Weekly Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1853-1861, 1856-01-31
New York Ohserver.

The first number of the thirty-fourth vol
religious paper in the Union, comes to us this
week greatly enlarged and most beautiful in
its typography and mechanical execution
The Observer is edited by SIDNEY f. MoRsE,
and is a bold, independent and able journal,
and as it is the largest newspaper in the iVorld,
the subscription price, 81 80 a year in ad-
vance, may be considered very low. The
Observer is published in New York, and or
ders for it should be addressed to SIDNEY +.
MORSE & Co. The following extract which
we make from an article in the last number,
shows that the editor Is not .inc.ured with
the fanaticisms, nor enamored of the tactics
Of certain r~eligionists, who assume to them
selves the title of moral reformers,2 and
would coerce men to believe in their dogmas,
and convert the world by legislation. We
commend the extract to those political preach
ers and religious Ligots who imagine that
Christ calls them and sends them upon the
sole mission of freeing the slaves of the
South, acting as guardians for the citizens OF
Kansas, or lobbying in legislative halls for
the passage of an unconstitutional liquor
law
We believe that Christ came into the world
to reform tie rOorld-to destroy intenlpe-
rance, RIGHTEOUSNESS, oppression, war, and all
the works of the devil; and to oonver. this
earth into 4 happier paradise than that from
which Adam was expelled; and loe believe he
relied for success toholly on erciting an the hearts
Of individual men that intense love of God and
man lolich springs from cordial faith in the
Gospel. We believe that a deep humility, a
profound sense of establishment, is the uni
form accompaniment of true Christian love,
and is necessary to the perfection and high
est cxaltation of the virtues and Joys which
it produces in the human soul.
We believe that Socialism, Fourierism,
.Aboltionism and all the various isms and
schemes for the reform of the great evils of
society on Other than Bible principles, will not
only prove a miserable failure, but an awful
curse TO the communities which cherish them.
The projectors of these schemes ignore the
fall of man and its consequences; they deny
the right of God to visit the iniquities of the
fathers upon the children; they maintain the
inherent injustice of all native inequalities in
the condition of men; they call upon every
man to seat himself proudly on a throne and
to demand of God and man an acknowledge
ment of his equal right to rule; they encou-
rage men placed in subordinate stations to
murmur a. their lot, to envy and hate, and
violate the obligations which God imposes
on them in their relations to their fellow men;
they propose to reform the toorld, not by be-
ginning with inaipidaals aud advancing step
by step till all are reformed, but by reforming
fchoe communities first and indiuiduals after
wards; they love to manifest their virtue by
publicly rebuking the sins of Others rather
than by confessing and repenting of their
own; they are impatient of all delay and all
compromise in the work of reform, demand
ing the instant and utter abolition of all great
systems to which great evils are Incident
Pride lies at the root Of all these schemes,
and however fair the fruit may at first APP
pear to the eye, they will be found when
gathered to be apples Of Sodom-full of ashes
and bitterness-wrath, strife, evil speaking,
envying, jealousies, division, and every evil
work.
1t must be obvious to observing men, that
the principles to which we have referred have
been spreading, for several years among the
people in some large sections Of eur country;
that they have caused the division of our lar
gest ecclesiastical bodies; that they are be-
ginning to undermine our institutions for the
spread Of the gospel among the destitute at
home and abroad; that they are sowing the
seeds of infdelity and ir7eiigion in districts
formerly distinguished for their morality and
orthodoxy; and that, after weakening, one
by one, all the bonds, political, commercial,
social, and religious, which unite the different
parts of our land to each other, they now Sc
riously threaten the severance Of that Union
which is the glory of our country and the
hope of mankind-the Union of the Ameri-
can States.