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THE Christian Statesman, of the 4th inst., has quite a lengthy criticism of Senator Blackburn’s eulogy upon the late Senator Beck, because in making that eulogy Senator Blackburn uttered sentiments which are not, in the opinion of the Statesman, in harmony with the teaching of the Christian religion. The Statesman does not question the right of Senator Blackburn to hold whatever religious views that may seem to him good, but it challenges his right to air them as a representative of a “people who are overwhelmingly Christian.” And yet this is just the authority that the National Reformers are proposing to give to Congress and to the courts. They propose to recognize Christianity as the religion of this Nation, and then in their own words they must either have a standard of Christianity or else admit anything which claims to be Christianity. But who will make this standard of religion? Evidently just such men as Senator Blackburn, a man who, though an honest man as the world goes, and an able legislator, knows little more of what Christianity really is, than a Hottentot does of calculus. The Statesman ought not to object to a little of its own medicine, as a foretaste of what may be in the future.
A CORRESPONDENT of the Voice, writing from Nebraska, says that he thinks that Prohibitionists are treading on dangerous ground when they “make an exception, in prohibitory laws, of wines used for ‘sacramental’ purposes.” He does not see “how any Christian Prohibitionist can propose or advocate alcoholic liquor for sacramental purposes.” To this the Voice replies that it does not advocate the use of alcoholic wine in the communion. “We simply say that it is not the province of legislators to decide whether or not the sacramental wine should be fermented. A law which prohibited the manufacture of fermented wines for sacramental purposes would go beyond the proper province of law, and cause many sincere Christians either to violate the law or to violate what they believe to be the injunction of Christ. There is no necessity for that.” This is a serious question, and should give pause to some of the ultra-Prohibitionists who want to enforce upon everybody their ideas not only of temperance, but of religion as well. Even the Voice should pause long enough to answer candidly, whether some of the legislation which it advocates would not interfere quite as seriously with religious liberty as would the prohibition of fermented wine in the communion.
THE statement comes from Winnipeg, that a serious charge has been brought against Lieutenant - Governor Royal, of Northwest Territory, who has been purchasing books for the Government library, and who confined his purchases to Roman Catholic works, only.
THE Red Bank, New Jersey, Register, in vigorously opposing the enforcement of Sunday laws, says that there should be no such laws, and boasts that while in Red Bank there is an utter disregard of Sunday laws, yet the “town has the reputation of being the quietest and best ordered in the State,” and, “unlike every other town in the county of Monmouth, there is no illegal liquor selling.”
MINISTER'S wife (Sunday morning)—“Is it possible, my dear, that after all you have said about Sunday newspapers, you are reading one?”
Minister (very much hurt)—“You ought to know me better than that, Maria; this is last evening’s paper.”—The Epoch.
We presume that this minister was reading that great exponent of moral ideas, published in this city, which demands rigid Sunday laws, advertises Sunday excursions, and which, while denouncing Sunday papers as demoralizing, suggests that the columns of its Saturday evening edition always contain matter suitable for Sunday reading.
THE Churchman, of this city, closes a careful review of the debate upon the bill to enlarge the appropriation for the Roman Catholic Bureau of Education, by calling on all Protestant societies receiving Government aid, to purge themselves in this matter by refusing any longer to participate, and says: “As it is to-day, by reason of participation, eyes are blinded and lips are dumb in the presence of wrong, and a department of the National Government made subservient to the Roman hierarchy.” THE AMERICAN SENTINEL made the same suggestion some weeks ago, but, so far as we know, it has not been adopted, and we look for no better result from the good advice given by the Churchman.
REV. J. D. GILLIAN, Secretary of the Utah Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, says:—
The devotees of no faction are so heartlessly cruel as those of a false religion. Mohammed's scheme to convert the world with the sword is but the common index to the character of them who are zealously wrong. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Catholicism of the Middle Ages illustrates the fact of the same possibility existing under the guise of Christianity. Intolerance is the first sign of the fanatic.
To “convert by the sword” is simply to “convert” by force; the same is true of “converting” by civil law; and yet many who can plainly see the iniquity of the former, can see no impropriety in the latter. And why not?—simply because the law is their weapon, whereas the sword was wielded by others. Nevertheless, in condemning the sword they condemn force, and in condemning force they unwittingly condemn their own appeal to civil law.
THE World publishes an interview with a clergyman, whose name it does not give, and prefaces it with this explanation:—
He said, at the outset, that his only object was to correct some popular errors as to the observance of Sunday in Biblical times, and to show exactly how the matter was then regarded.
Then follows an account of Christ's doings upon the Sabbath, and even Nehemiah's words concerning the Sabbath, (Neh. 8:10), are quoted to show how Sunday was observed in Bible times. It would be just as appropriate to quote Herodotus, to show how the Egyptians celebrated the Fourth of July. It actually seems that even a great many newspaper men don't know that Sunday is not the day called “the Sabbath” in the Scriptures.
GERMANY is not only a “Christian country,” but it is a Protestant country, and religion is regularly taught in all the public schools, yet D. Adolf Harnack, one of the most prominent theologians of Germany, declares that if the Lutheran Church is not to fall in ruins altogether, she “must change her Confession, her style of sermons, and her teachings, not according to the wishes of the day, but according to the indisputable knowledge we have gained.” Infidelity seems to be rapidly on the increase, and the law is vainly invoked to stay the rising tide of unbelief. This proves nothing against Christianity, but it is another demonstration of the utter impotency of a State religion, either to give or to conserve a proper moral tone in a people.
THE AMERICAN SENTINEL.
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