Year: 1876




Three current topics of interest receive at
tention in the latest issues of the religious
press. One is the Wagner musical festival
in Baireuth, on which tho Boston Plot re-
marks that while the Germans are wonder
full people in their scientific, pathological and
musical attainments and the metaphysical
air which everywhere invests their literature.
''Vaterlnnd" is at the bottom of oil. Their
great poem owed its revival to the reaction
against French supremacy in Germany dur
ing tho first decade of the present century.
1t did good service then, and it is polite now
because soothing to the national vanity Of
Deutschland to reproduce it with all the at
fractions of gorgeous dramatic dress and
appropriate music.


Another topic is the constitutional amend
ment against sectarian appropriations to, and
teaching in, the public schools of the land,
which the Observer gives without COM
ments. The Northeastern Christian Adpo-
cate, however, looks upon this amend
ment as q needed breakwater to the en-
croachments of Romanism. While the
matter referred to is sufficiently guarded
against, SO far as the general government is
concerned, the several State governments
are at liberty to do the thing that it is now
proposed to prohibit. "Any State" says
the Northeastern, 'could change its consti-
tuition in this respect, if it pleased, without
consultation with other States, and could
establish the Romish or the Methodist or the
Presbyterian Church within its own boun-
daries. Hence the wisdom of provision in
the federal constitution which shall insure,
on q point so fundamental, common policy
throughout all the States. In the matter Of
the public schools it is time that VIC reached
the end of any uncertainty as to their
character and management. Roman
Catholic majority in any one State could
now institute measures for distributing the
public school fund indiscriminately to all
schools in proportion to the number of chill
dren in each, which is the demand of their
ecclesastics. In that case We should sec
division lines run through the community,
which would operate to increase and per-
petuate a clannish and sectarian feeling. 1t
is not well to promote any such result by the
use of public money. The declaration by
Archbishop Purcell of the Catholic clergy's
position on this school question is discussed
by the Independent, which does not place
much reliance ON it, and gives the reasons
for not doing so. The Pope has spoken and
written against them; too many of the
prelates of the Church have raised their
voices in opposition, and the Catholic press
has been too unanimous in condemnation of
those institutions.


The Indian problem also receives attcn-
The Christian at Work. protests against the
unreasoning denunciation of the Indian as
an individual, and the cry for vengeance for
Clusters death. If the fortunes ofwar had
gone the other way and the Sioux had been
destroyed, Custer and his command would
subject that required to be looked at
without passion this Indian question is
the one. Prejudice and passion have already
cost us more lives and more money than we
can afford and it is time the country awoke
to the fact that the opinions that have con-
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the class Of men least worthy to be heard in
the matter. The Intelligencer thinks it itabsurd,
in view of what has been accomplished
among the Indians in the brief period that
the policy of their education and evangelical
ton has been on trial, to repeat the state
ment that nothing can be done to break up
their nomadic habits and to extinguish their
traditions and tastes. 1t cites recent evil
dence given by Bishop Whipple at o vista
ton at White Earth Reservation, from which
it would appear that the Indians are more
susceptible to intellectual and moral in
fuences than are their palefaced neighbors.


The Turco-Servian war. the reform cry of
the democratic Presidential nominees and
the Southern disorders also receive attention
from some of our contemporaries.


Th~ H.