Gold Hill Daily News

Fanaticism.—The spectacle of fifty Christian gentlemen assembling in Chicago for the purpose of offering prayers that "God would crush out all evils, especially Free Masonry," is not a particularly edifying one. We have no doubt that the clergyman who read with so much satisfaction the resolutions alleged to have been passed at an ecclesiastical assembly recently held at Monmouth, Illinois, disqualifying Free Masons from membership, was earnest; we have no doubt that the speakers who denounced Masonry as "heathenish, horrible and profanely wicked," really believed what they said; and that the remarks of Bishop Edwards, of the United Brethren, were based upon conviction. But the same men, had they lived a few generations ago, would have been foremost in the hunt after witches, and would have zealously co-operated with the New England Puritans in their persecution of the Quakers. We may congratulate ourselves that modern fanaticism is harmless, so far as positive persecution is concerned; but such meetings as this indicate the existence in our midst of an intolerance, and a bigotry, no whit less fierce than that which fed the stake and the gallows in the days of our forefathers.—S. F. Times.