The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-24
BIGOTED BUSYBODIES.

From the NJ Y World.
In what respects the Presbyterians of
America need reforming we know not, nor
yet by what commission from earth or heaven
a body calling itself the ''Presbyterian Re-
formed Synod, now in session at PhiladeI-
phia, assumes to reform the Presbyterians
aforesaid. But this we know, that until the
presbyterian Reformed Synod" shall have
succeeded in reforming itself in the three
trihipg particulars of Christian charity, CON-
mon sense, and ordinary historical knowl-
edge, it will do well to leave Presbyterians in
general to the care of Providence.
For this synod has just seen fit to favor the
public, most unprovokedly, with its views
upon the present state of affairs, not in the
Presby terian Church nor yet in America, but
in Paris and in France. And the sum of
these ''views" briefly is that ''the present
condition of France in general as desolatei
by storms of war, and of the city of Paris In
particular as now drenched by the blood of
her own citizens, is a righteous retribution
for the martyrdoms of Saint Bartholomew
day, and the tangible ful6lment to the
Church of the divine promise 'that no
weapon that is formed against thee shall
prosper.
This conclusion the synod reaches on the
very day when the news comes to us that the
Commune of Paris has been defeated by the
troops of Versailles. Now, the Commune of
Psrs has certainly ''formed wespon against
the Church." and that weapon certainly has
not prospered; SO that in this respect the
Scripture cited by the synod may be held to
have been ''tangibly fulfilled" But the
Church against which the Commune formed
its weapon was by no means the Presbyterian
Church, reformed or unreforlned. 1t was the
Catholic Roman Church. The pastors of that
Church have been cast into prison and threat
ened with death, among them men like the ve-
nerable DegHerry, cure of the Madeleine, of
whom all decently educated Presbyterians
ought to remember that twenty years ago and
more, on the oath of August, 1919, he pub
licly embraced the famous Reformed clergy
man of Paris M. Athanase Coquerel, on the
| platform of the Congress de la Paix, as a sign
| and token that the cruel memories of the St.
| Bartholomew were and ought to be forever
| puS aside from among Christian men. The
I Archbishop of the Roman Church in Paris
has been plundered and abused by the Com
mune. Its religious edifces have been sacked
and desecrated. If the Scripture of the synod
has been fulfilled in behalf of any Church,
then 1T is claerly in behalf of the Catholic
Roman Church.
But this hardly tallies with the synod's no.
tions of righteous retribution" for the
martyrdoms of the st. Bartholomew, which
are commonly understood to have been per-
petrated, not by enemies of the Catholic
Church, but by persons who claimed to be
acting in its behalf, and covered with the
cloak of the faith their own personal hatreds
and political plottings. From the point of
view of the synod the weapon formed by the
Commune was very sword of the Lord and
of Gideon; and if it were possible for such
people to be logical, they ought to
pass resolution of censure upon
Providence for failing to make
this weapon prosper, even to the hanging OF
Archbishop Darboy. If the synod, in a large
loose, radical way, means only t. lump all
PariAians Of the nineteenth century together
in expiatiOn of the crimes of an Italian Queen
OF France who happened to inhabit Paris in
the sixteenth century, it still must be ad-
mitted to be hard measure for the Commune
that the earnest desire of its leaders to murder
an archbishop should not exonerate them in
the eyes of the presbyterian Reformed
Synod" from being tarred with the archiepis-
copal staff.
If the world were governed as the Presby-
terian Reformed Synod would have it be, the
ohastisement of modern Paris by an athsistic
sacre of the Huguenots in 1872 ought to be
followed up by Chartist insurrection in
London and the execution of Mr.. Gladstone
to atone for the massacre of Glencoe in Scot
land and for the protracted martyrdom en-
dured by Catholic Ireland at the hands of
Elizabeth and of Cromwell. Between the
horrors of the St. Bartholomew and the
denominations Of the present civil war in Paris
one would say, looking at matters from a
purely human and humane point of view,