voice!”—a pulpit to fling down or pick up the gauntlet of defiance to all evil!-a pulpit to keep unrolled the perpetual banner of the Holy War!-a pulpit clothed with the shadow of the Cross of Christ!-a pulpit covered by the wings of the Unseen Dove!

May 30, 1867.

AN OUTRAGE ON THE CHRISTIAN

RELIGION.

T is the glory of Christianity that it stoops to the lowly. The proud exalt the proud. The The strong make fel

great flatter the great.
lowship with the strong.

The rich rank them

selves with the rich. But Jesus Christ was the Messiah of the poor. Born in a manger, he made the lowliest. roof sacred. The son of a carpenter, he made the commonest calling honorable. Having not where to lay his head, he took from poverty its disgrace. Condescending to men of low estate, he made pride of rank for ever despicable. Taking the form of a servant, he thereby invested human nature with a dignity which forbids the strong man to oppress the weak, forbids the high class to scorn the low, forbids society to divide itself into castes, and forbids the government to outrage its citizens.

In contravention of the Christian religion, the President of the United States has once again set his heel on the necks of the lowly. Andrew Johnson's late Message is the greatest affront to the Christian spirit of this age which has been given by any presidential manifesto since the iniquitous Fugitive Slave law. With scorn and indignation, with sorrow and shame, we have read the dull, stony, and cruel argument which the Chief Magistrate of a Christian republic has pointed against a class of citizens whom he ought to exalt rather than to degrade, and whom he ought to clasp with the hand of fellowship

This

It

rather than to smite with the gauntlet of scorn. state paper is without parallel and without excuse. is out of harmony with the Christian era. It is three thousand years old. It is the product of a Pagan brain. By the side of the Roman Emperor who kept in his girdle a bodkin to pierce flies, let posterity place an American President who kept in his inkstand a pen to stab

negroes.

This new document from the Whited Sepulchre is filled with dead men's bones. It crushes at a stroke not merely a multitude, but a race, of victims. It rolls like Juggernaut over the rights of one-sixth portion of the American people. It re-lights the dying fires of that martyrdom which the black race on this continent has suffered for generations, and ought to suffer no more. It begins again the cruel persecutions which all mankind lately supposed were drawing to an end. Not even Horatio Seymour were he governor, nor Fernando Wood were he mayor, would have written at this late day a message so bitter in its accusations against the most docile race in the Republic. The man who promised the black-faced millions that he was to be their Moses; the man who wrote to Governor Sharkey that all negroes who could read and write ought to vote; the man who said to Major Stearns that negro suffrage was to be fostered in Tennessee; the man who assured the black regiment that this Government was not for white men alone: this man, forgetting his pledges, forgetting his duty, forgetting his origin, has shocked his own nation, and astonished mankind, by putting forth, under the solemn seal of the Executive Department, an official re-utterance, in the year 1867, of the satanic slanders against the negro which disgraced the year 1856.

During the peril of the Republic the negro was a loyalist; his master a traitor. The negro was the nation's defender; his master, its assassin. The negro succored Union prisoners; his master starved them to death. Yet now, after this history, the President proposes to deliver the negro, bound hand and foot, to his late master! He argues that black loyalists should have no political rights, and white rebels no political disabilities. He asks for the repeal of all that Congress has done toward reconstruction, in order that Southern whites may immediately be re-invested with power over Southern blacks. He declares that impartial suffrage is worse than military despotism. He intimates that black men are unfit, not only to share political power with their white brethren, but even to govern themselves. He believes that foreign immigrants should have more privileges than native-born citizens. He insists that no calamity has ever yet befallen the Republic equal to the danger which will ensue from what he calls Africanizing one-half the country. He maintains that what is stigmatized as negro supremacy in the South will cost two hundred million dollars a year. He pretends that the ballot in the negro's hand will paralyze all mercantile business south of Mason and Dixon's obliterated line.

How strangely this message will fall on the ears of thoughtful Europeans! One President of the United States issues a proclamation emancipating slaves; and another writes a message asking practically for their rendition to slavery. How the beginning of 1863 puts to shame the end of 1867! How the silent sepulchre at Springfield rebukes the babbling Executive at Washing

ton.

Spiritual wickedness prevails in high places. What is

the remedy? Spiritual purity must prevail all the more in other places. When the government is base, the people must be noble. When the state is false, the church must be faithful. The conscience of this nation ought to be so sensitive that such a message from the President would sting twenty million loyalists to indignation, and cost its author his immediate impeachment. The sentiment of justice ought to prevail among the people to such a degree that a chief magistrate who should speak against the just rights of the weakest citizen would raise as great a tempest about his head as would an archbishop who should publicly assail the 39 Articles. A nation that quietly looks on while its ruler tramples a negro, shall be one day trampled itself by the same tyrant.

This nation needs to be re-baptized in the fountain of political equality. To this end, the Christian pulpit must re-preach St. Paul's sermon on the one blood of which God hath made all the nations of the Earth. Citizens who love liberty must kindle anew its altar-flames in their breasts. Good men's lips must learn how to say, "Who is offended and I burn not?"

We want to see tyranny swept out of the land. We want to see the civil and political rights of all American aitizens established on a rock of adamant. We want to see justice done alike to rich and poor, high and low, white and black. We want to see the Christian religion. victorious over men's pride of birth and prejudice of skin. We want to see a truer value set upon that human nature which the Lord thought worthy of redeeming at so high a price. We want to see the Gospel leveling no class down, but all classes up. We want to live under a government which fears God, and respects its citizens. We want to see an awakening church leading the sluggish