopoly” at the Court House Monday evening. An interesting and powerful speaker, with rare abilities for holding the attention of an audience. A man zealous and unselfish, though, as we believe, sometimes mistaken, in his purposes. Great intellectual powers, but marred, in some degree, by a tendency towards the visionary and impracticable, and somewhat Jacking in that power of logical and consistent thinking which comes from severe early mental discipline. His sermon Sunday morning was from Second Corinthians 4-17’ One of the ablest and most interesting sermons we ever listened to, and full of grand thoughts and elevating precepts, it were an ungracious task’ to criticise unfavorably; although we do protest against

such passages as the one m which he condemned Darwinism, as being only fit for, and believed in, only by men , who are beastlike in their own natures, and which lie himself directly refuted by his praises of the great teachers of Evolution: Darwin, Tyndal, Lyell and Huxley. The .lecture on “Daniel” deserves nothing but unqualified praise- To voice the common sentiment of the audience, we only wish that it had been twice as long.' ' . The pressure of- local news matters prevents for this week, any extended notice of the Monday evening’s lecture at the Court House, but upon which subject we shall have something to say next week. Mr. De La Matvr took the early train Tuesday lor Chicago, intending as we understand, to make a lecturing tour through lowa.

Owing to the malicious and despicable trickery and filibustering of Speaker Bynum, and others like him, of little sense and less patriotism, the Indiana Legislature adjourned without having passed the general appropriation bill. When you come to think of it, by the way, if ever in the history ,of this country there met a legislative body so utter ly vile as to make it a disgrace for a decent man to be found in it, then that same Indiana legislature of 1883- is just that oue and no other- The republican members, in the main, were respectable and intelligent, as, were also, many of the democrats. But such men as the blackguard Brown, the doubly dyed traitor and bloated and obscene debauchee, Heffren, and the shystering and incapable trickster Bynum, with their followers, swayed the democratic party in the legislature and through that the whole assembly. About the only good thing that can be said about the legislature is that it has prepared the way for a republican victory in 1884.