p. 1 | THE COMING STRUGGLE by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 20, 1857

THE COMING STRUGGLE.

By Editor

WE commend to our readers the following extracts from an article from the pen of an able divine and close observer of men and things in one of our Western cities. The article appeared some time ago in the Preacher and Presbyterian; but the lapse of a few months has by no means destroyed their importance to the christian community. The evils referred to, stand out distinctly to view, and the call for the co-operation of Christians to counteract them is as loud and imperative as ever.—Chr. Union.

"Wherever the Church militant exists, she encounters opposition. Rome silences the Bible reader in a dungeon. Austria confines the exposor of monkish abominations in a mad-house. France closes the churches, and fines and imprisons those congregations of Protestants who may happen to offend the Popish Bishop. Spain prohibits the preaching of the gospel and the printing of the Bible, or anything derogatory to the Catholic church. Denmark prohibits prayer-meetings. Prussia allows no dissent from her Puseyite or Rationalistic establishments. Russia forbids Bible circulation, or proselytism in all her wide realms. The light toleration in two South American Republics illustrates the darkness of all the remainder of that vast continent. As a matter of course the priests of Paganism and the followers of Mahomet employ all the power they possess to crush the effects of that gospel which endangers the craft whereby they have their wealth.

"There is but one country besides our own which pretends to grant liberty of conscience; but even there what a powerful opposition has been organized against the gospel of Christ. In no European country can the witnesses be found in any considerable number save England. England has ever been reckoned one of the ten kingdoms of the mystic Babylon; and if the inquiry be made, which of the kingdoms of modern Europe may be the great thoroughfare of the nations, the centre of travel, the mart of commerce? but one response can be given—England. Look at the preparation for this event which is transacting before our eyes. A college is supported by British taxation for educating fanatic emissaries of Popery to teach sedition at home and carry priestly government abroad. The government appoints these Maynooth priests to be chaplains to the army, chaplains to the poor-houses and prisons, dismisses officers who will not attend their masses, and would fain pass a bill to endow all the Popish clergy. It is well known that the prince consort was raised a Papist, and through policy assumed Protestantism; and it is very credible that his children, the heirs of the throne, may follow their father's example. It is incredible that without some high protecting influence, Jesuits should have been allowed so long to occupy the chairs of Oxford—that so many Bishops of the establishment should foster Puseyism—that altars, candles, crucifixes and confession, should have been introduced into so many churches—that it should be found impossible to eject an advocate of transubstantiation from a church as yet called Protestant—that such numbers of English aristocracy should have succumbed to the charms of Puseyism, or with more honest servility bowed to the supremacy of Rome. The Pope sends a Cardinal over to England. The Secretary of State sends a priest in the confidence of the government to Rome. England allies herself with Catholic France and Italy, and sends a Catholic ambassador to Spain. Priests wax confident, and begin to talk of their ancient rights—to point to the hundreds of thousands of ignorant, fanatic, famished Irish, who crowd the back-streets of all the cities of the land, ready at the word of command to pour out their hereditary hatred on the Sassenach. Popish Bishops write letters to English peers, warning them to cease distributing Bibles and opposing the church, and requesting them to remember that London is not more impregnable than Sebastopol, and the bayonets which gleamed on the Malakoff were Catholic. The eloquent historian of England shows that religious revolutions are no new thing there. In 1660 England was a Puritan commonwealth. In 1665 a persecuting Stuart filled the throne. It were not difficult to divine the measures which a Popish prince, a Popish ministry, a Puseyite clergy and aristocracy, and an Irish army, an Austrian and French alliance, would find needful for the suppression of evangelism. Indeed, Cardinal Wiseman, and his journalists save us all dubiety on the subject. They expressly tell us that as soon as possible they will use the same means for the protection of religion in England which have been found so beneficial in Spain and Austria. Significant intimations are held out to us, too, that Mexico and Canada, are Catholic—that Ireland, now almost on our eastern shore is Catholic—that soon fifty millions of Catholics will fill the valley of the Mississippi; and that—

"The number and variety of the forces arrayed against the church in our own land is amazing. The theatre, the tavern, and the ball-room, the hereditary fortifications, we are not at all surprised to find in their possession; but it seems like turning our own forces against us, when the college and the pulpit become the engines of infidelity. It is reserved for the nineteenth century to behold men, calling themselves Christians, teaching Pantheism, or casing themselves in armour of Biblical criticism, and defying the armies of the living God, to prove that he is able or willing to punish his foes. On the very verge of the desert we behold, on our own soil, the scum and dregs of all nations deliberately choosing an American Mohammed as their Prophet, coolly throwing aside the bonds of civilization, and demanding the aid of the Federal Constitution for the consolidation of their abominations. More shameless and more dangerous, because in the very heart of our own communities, the novel and the newspaper wage war against marriage, the Sabbath, and the Bible, and multitudes of the young fall victims to lying spirits, (whether of the dead or living,) who teach that there is no resurrection, no judgment, no hell; that religion is a fable, worship a farce, and the spirit of man the highest intelligence in the universe. It would be hard to name a family in which some inmate has not been more or less influenced by this spirit of the age.

"On our eastern shores the tide of emigration lands a thousand Popish militia every day, trained up to cherish the most determined hatred to the word of God, and to the Church of Christ, and instructed by the Romish agents ere they have landed from their ships to beware of the Bible and the heretics. Into our very families do these agents of a foreign prince, carry their opposition to the gospel, prohibiting their slaves from listening to the reading of the Scriptures, or from uniting with their employers in the worship of God. The chosen victims of poverty and filth, vice and crime, in the cellars and garrets of our cities, they will have them remain so rather than to allow them to attend school, where their minds may be enlightened, or emigrate to the fertile fields, where the rewards of industry would elevate above the condition of slaves. "Let us remember, too, that all these adversaries of the church are regularly organized, and enrolled, and paraded in rank and file. There is no longer a loose, floating, neutral party. Every person belongs somewhere, as the saying is. He claims to belong to some church or order, or club, of one kind or other. The Romish missionary boards the emigrant ship, takes his passage on the river steamboat, or travels in the second-class cars with the newly arrived emigrants, and leaves them not till he has handed them over to the care of some brother Jesuit, and placed them within the pale of the holy church. Even those who have no belief in any God find some advantage in the society of their fellow-men, and associate to keep each other in countenance.

“Let us not deceive ourselves with the delusion, that material so heterogeneous can never unite in any common enterprise. They can co-operate. The very explosion of discordant substances may overturn the battlement which has resisted the sap and battery. Let the experience of England warn us in time. Last year (1855) beheld a strange combination there, powerful enough to intimidate the government, control the Parliament, and almost revolutionize the religion of the land. High Church, and Broad Church, and no Church, Romish cardinal and Chartist lecturer, Whig Tory, Radical and Repeater, the peer of Parliament, and the publican of Pamlico, engaged in a common league to dethrone the Sabbath and worship, and substitute Sunday and revelry. Were it wise, think you, to wait till sad experience teaches us how effectually the Western Mormon, and the Eastern Universalist, the priest, the German Infidel and the American Spiritualist, can unite with the vast and yearly increasing mass of heathenism in all our cities, to trample under foot that gospel which they all cordially hate, and a divided church whose weakness they have learned to despise? With a population increasing by thousands, and a church increasing by hundreds, it becomes a mere matter of arithmetic to calculate in how few years, at our present rate of progress, the churches of Christ shall have dwindled into relative insignificance, and the overwhelming mass of ungodliness shall undertake to decide their destiny at the ballot-box. American Christian! the forces of Western licentiousness, Eastern Infidelity, and Northern Popery, the heathenism of your prairies, and the rowdyism of your streets, are steadily and rapidly concentrating their movements upon you. Already they have made lodgements in your churches and inroads in your families, and but wait their opportunity for the last onset.

“Under such circumstances it does almost seem unnecessary to enquire what course of conduct the church should pursue. Few and weak in the aggregate, ought they still further to weaken their forces by distraction and division of councils, in the presence of such numerous and powerful combinations of their foes? With the consciousness that every day augments the number of their opponents, and every week opens some new engine of warfare against the truth, and every year unfolds some new and bolder assault, should the people of God be content with the old, quiet plan of defensive operations, and folding their arms await the combined onset? Were the Bible silent on the subject, common sense would reply, that harmony of feeling, concert of plan, and energy of action, were indispensable in this crisis.