An Irish Estimate of Religion in America.
THE Irish Presbyterian church is evidently not a unit in principles or measures. A Presbyterian pastor in Belfast descents as follows upon religion in America and the speeches of his brethren of the deputation: "We regret to notice the fulsome manner in which persons from this country have attributed the revival in Ireland to the prayers of American Christians. A movement which is regulated and controlled by revivalists should at all times be regarded with much suspicion; but a revival emanating from America, a country which has done more to foster infidelity than any so-called christian land, must of necessity be pretense. When the state of things in the American Board of Home and Foreign missions is properly understood, and the disgraceful manner in which ministers yield to a vile public opinion is considered, no Christian movement imported from their shores will find acceptance with intelligent men. There is perhaps no chapter in the history of modern persecution more painful to read than that to which Dr. Cheever, one of the boldest and best of all its ministers has been subjected in New York, simply because he alone has had the courage to lift his voice openly against that sum of villany—American Slavery. The determination to crush all ministers who say a word against their national sin, the determination to suffocate and suppress the plain teachings of Scripture, can be persisted in and carried out at the very time these New York Christians are expecting the religious world to hail their revivals! When the time comes in which they shall heartily and earnestly direct the lessons of God's word against their own national iniquity, more and better demonstrations will be given of their real respect for the gospel than any which can be obtained by a technical revival shipped and invoiced to distant kingdoms. Until the wretchedly degraded churches of America do the work of God in their own land, they have no spiritual vitality to communicate to others; their revivals are in the religious world, what their flaunted cries of liberty, intermingled with the groans of the slave, are in the political."