The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-02
THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1870.
OPPOSITION or THE SOUTHERN
PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY TO
PRTTN1DN

CPPCSIIION OF THE SUI IIDhN
PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY TO
REUNION.
The committee appointed some days ago by
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church to visit the Southern Assembly recently
in session at Louisville, and to make over
lures for the re-establishment of friendly re-
lations, have returned to this city, and yes
te1day they submitted q report which sub
stantially confirms the telegraphic despatch
announcing that these overtures have for the
present been unsuccessful. The way does
not yet seem to be prepared for the abroga-
tion of sectional divisions in this great reli-
pious organization. The Southern Presby-
terian Church gave a friendly reception to the
Northern delegates, and they agreed to con-
slider the matter of restoring amicable relations,
but they insisted on conditionsso preposterous
and impossible that the General Assembly
cannot submit to them without disgracing
and stultifying itself. The Southern Church
has not yet been fully reconstructed. 1t is
not yet ready to bury the memories of the
war; Assuming an attitude of injured inno-
cence, it arraigns the Northern Church on
the charge of fatally complicating itself with
the State, and thereby betraying the cause
and kingdom of the Saviour, because it
openly proclaimed allegiance to the Union.
The Southern preachers assume that the
Church is ''purely spiritual body among
men," and that the Northern Presbyterians
so grossly violated this doctrine by their poll
tical utterances during the Rebellion that
they must purge themselves of this
error before they will be worthy
of the friendly and fraternal
greetings of the godly men of Dixie. Con-
sidering that these same Southern preachers
were for many years the Jealous advocates of
the worst sort of politics that ever disgraced
humanity, the politics that was pledged to the
perpetuation and extension of slavery, and
that during the war they were praying and
working for the success of the Rebel armies
with as much energy as Northern Presbyte-
rians labored for the triumph of the Union
cause, it is difficult for impartial observers to
understand how they propose to establish
their own innocence of the imputed
sin Of combining politics with religion.
We know Of no theory they
can employ for this desperate purpose, unless
they have the sublime audacity to pretend
that advocacy of slavery and rebellion is re-
lgion pure and undefiled, while the cham
pionship of freedom and loyalty is pestiferous
politics The General Assembly, in pro-
posing to ignore past records and to bury
the passions engendered by the war, pursued
the only proper and practicable course; and
it is as impolitic as it is ungenerous for the
Southern Assembly to revive the Issues of the
conflict in which their deluded followers were
al Sha ;oio eof
whole civilized and truly Christianized world
Another point of objection raised to the
re-establishment of friendly relations is the
reunion of the "Old' and New School,
branches of Northern Presbyterianism. The
Southern churches, with scarcely an excep-
ton, belonged to the former, and they con-
tend that the terms on which the late combi-
nation was effected ''involve total surrender
of all the great testimonies of the Church for
the fundamental doctrines of grace" This
allegation implies desire to not only per-
petuate a division between Northern and
Southern Presbyterians, but, if possible, to
rekindle in the North the dying embers of
old dissensions. The Southern Assembly
claims to be the ''sole surviving heirs" of
genuine Presbyterianism, and to stand on a
much higher and better platform than the
reunited Northern Church.
These imputed offenses, as well as the
alleged injustice of the expulsion of rebels
from the communion of the Old School Pres
byterian Church, the Southern Assembly now
formally declares to be ''an impossible barrier
to official intercourse" and it demands that
they shall be distinctly met and reviewed
before amicable relations can be restored
The best to be hoped for under these cir
cumstances is that the negotiations which
the General Assembly was necessarily obliged
to suspend may be resumed hereafter under
happier auspices. Time may bring on its
healing wings better spirit to the Southern
Presbyterians, and teach them finally to for
give those whom they have injured, and tc
become loyal citizens of the republic the!
yainly endeavored to destroy.
ABOLITION OF THE INCOME TAX
The income tax came up for discussion yes
terday in the House of Representatives, an