The New York Herald

Christianity in Congress.

Every now and then our genial representatives in Congress relieve the dry deliberations of the session by exquisite Scriptural humor. On these occasions they study the Bible thoroughly, cramming with quotations, until the good old family edition in the library looks like a new land survey, with its dog ears and reference marks. Whenever a member makes a Scriptural quotation the House roars. The members enjoy a Bible joke better than anything Joe Miller ever said or Bill Mungen ever had printed in the Globe. If a sweet morsel about Sunday schools or a delicate touch upon the "anxious seat" is administered they laugh till tears roll down their cheeks, and if a neat representation of the old-fashioned camp meeting is improvised by some especially ambitious joker, like Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, they clasp their hands over their stomachs and cry "peccavi" at once; while if that member rises to the very pinnacle of wit and humor, as he often does in this line, and actually gives out the lines of a Methodist hymn, the very buttons of the members' vests and pants fly off, like poor Peggoty's back buttons, and they give up without any further effort.

The actual comfort and instruction that can be got out of a humorous rendition of the Bible is only to be realized by a view of Congress on these biblical field-days. Cox, with a few judicious improvements on the old reading, can throw more interest into a Bible sketch than Dr. Clark ever did in his "Commentaries," and consequently he induces more people to listen to him. No doubt the well-timed and witty discussion which Messrs. Cox and Lawrence carried on in the House on Thursday, on the subject of mercy and amazing grace, evidently by preconcert, ensnared some few of the unholy members into a knowledge of God's Word which they would never have acquired by their sober Sunday reading or hearing of it. The glorious fact that there is such a book may have been let in even, for the first time, upon the darkened minds of some savage members from the far Western wilds, or some bigamous or dishonest members from even more highly cultivated portions of the Union. Indeed, if these Christian readings had been instituted earlier we might have had a better record of Congressional morality. Mr. Bowen, of South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, of Tennessee, both of whom listened to the jokes on Thursday with unusual zest, might not have so suddenly brought sorrow upon a promising Congressional revival by falling from grace, even into the pits of bigamy and perjury, and, possibly, into the unclean cells of a State prison. They might not, and then again they might. "What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh," and Congressional psalm singing is not likely to have touched the hearts of such as these. Indeed, it is not unlikely that these two may already have leavened the whole lump, and that the crowd of members who find such sport in the new Coxonian reading of the Bible may be permeated through and through with bigamists and frauds.