2- robilirrizt
Neva Series, 'Vol VT "NT, .A fY
John.A.Weir 1 jan7o '
Strictly in Advance $2.50, uwierwise *is. 1
p o stage 20cti, to be paid where delivered. 1
UNION SERVICES.
The Committee of the Ministers' Meeting
haring the matter in charge, have arranged for
the following services in commemoration of the
Reunion:
On next Sabbath, the 28th, two communion
Aervices at 3 o'clock, P. M. One in the North
Broad street church, corner of Broad and Green
streets; the other in the West Spruce street
church, corner of Spruce and Seventeenth Sts.
The pastors of these churches are to interchange
in presiding in th'e services—Rev. Dr. Breed in
the North Broad street, and Rev. Dr. Stryker in
the West Spruce street. The . fellowing brethren
are requested to take part:
• In the North, Broad St., beside Dr. Breed,
Rev. Drs. Wiswell and Reed, and Rev. D. A.
Cunningham.
In the West Spruce • St. church, beside Dr.
Stryker, Rev, Albert Barnes, Rev. Drs. Shepherd
and Beadle. The sessions of the two churches
are requested to invite elders from different
churches, on the union principle, to distribute
the elements. -
A mass-meeting union service of all the
churches has also been appoinjed for Wednesday
evening of next week, Dec.lst, aChalf past 7 o'clock
to be held in. the First church, Washington
Square : the pastor, Rev. Dr. Johnson, to pre
side, and Rev. Drs. Willetts and March to ad
dress the meeting,—the other exercises to be vo•
luntary.
The first monthly meeting of the newly form
ed Young Men's Association of the First Church
was held on Friday evening last, in the lecture
room. The association is for the purpose of or
ganiting the young men of the church and con
gregation for active efforts, especially in behalf
of the multitudes of young men in business_
places and boarding-houses, comparative stran
gers, in that part of the city. A weekly Satur
day night prayer-meeting is held in the basement
of the church, committees on strangers, on
neighborhood prayer-meetings and on temper
ance meetings have been formed; invitations
have been extended to the medidal students to
attend preaching, and other labors have been.
undertaken, the whole work as yet being only
begun. The next monthly meeting, do the third
Friday of December, will be, in part, devoted to
temperance. Stirring addresses were made - by
ex-Governor Pollock, Mr. John Wanuamaker
and the pastor, Dr. Johnson.
The sight of an organization of young men
in the old First Church is most reviving. As
was well remarked, some of the young men of a
former generation in that church have refused to
grow old, and they have done much, by the
divine blessing, to keep up the energy and hope
fulness of the body; but the appearance' of a
youthful element large enough for concerted
labors, is a novel and cheering sign in its later
history. May it rival the strength and the suc
cess of the society of an earlier day, which was
a city mission in itself, and which trained some
of the greatest benefactors which our churches
and church causes ever enjoyed.
Thanksgiving day was observed so generally, so
heartily and with so few of the perversions that
have scandalized it heretofore, as to call out in
quiry and remark. We never saw the First
Church so full on a Thanksgiving occasion as on
last Thursday. Mr. Barnes preached with the
freedom and vigor which, of late years, have
been superadded to the thoughtfulness and com
prehensiveness of his earlier style. He showed
that the very idea of thanksgiving was at, war,
not only with Atheism and Pantheism, but with
those views of nature now so popular, which
undertake to exclude all direct providential in
terposition in the affairs of the world. For such
interposition, as an actual fact, he argued with
great ingenuity and force. He showed how the
laws of nature were interfered with by nature's
self, and by the human will, and made it clear
how the divine 'will, in the way of miracle and
of providence, might with just as little incon
sistency, do the same. He then referred to the
events of our national history which might
properly be ascribed to the interposition of pro
vidence. He easily held the great audience for
an hour. In North Broad Street Church, the
pastor preached on the blessings of reunion, and
had a good congregation, the Alexander Church
having united in the service. The singing by
the choir, who had prepared carefully for the
occasion, was of the highest order. The Second
Church, Dr. Beadle's, united with Calvary
Church, and heard a sermon from Dr. Hum
phrey. Dr. March preached in Clinton St.
church, on the tendencies to unity abroad in the
world. Roman Catholic churches and Jewish
Synagogues advertized services for the day,
which was bright and exhilarating. Doubtless
the increasing public interest which religious
questions have acquired, and the large space
given to them in the columns of our secular
papers, especially such points as: the Bible in
our mailmen schools, the approaching (Ecumeni
cal Council and the relation . of 'the Romish
Church to our own public affairs and those of
other nations, the interest excited by Father
llyaeinthe's position and his presence among us,
and, last of all, the union of the Presbyterian
Churches, have caused a certain religious awak
ening among the people, and have turned . their,
feet to,,:the house of God as to a place where
they will . be likely to hear something on matters
of fresh and present interest. We ,hope it is an
omen.of a still deeper awakening and of more
profound and blessed results.
JESUIT MISSIONS,
Rome.began the work of Foreign Missions
sooner than Protestants did. The revival and
missionary work ef the Moravian Church during
the last century, may be regarded as the first
impulse imparted to Protestant Christendom, to
carry the Gospel to foreign lands. But the little
company, that gathered around .Loyola in the
very days of the Reformation, and which
( was
organized into the Society of Jesus to resist and
overthrow the great revolution that had begun
in Germany, contained a Francis Xavier, who
was to preach the Gospel—as Rome knows it—to
the heathen of China and Japan. Romish mis.
sionaries—especially the Jesuits—have been so
long at work, in every field, have labored with
so much of zeal and of outward success, that the
question for us is not " What have they accom
plished ?" but, "Why have they not accomplish
ed everything? Why is there a single unconverted
heathen in the world?" Yet with all their zeal
they have effected next to nothing; they have
been "as men that beat the air." Field after
field—Japan, China, our American Indians,—
they have apparently conquered and occupied,
winning the favor of kings and chiefs and gather
ing in *bests of converts. And then a great
change has come. While they continue to build
on the foundation they have laid, the people rise
and drive them out, and stamp out every trace of
their work. The whole history of their labors is
one of the most curious parts of Church History.
What is the secret of their failure?
I. Their theory of Christian conversion has
been the shallow Ritualistic one. "Submit to
baptism, do penance for subsequent sin and obey
your director," is the form in which they preach
" Repent, for the kingdom,of heaven is at hand !"
They make converts by hosts, their converts
judging of this new, formal religion as they did
of their old formal paganism. The rite makes
the Christian, in the view of both converter and
convert. On these terms, conquests are easily
won. The deeper heart-work, the Spirit's con
viction of sin and righteousness, is kept out of
sight. Hence the easy and rapid gains in the
extent of the work, and the readiness with which
the Gospel of Jesuitism takes the field. The Ma
donna and the Child take the place of the old
idols ; the new processions and feasts are put for
those of paganism, and then when the test comes,
the seed sown on stony ground which has sprung
up immediately, withers laway immediately, be
cause it has no root in itself, when the sun is up,
—when affliction or persecution ariseth for the
Word's sake.
11. Jesuit Missionaries systematically suppress
"the offence of the cross." We are making no
rash assertion here; we but repeat charges hurl
ed at them by the Popes, Conclaves and Synods
of the Romish Church. Christ,, crucified, the
offence of a God made subject unto death, the
death of the cross, they kept in the background.
They presented to their converts Christ, not the
crucified, but the Child in the Madonna's arms.
To the heathen mind, which always associates
dignity and majesty with self-assertion 'and
strength, never with self-sacrifice and submission,
the offence of the cross is as real as when it was
" to the Greeks foolishness; to the Jews a zitumb
ling-block."
Jesuit policy began by presertting the unes
sential facts of the Christian faith, and keeping
the great essential fact in the background. They
thought to prepare the minds of their converts
for the great surprise, but by and by, when they
tried to preach the death of Christ as their se
cond lesson, the deceived, indignant and really
pagan people rose in indignation and drove them
out. Almost to our own day, the Japanese an
nually trampled on the cross of Christ, a cere
mony which was the last memento of the fact
that the Jesuits had at one time converted almost
all Japan.
111. Even when no outward disaster interfered
with their plans, and when they bad the field for
long ages to themselves, they never succeeded in
PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1869.
implanting any true spiritual life in their con
verts. The Republic of Paraguay, for instance,
stood for centuries as the greatest monument of
their missionary zeal: There, they boasted, they
had created a civilized nation out of a handful of
barbarous tribes. The boast was true enough,
after a fashion, but what was the kind of
civilization? The formal ceremonialism of China,
compared with it, was freedom itself. The slight
est and least important act of life was prescribed
by formal rules, and perfdimed at a preconcerted
signal. Everybody lived at the nod and beck of
-the Jesuit fathers. No intellectual or social life
was evoked ; no spontaneity of action or charac
ter was either desired or tolerated.
When, at last, the Jesuits were driven out,
they left behind a community which had just two
social marks 'of a civilized people—plodding in
dustry and abject sabmisaion,—both of them
characteristic of an imperfeet civilization. The
citizen who submits to anther's will without
question, or does the work'set before him in the
way he is bidden, is not an ideal citizen. As
might be expected, the Jestiits were succeeded by
secular tyrants. The two Francises, and Lopez
have ruled Paraguay as Dictators, and were such
in the most emphatic sense. The last of the three
has been driven out by his neighbors of Brazil,
and the other States of the La• ; Plata, in resisting
whom the Paraguayans showed their old quali
ties to the last. They refused to take quarter
when defeated, "for," they said, "we have no
such orders." They, for hours, resisted the Allies
when the latter were ten to . one, and died with
shouts of " Lopez !" on their lips. It may be,
that God will overrule the wicked rapacity of
Brazil and her allies, to waken Paraguay to a
higher grade of national life, and thereby wipe
away in Paraguay, as elsewhere, the traces of
Jesuit emission work.
What the Jesuits did for Paraguay, they would
fain do for Christendom,—exthiguish freedom of
thought and aspiration, and establish everywhere,
a social uniformity, corresponding in its rigidity
and'its pettiness, to the naguastic rule. - They_
would make the whOle eiviliked world one
moiastery. They seem not unlikely to succeed,
so.far as the Church of Rome is concerned. They
have built up a powerful party, who would add
to the old dogma of the infallibility of the Church--
the laity and clergy of all degrees under the guid
ance of the Holy Ghost, and in agreement with each
other—the new 'dogma of the infallibility of the
Bishop of Rome. They have secured the ear of
the feeble, harmless old man who wears the tiara,
and a council will soon be held to proclaim that
the nations must receive his words as the truth
revealed by the Holy Ghost for the guidance of
men. So far they have succeeded, and the
Council will probably promulgate the decree,
which will oblige all good Catholics, at the peril
of their salvation, to submit.
pull *lO I DI 3 Dfo 1 tU
The Presbyterian Church formed by the late
union consists, according to the reports made to
the Assemblies la 4 May, of fifty-one Synods and
two hundred and fifty-six Presbyteries; it has
nine hundred and eighty-two licentiates and can
didates for the ministry, 4,229 ministers, 431,-
463 members, and nearly as many Sunday School
children.
They raised in the year for congregational
purposes : $6,047,042;' for Ministerial Relief,
$56,162; for the four causes of Education, Home
and Foreign Mission Church Erection and Pub
lication, $1,214,310; for contingent expenses of.
the Assemblies, $38,706; for miscellaneous pur
poses, $760,690; being a total of 88,166,814.
This is much below the truth, as it includes al
most nothing but church collections, omitting
legacies, individual donations, income from in
vested funds, &c., which will probably make the
total year's income nine or ten millions, two and
a half millions of which, doubtless, went for pure
ly benevolent purposes.
Without doubt, this is the largest and most
powerful Presbyterian organization in the En
glish-speaking portion of the human family, and
the largest voluntary Presbyterial Church in the
world. In our own country, it is exceeded in
numbers by the Methodists and Baptists alone;
viz, by the M. E. Church, the M. E. Church
South, the regular Baptists a r nd the Campbellites,
the numbers of whom, however, do not seem to
be accurately ascertained. Taking into account
the wealth and social influence of the Presby
terian Church as thus constituted, its zeal for
home and foreign missionary efforts, the vastness
of its contributions for benevolent objects, and
the value' of its church property, it is second
to none in the Union. It has about 1100 mis
sionaries on the home field and 114 on the for
eign field. The next larger denominations in the
country are the Lutberans; numbering 350,000;
Congregationalists, about 300,000; the Episco
palians about 200,000.
The total Presbyterian strength of this coun
try, if united, including German Reformed,
(Dutch) Reformed, Cumberland, U. P., &c., would
be about 915,000.
These facts are not stated in a boastful spirit,
but rather to aid in bringing home to us, more
impressively, the weight of our responsibilities
and the solemnity of our stewardship. It is very
certain, that, as a whole, the Presbyterianism of
this western world, though far in advance of the
original branches, in vigor, expansiveness and
wise adaptedness to the demands of the times,
has by no means wielded the influence for Christ
which, from its resources and position, might well
have been expected. It needs greater pliancy
and versatility, less creaking of machinery, more
free consecration of men and money, a clearer
eye and a wider grasp of the problems set before
it, deeper prayerfulness and a larger measure of
the Holy Spirit.
IS OURS A PROTESTANT OR CHRISTIAN
COUNTRY?
Shall this country continue to be so far Chris
tian and Protestant as to recognize and employ
the Bible in its common schools? It seems
to us this is the real question involved in the
dispute now going on, upon this subject. Where
Protestantism and Christianity are virtually re
nounced, as in the, government of the city of
New York, there the Bible is banished from the
common schools. And we believe that through
out the country generally, the exclusion of the
Bible from the schools will be regarded as a sur
render of the claim that this is =a Protestant or
even a Christian country. Are we ready to do
it ?. _That is the question. We have no doubt
that if Protestrits were united, they could every
where secure the continued use of the Book of
God in the public training of the young, as we
think they should. But faint-heartedness and a
spirit of compromise on the part, of not a few
bearing the "Pirotestant name — are discouraging
sympto l ms, in. the opening of the conflict.
Thus, Henry Ward Beecher, in his late
Thansgiving sermon, is reported to have said :
He would be willing even to exclude the
reading the Bible in our schools, if by that
means any class of our people would be better
satisfied and more zealous in supporting the
system. And certainly he, the son of a Puritan
and a Puritan himself, could not be suspected
of depreciating the importance of Bible reading.
The Puritans took their 'stand on religions tole
ration ; let them stick to their text, and never
abandon the principle of perfect, free religious
toleration, nor suffer- others to impose a different
principle upon them. " What," says the Catholic,
"Do you think it proper to encourage infidelity
—to bring up children without religious instruc
tion 1" Not at all. We do not teach husbandry
in tbe common schools, but it does not, therefore,
follow that we wish to make lazy children. Every
thing in its place. Let the Church teach dog
mas. Let the common school give intelligence.
Let religious instruction be taught in the house
hold, in the Sunday School, in the church.
Therefore, by all means, let our people guard and
cherish the common schools of the bountry.
Our object is not to expose the fallacy of this
reasoning or the incorrectness of the statements.
The declaration which Mr. Beecher makes of his
Puritanism in the midst of this argument, points
to a more than half-conscious suspicion ii the
speaker of serious defection from the standard
of his foirefathers.
Another Puritan divine, Rev. Dr. Cheever,
upon the same occasion, held forth widely differ
ent sentiments on the same subject:
There was, he said, no such duty imposed upon
the State to protect railroad kings, as there was
to protect the youth in .securing a proper reli
gious education. If the State taxed its citi
zens for education, it was bound to educate ac
cording to God's law. To exclude the Bible
from our common schools, would be as bad as to
exclude Christ from our churches. For ages,
rulers had attempted to govern without the
Bible and without Tod. France was an instance,
and what was the result? God says now, as to
that nation, "let the people rule." But they
will do no better, if the governmental affairs of
that nation are carried on without the Word of
God as a chart and compass. For any ruler or
any nation to do without that, would be like
makinc , all the sailors captains on board a ship,
and throwing the chart, compass and helmsman
overboard. This government ought no more to
allow the children to grow up without the Bible
in the common schools, than it would allow nitro
glycerine or gunpowder to be stored in every
dwelling. Half a-million or more of people from
Europe, Asia and other lands are yearly immi
grating to our shores. No nation ever had such
a conglomeration of races and religions as ours
has, within its borders. Without the Bible as a
guide book universal suffrage would prove a
snare and delusion among us. Let them all
come, he said, but let them come under such
laws as the Christian religion dictates. No sect
had a right to interdict the Bible any more than
the Commissioners of the Croton Board had a
Genesee Evangelist, No. I;Z`27
Home & Foreign. Miss. $2OO.
I Address :-1334 ChePtnut, Street
right to put whisky or other poison into the re
servoir. And yet we were now witnessing an
effort to put the Word of God out of our com
mon schools. The Romish Church says it is not
safe to take the pure milk of the Word. It was
deemed necessary to pass the pure fluid under a
Papal pump before it was fit for usc. Thank
you, said the speaker, if the Word must be
watered, we prefer to dilute it ourselves.
Even the Unitarian, Dr. A. P. Putnam, ap
pears to have been truer to his Puritan antece
dents than Mr. Beecher, as will be seen by a
reference to a recent discourse of his in another
part of the paper.
The unanimity with which the late N. S. As
sembly adopted Dr. Darling's paper, protesting
against the removal'of the Bible from the public
schools, shows how the Presbyterian heart is
affected on this subject. We think the united
Church is eager to bring all the weight of ber
great influence to bear on the same side of the
subject.
THE TWO EVENTS OF THE YEAR.
Did ever a single year witness two events of
such magnitude and importance in the peaceful
progress of the race as the coitpletion of the Pa
cific Railroad and the opening of the Suez Canal r
The one celebrated in May and the other in No
vember, mark such a shortening of great routes
of travel and trade, as . had scarcely been more
than dreamed of before they were undertaken.
In either case, the doubling of a whole continent
is avoided, and a complete route is for the first
time established, very nearly upon a single line
of latitude around the world ; the deflection being
reduced from nearly one hundred, to less than
forty degrees, and tens of thousands of miles, and
months of time being saved in the journey.
The various races and nations of the human
family are being brought together and made to
feel the unity of their natures and interests in
the very spirit of the Gospel. To quote from
Dr. March's Thanksgiving discourse :
We have read this morning what was done
yesterday in the grand inauguration of universal
brotherhood, under the auspices of a government
which, within our memory, was the most intensely
exclusive and bigoted of all the powers of the
earth. Day before yesterday, a Christian church
and a Mohammedan mosque were dedicated, side
by side, in Port Said, on the Mediterranean, and
men of all creeds and nations were freely invited
to attend both services; and Moslems and Chris
tians were equally wild with joy at the opening
of the-gates for the commerce of the world be
tween East and West, and the breaking down of
the stronger barriers of prejudice and hostility
between followers of the Crescent and the
Cross.
The religious exercises which marked the
opening of both of these great lines of travel
show us how trifling, after all, is the impression
which unbelief has made upon the popular heart
in the East or the West. The omission of such
services at the landing of the Atlantic Cable, the
union of the two Pacific Railroads, and the open
ing of the Suez Canal, would have left a deep
sense of vacancy in the public mind, such as was
felt at the Sabbath-breaking launch of the Great
Eastern, and in which an omen of her subsequent
ill-fortune was contained. Man, in his grandest
triumphs over nature, feels impelled to recognize
his own and nature's Lord.
—The wrong in the relative positions of men
is frequently so great as to outrage our sentiment
of justice, and to prove that the affairs of the
world are in a fearful state of disorder. The
idea of the pure and holy Jesus standing as a
culprit before the cruel and profane Pilate !
The -idea of Barabbas, a murderer, being pre
ferred and set at liberty, rather than the heaven.
ly teacher and benefactor of men ! And what a
world is this which would suffer a Paul to lie in
the Mamertine dungeon, and a Nero to occupy
the throne of universal dominion ! But not less
extraordinary than the wrong, is the righting
that often comes, and that by its completeness
proves the supremacy of justice and the govern
ment of a righteous God in the affairs of the
world. Pilate has perished as a miserable sui
cide. His prisoner founded the mightiest king
dom the world has ever seen—the stone cut out
of the mountain without hands and filling the
whole earth. Nero is remembered only to be
execrated. The iron kingdom which he ruled
has vanished, centuries ago, from the earth ; while
the name and the works of the unnoticed victim
of his cruelty are fresher and more influential
for good than ever,—a living stream of ,inspira
tion and instruction for all mankind.
—The Oberkirchenrath, the highest ecclesias
tical authority of the Protestant Church• in•
Prussia, has summoned extraordinary Provisional
Synods for the eastern provinces of the kingdom
in which the lay element will be largely repre
sented. The principal subject of discussion. will
be some reforms in the constitution of the Church.