termines the rise, progress, decline, and extinction of nations; nor because the world's history moves in irresistible cycles, to which all greatness must submit ; nor because society is an abyss throwing up from its depths endless transformations to be again engulfed, a monster, Saturn-like, devouring her own children. They have fallen under the just judgment of Heaven because of the violation of Heaven's laws, they have fallen because they have refused to learn Nebuchadnezzar's lesson; that "the Most High God ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that he giveth it to whomsoever he will." Many a Sarmatia has fallen unwept, but no one without a crime. We have but to give loose rein to the powers of evil that do already work in our own country with fiendish energy and Satanic aspect, and the result is soon accomplished. "All national greatness," says Neander, "depends on the tone of public feeling, and this again on the power of religion in the life of the people." And again, The times in which unbelief has prevailed are, as history teaches, uniformly times of earthly calamity; for the moral depravation which accompanies unbelief necessarily destroys also the foundation of all earthly prosperity."

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The nation is of God, is a creature of moral law and a subject of the divine government; change the names, and the burden of Tyre, of Edom, and of Ammon may be written of any nation that follows in the same path of wickedness; phenomena are transient but principles are eternal. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away." "For three transgressions and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof." Fire, famine, and slaughter" are the avenging fires that follow in the pathway of national atheism, political corruption, and crime. The curse does not come causeless. Who are punished, being innocent; and where were the righteous cut off? We have crushed out the head of the hydra that once threatened our national existence. There is the same irrepressible conflict between the theory of government which we advocate and that of the various foes that now threaten the nation's life.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty through God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan. We do not forget, however, that Christ has said that he came not to send peace on earth, but a sword. A nation, like an individual, reaches its goal through conflict, through agonies of war and strife. If she is to come forth triumphant, her garments will be red as are those treading in the wine press.

us.

We follow the Master. The banner of the Captain of our salvation is before The leader of this army hath upon his vesture and upon his thigh a name written: "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," and we know that the final issue can not be doubtful. He is called, and faithful, and true, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. Though His vesture be dipped in blood, He goeth forth conquering and to conquer. The armies that are in heaven follow Him. He will overturn, overturn, and overturn until His power is established, and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. MR. CHAIRMAN-I believe we have held no convention on this subject without hearing the roaring of some wild beast, threatening blood. Well, sir, we are the followers of the Prince of Peace. We propose to carry forward this discussion in the arena of fair argument. But, sir, we have heard such threats before, and we have seen them put in execution, and the result is before the world.

We follow peace, but those who make these threats may as well know that they cannot intimidate or drive us from our firm purpose. If they attempt to carry

them into execution, they will be met by a resolution as determined as their own, and by a heroism that no system of unbelief ever inspired.

We are the sons of sires who in the face of a great moral conflict could sing:

Father in heaven, we turn not back,

Though briars and thorns choke up our path,

Better the torture and the rack

Than meet the whirlwind of Thy wrath.

Let tempests rage, let torrents pour,

Let whirlwinds churn the raging sea,

What is the turmoil of an hour,

To an eternal calm with Thee?

At the close of Prof. Sloane's address, the Convention adjourned to meet the next morning at nine o'clock.

SECOND DAY-MORNING SESSION.

The Convention met at nine o'clock, and was opened with prayer by the Rev. Chauncy Barnes, of Athens, Ohio.

In the absence of Judge Hagans, the chair was occupied by the Rev. R. A. Browne, D D., one of the Vice Presidents of the Conven-tion.

The resolutions reported by the Business Committee at the previous: session were taken up seriatim. We much regret that want of space compels us to omit all report of the spirited and able discussion which followed. The principal speakers were the Rev. D. McAllister, the Rev. A. M. Milligan, Prof. W. Wright, Prof. Stoddard, the Rev. A. Ritchie, the Rev. H. H. George, the Rev. J. W. Bain, and the Rev. J. L. M'Cartney.

During the progress of this discussion, the Business Committee reported to the Convention the written protest of Mr. Francis E. Abbot against the movement, with a recommendation that Mr. Abbot be allowed to present it orally, and a motion that the pending business be suspended for this purpose. The motion was adopted, and Mr. Abbot spoke as follows:

I thank the convention for the courteous manner in which you have con-sented to listen to this remonstrance. I respect this movement very sincerely It seems to me to have the logic of Christianity behind it, and if I were a Chris tian, if I believed in Christianity, I do not see how I could help taking my stand at your side. [Applause. ] I stand here not as a Christian, but as a fellowcitizen of yours, a man who has as much interest in the government as you have, and at the same time, a man who does not share your Christian belief..

Without casting any reflections upon the motives which have led to this attempt to Christianize the United States Constitution, I wish to enter a most earnest protest against the attempt itself. I will not inflict a long document on your attention, but confine myself to a single point of vast practical.importance

If the proposed changes are ever made in the Constitution, their necessary result will be to prevent all persons except Christian believers from holding any office, civil or military, under the American government. No honest disbeliever in the newly incorporated doctrines will be able to take the Oath of allegiance required from all United States officials and soldiers. Only Christian believers and dishonest unbelievers will be able to take it; consequently the entire power of the government, both political and military, will be constitutionally concentrated in the hands of those who believe, or profess to believe, the doctrines thus incorporated.

The very large portion of the American people who do not believe in these doctrines will thus be rendered incapable of holding office, deprived of all representation in Congress and the other branches of the national government, and robbed of rights which have been hitherto recognized as theirs from the very adoption of the Constitution. They will be degraded to a subject class, ruled by an aristocracy of Christian believers.

This state of things once established the "appropriate legislation" by which the new policy must be sustained will necessarily involve the proscription and suppression of free thought, free speech, and free press. Whether intended now or not, oppressive persecution must be the consequence of the adoption of the proposed amendment. All your disclaimers of the intent or wish to persecute are utterly idle. The matter will not be in your hands. Persecution will grow like a cancer in the body politic just as soon as the coveted inequality of religious rights once poisons its blood.

Now, I urge you to consider well the temerity of your proposed usurpation of political power. I warn you against the peril of instigating the Christian part of our population to attempt this usurpation. I caution you against the folly of supposing that the majority of the people will finally consent to this subversion of their common liberties. I beg you to count the cost of this agitation before you carry it further. It is a wild and insane delusion to expect that the great body of freedom lovers will ever submit voluntarily, or can be made to submit by force, to any such outrageous oppression, whether in the name of God or man. I make no threat whatever, but I state a truth fixed as the hills when I say that before you can carry this measure and trample on the freedom of the people, you will have to wade through seas of blood. Every man who favors it votes to precipitate the most frightful war of modern times; and it is simply preposterous for any of your number to speak of the liberals as "threatening war.' You threaten war when you avow a purpose to destroy the equality of religious rights now guaranteed by the Constitution to all American citiOn the assailant in this struggle be all responsibility of its results! In the name of freedom, and humanity, and peace, I appeal to you to recognize the real tendencies of your enterprise, and to abandon it as not only hopeiless, but also most dangerous to the tranquillity of the land. If you are thoughtlessly favoring a scheme whose success would be the establishment of a

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Christian oligarchy on the ruins of this free republic, you will turn from it in horror when reflection has shown you its sure issue. But if you deliberately aim to compass this usurpation of power and this disfranchisement of all but Christian believers, notwithstanding the inevitable calamities involved, you will, if as honest and earnest as I believe you to be, point out to the people the abyss that yawns before their feet. Of this be sure-there are millions of men in America who will never submit to be ruled by an oligarchy, whether Christian or antiChristian. If I wished to destroy Christianity in this country by unscrupulous

means, I should encourage your attempt in every way; for the reaction you will create will open the eyes of millions to the fact that Christianity and freedom are incompatible. But because you are not only Christians, but also fellow-citizens, fellow-men, and brothers, I appeal to you most earnestly TO BE CONTENT WITH THE EQUAL RIGHTS YOU NOW ENJOY BEFORE THE LAW, without asking to destroy the rights of those who are not Christians in belief. I appeal to you to make no further efforts to fan into a flame the dangerous fires of religious bigotry; for the conflagration, once kindled, you will be powerless to control. Rise above the temptation to seek the triumph of your creed by political strife, and trust your cause, as I trust mine, to the power of truth over the human soul.

The Rev. A. D. Mayo took the platform and replied to Mr. Abbot's argument as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT-The gentleman who has just spoken has given you, in his written protest and his speech, the gist of the popular objection to the movement in which you are engaged. It is, that if in the Constitution of the United States we place a declaration that the nation is dependent on Almighty God, and bound to obey His holy law; that the nation is living under the rule of Jesus Christ, considered as the ruler of nations; that the nation is bound to conform its character and legislation to the law of Christian morality, the nation will be logically bound to deny all political rights to those who do not believe in Christianity; will be forced into persecution of all unbelievers in religion; will compel persons of his own way of thinking to fly to arms and inaugurate a bloody war.

Now what, in a word, do we ask shall be done in the Constitution of the United States? We ask, in substance, that the same declaration that now stands in almost every State Constitution shall be placed there. One would think the gentleman had come all the way from Toledo to Cincinnati to utter a prophet's warning against some future danger threatened by us. Why, he is now living as a citizen of Ohio, under a Constitution that substantially includes every idea we propose to place in the national charter. The Constitution of Ohio begins with a confession of dependence on Almighty God as the author of the liberties it is made to preserve. It declares that "religion is essential to good government." And by "religion" it means just what this proposed amendment means-that in order that a State shall endure, its citizens should be religious men; should live according to the highest idea of morality, which, in this State, is the moral system of Jesus Christ; and that the State itself should conform to that idea of morality in its legislation and character as it hopes for life. That's all there is in this thing. The gentleman need not have come across the State of Ohio to find this bugbear. It is in Toledo. As a citizen of Ohio he is exposed to all the danger of disfranchisement and persecution to which he would be exposed if this amendment was made. Has he ever suffered such disfranchisement or persecution in Ohio? Has his vote ever been challenged, or his political rights been curtailed, or his right to print the Index or to preach against the Christian religion, been forbidden because the people of this State have solemnly declared they owe allegiance to God, and that religion and morality are essential to good government?

The trouble with him and this class of thinkers is that they do not understand the practical character of the American people, or that a government is not a logic machine that takes out one abstract proposition from the Constitu tion, and with no regard to the genius, character, history of a people, rides

that out to chaos. Government represents the whole of a man. An American government is a practical affair. Like a good man, it believes itself dependent on God, and bound to obey the great laws of Christian morality. It does this with the most scrupulous regard to the rights of thought of every citizen. It forbids no man any right except the right to disobey laws that represent the Christian morality of the civilized world, or that phase of it to which the American people have risen. And so far from being an instrument of oppression, no government on earth ever acknowledged the complete spiritual and political rights of man until Christianity, with its law of universal love and liberty, had inspired the souls of the people of the United States to make a government under which Mr. Abbot can denounce Christianity, and even threaten a new rebellion, with no one to molest him or make him afraid.

The glory of the great Anglo-Saxon peoples is that they are not ridden by this petty, logical mania for pushing an abstraction out to anarchy that curses the Red Republican party of Europe and America. The Anglo-Saxon mind constructs government according to the logic of human nature as a whole. It mixes liberty and order, worship and service, just as they are mixed in the soul of man. Man is the most contradictory creature in existence to a philosopher who don't believe in a soul. The governments of Great Britain and the United States are the only really progressive constitutional governments on earth, because they are constructed to fit man as he is in reality, not as a one-sided philosopher who thinks through a pair of blinders imagines he must be.

Now, the people of the United States, in the exercise of that large roundabout, practical, political wisdom in which they excel all people, have hit the head of this religious question. They say, Leave religion as far as concerns theological creeds to the churches. Leave religion as far as concerns ecclesiastical polity to the churches. But there is one phase of religion infinitely more important than sectarian theologies or church discipline on which men disagree: that everlasting obligation of man to obey God, and live up to the highest morality acknowledged by every people since the world began. That is the great universal religion of man. Christianity has lifted up and cleared up that religion of mankind so that the Christian morality is now the ideal of every civilized State. That universal, absolute Christian religion of obedience to God and love to man the people have declared the practical side of religion with which the State has to do. The obligation to obey that religion is directly or indirectly declared in every American Constitution. Nobody expects any American State will fully live up to that declaration. But the people have taken religion out of the hands of the priests and the secular philosophers, and placed it, in its practical shape as a law of Christian morality, in their governments, and stand around it to defend it as the source of all their liberties and the end of all their hopes.

It is easy to predict what things will come to pass in certain emergencies. Let us see what has actually been done by an American State within the last fifteen years. After the Rebellion closed, the people of the State of Missouri met to form a new Constitution. They were the loyal people of the State, more than half German; many of them of radical German tendencies in religion. They were just out of a dreadful war, and knew better than any philosopher could tell them the dangers besetting a State. What did they say on this subject of religion? They did two things. First, they put into the preamble of their Constitution a more full acknowledgment of dependence on God than any State; even thanked God for saving them from the rebellion: and surely only God