The Spirit of National Reform
By Editor
THE tender, loving spirit which actuates some of our National Reform friends is well exemplified in the following from Fire and Hammer, a so-called religious paper published in Los Angeles, this State:— “We have received a circular from the American Sentinel Publishing Company, Oakland, Cal., wishing us to use our influence to break down the Christian Sabbath, and to prevent the passage of the national law against secular work, and turning our Christian Sabbath into the infidel continental Sabbath of France, with no definite time set apart for the learning about God or morals. Our private opinion of the SENTINEL and its sentiments is, that it is one of the most damnable sheets ever published. “We take notice of your circular, Mr. SENTINEL, by these few well-considered-for-years sentiments; and hereby set our hand and seal, that we consider your form of infidelity to be one of the worst, if not the worst, that the devil has hatched out in sulphurdom for centuries. ‘There is not an infidel or saloon keeper in the land but hugs your delusion of devils as Satan will you except you repent.’” We are sorry to soil the columns of the AMERICAN SENTINEL with language of this kind, but it seems necessary in order to give our readers a proper idea of the true spirit of National Reform. “Michael the Archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke thee;’” but this professed Christian editor does not stop short of profanity in the railing accusation which he brings against us, simply because we insist that the State has no right to pass laws requiring the observance of a religious institution. We do not know what the Fire and Hammer means by saying that “it has received a circular from the American Sentinel Publishing Company.” In the first place, there is no such publishing company; and in the second place, no such circular as described has ever been sent out by anyone connected with this office, nor by anyone else to our knowledge. We suppose that the venom of the editor has got the better of his desire, if he has any, to tell the truth. It matters not to us what his private opinion is of the SENTINEL nor of its sentiments. Nor are we to blame if there are saloon keepers in the land with a sufficient sense of justice to appreciate the arguments which we use. We have certainly never said anything in the SENTINEL that we do not believe is perfectly consistent with true Christianity, and here we shall continue to stand; we cannot do otherwise.