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TION.jplin, Editor., Indiana, Sept* 14 1881E Conference at Argos was well attended hnd a very good meeting indeed. Fuller particulars from the secretary next week.A telegram from Brother J. M. Stephenson says—“Drop all my appointments except at Baxter School House.” We accordingly leave out his list of appointments this week.News from President Garfield this morning is very encouraging. He was placed in a reclining chair yesterday and enjoyed the changed position for thirty-five minutes; and it is reported that Dr. Bliss is of opinion that the bullet has become encysted, and that the wound has become healed for about three inches from the position of the ball.The following tribute to Christianity is the concluding part of Judge J. S. Black’s reply to Col. Ingersoll’s article on The Christian Religion published in the Xorth American Review forAugust, 1881. The terse and decisive manner in which the learned Judge disposes of the Coloners pcttifoggings stamps the article as one of marked ability, in which the author has exhibited himself as no ordinary controversialist. We are very glad, not only that the Atheist has lound a man worthy of his steel, but also that, once in his life, he has had an antagonistprivileged to reply to him, if not before the same hearers, at least before the same readers, and not have a onesided contest with no one to point out his numerous errors, sophistries, and misrepresentations:WHAT CHRISTIANITY I1AS DONE.Reflect what kind of a world this was when the disciples of Christ undertook to reform it, and compare it witli the condition in which their teachings have put it. In its mighty metropolis, the centre of its intellectual and political power, the best men were addicted to vices so debasing that I could not even allude to them without soiling the paper I write upon. All manner of unprincipled wickedness was practiced in the private life of the whole population without concealment or shame, and the magistrates were thoroughly and universally corrupt. Benevolence in any shape was altogether unknown. The helpless and the weak got neither justice nor mercy. There was no relief for the poor, no succor for the sick,no refuge for the unfortunate. In all pagandom there was not a hospital, asylum, almshouse, or organized charity of any sort. The indifference tohuman life was literally frightful. The order of a successful leader to assassinate his opponents was always obeyed by his followers with the utmost alacrity and pleasure. It was a special amusement of the populace to witness the shows at which men were compelled to kill one another, to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, or otherwise “butchered, to make a Roman holiday.” In every province paganism enacted the same cold-blooded cruel ties *. oppression and robbery ruled supreme; murder went rampaging and red over all the earth.The Church came, and her light penetrated this moral darkness like a new sun. She covered the globe with institutions of mercy, and thousands upon thousands of her disciples devoted themselves exclusively to works of charity at the sacrifice of every earthly interest. Iler earliest adherents were killed without remorse— beheaded, crucified, sawn asunder, thrown to the beasts, or covered with pitch, piled up in great heaps, and slowly burnt to death. Rut her faith was made perfect through suffering, and the law of love rose in triumph from the ashes of her martyrs. This religion has come down to us through the ages, attended all the way by righteousness, justice, temperance, mercy, transparent truthfulness, exulting hope, and whitewinged charity. Never was its influence for good more plainly perceptible than now. It has not converted, purified, and reformed all men, for its first principle is the freedom of the human will, and there are those who choose to reject it. But to the mass of mankind,directly and indirectly, it has brought uncounted benefits and blessings.Abolish it—take away the restraints which it imposes on evil passions silence the admonitions of its preachers —let all 'Christians cease their labors of charity—blot out from history theisfied the hunger of the infidel heart for a time. What followed? Universal depravity, garments rolled in blood, fantastic crimes unin^agined before, which startled the earth with their sublime atrocity, The American people have and ought to have no special desire to follow that terrible example of guilt and misery.—J. S. Black.We give the following from Brother Magruder’s pamphlet—“The Bible Defended and Atheism Rebuked”—in reply to Ingersoll's pamphlet publications of different titles. In the science of ethnology the separate existence of the Jewish race is a standing miracle. This ra^ce fills a place in Bible History and in Bible prophecythat demonstrates the intervention of a divine hand in the origin and wonderful preservation of this peculiar people. As an argument against atheism, and in proof of the credibility of the Scriptures, it is unanswerable. We consider Brother Magrudcr fully the peer of Judge Black of whom we speak in terms of meiited commendation in this number of our paper. Both have received, like Col. Ingersoll, a legal education, and both have done themselves honor in the replies they have made to this champion of modern infidelity. We heartily wish that the same readers that have read Mr. In-gersoll's pamphlets,could read Brother Magruder’s reply, giving him the same advantage that Judge Black had in the Xorth American Review. Judge Black was limited for space but has made every paragraph tell — while Brother Magruder, with more ample space, has made all his sentences equally expressive:CHAPTER VII.—SECTION IX.The Jews, as a people in history and prophecy, are living witnesses for the Bible. They can, with confidence, he placed on the witness stand, for they are the most conclusive and the best known attostators of the Bible in all history.It is known that Frederick the Great was prone to assemble at his court the most learned scholars, philosophers, theologians of Europe, that one dav, with hisIt is related accustomed of hisonebrusquenrss, lie accosted chaplains, saying,“Give me without argument, in a word, the strongest proof you can present of the truth of the Bible.”The answer was promptly returned, “The Jew, sire, the Jew. It is impossible to account for his history and his presence among us on any other hypothesis than the literal and absolute truth of the Bible.”The reply could not have been more apposite.If we east away our Bible, as Mr.Ingersoll would have us to do, if we seal up the pages of that oldest and most venerable history of our race and world, what an unaccountable anomaly, what an insoluble mystery, what an unnatural social interpolation is TheJew?Here they are among us and not of us. Pioneers of our race and among the first proprietors of the earth weinhabit, once at the ze d:h of humanprosperity and renown, o, w exiles, fugitives, and Arabs among the nations —without a home or a country, witli-Lord and his goodness in the latter days.”Is he not a witness to the first part of this prophecy? The testimony of1Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John will exhibit to him, in outline, the same prophecies in the words of that “great and serene man to whom he gladly pays the tribute of his admiration and liis tears.”He will read, speaking of his countrymen the Jews, these words of the Lord:“They shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled,” concluding with his touching and most affecting lamentation over them and their beautiful city in ruins:“Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are scntunto thee, how often would 1 have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate, for I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth till ycushall say: Blessed is he that comethin the name of the Lord.”Nor is even this all our proof. There are patent physical facts in regard tothis ancient people that are known to all men and cannot be denied, and which, being so peculiar and phenomenal, prove to a demonstration the direct impress of the hand of the Almighty and carry us back to the Bible for the only explanation that can be found.Of these is their continued unbroken practice of the rite of circumcision, from its original institution down to the present day. This has always kept them distinct from every other people and race; and that most wonderful though indescribable mark in the face and countenance which causes their descent and lineage from Abraham to be easily, even instantly, recognized. We meet the Jews everywhere. They are scattered among all nations, and yet are not reckoned with or among any. They preserve their distinct isolation and their own peculiar habits and customs in the midst of the peoples among whom they may be said to sojourn rather than to live.What the gulf-stream is to the seas, “a river in the ocean”—what the burning bush of their own Sinai is to other mountains, scorched and blasted, but not consumed, so are they to the nations and countries to which they migrate.They do not adopt our habits or avocations. They do not build, or buy or deal in real estate. They do not cultivate the land, nor sow, nor plant, nor reap. These pursuits would identify them with the soil and give them a permanent footing in the earth; this they do not desire and will not accept. On the contrary, they deal in money and bills of exchange, in merchandise and clothiqg, in buying and selling, in bargaining and brokerage; all their wealth and possessions are portable or easily convertible into coin or bills, so that they may be ready at a moment'schildren of Israel” (Deut. xxxii); that “the people of Israel shall dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations” (Num. xxiii. 0); and that after their long dispersion, “shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord, their God, etc., in the latter days” (Ilosea iii.); that “Behold the days come, saiih thi Lord . . . when I will bring again the captivity of my people, Israel . . . and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saitli the Lord thy God.” Amos ix.The long banishment and exile of this ancient race, and the waste and desolation of their native land to this day, are not more clearly proved by prophecy and history, than their return and gathering together again is predicted by their prophets. The intelligent Christian not only recognizes the exact and literal fulfillment of the prophecies of their return to Palestine, but he hails it with grateful joy, because he knows that it is their Messiah who is his Savior and deliverer.“Salvation isout a temple or an altar or a victim; without prophet, priest, or king; without rule, cities, or institutions; without lands and flocks and herds.Yet once, in the davs of David and/ %/Solomon, their land and temple and capital city were their boast and pride as the glory of all lands, and themselves the people of God, so richly blessed that the fame of their greatness spread to distant lands, whose monarchs came from the uttermost parts of the earth to behold their wisdom and glory, and confessed that the half had not been told them.Now the same people are exiled from their once fair and fruitful, but now deserted and desolate land, and have become a byword and a hissing reproach among the Gentiles, who are descendants of nations whom their ancestors looked down upon in scorn and contempt. They remain among us to this day witnesses among all mankind and, to the confusion and reproach of all infidels, a standing monument and miracle of the truth of the Bible.Let Mr. Ingersoll open the book he has rashly covered with reproaches, and read in Moses and the prophets, as in Deut. xxviii., the predictions relating to the children of Israel, and then note their exact fulfillment now present before his eyes. He will read all the details in this chapter, and awarning, to move on and change their abode to some ether region, or to return to Palestine, the home of their race.Not their customs and business habits alone make them a peculiar people, but their visage, their physiognomy, is unique, and unlike any other race of people. We meet them in the citiesor on the crowded thoroughfares ofbusiness, and as soon as our eye rests upon them, we say, without hesitation Or risk of mistake, “There’s a Jew”— there is a son of Abraham, a wanderer and an exile far from the home of his fathers. Arabs in the desert of the people, they are the oldest of existing nations, and you cannot help asking where are now their conquerors and persecutors; the Pharaohs of the Egyptian bondage, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Romans, and Bie Saracens?He doc3 not forget thatof the Jews,” that “in him shall the Gentiles trust,” that “if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham s seed and heirs according to the promise,” and in brief that all the promises “are yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” Accordingly we are not surprised to see on the broad theatre of international affairs, in the movements among the nations of the earth, the daily growing evidence of the rising prominence and importance of the Jews and their affairs in respect to their historic country, their restoration to their ancient home, and the reconstruction of their long-lost nationality. Within the memory of living men their lone; continued ando ounjust civil disabilities have been almost everywhere removed, and they have risen to the platform of political and legal equality with their former Gentile oppressors. These are only preparatory steps to future developments. Even the very recent and significant fact that in the German empire, where they are most numerous, as well as in Hungary and Bavaria, in Austria and Russia, they seem to have become obnoxious to the native populations through envy and jealousy of their extraordinary wealth and prosperity; which goes to show that this persecution is but another feature of the divine programme, and will necessarily quicken their predicted cxoue from the nations among whom they are scattered, to Palestine their future home, from which, as the prophets say, they will “remove no more.”As Joseph in Egypt, Mordecai in Persia, and Daniel in Babylon, rose to the highest rank and dignity at the courts of their former Gentile oppressors in the ancient world just previous to their emancipation from oppression and exile, so now their countrymen are filling the highest places and positions in Gentile governments. The Rothschilds, the late Disraeli (Lord Beacons-field), Sir Moses Montefiore, and other Jews in England; Crevy, Gambetta,and *others in France; Gortschakoff and Todleben in Russia, and others in Germany, Italy, and Austria, distinguished as statesmen, diplomatists, historians, professors, bankers, orators, composers, and actors, are witnesses in this generation of the long promised but now approaching deliverance and restoration of this pre-historic people to their ancient inheritance.improvements, crops and stock, and hundreds of human beings have been burned up; Canada is a-blaze in her extensive woodlands; over the lakes such a vail of smoke is resting that vision scarcely extends for one-eightli of a mile, and vessels have to make their way through an atmospheric ocean of smeary duskiness painful to the eyes and injurious to the lungs, navigating by guess and avoiding collisions with invisible vessels by the sounding of fog-horns; the East, too, is parched, and the flames are spreading desolation in different localities; the monarch of the largest empire on earth has fallen a prey to the assassin s madness; the President of this Great Republic is now hovering between lifeand death in consequence of a woundinflicted by one of the Serpent’s slimy seed: volcanoes are pouring out fiery deluges; earthquakes ingulph cities and horribly mar the fairest landscapes; cyclones sweep the country with the besom of destruction; thefloods drown out whole districts; the*tidal waves roll inland; grim vis-aged war lays his blood-red hand upon his sword, and sounds the tocsin of present and coming wars; men s hearts are so failing for fear that reason reels and insanity is almost an epidemic; the end is not yet, all these are only the preliminary travailing throes that will bring to birth the great tribulation; we are living in a grand and awful time. Watch and pray.inC(rofocltilt;P‘taUs\olC‘chi■!r(aI!tlafiatlt;wPhosht\cfaaDoubtless Mr. Ingersoll is cither ignorant or faithless of this purpose ofGod in regard to his ancient people, the children of Abraham, the father of the faithful and the friend of God. In attempting in one of his lectures to set aside the prophecy of future events of a kindred nature, he quotes with avidity the saying of the Master: “Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled,” by which he supposes that such prophecies as we have cited have either failed altogether or relate to past events. There are two conclusive answers to sucli an objection.•rf 1(]records of its heroic benevolence—re- brief summary in these words of IIo-peal the laws it has enacted and the institutions it has built up—let its moralprinciples be abandoned and all itsmiracles of light be extinguished— what would we come to?I need not answer this question: the experiment has been partiallytried. The French nation formally, renounced Christianity, denied the e^t-u^of tfee Supreme Being, and so saVThe answer comes back:—“They have been swept down the tide of time, and are utterly lost in the ocean of oblivion.”Yet here is the proscribed, wandering Jew, who, in spite of cruel and unrelenting persecutions, and contrary to all the calculations of human probabilities, remains the survivor of them all, and now the only inheritor of the fame and glory of the most renowned and illustrious race that ever lived. And if you ask the meaning of all this, is it not the Bible and the Bible alone that gives the answer, that solves and explains the mystery?Opening the venerable record, you find there the revelation of the secret, for you will read that far back fice, and without an image and without | in the beginning, “when the MostHigh divided to the nations their in-fteritance, when he separated the sons onkdam, he set the bounds of the people awarding to the number of theTHE PHENOMENAL YEAR.sea, a prophecy delivered nearly eight hundred years before Christ:“For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, r.nd without a prince and without a saurian ephod, and without teraphim; after5 wards shall tne children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear theWhether the approach of several of the planets to the perihelion has any influence on the meteorological conditions of our planet or not, one thing is indisputable, that we have celestial and terrestrial prodigies without number.The sun is covered with spots; three comets have tracked their course ominously across our skies; a band of light four or five degrees in width spanned the heavens over New England and New York two evenings ago; the sun has been destructively blazing over our country, cutting short the crops of acontinent; the day was recently so darkened in its going forth that they were compelled to burn gas at mid-day along the coasts of New England; a large area in Michigan has been swept by forest fires by which several villages, numerous farms with th*
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