Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1891 — Novel Creeds. [ARTICLE]

Novel Creeds.

The young man of the period is full of doubts and problems and question. Ings, and the beliefs of his grandmothers and maiden aunts are but as pap for his soaring intellect, which he feels requires stronger victuals. His self-compacency is flattered (and the agnosticism now so fashionable is largely the product of intellectual vanity) by the notion that the old ideas, while good enough for ordinary persons, are unsuitable for men of superior mental caliber. Hence it'is that mankind nowadays are ever on the lookout for some new thing in matters spiritual; but as most people are incapable of constructing a new creed on their own account, they must turn to some other person to do it for thorn, You, my dear sir, for whose instruction and benefit these pages are written, will be that person. With you it rests to satisfy the spiritual cravings ana aspirations of an inquiring age. With you it rests to minister to the disease peculiar to this ninteenth century,that so-called • earnestness” which, often begot of a morbid and unhealthy egotism daily furishes recruits to th* noble and ever-increasing army of prigs. For, as old Teufelsdrockb would have it, “Beneath you hideous coverlet of problems and doubts and earnestness and questionings, what » fermenting vat of briggism lies simmering and hid!” Prigs in trousers galore, and prigs, ah my lackaday! in petticoats too. For the ladles dear things are being drawn into the vortex of rationalism and speculative inquiry. Some of them write novels mildly seasoned with unbelief, and they all read “Robert Elsmere.” The “demon of annosticism” has invaded all sections of polite society, and he is nowhere more at home than in the gilded saloons of the great Nor does he now, as formerely, confine himself to the smoking room and the other purlieus of the male sex. but growing bolder,like goosey gandetOn our childhood’s legend, he wanders (where neither of thorn have any business to intrude) “in my ladies chamber.” Here his horns and hoots have long since ceased to terrify, and familiarity with him has bred, not contempt, but a conviction that he is not so disagreeable an imp after all.