The Bedford Gazette

The Truth well Spoken.

The subjoined dignified, truthful, and eminently Christian article we copy from the Baltimore Patriot of the 13th inst. The madness which now rules the hour - the perversion of the sacred calling of so many modern divines, some of them in our own State, and not a hundred miles from our own city - the melancholy attempts to divert the sacred volume to unauthorized and unchristian purposes - to substitute for its teaching, of peace and love a warrant of sedition, strife and discord, or to discard it entirely - are candidly and dispassionately alluded to, and the fearful consequences to Christianity itself strongly depicted. The present practice of too many clergymen, in leaving the spiritual wants of their flocks to the tender mercies of the prowling wolves of infidelity, and feeding almost entirely to "preach Christ and him crucified," is becoming apparent to all in the decreasing interest with which the ordinances and institutions of religion are regarded, and their growing inefficiency upon the spirit of evil which everywhere afflicts society. The extract below is from a letter of an eminent and distinguished Episcopalian clergyman of New England, but applies with equal force in all the States north of Mason and Dixon's Line, and is not inapplicable in the city and county of Lancaster. Present appearances would seem to indicate that this country is rapidly tending to the moral condition of Revolutionary France, and the cause is fully set forth in the following extract:

"I think I foresee that one of the most unhappy results of the political agitation we are going through will be the demoralization, or rather the de-Christianization of society here at the North, through the shameful prostitution of the pulpit to political purposes. This has now been carried on so long and to so great an extent, that great moral effects must inevitably follow. The claims of all the members of the human race to personal freedom everywhere, and under all circumstances, have been so long and so vehemently urged from the pulpit that the belief in them has become, with not a few, a second gospel: claims quite in conflict with the actual gospel of our Saviour, and with the examples of slavery in the Old Testament, not only authorized, but commanded by God himself. The question then occurs inevitably to the fanatical mind, which gospel am I to receive? Then, again, there has been the unholy alliance of the three thousand clergymen of New England, with the unhallowed crew of Atheists and Deists, male and female, all working harmoniously together to establish this new gospel, and to assert a principle in morality not recognized by the Old. On the same platform with the 3,000 are the men, Mr. Speaker Banks among the rest, who affirm that "if God authorizes slavery, we must have a new God." What pollution in the very contact of a Christian minister, with such creatures as Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theo. Parker and others of the same tribe! and what are the people to think when they see their pastors fraternizing with the open and sworn foes of all revealed truth on the same stage, and making common cause with them in a crusade against government and law? Why the multitude cannot help losing their reverence for Christ's religion and its supposed ministers, and this is precisely the process which is now going on. Such causes operating so widely as they are now doing, and have been doing for several years, must tell on the public mind at last. The fruits will appear by and by."