The National Reform Movement.
In Review No. 7, we gave a preliminary report of the Convention assembled in Philadelphia the 18th ult., to agitate the question of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In the N. Y. Tribune of Jan. 25, we find the following additional particulars concerning the meeting:— On the second day, numerous verbal amendments to the resolutions entangled the meeting for a time in confusing points of order. The exciting event was the advocacy by Prof. McIlvaine of the University of Pennsylvania of the following amendment to the preamble of the Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, acknowledging Almighty God as the ultimate source of all authority and power in civil government, and the moral laws of the Christian religion as of paramount authority, in order to secure a more perfect Union,” etc. This substitute was vehemently opposed by almost all the speakers, as “failing to recognize the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and was rejected by a vote almost unanimous. The keynote of the meeting, as thus struck by one of the speakers, was: “As at present, rejecting the authority of God in our Constitution, we are a nation of atheists; if we adopt the resolution of Dr. McIlvaine, we become deists; if we abide by the report submitted, we stand before the world as a Christian nation.” The meeting adopted the above resolutions, and thus maintains the platform practically ratified by the first General Convention, viz.: “We labor to secure such amendments to the Constitution of the United States as will suitably express our national recognition of Almighty God as the author of National Existence, and the source of all power and authority in civil government; of Jesus Christ as the ruler of nations, and of the Bible as the fountain of law and the supreme rule for the conduct of nations.”