there is now-a-days for admission to court in monarchical countries. The fit garment must be worn, or the person cannot be admitted.

Now the Lord's Supper is an occasion that introduces the soul into the Kingdom of Heaven, and is, therefore, the greatest event in spiritual life, as marriage is in ordinary life. It is proper that the dress of the guests should comport with the importance of the occasion. If we should see a man go to the Lord's table in the dress of a Buddhist priest, or of a Mahometan mufti, or in the mystic regalia of a Freemason, with his lamb-skin apron on "the symbol of innocence"-all covered with strange devices, our attention would be arrested by the sight, and we should doubt whether the wearer of such garments could be received or recognized as a guest.

We may go farther, and say that if King Herod, or Pontius Pilate had sought to be of the Lord's company at the Last Supper, and had presented himself even in his royal robes, it was not in the nature of things that he could be admitted there. Those robes, though doubtless very splendid, were visible, tangible evidences of the enmity of the wearer to our Lord. How, therefore, could the wearer be received as a guest at the supper?

These garments that we have mentioned are mere outer types of an inner spiritual unfitness for the Lord's table. When we come to the inner, spiritual characteristics of the men, I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that Freemasonry itself is an infinitely greater disqualification for the Lord's Supper than can be typified by the Masonic regalia. Freemasonry is enmity to Christ; it is self-righteousness, self-justification, and can have no place where justification and righteousness come by faith in the Lord.

The initiation into the church through the Lord's Supper, destroys the natural man, but substitutes in its place the spiritual man. So the initiation into the lodge, also destroys the natural man, but it substitutes in its place a spiritualistic man. The spiritual man of the church is frank, open, sincere, kindly, sympathetic and devoted to truth, which is life, while the spiritualistic man of the lodge is sly, secretive, double-faced, truculent, partisan, narrow, suspicious, and practices fraud and falsehood, (for Masonry is false,) which leads to death. Church membership humbles a man; lodge membership degrades him. One makes him dependent upon God, and the other upon

man.

Hence the Freemason is not only not in a fit garment to appear at the Lord's table, but he is in a very unfit one to be there. His garment is not unfit from mere neglect, or from accidental rents, or spots or stains, but from its very make-up shows enmity to Christ. They who admit a man in such garments to the Lord's table, are negligent and wicked servants, who care little for the honor of their Lord; or else they are too ignorant to serve him.

Now, as to the practical bearing of the question. If a man presents himself as a guest at the Lord's Supper, it should be ascertained whether he believes and practices such teachings as the Shasters, the Koran, the Confucian religion, or Masonic monitors. If he answers

yes to either of these questions, if his soul clothes itself in either of these garments, then it would be a desecration of the Holy Sacraments, and of everything the most serious and the most sacred in life to permit him to partake of those sacraments. It would be void of all discrimination, for it was in this discrimination between right and wrong that our Lord sacrificed his life, which the sacraments commemorate.

This question, propounded by your correspondent, Inquirer, which I have thus endeavored to answer, I consider the most important one of all others now pressing for the careful and serious attention of the American people. AMERICAN.

April 13, 1878.

THE IMMORAL CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT.

BY JOHN M. SLOANE, STEUBENVILLE, OHIO.

In the 9th chapter of Revelation, where we have the record of John's awful vision of the rise of the Mohammedan power, happily now largely a thing of the past, he tells us in the 11th verse, that the locusts with shapes like unto horses, prepared unto battle, had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit-the destroyer. If the angel of the bottomless pit was king of the Mohammedan power, is he not king of all spurious, ungodly civil power? If not, why not? If, according to the Tripolitan treaty, the government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion, and has in it nothing inimical to the religion of Mussulmans, and the Senate of the United States that ratified that treaty, could hardly have been better qualified to give judgment on the character of the government, as many of its members had been members of the convention that framed the Constitution-the fathers ought to know what they have begotten, and the mothers what they have brought forth-and if the declaration of Ex-President Woolsey to the Evangelical Alliance, that the Constitution of the United States would not require one word of change to adapt it to a Mohammedan people, be true and it cannot be successfully contradicted-then the United States has the same king as the Mohammedans, the angel of the bottomless pit, the destroyer.

But, it may be inquired, what has he destroyed? We note

1st. The colored people have been robbed and peeled from the foundation of the government to this day. The government is responsible, whether it inflicts the evil directly, or fails to protect from it.

2d. The destruction of the Indians. What a sickening horror has been the treatment of the wretched aborigines of the country.

3d. The Christian Sabbath has been destroyed and turned into a day of special service of the angel of the bottomless pit by direct governmental influence, in the running of Sabbath mails, the great cause of railroad desecration of the Sabbath, the sitting of Congress, the baneful example of public men, &c. The failure of the recent attempt to secure increased legislation in favor of the Sabbath in Pennsylvania, shows that the legislature of that state and all other legisla

tive bodies of the nation, as they are all alike wanting in moral character, are poor places to go to fight the angel of the bottomless pit. "The labor of every one of them wearieth him, because he knoweth not how to go to the city."

4th. The expulsion of the Bible from the schools of every important place where it has been attempted, so far as remembered, and its universal expulsion only awaiting the convenience of its enemies.

5th. The deterioration of the moral character of public men, as well as of society in general, has been very great for some years past. That pervading principle of the whole system of American jurisprudence, that crime is not to be restrained or punished because it is morally wrong, because it is sin and dishonoring to God, but only because it injures or infringes the rights of fellow-men, thus altogether ignoring the authority of God, has so demoralized the nation, that the most important moral and political questions are decided with a shameless disregard of even common decency. Witness the drunken revel in the Senate, the most dignified and honorable legislative body in the nation, on the night of the passage of the silver bill.

6th. The mournful decline of patriotism, honor, and commercial honesty, of the public men of the country, which even many worldly men among them possessed in the early days of the government. The financial honor and integrity of the nation is deeply stained, and through the evil example of the government, dishonesty greatly prevails in states, municipalities, and among the people. Confidence is so shaken, that business is largely destroyed, and the consequent demand for labor is so limited, that many are in great want, and communistic ideas are making rapid progress.

"Knowest thou not that Egypt is destroyed?"

CONCLUSION.

So far as any one is in allegiance to, supports, or identifies with the government of the United States, so far, he is a supporter of the kingship of the angel of the bottomless pit.

SELECTED.

OPENING OF THE FIRST REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. THE First Reformed Presbyterian church on Grand street, Rev. S. Carlisle, pastor, was re-opened this morning, after having been closed since last August. The sermon was preached by the pastor, Rev. S. Carlisle, from Ephesians, 2: 8. It was a discourse on the origin and nature of salvation, and was listened to with great interest by the large congregation that was present.

The improvements that have been made in the church of the congregation, which was organized in this city over 60 years ago, are so extensive that the edifice is practically new. Instead of the small, white, frame building, which stood some distance back from the street, there now is a fine, large frame building, with a brick

front of handsome design that is a credit both to the congregation and to our city. The old church building has been raised ten feet, and the auditorium has been enlarged by lengthening and widening it 20 x 48 feet, giving room for 32 additional pews. In the west end a gallery has been erected affording seating accommodations for 75 people. The main audience room has seating accommodations for 650 persons. The floor is carpeted with a bright carpet, and the pews, painted white, with black walnut trimmings, are all cushioned. In the east end of the church, instead of the old-fashioned pulpit which stood there in the old church, is a handsome and roomy platform, having on it an elaborate reading desk. On the north and south sides of the platform are two gas lights. The main audience room is lighted by means of four large stained glass windows on the north and south sides of the building, and on the west side, or front of the edifice, is a fine large window made of handsome stained glass. Two very fine twelvelight chandeliers hang from the ceiling, while double gas burners light the gallery and the space under it. The basement, which is entirely new, will seat 400 persons, and has been divided into three rooms. The largest one has seating accommodations for 250 persons and will be used as a Sabbath School and lecture room; another room, having accommodations for 100 persons, will be used as an infant class room, and still another for a Bible class room. All the rooms are provided with seats and means for lighting. The whole building is heated by means of a large heater erected in the basement.

The front of the church building is very handsome. It is built of brick with stone trimmings, and with the large stained glass window in the centre, presents a fine appearance. There are two entrances from Grand street, one each on the north and south sides, and the entrance to the gallery is by two stairways leading thereto from the main audience room.

The church was closed for the improvements on the last Sabbath in August, and since that time the congregation has been worshipping in the Court House.

Services were again held in the church this afternoon, conducted by Rev. Joshua Kennedy.-Newburgh paper, March 14.

MAKING WAY FOR A YOUNGER MAN.

THE Boston Herald has some forcible remarks in reference to the statement that the pastor of a Congregational church in a New England village," had been requested to resign, to make way for a younger man." Churches that are inclined to do that sort of thing may like to see how it looks from a secular point of view:

"It is easy to imagine what has preceded that step. The men and women of this congregation have forsaken their prayer meetings and Sabbath services, and gone buzzing about from house to house, with all sorts of gossip about their spiritual shepherd, his age, or it may be, his sermons, or his frequent infirmities, or his peculiarities of some sort. They have begun the Christian life chiefly through his godly admonitions,

and now they express their gratitude and show their religion by turning against him. They are so eager to accomplish their object that they invent stories to put him down, when they have no facts to go upon. They stab him right and left, in the dark and in the light. They ruin his influence over the young, and then claim that he no longer attracts them. His parish is not prosperous. The deacons begin to feel that they cannot hold him up. The pews are vacant. The salary is cut down. The talk runs high in religious circles. He is isolated. It costs something to be his friend. He is subject to a social inquisition as cruel as it is unjust, and no stone is left unturned to break him up and set him adrift-to go nobody in the church cares where Now, if this case were new or exceptional, we could treat it as such. But in this Protestant world, where ministers are hired by the year, as farmers hire laborers for the season, we are rather used to see this sort of thing, and it is only when people do a thing which is so disreputable and outrageous that it becomes secular news that we pause to think of the Christian minister who is subjected to such often unjustifiable disgrace. In many of our largest corporations the heads of the firm retire honorably its older and long-tried servants when they must give place to younger men, but the pastor is simply kicked out of the position which his people called him to, as a man kicks an unfriendly dog from his doorstep. The saints in that hamlet are thinking only of the spruce young man whom they can get to take his place, but the outside world has its opinion of their conduct, and says truly that the proceedings by which men like Mr. Hammond are forcibly ejected from positions which they are filling with at least average ability, are both unchristian and indecent. There are countless religious societies every where in this country, where men who are the noblest of their race, men who, in one point or another, are the very backstay of the communities they live in, are in danger of being called upon to resign their parishes for reasons which honest Christian people ought never to avow, or even think of. This is a devilish sort of business, and alienates more than it wins to the churches. It keeps good men out of them, because they are too honorable to have a hand in such work, and do not want to associate with those who thus attempt to blackmail their pastors. We dwell upon this crowding out of one minister in a parish to make room for another, because it is one of the growing evils of the times. It meets one everywhere, and is cutting up the churches by the very roots. What inducement is there for capable and able men to enter the ministry, when, at the very time their large experience will make them most useful to a parish, or to society in general, they are asked to resign to make way for younger men? Are religious people so stupid that they cannot see what they are doing? There is no class of men who deserve more gratitude at the hands of the churches, or from the community at large, than the men who have given their lives to the work of leading others to righteousness. If they did it as a worldly occupation alone, they would deserve respect; but when it is considered that, in most cases, they have willingly accepted a life of comparative poverty, in order that they