CHAMS. W. MILLER, a seventh-day observer of Wampum, Pa., informs us that he has recently been notified by a committee composed of a Presbyterian minister, J. C. Rukens, and a Methodist minister, G. B. Carr, to close his stationery and confection store on Sundays, and told that a violation of the command would be followed by his prompt arrest. It looks now as if Pennsylvania would join Massachusetts in introducing the Sunday-slavery crusade into the northern States.
THOSE who oppose our scriptural prediction of a general persecution for non-observance of the Sunday dogma, have always remarked that the previous persecutions were confined to States south of Mason and Dixon’s line, and were the result of local conditions. But we have always responded that the human heart is the same on both sides of the line, and that, at an early date, these persecutions would be seen in the North. We were not mistaken.
A GOOD illustration of the illogical and absurd religious test which some States require of witnesses as a qualification to give testimony, occurred recently in Tennessee, where a witness is required to believe in a God and in future rewards and punishments. A witness against the men who recently lynched six negroes in Tennessee, to escape testifying against the lynchers, boldly denied his belief in a God. His father testified that he had never before heard his son express atheistic sentiments. The judge after mature thought decided that the young man was lying and did believe in a God, and was therefore thoroughly qualified “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and he was required to testify. Comment is unnecessary.
WHY is it that Roman Catholics point to the appointment and election of members of their church to the premiership of Germany and the presidency of Switzerland as a triumph of Catholicity over Protestantism?—Because it furnishes an opportunity for these papists to carry out the programme outlined by Pope Leo XIII., communicated in 1885 to the faithful in all lands, but especially in America. It furnishes an opportunity to “do all in their power to cause constitutions of States and legislation to be modeled in the principles of the true [Roman Catholic] church.” And when American citizens oppose this programme and attempt to prevent in America what Roman Catholic papers in this country declare to be a triumph of the papacy in Europe, this effort is denounced as persecution! Yea, verily, everything is persecution! Yea, verily, everything is persecution in the mind of the papist that interferes with the scheme of Rome to again dominate the world and punish heretics.