AN IRATE "CHRISTIAN" YOUNG MAN.
By Editor
It is thus that the general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. of Winsted, Conn., writes us:— MR. EDITOR—Dear Sir: Will you please drop our name from your free list. Don't want your paper (SIGNS OF THE TIMES), and am tired of throwing it in the wastebasket. I suppose all my fellow secretaries feel the same way. Think your treatment of Rev. Mr. Crafts deserves a rebuke from every decent man in this land. Would rather put dime novels on our table than your paper. Respectfully,
E. B. PHILLIPS. We would cheerfully grant Mr. Phillips' request if we could, for we believe the SIGNS has a more worthy mission than the wastebasket. And from many letters received from various parts of the country we are sure that there are not a few secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. who agree with us. The SIGNS OF THE TIMES, however, does not send the paper. It has evidently been ordered sent by some friend of the paper and the association from some regular news agency, the managers of which if they see this notice will act accordingly. As to our treatment of Mr. Crafts, the SIGNS is not aware that it ever treated him in any other way than courteously, and more than justly. For his pronounced National Reform opinions we have only the utmost abhorrence, as we are sure he will sometime, when he reaps the harvest if not before. We pity him; we are sorry for his dupes, and we feel this way simply and solely because that upon which he largely expends his unbounded energy is contrary to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We oppose his principles because they are a perversion of the gospel of Christ and of the civil liberties granted under the Constitution. As to the preference which Mr. Phillips has for dime novels as compared with our paper, we have only to say that that is his privilege. We are sorry that he feels thus; we would that he could see the gospel of Christ as it is, and greatly regret the influence which such feelings as Mr. Phillips cherishes must have upon the young men, Christian truly, we hope, who frequent the rooms in which he holds official position.