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tract on the Impropriety of Dancing by members of churches, the tract to be published by the American Tract Society.
Reply.
The notice copied above suggests to us some other subjects on which we think Tracts are needed—subjects which are beginning to attract the thoughts of not a few, and which are, like dancing, of practical moment.
We would suggest premiums to be offered, as follows:
$20 for the best Tract on
The rightfulness and consistency of a Christian's spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on the appetites and enjoyments of himself and family, when there are a thousand families within a mile of him who are compelled to live on less than $200 a year.
$10 for the best Tract on the rightfulness and Christianity of a Christian's building a house for the exclusive residence of himself and family, at a cost of $50,000 to $100,000, within sight of a hundred families living in hovels worth less than $100.
$5 for the best Tract on the Christianity of building Churches which cost $100,000 each, in which
poor sinners can only worship on sufferance, and in the most out-of-the-way covers.
We would not intimate that these topics are by any means so important as that of Dancing—far from it. The sums we suggest will shield us from that imputation.
Yet we think these subjects may also be discussed with profit, and, that there may be no pecuniary hinderance, we will pay the premiums if the American Tract Society will publish the Tracts.
Provocation.
An assertion in the
Express, that the Tribune bestows ‘peculiar commendation upon that part of the new Constitution which takes away the necessity of believing in a Supreme Being, on the part of him who may be called to swear our lives or property away.’
Reply.
“The necessity of
believing in a Supreme Being,” in order to be a legal witness, never existed; but only the necessity of
professing to believe it. Now, a thorough villain who was at the same time an Atheist would be pretty apt to keep to himself a belief, the avowal of which would subject him to legal penalties and popular obloquy, but a sincere, honest man, whose mind had become confused or clouded with regard to the evidence of a Universal Father, would be very likely to confess his lack of faith, and thereby be disabled from testifying.
Such disability deranges the administration of justice and facilitates the escape of the guilty.
