Year: 1867

Horace Greeley writes an article in the
New York Independent on one of the most
alarming and common sins of the day. The
following is an extract:


! presume balf the good sermons ever yet
preached might have had for their text,
a. The fool hath said in his heart there is no
God" To that foolish, blind presumption
turks the impulse to every wrong. every
transgrcssion. Men geneneraliy admit, IN
listless, soulless way, that the universe,
this world, and all who live in it, are the
subjects of omniscient moral sway; but
scarcely one in dozen "iu his heart"
believes il. If all did believe il, how could
there be hvpocrites in the church. libertines
by the family hearth, CT villains anywhere
How could there ever be robbers in the
mountain pass, wreckers on the perilous
coast, or slavers on the stormy main, If men
really and heartily believed in the existence
and rule Of an all-seeipg, omnipotent God?


Every age, every nation develops some
vast wickedness. Intemperance, lewdness,
gambling, and n hundred other manifesto
tions of mans proneness to evil, appear and
disappear like physical epidemics; hardly is
one eruption of evil crushed when another
appears and begins to run its measured
round. If [ were called to say what crime
is to-day most fearfully prevalent among US,
/ should indicate the destruction OF unborn
children.


speak not here of the murder of inno-
cents, the children of lust and sin, and
whose destroyers have the wretched excuse
of seeking to preclude disgrace and shame.
Guilty as these are unquestionablv are, they
are not so criminal in the sight of Heaven
as are the married pair who conspire to blast
the germs of offspring in the mothers womb,
and thwart the benefcent command to in
crease and multiply given to the progenitors
of our race. If there be crime more das-
tardly and unnatural than all others, surely
it is this.


Of course, excuses and apologies have been
invented for this, as for other varieties of
murder. The parents are too poor to rear
more children on their scanty means; the
mothers constitution is too feeble to endure
the trials of child bearing and nursing, etc..
etc. The first of these, if valid at all, will
Justify the killing of the child born last
March as well as that of the child TO be born
next November; the second is direct i'm
peachmeut of the Divine economy, and a
proclamation of disbelief in the Divine as
surance, 4" AS thy day so shall thy strength
be-" In short, there is no palliation for any
sort of child murder which is not essentially
Atheistic--a repetition of what "the fool
hath said in his heart"


1t has for years been noted that our old
New England element is less prolific than
formerly-that families Of six to eight chill
dren are as unfreouent as those of ten to
twelve were two or three generations back.
1t is further noted that our immigrant pop
ulation do not share in this sterility-that
our Irish born neighbors have more children
to the family than their Yankee neighbours
learn that the Roman Catholic priests are,
to considerable extent to be credited with
this disparity-that. having had their atten
ton called to the diminution of births among
US, they have discussed its reasons, and sys
tematcally applied themselves to guarding
their focks from the contagion, believe it is
generally, through the confessional and
p otherwise, enjoined on married Catholics
that they under no circumstances conspire
against the lives of their unborn children.
Shall not Protestant pastors be inspired by
this example? Their opportunities may be
less direct and palpable, yet they are sufi-
cient Why should not every settled clergy
man preach pointedly against the crime in
question? Is any in doubt as to its exis-
tence? Let him confer with two or three
popular physicians, and ne will doubt no
longer. Nay, he will be astounded by their
testimony as to the extent, the magnitude OF
this offence against God and humanity
country and family.


What eminent physician will prepare a
tract of sixteen, twenty four, or thirty two
large, fair pages, setting forth in convincing
array the moral, physiological. and religion:
considerations which should secure general
avoidance and adherence Of this species oi
infanticide?