movement in which these men are engaged has too many elements of strength to be contemned by any far-seeing liberal.  Blindness or sluggishness to-day means slavery to-morrow.  Radicalism must pass now from thought to action, or it will deserve the oppression that lies in wait to overwhelm it.”

As to the probability of the success of this movement, there is at present some difference of opinion.  While a very few pass it by with a slur as a mere temporary sensation of little or no consequence, it is generally regarded as a work of growing strength and importance, both by its advocates and opposers.  Petitions and remonstrances are both being circulated with activity, and shrewd observers, who have watched the movement with a jealous eye, and heretofore hoped it would amount to nothing, now confess that it “means business.”  No movement of equal magnitude of purpose has ever sprung up and become strong, and secured favor so rapidly as this.  Indeed, none of equal magnitude has ever been sprung upon the American mind, as this aims to remodel the whole framework of our government, and give to it a strong religious cast—­a thing which the framers of our Constitution were careful to exclude from it.  They not only ask that the Bible, and God, and Christ, shall be recognized in the Constitution, but that it shall indicate this as “a Christian nation, and place all Christian laws, institutions, and usages, in our government on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the nation.”

Of course, appropriate legislation will be required to carry such amendments into effect, and somebody will have to decide what are “Christian laws and institutions.”  From what we know of such movements in the past in other countries, and of the temper of the churches of this, and of human nature when it has power suddenly conferred upon it, we look for no good from this movement.  From a lengthy article in the Lansing State Republican in reference to the Cincinnati Convention, we take the following extract:—­

“Now there are hundreds and thousands of moral and professedly Christian people in this nation to-day who do not recognize the doctrine of the Trinity, do not recognize Jesus Christ the same as God.  And there are hundreds and thousands of men and women who do not recognize the Bible as the revelation of God.  The attempt to make any such amendment to the Constitution would be regarded by a large minority, perhaps a majority, of our nation as a palpable violation of liberty of conscience.  Thousands of men, if called upon to vote for such an amendment, would hesitate to vote against God, although they may not believe that the amendment was necessary or that it is right; and such men would either vote affirmatively or not at all.  In every case, such an amendment would be likely to receive an affirmative vote, which would by no means indicate the true sentiment of the people.  And the same rule would hold good