CHAPTER LII. THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE SECULAR PRESS.

The most decided index of the coming agency of the people, in throwing off the Augustinian system, is the present position of the secular press.

It has been shown how much the religious press is restrained in liberty of opinion and expression, so that it is probable that there is not a professedly religious paper in the nation that could controvert the _distinctive_ doctrines of the sect that patronizes it without losing its character and income.

But the secular press is far less encumbered with such difficulties. The progress of this great power toward the discussion of such subjects has been very striking. At first there began to be seen simple reports of the religious anniversaries in some secular papers. This proving popular, next there came notices of missionary and benevolent operations. Then notices of the sermons of distinguished clergymen were given, and then whole columns of daily papers were occupied with sermons from ministers, without regard to denomination. Finally, the great “revival” became a topic of the secular press. Reports of religious meetings, the number who were counted as converts, and all the details connected with this great popular movement were chronicled in the secular almost as fully as in the religious press.

The comments of editors, also, on this subject, were usually respectful, candid, and in many cases very able and discriminating. The result has been, that inasmuch as the religious press circulates chiefly among “the church” and the secular press among “the world,” the gospel has been preached to sinners far more by secular than by religious editors. And it may be assumed as a fact, that the secular editors of this nation have far more power and influence in guiding the religious opinions and moral conduct of “the world” than either the clergy or the religious press, and probably more than both combined.

In this state of the case, all the interests of the religious press are opposed to free investigation and discussion, and all the interests of the secular press are as powerfully interested to promote it.

In appealing, therefore, from the theological world to “the people,” it is the editors of the secular press—the true “_Tribunes_ of the people”—who will render the verdict, and this verdict is awaited with very little doubt or apprehension in regard to its nature.

The questions submitted for decision are not so comprehensive as those of the volume referred to in which theologians chiefly were invoked, and which they have as yet declined to answer. The questions submitted to _the people_ are briefly these: Does common sense, or does the Bible teach that every human being possesses such a depraved nature as never to perform any truly virtuous act until this nature is re‐created by God? and are the churches organized on the assumption that its members are diverse from the world, in that they, as regenerated persons, perform virtuous acts as no unregenerated person ever does, sanctioned by common sense or by the Bible?