An Eastern paper says:—
By Editor
"Religious newspapers are rapidly multiplying, both in number and extent of circulation. Religious books are issuing from the press in unexampled quantities. Religious essays never before filled so large a space in periodicals." All this is true, but what sort of religion is very much of that which is taught in those so-called religious books and papers? Not a little of it is only whitewashed infidelity. The time foretold by the apostle (2 Tim. 3:1-3) has come, and having itching ears, men having a form of godliness but denying the power are heaping to themselves teachers after their own lusts. THE debate between Brother A. T. Jones, and the Rev. G. W. Bothwell, A.M., D.D., was held, as announced in the SIGNS of two weeks ago. Mr. Bothwell prepared the way for his unacknowledged defeat by saying that he had Scotch blood in his veins, and that Scotchmen loved controversy, and never knew when they were beaten. His chief arguments were, precedent and numbers. Sunday(?) legislation had existed from Moses down. The opinions and acts of Constantine, St. Augustine, and other of the early Fathers, and the Reformers, together with the great array of talent and numbers of to-day, and the decision of judges of State courts, constituted his main argument. It is so, because this great number of great men believed it so. National Reformers were placed in the fore front of the friends and supporters of Sunday. Altogether it was a poor argument. There are noted equestrians who ride two horses at one time that are going the same way, but we never heard of one who ever succeeded in riding two horses at the same time which were traveling in different directions. But this is just what Mr. Bothwell attempted to do. He claimed that all that was wanted, all that was designed by the proposed Sunday law, was a civil Sabbath, and yet he justified National Reformers, and the religious legislation which they propose. Brother Jones replied in his usual clear style, showed the inherent wickedness of all Sunday legislation from Constantine down, and presented some precious gospel truth besides. Is it proposed to publish the substance of this debate, on both sides, as one number of the Sentinel Library. It will be interesting reading. We will have more to say on this subject in the future. THE Boston Advertiser relates a circumstance that occurred recently in the suburbs of that city which illustrated the practical working of a Sunday law. The case is stated thus:— "C. B. Botsford, who lives out on Garfield Avenue, West Roxbury, is a prominent deacon in the Congregational Church. He sold a lot of standing grass to Alvin Spear. Last Saturday the grass was cut, and Sunday, there being signs of rain, Spear, his father, and two other men, proceeded to shake the hay and store it away in a barn. This went against the conscience of Deacon Botsford, and, upon the men refusing to stop at his command, he had them all arrested. In court the next morning the Judge ruled that they were not engaged in a work of necessity, and they were fined $10 and costs each for Sabbath-breaking." Perhaps this "good deacon" feels that he has secured the vindication of the law of the State, and also of the divine law of the Sabbath as he understands it, but did he obey the golden rule? did he do unto others as he would have them do unto him? A LATE New York dispatch tells of a man in that city who, while intoxicated, threw his daughter, aged thirteen years, on the floor and holding her down with one hand, with the other he seized a kettle full of boiling water and began to pour it on her body. The girl screamed, but her brutal father emptied every drop of the boiling water in the kettle upon her before he stopped. Her cries brought up the other tenants, who called a policeman and had the wretched man arrested. The mother sat stupidly looking on at her daughter being scalded, never interfering to save her. The girl was so badly burned that her recovery is doubtful. When the officer entered the house the mother was lying drunk on the floor in a mass of filth and rags which served as a bed. The infant, sickly looking and suffering terribly from neglect, was being rocked in a broken cradle by a seven-year-old boy. This boy is an imbecile. And thus another significant comment is added to the many of a like character already written on the assertion so glibly made by the advocates of so-called personal liberty, that liquor hurts only those who drink it. WE do not know by what terms to characterize such mixing of God's providence with such stupendous folly. Before Graham dared to undertake the feat of shooting Niagara in a barrel, he tried the rapids, and passed safely through. Then, as reported in the Daily Examiner, "Standing on the head of the submerged barrel, which shifted about in the uneasy water, Graham lifted a glass of liquor to his lips and said: 'I drink to the health of a greater venture than this, which, God helping me, shall be accomplished before the leaves turn.'" This shows just what ideas men have of God. To say that such folly is abhorred of God would simply be to utter a truism evident to every man of good sense. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself," said the Lord through the psalmist, in speaking of the sinner of the last days, and here the statement is exemplified. And yet what worse is that than for Christians to ask God's blessing upon institutions and preachers not only not ordered by him, but that are directly subversive of his own commandments? Either is but little short of blasphemy. ROMAN CATHOLICS have two thousand eight hundred parochial schools in the United States, and pressure is again being brought to bear upon Catholics to patronize them. There they are taught the faith of their fathers. Says the Catholic News, in a plea for the parochial schools:— "This faith should be dearer to every Catholic heart than all the wealth, the honors, and the pleasures that the world can offer. This faith we have retained from generation to generation under all the pressure of penal laws, our forefathers suffering death, imprisonment, loss of property, all rather than abandon the truth once delivered by Christ to his apostles. We Catholics of to-day must not show ourselves unworthy descendants of the persecuted Catholics of the past." And this faith has been maintained by anathema, by malediction, by torture, by fagot, by thumbscrew and rack, by every kind of torture that hellish ingenuity could invent. Persecuted Catholics? Yes, somewhat, but their own record for hundreds of dreary years compelled it, and goaded on their persecutors. Roman Catholics have a right to their belief, but they have no right to carry out that belief in the enslaving of their fellow-creatures by the civil arm, or any other means of compulsion. But we should think that no honest journal among them would ever talk of persecution, when the persecutor over all others combined is the papal church. Yes, we believe it; give them the power to-day, and they would not shew themselves unworthy of their ancestors in more ways than one. So tolerant are they when powerless to enforce their dogmas, so cruel when possessing power!