New England Religious Herald

Correspondence of the Herald

CLEVELAND, OHIO, Jan. 26, 1852.

MR. MOSELEY—Dear Sir: Your paper of this morning has promptly followed me in my past wanderings, and now reaches me with a tolerable degree of regularity in my Ohio home. I am glad to see the Herald enters the new year with good prospects, and that the proprietor feels encouraged in his enterprise. It seems to me that the paper is well worthy of the patronage of Connecticut Christians. Among the many and mammoth religious papers now published there are few if any whose pages are filled with matter more moving and adapted to interest, instruct, and spiritualize. Every Christian fireside needs such a paper.

Perhaps some of your readers will be pleased to learn that New England's favorite style of Church organization has found a place in Cleveland. "The First Congregational Church" was organized on the first Sabbath of the new year, with thirty-nine members, under promising auspices. Originating not in denominational feeling, but with the prayers and sighs of a few faithful Christians, the providences of God have led on step by step, resulting in the formation of a Congregational Church, upon liberal principles, and taking high moral ground on the important questions of the day.

The first movement in the enterprise was made early last fall, in the purchase of the Church edifice owned by the Universalist denomination, by a benevolent individual for the purpose of affording a place for evangelical preaching and a free house of worship to all classes; without any fixed determination for a church organization but to occupy the ground as a missionary field.

As the numbers of those interested increased, the feeling was united and harmonious that an organization upon the Congregational platform was eminently desirable—the free seat principle being carried out.

The Covenant and articles of faith of the "Plymouth Church Brooklyn" were considered as very happily constructed, and the brethren were unanimous in adopting them.

The religious exercises have been conducted by the Rev. J. T. Avery, who has consented for the present to be identified with the enterprise. Our meetings are well attended and interesting, a few are inquiring what they shall do to be saved, and we are hoping for a large outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The Churches in Ohio are every where agitated upon the question of communing with slaveholders. Those of the Congregational denomination generally take the ground of non-fellowship with slaveholders or their abettors. The Presbyterian churches, in consequence of their relation to the General Assembly, find more difficulty in settling the question. Some have deemed it their duty to dissolve connexion with that body on account of its being composed in part of those who uphold the principle of holding property in man.

A Society has quite recently been formed in Cincinnati, called The American Reform Tract and Book Society, for the purpose of publishing Tracts, Sabbath school books and other religious literature, that shall speak boldly against Slavery, in common with other great sins as the American Tract Society, American Sunday School Union, and other boards of publication do not. The ecclesiastical organization of the land, through all their myriad tongues are teaching either that slavery is not a sin or that being a sin, it is still worthy of Christian fellowship and communion. Either proposition is, of course, fatal to the idea of reform, and forbids even its commencement; for if slaveholding be not a sin, where among the millions of earth shall be found a crime deserving the name, and if it be a sin, and such a sin be welcome to the church, what then shall be excluded? These organizations have avowedly settled their policy, and these presses are either their organs, or they are so trammeled by pecuniary interests, that there is no hope of change.

Kossuth is expected here next week.— Clevelanders are preparing to give him a generous welcome.

We are having a severe winter, of the New England stamp. The mercury marked 18° below zero on the 21st. It has never before been known colder than 8° below, at this point.

Yours,
F. E. C.