Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/135

126 by his sister Abigail Scott Duniway, Scott on that day referred to Paine as "irreverent, flippant, irrational." Nearly 20 years later (February 6, 1895) the editor expressed himself as follows on Paine:

"Every few years a rage of admiration for Thomas Paine breaks out, and has its run among a number of our people. Paine's celebrity is due chiefly to the fact that his manner is rough, startling, violent. Many persons are delighted to find furious attacks on old opinions and old institutions. Paine does this work well. But it is a kind of work that has little effect upon the world. Moral insight Paine had none; of the institutions of society as the growth of ages, which might be slowly and safely modified, but could not be upset at once and tumbled into chaos without producing the greatest catastrophes for mankind, he had no conception. The notice he gets from our clergymen is often out of proportion to his weight in history, and is usually provoked by the popular meetings held at intervals by those who, in their hero-worship, reflect or flatter themselves. It is, perhaps, needless to say that it is not because Paine was what is called an "unbeliever" that the Oregonian does not join in this excessive admiration of him."

In such a condensed discussion as this there is real danger of doing violence to the beliefs and significance of Mr. Scott in a field so full of subtleties and controversies as the various phases of religion, theology, and morals. It is even difficult to select from this editor's writings, clear and strong though they are, any quotations within the space limits of this volume which will not perhaps, do him injustice. It must be remembered, too, that Mr. Scott regarded himself as a defender of true religion. He found it possible to affiliate throughout his life with the Congregational church and was on terms of friendly understanding with many of Portland's best-known clergymen in several denominations.

With all this in mind, the following excerpt, published in the Oregonian as an editorial November 19, 1889, under the heading "Rationalism Not 'Decay" of Religion" is offered as probably a fair expression of what Mr. Scott was trying to accomplish in his many unorthodox editorials:

Men, in increasing numbers, perceive that Christianity is not the absolute religion, but merely one of the forms through which the moral and spiritual consciousness of the race is undergoing development. They begin to understand that religion is greater than any form under which it has appeared among men, and they question the claims of any form of it to an exclusive and supernatural character.

The rationalism on which this attitude is founded is not