Public Ledger

Signs in the Sky.

[From the New York Tribune.]

A religious paper publishes a curious appeal in the following words:

"It is asked of all newspapers desiring the spread of truth, and the destruction of error, that they publish this request and prayer to Almighty power, that on the three first Sunday nights in October, 1871, there shall appear in the heavens a distinct light in the shape of a great cross;" and furthermore, all good people are urged to pray earnestly for this miraculous sign. The honest enthusiasm which dictates this communication is of course entitled to full respect. Here is doubtless some devout Christian who has looked on the wickedness of the world and the obduracy of mankind until he has lost confidence in the ordinary means for diffusing religious truth. He has seen millions of money and hundreds of lives expended in missions to the heathen, and still the heathen are not converted. Civilized countries have thousands of churches and scores of religions, and still the land is full of murder, lust, fraud, theft, lying and anger. The pulpit and the printing press seem, to one who looks so steadily towards the dark side, powerless for anything but evil. God's way of preaching the Gospel proves to be a failure; we must call upon heaven to intervene with miracles and apparitions. The delusion under which such people labor is worth study. Ever since Christ censured the wicked and adulterous generation which demanded a sign instead of living up to the light already given it, the world has been full of mistaken enthusiasts begging for a suspension of the laws of nature to frighten mankind into doing their duty. They have all history to teach them that the world is not to be converted by marvels in the sky—nay, that those who will not believe the words of the Gospel would still refuse to believe, though one should rise from the dead. The apparition of a cross in the clouds would be a sign less wonderful than many things that are done every day under our eyes, and this is not an age which people are disposed to interpret as a message of divine import every phenomenon which they are unable to explain. A miracle which spoke no definite truth would leave the skeptical unconvinced of Christianity, just as the unaccountable performances of the medium Hume leave us skeptical of Spiritualism as a system of religion. Christianity itself is a standing miracle, far greater than crosses in the sky. And is it by any means certain that the Gospel is not getting along pretty well, considering what a world of work the Almighty gave it to do?"