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OF THE

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION.

PRESIDENT:

The Hon. WM. STRONG, United States Supreme Court

VICE-PRESIDENTS: *

His Excellency, JAMES M. HARVEY, Governor of Kansas.

His Excellency, SETH PADELFORD, Governor of Rhode Island.

The Hon. J. W. MCCLURG, ex-Governor of Missouri.

The Hon. W. H. CUMBACK, Lieutenant Governor of Indiana.

The Hon. WM. MURRAY, Supreme Court of New York.

The Hon. M. B. HAGANS, Superior Court of Cincinnati.

FELIX R. BRUNOT, Esq., Board of Indian Commissioners, Pittsburg, Pa.

JOHN ALEXANDER, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. CHARLES G. NAZRO, Esq., Boston, Mass. THOS. W. BICKNELL, Esq., Commissioner Public Schools, Rhode Island.

JAMES W. TAYLOR, Esq., Newburgh, New York. Prof. TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D., Union College, New York.

EDWARD S. TOBEY, Esq., Boston.

RUSSELL STURGIS, jr., Esq., Boston.

The Right Rev. MANTON EASTBURN, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts.

The Right Rev. G. T. BEDELL, D. D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio.

The Right Rev. G. D. CUMMINS, D. D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky.

The Rev. C. 8. FINNEY, D. D., formerly President of Oberlin College, Oberlin, O.

The Rev. F. MERRICK, D. D., LL. D., President of the Ohio University, Delaware, Ohio.

The Rev. JOSEPH CUMMINGS, D. D., LL. D., President of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.

The Rev. A. D. MAYO, D. D., Cincinnati.

The Rev. T. A. MORRIS, D. D., Bishop of the M. E. Church, Springfield, Ohio.

The Rev. J. H. McILVAINE, D. D., Newark, N.J. Prof. O. N. STODDARD, LL. D., Wooster University, Ohio.

The Rev. M. SIMPSON, D. D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Rev. J. BLANCHARD, D. D., President of Wheaton College, Ill.

JOHN S. HART, LL. D., Princeton College, N. J. The Right Rev. JOHN B. KERFOOT, D. D., Bishop. of the Diocese of Pittsburg.

The Right Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Central New York.

The Rev. T. L. CUYLER, D. D., Brooklyn.

The Rev. LEVI SCOTT, D. D., Bishop of the M. E. Church, Delaware.

Prof. JULIUS H. SEELYE, D. D., Amherst College,. Mass.

The Right Rev. CHARLES P. McILVAINE, D. D., LL. D., D. C. L., Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio. The Rev. A. A. MINER, D. D., President of Tuft's College, Mass.

The Rev. JONATHAN EDWARDS, D. D., Peoria, Ill.

GENERAL SECRETARY

The Rev. D. MCALLISTER, 410 West Forty-third street, New York.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY:

The Rev. T. P. STEVENSON, 1405 North Eighteenth Street, Philadelphia.

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*The name of Governor WASHBURN, of Massachusetts, was included by the Convention in the list of Vice Presiden's, as appears in the Proceedings. In view of the statement which is published on pages 70-71 of this report, it is thought proper to omit it in this connection.

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US, 2062,5

Gift of

Hon. Charles Summer,

of Boston.
(76.U. 1830.)
CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION-The Origin and Progress of the Movement to
secure the Religious Amendment of the Consti-
tution of the United States..........

..............

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION AT

CINCINNATI:

iii.-xvi.

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Report of the Executive Committee of the National Association....
Resolutions Adopted by the Convention.........

38

50

ADDRESSES BEFORE THE CONVENTION:

BY THE REV. D. MCALLISTER-The Aims and Methods of the
Movement.......

4-8

BY THE HON. M. B. HAGANS, President of the Convention.......
BY THE REV. A. D. MAYO, D. D.—Religion in Public Schools..

9-13

17-24

BY THE REV. J. R. W. SLOANE, D. D.-The Moral Character
and Accountability of the State.........

25-33

Protest of MR. ABBOT-and DR. MAYO's Reply........

33-37

Paper by PROF. TAYLER LEWIS-Impossibility of State Neu-
trality........

39-49

BY THE REV. T. P. STEVENSON- The Legal Effect and Practi-
cal Value of the Proposed Amendment.............

56-66

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE MOVEMENT

TO SECURE THE RELIGIOUS AMENDMENT OF THE CON-
STITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

BY T. P. STEVENSON,

Corresponding Secretary of the National Association.

THAT there is no acknowledgment of God or of the Christian religion in the Constitution of the United States, has been deplored by many devout and thoughtful men ever since that otherwise admirable political instrument was framed. In the early part of the present century the eminent Dr. John M. MASON, of New York, employed these words: "One would imagine that no occasion of making a pointed and public acknowledgment of the divine benignity could have presented itself so obviously as the framing an instrument of government which, in the nature of things, must be closely allied to our happiness or our ruin; and yet that very Constitution which the singular goodness of God enabled us to establish, does not so much as recognize his being."

In the admirable treatise on "The Oath," by the Rev. D. X. JUNKIN, D. D., published in 1845, the writer says: "The oath of the President of the United States could as well be taken by a pagan or a Mohammedan as by the Chief Magistrate of a Christian people: it excludes the name of the Supreme Being. Indeed it is negatively atheistical, for no God is appealed to at all. In framing many of our public formularies, greater care seems to have been taken to adapt them to the prejudices of the infidel few than to the consciences of the Christian millions. In these things the minority in our country, has hitherto managed to govern the majority. ** We look on the designed omission of it the name of God in the oath] as an attempt to exclude from civil affairs him who is the Governor among the nations." These views have been intelligently and publicly maintained by a portion of the American people at all times since the adoption of the Constitution. The contrast, in this respect, between the Constitution of the nation and the Constitutions of nearly all the States did not escape observation, and it was remembered that, before the national Constitution, no similar instrument of government had been framed by any portion of the American people without an explicit acknowledgment of Almighty God and the Christian religion.

No public or united effort however was made to secure an amendment which should suitably express the religious sentiment of the nation until the year 1863. The civil war in which the nation was then engaged was almost universally felt to be an expression of the Divine displeasure against the nation. The public conscience was prepared to welcome any measure which proposed in a suitable and becoming way to give honor to the God whom we had offended

and express our feelings of repentance and purpose of reformation. A Convention for prayer and Christian conference, with special reference to the state of the country, had been called to meet in Xenia, Ohio, on the third day of February, 1863. When it assembled, it was found to include representatives from eleven different denominations of Christians, and from seven of the States of the Union. An unusual degree of patriotic and religious fervor pervaded all its exercises. It was therefore an auspicious hour for the consideration of the subject when on the second day of its sessions, Mr. JOHN ALEXANDER, then of Xenia, now of Philadelphia, quietly laid on the table of the Convention a paper of which the following are the principal portions:

In this, the day of our national calamity, it becomes us to inquire what the Lord would have us to do. In considering the way by which God has led our nation and the poor returns we have made to him for his distinguishing blessings, we are constrained to confess that we have been an ungrateful and backsliding people; and if the deserved judgments now upon us for our sins do not produce repentance and reformation, national division and prostration, if not destruction, are inevitable.

In the earlier struggles of the people for national independence, the frequent acknowledgment of God and his authority, the notable declaration of reliance on the aid of Divine Providence and the sentiment that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to liberty, which were uttered in the Declaration of Independence, gave evidence of a religious public sentiment in the nation. Might it not, then, have been reasonably expected that after our national independence had, by the help of God, been secured, and our national troubles had passed away, and when, after the enjoyment of years of peace and prosperity, the national Constitution was adopted, such a nation, with such a history of divine deliverance fresh in their memory, would, by common consent, stamp indelibly on their Constitution that sentiment of "Glory to God and good-will to men," which they had so often professed in adversity and which they had so conspicuously proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence?

But alas for human frailty and ingratitude! Instead of going on to promote more and more the glory of God and the rights of man, a terrible, and, if God's mercy prevent not, a fatal backward step was taken in adopting that otherwise noble instrument without any direct recognition of God or his authority and with a toleration of human slavery, thus contradicting two of the noblest principles of the Declaration of Independence, viz.: Reliance upon Divine Providence, and acknowledgment of the equal rights of man.

From that day the nation has been demoralized by the promulgation of an instrument as the paramount law of the land, which is far beneath the Christian sentiment of the nation. These two defects in our otherwise inimitable Constitution, so dishonoring to God and unjust to man, we believe to be the plague spots in the heart of our nation, corrupting its vital fountains and threatening its dissolution.

These facts have long been understood and deplored by patriots and Christians. But pecuniary interest and corrupting prosperity on the one hand and avarice and wicked ambition on the other, have conspired to allow these defects to remain, and step after step to be taken in their support, until we have well-nigh legislated God out of the government, while we hold man, made in his image, as a chattel. And now God has arisen in his anger and is vindicating his own glory and the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Therefore his just judgments are upon us as a nation, and we must repent and forsake our national sins, or be destroyed.

We regard the Emancipation Proclamation of the President and his recommendation to purge the Constitution of Slavery as among the most hopeful signs of the times. But we regard the neglect of God and his law, by omitting all acknowledgment of them in our Constitution, as the crowning, original sin of the nation, and slavery as one of

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