2676

BY

ANDREW HARPER, B.D., Professor of Hebrew, Ormond College.

.Melbourne:

Published by M. L. Hutchinson, Presbyterian Book Depot. 305-7 Little Collins HI. Printed by I'ergcsson & Co., 203 Collins St.

INTRODUCTION.

' I 'HIS address was delivered at the opening of the ^A session of the Theological Hall in Ormond College. At the request of a number of those who heard it, it is now re-printed, in the hope that the wider public it may reach may be helped to some adequate view of the responsibility which rests upon them in connection with the recognition of God in our political life. Two things seem clear to me— first, if the religious people of Australia did not mean to secure that their wishes in this matter should be respected, they ought never to have petitioned for the recognition of God in the Constitution at all; second, if they are determined, and will show some energy, they can secure it. If it be not secured, the blame will be theirs, and theirs alone.

Andrew Harper.

30th April, 1X97.

AUSTRALIA WITHOUT GOD

UNDER ordinary circumstances this address should be academic, but there are occasions when the public weal demands that things academic should be put aside, and a word spoken on some immediately pressing interest. Nothing could, as a rule, be more remote from the ordinary interest of men than philosophy, especially as taught in Germany. Even Hebrew is not quite so utterly secluded from burning questions in national affairs. Yet, when Germany lay at the feet of Napoleon, and all national life seemed dead, it was Fichte, a professor of philosophy, in a college lecture-room, who raised the first and most powerful trumpet-blast of encouragement to resist the invader, and to prepare for a renovation of national life. The dishonour done to his king, and the outrages perpetrated on his country, left him no heart for discussions upon the Ego, or the other abstractions of the study. He came forth into public life and spoke a living and powerful word which aroused Germany to self-discipline, self-control and patriotism in his day, and has made it, in the first place, the liberator, and uqw the arbiter of Europe. Now, of course, no one here can claim to be a Fichte, and this Hall is not a national sounding-board as Fichte’s lecture-room was; nevertheless it has seemed to me that his example is a sufficient warrant to turn aside to-day from more exclusively theological questions, to an event which concerns the honour of God and the national

welfare, more even than the oppressions and insults of a victorious conqueror affected the welfare of Germany in Fichte’s day.

The Crisis.

That event is that the Federal Convention has rejected the petitions presented to it, praying them to insert in the proposed Australian Constitution an acknowledgment of God. So far, save by the Council of Churches, and but for letters from Professor Rentoul and Mr. Watsford, the resolution has been unchallenged. In the secular papers nothing more than notice of the fact has been taken. No attempt at justification has been made; no protesting voice has been heard, and this disastrous resolution seems likely to pass unchallenged, unless the Christian Churches of Australia rouse themselves as they have never done in my memory. If that be so, the Union of Australia, which we have all looked earnestly for, may prove the beginning of a downward career for our beloved country. It is a most serious thing to take part in the founding of a nation. To strike a false note then is to send discords sounding down through all the following years. To tix the tone of national life low is to place all the nobler elements of national character at a disadvantage ; it is to hamper the higher aspirations, to put vigour and energy into all the more unworthy tendencies ; it is to fetter all the future in the bonds of a national sin. To anyone possessed of inward spiritual eye, to all those who know that in the unseen realm of thought the fate of nations is determined, the risk even of any such disastrous treason to the best we know or hope must seem a tremendous one to run. Battles and their final issues are mainly the results of what has taken place in the spiritual sphere. To me, therefore, it seems

that a crisis more radical than any the thunder of Napoleon's guns at Jena brought has come upon us, and all who honour the name of God are challenged by it to show what spirit they are of. It is a great privilege to belong to a generation that has to plant and water the tree of Australian national life. It is legitimate to feel pride in what even ordinary foresight can reveal ol the future greatness of this land. But the position brings with it exceptionally tremendous responsibilities. The average man has here and now an opportunity which only prophets and kings have had elsewhere. But he has also their accountableness. Upon his faithfulness to the best light he has depends the character of Australia in the future. The danger is that such a crisis, coming upon merely average men, who in ordinary circumstances would have acquitted themselves respectably or even well, may Hash out into lamentable distinctness their inadequacy, and leave them branded with a guilt which history will never drop from its memory. In the great upheaval of the Indian Mutiny all the capable had their chance, and shine now for ever as the heroes of that time. But the ordinary routine commanders, who could not believe in their soldiers’ treachery', who saw nothing but what insisted upon being seen, who scarcely knew that the permanency of the British rule was the stake in the game they were called upon to play, saw their reputation crumble into ruin, and were dismissed from the scene most often by a bloody death, into the limbo of the neither good nor bad, whom all sincere and whole-hearted men turn from with pity.

Tin? Nature of rr.

That is the peril that lies in wait for 11s to-day. We are threatened with a perfectly gratuitous denial of God in

our national affairs. It conies upon us in a peculiarly invidious because inconspicuous way, and we may quite easily shut our eyes and deny that there is any crisis at all. We may refuse to see that in our name allegiance to the Heavenly King is being minimised to disappearance. But the fact remains the same. We are being proved whether we shall be true to Him who is the giver of all good, whether we shall, out of mere laziness and indifference, permit God to be ignored as the great supernatural supreme factor in human affairs. For it is no mere sectional doctrine, no notion of a sect or denomination, no teaching which rouses the passions of men, which is here in question. The chosen representatives of all Australia have refused to sanction the insertion of an acknowledgment of the power of God as the source and basis of true political life. They have refused, that is, to acknowledge that there is any intelligent will ruling in political affairs ; they refuse to affirm that there is any supreme wisdom, intelligence, or love manifesting itself in human life. They appear to desire to keep that hope or fear, whichever it is to them (that it is the latter to some of them we can well believe), in the background, to obscure the fact which to Protestants and Catholics alike, to Jews and Mohammedans, to Christians and non-Cliristians of numberless kinds, is the one essential factor in their planning for the future ; the one ground for their belief in progress; the one spring of social, philanthropic, and political energy. Without belief in a God who is at least ‘‘a power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,” no man can cherish a well-grounded hope for the future. For aught men know, without belief in such a power, righteousness may be a mere superstition. The supreme art in building up and governing States may be

the duplicity of the trickster, the compliance of the opportunist, the sycophancy which always gives judgment in favour of the majority, even when experience and history and conscience proclaim them wrong. In a word, if their act he ratified, and God he deliberately thrust away from our thoughts as a people, we are preparing for the advent of politics such as they were in the Italy of the Renaissance, politics in which conscience and mercy and good faith were trampled under foot; in which the keenest brain, the hardest heart, and the most basely suspicious mind always had the upper hand. W^re are, in truth, working towards a state of things in which another Werner, proclaiming himself the enemy of God and of mercy, might arise, or, perhaps, more probably, a Napoleon of finance, who would use all the machinery of free government to debase the will of the nation, to bring the foul stain of monetary corruption into every department of the State, and to exploit the bodies and souls of the poor in the interest of his dividends. I do not wish to say that this action of ours—for if it be not revolted against and upset it will be ours—will necessarily draw upon us any especial divine chastisement. It is more than probable that if we could conceive the divine attitude at all and express it in human words, the nearest we could attain would be the words of the Psalmist, “ He that sits in heaven laughs, “ the Lord shall have them in derision.” But even though the disasters, the droughts, and the despairs of these last years, for relief from which even the very men who are refusing to acknowledge God have appointed a day of prayer to Him, should, as I think is most unlikely, have no connection with our long standing and now culminating dislike to retain God in our knowledge, yet the course of things as it has been established will

bring 11s our reward with all the inexorableness of natural law. God is present in human affairs, whatever we may think or say. 11 is mills may grind slowly, but they do grind, and they grind exceeding small. We may deny His presence, or refuse to affirm it, but He is there, “ not in word, but in power.” To say that He is one of the great elemental forces of life is not sufficient. He is behind, and above, and below, and within all these, for as the proverb that is constant on all Mohammedan lips affirms, there is no strength or power but God. At every crisis of our history we should meet Him, at every parting of the ways in national life He might Ire found, pointing with a sword of flame down the path of national safety and honour, and away from the road that leads to disaster and shame. He might be found to read to us the riddle of all national pain and chastisement and loss. But if we permit Him to be ignored, if we lose, as we easily may, the power of seeing the hidings of His power, we shall be blind to the great factor in all these things. We shall stumble in endless labyrinths of evil, till in our weariness at the greatness of the way we find, at last, our way back to God, or perish there, so far as national greatness is concerned.

Politicians Not Wholly Responsible.

But if these things be so, the question naturally arises, why is it that this acknowledgment of God has been refused ? It is probably not the case that the bulk of our people are either theoretic or practical atheists. Are our politicians prevailingly men who hold these desolating opinions ? That was probably more true of them than of the people at large. The continual compromise, the temptation to suppress personal opinion when it is unpopular, the impossibility of realising any

ideals in the politics of a community like ours, all tell upon our public men. They cease to feel the pressure of immutable principles, and lose the power of holding firm to any transcendental verity. Some of them, too, are of the class who are touched by the agnosticism of the day, and pride themselves upon affirming nothing in the realm of religion. But whatever their personal opinions may be, these are not the source of their action. Even if they were more inclined to strong religious belief than they are, they would not act differently. They are moulded entirely by the hands of their constituents. They take quite helplessly the imprint of the electors’ hands, and the only religious pressure they feel as a constant force, which has always to be reckoned with, is the pressure from the Roman Catholics ; and until this question arose that pressure has always been exerted to keep the State from satisfying the Protestants, unless the huge demands of their Church have been satisfied. Whether it will now be exerted to secure a direct recbgnition of God in the Constitution or not, no one can say, but we hope it may be so used.

Reasons of Refusal to Acknowledge God.

Under the circumstances, therefore, the main reasons why politicians, even those who arc not irreligious men, support the exclusion of God from the Constitution Act, appear to me to be three :—

I.—Roman Catholic Vote.

They fear the awaking of religious rancour in politics. The whips of the Romanist vote is always hanging over their heads. They never know when it may descend, and for what offence it may be turned

against them. They have with infinite trouble—by flattering the Romanist clergy, by speaking respectfully of the Pope, by pointing out to their Romanist supporters that if they give them nothing, they keep back from the Protestants even more—established an equilibrium for the time. They feel as if they knew what this particular vote will do, but they cannot tell in the least what it might do if they were in any way to change the condition of things. Their golden rule, therefore, is to frown down any proposition which has a religious aspect. They are sustained in the belief that this is the right line to take in the present instance, by the fact that since a Romish Cardinal proposed the introduction of this acknowledgment, a number of voters, whose religion and whose politics consist in nothing else but protesting against everything that would give Catholics pleasure, will support them in refusing it. Further, the secularists and atheists, whom all politicians think far more numerous than they are, always on such occasions raise their howl about the danger of religious persecution, and there has not up till now been any strong religious feeling manifested in favour of such a proposal.

II.—Church axd State are Separate.

A second reason has its origin in the first, and is simply a formulating of the policy it dictates. They have pushed secularism to such an extreme -that they have come to believe that any connection between religion and the State is dangerous. This is their reading of the principle that Church and State should be separate. But the two principal propositions are totally distinct, and are in no way necessarily bound together. Even in logic, which is a very dangerous guide for life, they are not so bound. Still less in life are they

necessarily correlated. In America the Church and State are as rigorously separated as they are with us, yet the Constitution acknowledges God, and great religious acts are authorised and initiated by the President. In the separate Australian colonies the principle does not mean that religious duties do not fall upon the State. As I have already mentioned, days of special prayer are proclaimed in all the colonies. Oaths are still sworn upon the Scriptures, and religion is taught in all our gaols and reformatories. But the persistent pressure of political men is always toward the elimination of these things, and this refusal to give a place to an acknowledgment of God will inevitably and at once strengthen all the extreme secularist tendencies. The politician, as such, will always welcome secularism. His cause is immeasurably simplified by it. There are so many fewer winds that can raise a storm when religion is eliminated, and those causes of disturbance that remain are so thoroughly within the average politician’s sphere that he breathes more freely with every day’s drift towards secularism, even of the Arctic type.

III.—Religious People Indifferent.

Politicians believe, and I fear they have a right to believe, that the great majority even of the religious people of this country are indifferent as to any State recognition of religion. Some of them resemble an American citizen named Dr. Hayward, whose epitaph has been quoted by Dr. Parkhurst, the great Presbyterian Reformer, who has cleansed New York from corruption in one important sphere :—

“ Here lies the hotly of Dr. Hayward,

A man who never voted.

Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

But most, while eager enough to make the question of a duty on a material they manufacture or use a question by which candidates gain or lose their votes, or whether a man is a Kibbonman or an Orangeman, or whether a man is in favour of local option or not, few or none can ever begot to make an outrage to religion, like the exclusion of the name of Christ from the school books of our children, or the refusal to acknowledge God in a Constitution Act, the cause for withholding political support.

d'he great bulk of Christian people take the obligations of their religious profession in a very Pickwickian sense, in the political sphere. If the above epitaph be true, and “ if such is the kingdom of heaven,” then it is quite certain that they who are of the kingdom of heaven are not those who will ever bring about the realisation of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, that God’s will should be done on earth as it is in heaven. A new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness will never be on such lines, for as Dr. Parklmrst says, “ While there is no propriety in putting politics into religion, there is always a demand for putting religion into politics.” Otherwise the irreligious, who never think of leaving their hostility to religion behind them when they enter the political sphere, will always be regarded by political men. These will feel that they are always secure of enthusiastic support from the irreligious when they snub religion, while they know that they really need not fear anything the church-goers will do. Long experience has taught them that the religious people cannot be roused to any resolute assertion of themselves as religious men in the public life of the community.

Reasons for Apathy.

Now, why is the religious community so apathetic in this and kindred matters ?

Because it is said and believed that mere externalities, the opening of Parliament with prayer, the acknowledgment of Divine Providence in Queen's and Governor’s speeches, the inserting of an acknowledgment of God in the Constitution of United Australia are mere externalities, which neither represent accurately nor can alter the real state of things, whatever it may be. These things do not make a nation Christian. With them all, a people’s policy and actions may be such as to deny with emphasis any allegiance to the teachings of Christ. Without any of them national policy and actions may be such as Christ would certainly approve. If the bulk of the people acknowledge Christian truth, and conduct their own affairs according to the sanctions of Christian morality, the nation, it is said, is Christian, whatever absence of declaration there may be. If, on the contrary, the majority of the people devote themselves in reality only to material interests, and are restrained only by selfish fears, then the nation is not Christian, whatever declarations they make. Indeed, any declarations to the contrary are simply hypocrisies and shams.

How Externalities may Affect the Future.

Now, there is a certain modicum of truth in this statement which it is only fair to acknowledge. We ought to welcome it as a protest against that externality which is, and has always been, the dry rot of true religion. It represents an effort to strip our actual state as a nation of any sheltering falsities which may hinder us from seeing the truth. But like the effort of these extremists in religion, who, because they see that organisation in religion sometimes works harm, reject all organisation, and then proceed to organise themselves on that rejection

as a basis, it overleaps the saddle, and falls on the other side. For in the endeavour to avoid the hypocrisy of professing too much, such a principle crystallises and formulates the lowest and poorest moods of the nation as its highest. Neither falsity nor formalism is avoided. The only difference is, that while the formalisms of our best moods may lead us into hypocrisy, they yet remain an incitement to aspiration and an encouragement to us in our sincere moments to aim at an ideal in our conduct. On the other hand, the formalisms of our worst and most despondent hours perpetually drag us down, and make any pursuit of ideal ends appear mere Quixotism. These declarations, or refusals to make them, never end with themselves. They have power, which cannot be disregarded, to shape and mould the future. They influence most potently men’s conception of what they are and ought to be, and thus smooth the way to action in the direction in which they point. And they must point definitely in some direction. Neutral they cannot be; they point either upward in the direction of reverence, self-control, and conscience, or downward in the direction of irreverence, self-indulgence, and the supremacy of mere self-will. Secularists know this, however blind religious men may be to it, and they are untiring in their efforts to commit public men, and the community in general, to ever new formulas of the anti-religious sort. They believe that every such formula, or statement, is a palpable and powerful advance to that denial of God in public life which is the goal they seek to attain. They hold firmly in regard to the nation what George Elliot has so powerfully pointed out in the sphere of individual character, that the moment when a man can picture himself going down the years with a character he would

not himself desire without more tlum a mild regret, his higher charaeter is doomed. They therefore value and fight for every sign of national acquiescence in antireligious maxims. They may not appear to be great things, but they help to fix the outlook for the future. The religious community, on the'other hand, placidly dreams on. Busied with what the}’ call their own affairs, they refuse to awake to what should be one of their own affairs, the leavening of the national life and action with righteousness, with justice to the poor, and with that reverence for God the Supreme Ruler of the World upon which alone sound human character can be built up in masses of men. It is a vain delusion on their part if they imagine that such maxims will mean just as much as they choose to let them mean, because they are the majority. Each one of these they permit to creep in undermines the resisting power for the future, and makes the way back more perilous and more difficult.

What Experience Teaches.

We have had an object lesson in that matter which ought to have impressed us in the history of the expulsion of even references to Christ from the State School books and the exclusion of Scripture reading. The voters who attend church accepted, without the wise limitations imposed elsewhere, the formula that education was to be secular, compulsory, and free. They were strongly and rightly in favour of the two latter qualifications, and they were gulled into accepting the latter as meaning non-sectarian in the fashion made immortal in the “Hunting of the Snark.” They were “soothed with smiles and soap.” The books then in use were not to be interfered with; the moral teaching of the schools was to remain as it was; there was to be

no secularist propaganda by the Government. So the formula was accepted without qualification or instigation. Then the anti-Christian elements in our population seized on it. They pressed it home and captured the Education Department. The books were changed. Even the new books were mutilated* by the removal of the name of Christ and the adjective Christian. Minister after minister declared the system secular in the bitter sense. Local preachers and Sunday-school teachers were warned by one Minister that their acting in these capacities would be reckoned against them when opportunities for promotion came. Fines were inflicted upon teachers for assisting in the singing at religious services in State schools. Even where voluntary religious teaching was allowed, the schoolmasters were permitted to harass the voluntary teacher by dismissing the school, closing the doors, and then leaving him to gather in what children he could, and to re-open the school. It is true that this bitter, fanatical secularism has been broken by the action of the National Scripture Education League. After years of labour a stop has been put to the advance on this intolerant path. In some degree even the Government has had to retrace its steps, notably in regard to the deletion of the name of Christ, but notwithstanding thirteen years of strenuous work, we are still far from the position of twenty years ago. And yet the church-going people slumber on, or, if they awake at all, are only half awake. The trumpet calls of the League only elicit a sleepy assent from the mass of those who profess the Christian name, and if they cannot be roused to strenuous determination at next election to reverse all this fatal policy, the dams the League have erected will be swept down, and the tide of bitter secularism they have curbed will once more have unchecked way.

The Continuity of National Acts.

And not only is that extract from our recent history an object lesson as to the danger of permitting the secularisation of our laws. It reveals to us the consistency with which one concession of this kind leads on to another. Had the Christian communities—not their ministers, but the voters who belong to them— determined that the insult to religion, and the barbaric mutilation of our literature which the Education Department carried out, should be resented as they ought to have been, it is very unlikely that the petition for the acknowledgment of God would have been rejected as it has been. Had the religious opinion of the various colonies asserted itself at this point, its value as a live force in politics would have been appreciated. But having proved to be a negligible quantity when its dearest interests were manifestly concerned, its expression now is looked upon as a mere irrelevancy, if not an impertinence ; and so the days of our national life are “ linked each to each by natural «»-piety.”

Cause of all, Low Standard of Working Religion.

Yet that is not all; it is not merely because Churches have been hypnotised by the mumbling of fallacies as to the small importance of such acknowledgments as the petitioners to the Federal Convention asked that their influence has decayed. There is another and deeper reason, the low standard of our working and effective religion. No one more than I would deprecate the turning of the churches into political machines. To no one could the use of the pulpit for the furtherance of even the most admirable political ends be more repulsive. For 1 am convinced that the calling of the Church is too high for that, and the pulpit ought to be

kept sacred to the proclamation of the message of Redemption. Furthermore, I am convinced that the Church and the clergy could not more fatally betray the best interests of mankind than by giving up their true mission of opening up to men as individuals the way to communion with God. But the Gospel of Christ necessarily has large social and political implications. These it is the bounden duty of all Christian men, in their capacity as citizens, to endeavour to have realised, and it may be feared that through too much individualism in religion these social and national duties have fallen almost utterly into the background of the Christian mind. “ The kingdom of God" has ceased to have in it for many any real practical meaning. Now, it should have practical meaning of the finest kind. So far from making men believe that the kingdom of heaven is specially for those who have never voted, the vote, as the symbol of political and social duty, ought to be prized and exercised as a great trust, of which we must give an account to God. The Puritan demand for a State worked in accordance with the divine law of righteousness needs to be renewed. As Dean Church has told us : “ Doubtless, before the judgment-seat of Christ men will be judged as individuals ; but among the things of which individuals must expect to give account is their share in the collective character of the societies to which they have belonged.”—[Caih. and Univ. Sermons, p. 25.] In this matter, as in all, to us who believe, the judgment-seat of Christ looms out of the mists of futurity with a tremendous power of compelling awe. For the condition of this community, for its readiness to forget God, for its greeds, its vices, its sins, for every unrighteous law, for every unnecessary burden on the poor, for the war of classes, for the ev il

social conditions which everywhere are marring human lives, for our collective pride, for the base elements in our politics, for all the darker features in the character of this community, we shall have to give an account at the judgment-seat of Christ. So far as we have not resisted the growth of these evil things ; so far as we have sought quiet at the expense o^ faithfulness ; so far as we have cherished even our spiritual interests at the expense of efforts to bear the burdens of our fellow-men, in so far must we bear the condemnation of that judgment-seat, so terrible because of the self-sacrificing love that there shall sit enthroned.

Two Evils Christian's Specially Responsible For.

Above all, for these two things shall we have to bear our burden, for the exclusion of Scripture from the State schools of the community, and for the absence of any acknowledgment of God in the Constitution of our country. For these two things are present-day evils. They press upon us now, and are judging us quietly by the attitude they are compelling us to take up. We believe in both, and we could have them both in a few months if we had but united and enthusiastic action by church-going people. Whether we shall have them I do not know, for it is impossible to say whether the Christian people of this community can be waked out of sleep. But if they cannot be awaked, then it should not be awe alone with which they ought to look forward to the judgment-seat of Christ — but with nothing less than consternation. For though to some the state of the community in other respects may seem more terrible than in these, Christian loyalty has been challenged

more openly in regard to them than in other things. Moreover, they are things which are here because of the laxity and supincness of this generation. They are not like many more horrible things, rooted deep in the history of the past. Further, they sanction and reinforce all that is evil whencesoever it may have come. These, I believe, are the testing questions which will settle the rise or fall of the influence of the churches of these lands. And if they settle its fall, then the posterity of the State will surely suffer. For it must make a difference to a nation if the one real ty drops out of account when they plan their Acts, or it He is hid from their aspirations, if He is removed beyond any power of vision they may have. And they need not imagine that the suffering will be only in the impalpable sphere of spiritual life. If God be really disciplining men—if the whole “ dance of circumstance,” as Browning calls it, be intended to mould character—then it surely is a superstition to suppose that God has shut Himself off irrevocably from training us by material privations. It' men bring themselves into such a state that they can have their lives “ touched to liner issues" only by being deprived of the material comfort which they have made their highest good, then, if God is not to abandon them, He will smite with the only whip they feel. Of course, according to the old Deistic conception of God, this would be impossible, but in all fully-trained minds that conception is dead. To faith in a God immanent in the world, whose present Will is the only ground of things as they are, at any moment there is no difficulty, even if miracle be left out of account. Moreover there are many reasons for believing that we are being thus disciplined. The awful “outstretched hand,” which was seen in the background of many a prophet’s vision,

may be seen, we fear, darkening our sky. It will be well if, by awaking out of sleep, we may silence the refrain which has accompanied many peoples dead to decay, “ Yet His hand is stretched out still.”

Of course we shall be told that nations that do all, and more than all, we desire, are denying God, notwithstanding, in a most conspicuous way. It will be said, look at a Europe which professes to be Christian, obliged by its own greeds and jealousies to stand helpless by while the great assassin slaughters out a whole Christian people. Look at it firing upon Cretan men and women, who are only striving to be free. And we must confess that the spectacle is one of the most portentous in its wickedness that has been seen in the history of Christendom. But it only shows to what depths of callous cruelty nations may sink when they forget God in their public action. Instead, therefore, of making us careless of acknowledging God, this complicity of Christian nations in the horrors of Turkish cruelty should urge us on to set up all the national barriers we can to any such lapse in our own history. Negligence now may make the thought of God and of the divine justice die out of our politics. By seeking to avoid trouble now, we may be preparing for even blacker treachery to righteousness than that which the European concert is laying to-day as a burden on the world.

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