Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1873 — A Godless Discourse. [ARTICLE]

A Godless Discourse.

The most extraordinary discourse ever heard in Laporte,- was delivered in Huntsman Hall, last Sunday forenoon, by Mr. W. F. Jamieson, /L' genticaian, SJIIO, in ixovember, 11870, debated with Mr. this city. Mr. Jamieson in nis address, proclaimed himself an out-and-out Atheist. He repudiates distinctly and positively the idea of a first cause, creator or governor. In his view, matter is eternal, and the universe does not owe its existence to any supreme or higher power. God is a myth, and every form of religion a superstition. He declared that the impersonal Deity believed in by so many Spiritualists is a more contemptible “myth” than the orthodox God, being confessedly a Deity without intelligence Or brains. lie was mor,e severe on the Pantheism of his brethren than on the Theism of the Christians. We never listened to so radical and pronounced an iconoclast. His Atheism is perfectly rank, bald and absolute without any condition or qualification, whatever. But he is not a materialist. He believes in the immortality of the soul and a future state—-being taught these great truths (he says) by Spiritualisni. /./low's there is a hereafter, because he has communicated with the spirits of the other world. He has reasoned himself into nis present extreme notions within the last year and a half. He admits that he is in advance of his brethren.— His audience consisted of about fifty men, women and children.— Laporte Herald.