New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-09-04
ARE We 4 RELIGIOUS PEOPLEf

ARE HE RELIGIOUS PEOPLEf
There is little doubt that should the Nations
patient recover, he will be the most popular
President that we have had for half a century.
1t was as soldier, not az ruler, that General
Grant won himself his once great popularity.
LincOn's virtues, like Gartied's, suddenly
started to light before the sOmbre tragedy of
his assassination, like brilliant cOors on a
black background, but he was dead before the
people discovered them. Dead, he was eman-
cipatOr hero and martyr, but living he had
the enmity of half the Nation and the jealousy
of half dozen Presidential candidates and
their adherents to contend with. Mr.. Hayes
with as much honesty, justice and firm dis
erection rs President Garfield, had not the luck
to be shot, or his career as statesman and
ruler would have received as sincere applause,
and he would have known how profound was
the National confidence in him. But it would
need long course now of feeble inaction
and incapacity on the part of Gar
field to dull the sound of Guiteau's
bullet in the Nations ear. lnaction and
incapacity we need never fear from him. Gui-
teaus bullet will not have done an altogether
i'll work If it brings to light, solid and perma-
nent, the real feeling and principle of the Amer
lean people; Tor although their keen dramatic
sense prevents their open recognition of the
more solid, quiet virtues, unless some tragedy
such as this of July lends them emphasis, still
they do recognize them and pay them homage.
We have often said before, but we cannot
say it too often, that the American people, as n
people, not the tricky politicians, office
seekers unfathful husbands divorced wives
and blatant sceptics which the records of our
public life would indicate. The doings of these
I'M tba 40
cent, God-fearing majority are silent. No sign
of the purity and nobility of national domestic
life could be more significant than the fact of
the universal sympathy with the wounded man
ut the White House; not because he was Pres
ident, but because the great mass Of the peO-
pie believe him to be truthful, temperate and
manly. There is, il is true, large amount of
open vice and immortality in the United States,
chiefly due to the fact that we have been
made for the last ten years moral lazaretto.
The pauperism-and the ignorance, vugarity
and crime too often the concomitants of pau
persm--of all other countries have fled to orr
shores for relief There il, too, owing to the
same cause, much avowcd scepticsm; we
have every shade and phase of atheism Budd-
hsm, the heather beliefs of Asia Africa and
our own red men, the philosophy of every
nation under heaven, all massed and struy-
CLING together to direct the thought and ac-
ton of our foreign population and their inn
mediate descendants The native American.
too, is no longer IA Christian after the pattern
of his Puritan, Quaker or Methodist ancestor.
He is no longer likely to detect the DEVILS
wlies by the cut of coat, or to hear lures
to the fate of the damned in the scrap
ings of fiddle in theatre or at a car
pet dance. All priestcraft is now at a
| mn tbo r.tl, nI;
his flock i'll a very different mood from those
on the shores of the Shannon or the Seine, or
even the upper side of the ST. Lawrence :.
and the Protestant clergyman is put on mar
with the members of his flock, and must rain
leadership if he has it by his superior virtue
and goodness not by the color of his neck
tie or mere position. There are isolated rurol
populations, such as those in Norway and Scot
| land where the relation of the simple minded
! people to their religious teacher il still in
| KIND that of the old Israelitc to Moses. He is
ther guide III temporal well as spiritual
matters; they are his loving children; his
conscience finds out the right and wrong for
J them; in short, he stands between them and
God. There were such communities in tbe
iirst settlement of this country, but there are
now none such in the United States. In some
OF the older and sparsely settled districts mo-.
! tably in the South, some of the old IDEAS of a
religious life do still tcnaciousIy hold ground
! 1t is a sin to dance, to go to the theatre to
! play cards. Prayer meetings, tracts, and nm
! limited sermons-these mark the ONLY strait
and narrow way all others lead to death
With each year the number of these be-
| levers in the infallblty OF given forms of
religion grows fewer. 1t may be, even. that
| the awc-struck, almost fearful reverence of
our forefathers for the Bible is scarcely known
| among u.s.
| Yet with all these signs of retrogression 40
they would be regarded 10y many, we cannot
admit that the native population of the States
is whit less religious, in the true sense of
the word, than it was century ago. There
| may be less reverence for the letter of tbe
| Christian creed, but there is a clearer comnre-
| hension of its spirit. Religion in every are
| has its different phases of expression Ours il
| the practical. man, nowadays, NAV care
| little for the dOgmas, the church building or
| the rules which his grandfather held to he the
only gate of heaven; but every fact of his
| daily life cOnvinces him that nothing is suc-
cessful in the end but honesty temperance and
| truth that nothing 50 elevates a man or n
| community as domestic purity, -brotherly kind
| ness and humble trust in God When the
national voice is heard, though at long inter
yals. it gives it's verdict for these principles.