The Russellville Democrat., 1879-02-27

generate heelS>-Weil-tic uoii slug like unto Il knocking bird. Well, the preachers soine don't seem to hear it and some do-the audieDce--wcll we won't say how they take it, and just here we wish it understood that we dou't blame the oaby-not a bit of it--it IS his nsture. Nor have we said we blame its mother, that, we again assert, we want distinctly understood.
 Solomon said, and he is regarded, b, Christians especially, as having been very wise man. He said there was q time for all things and hy inference, . place for all things = even babies--a and he no doubt would have said something about babies Ill church, but from history and tradi- ton it cannot be. found anywhere recorded or even intimated that in Solomon's day baoy was ever seen in church, unless taken there as they may have been, to be DlessVd or per haps to be baptised.
 Moses iu his history or that grand old tradition handed down by some one, gives the earliest and most minute history of the origin of the human race, making a unity of it in Adam and Eve, the first of all crea. tion. Alter that, all the millions that followed commenced on babies. Old Mathuselah was baby until he was fifty, an infant until he was one hun dred, and we will venture the predic lion that he was never taken to church d6til he put on his first little brooches with pockets in them, the whole suit made of camels hair, and tipped of with s red goat skin cnp and red shoes. There is an old tra dition that bis fond mother took him with that fine suit on to church one day when Melchisidec the Great High Priest of Heaven and Earth, visited Abraham h Mezamtomia, soon after tue division of the spoils captured by Abraham when he whip ped in great battle near Dan, the five heather kings and rescued Lot and his family, Melchisidec held service on that occasion in a sacred grove in front of Abraham's tent. Methuselah, the infant boy with his first pants on was there ninety-seven years to day and tradition says he WAS q good boy, though he had never had stick of candy, nor baby rattle, nor been trundled on the side walk iu baby wagon; and on thls occasion he was old enough to be have himself, and listened to all the preacher. Melchisidec, said. Now we wish the reader and especially mothers with babies to observe that we have not said one word against taking babies to church; but confne ourselves to the facts of history and tradition, touching this important subject.
 A poet once went to religious ser wee in a grand old country church standing moss covered with age, in grove:--
 "Such were Gods first temples,
 Ere man man learned to hew the shaft
 and lay the architrave;"
 And he saw two swallows skimming around the ceiling overhead, whilst service was being had, upon which innocent scene he wrote grand poem commencing,
 "Ye winged worshippers, what seek ye
 here-heaven
 Ye have no souls to save, no sins to
 be forgiven.
 So we say about the little infants, excepting, they have souls. They have committed no sins, and they need neither forgiveness nor repen- tance. They are of just such iii ate. rial as Heaven is made of.-So said the Saviour when he took little child into his arms and blessed it. Was not that the most sublime ut .erance the world ever heard2 Did not the Savior and the child in his arms, when he uttered it, make the grandest and most God like picture the world ever knew2 Yet, strange and shocking as it may seem, not half century ago, the monstrous doctrine was preached from the pull pit, that little children, not a year old, would be sent to hell, because 0i the so.called original sin of Adam and Eve, unless by infant babtism, or some supposed holiness of their believing parents they were fit sub iects for salvation. That cold. harl.