142 THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY.
tives and their intentions. It is such qualities as these
in the leaders of the movement that give it its most for-
midable character. They havé definite and consistent
ideas; they perceive the logical connection of these ideas,
and advocate them in a very cogent and powerful man-
ner; and they propose to push them with determination
and zeal. Concede their premises, and it is impossible
to deny their conclusions; and since these premises are
axiomatic truths with the great majority of Protestant
Christians, the effect of the vigorous campaign on which
they are entering cannot be small or despicable. The
very respect with which we were compelled to regard
them only increases our sense of the evils which lie ger-
minant in their doctrines; and we came home with the
conviction that religious liberty in America must do bat.
tle for its very existence hereafter. The movement in
which these men are engaged has too many elements of
strength to be contemned by any far-seeing liberal.
Blindness or sluggishness to-day means slavery to-mor-
row. Radicalism must pass now from thought to action,
or it will deserve the oppression that lies in wait to over.
whelm it.”
To show the strong convictions of many minds
that the conflict here indicated is inevitable, we
present some further extracts from the Index. In
its issue of Feb. 12, 1874, it Says :i—
“Yet in this one point the Christianizers show an wn
erring instinct. The great battle between the ideas of
the State and the ideas of the Church will indeed be
fought out in the organic law of the nation. The long
and bitter conflict of chattel-slavery with free industry
began in the world of ideas, passed to the arena of poli-
tics, burst into the hell of war, and expired in the peace-
ful suffrages by which Freedom was enthroned in the
Constitution. The old story will be repeated; for it is
the same old conflict in a new guise, though we hope, and
would fain believe, that the dreaded possibility of another
civil war is in fact an impossibility. But that the agi-
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 143
tation now begun can find no end until either Christian-
: ity or Freedom shall have molded the Constitution
wholly into its own likeness, is one of the fatalities to be
"read in the very nature of the conflicting principles. The
battle of the amendments is at hand. A thousand
: minor issues hide it from sight; but none the less it ap-
; proaches year by year, month by month, day by day.
»
Cowardice to the rear! Courage to the front!
The sentiment here expressed, that “the agitation
© now begun can find no end until either Christianity
= or Freedom [by which the Index means infidelity |
i shall have molded the Constitution wholly into its
E own likeness,” is becoming the settled conviction of
many minds. It is not difficult to foresee the re-
sult. Infidel, the Constitution can never become;
hence it will become wholly the instrument of that
type of Christianity which the Amendmentists are
‘now seeking.
Again the Index says: —
“The central ideas of the Church and of the Republic
are locked in deadly combat—none the Jess so, because
"the battle-ground to-day is the invisible field of thought.
? To-morrow the struggle will be in the arena of politics,
“and then no eye will be so blind as not to see it.
At the Pittsburgh Convention, in 1874,—
«Dr. Kieffer said that this movement was more po-
litical than ecclesiastical, appealing to the patriotism of
all classes alike, and should be accepted by all. Dr.
Hodge said it was in no sense sectarian, and the ends it
sought could be accepted by one denomination as well as
y another,—by the Catholic as well as by the Protest-
ant. He said it was destined to unite all classes. And
heir work was all in this direction.”
The following, also from the Index, we copy from
the Christian Statesinan of Jan, 2, 1875, We dg