IX.
UNVEILED NONSENSE.
August 28th.
My dear Mr. Bonner: Are you not a censor of all your contributors? Do you not read cautiously all matter sent to the Ledger, to prevent the entrance thereinto of any injurious sentiments? And yet you have allowed blasphemy in your columns? You have! Or else the Christian Intelligencer, the Dutch Reformed religious journal of New York, by one of its contributors, is greatly mistaken. An article appears there signed “Puritan,” and entitled “Veiled Profanity.” It begins with an extract from an article of one of your contributors:—
“Henry Ward Beecher says, ‘The only way to exterminate the Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and mildew and blight will cover it.’”
And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in these words. Put on your spectacles. Nothing wrong, do you say? O, but there is! You, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, and can’t see heresy! Fie, for shame, to be beaten by a Dutchman! Now, let our Intelligencer’s man express himself. The italics are his, not mine:—
“These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are the messengers of God. If they are sent, they are on an errand for God! Now, if the above extract has a point, it is that when mankind plant a crop of any kind of grain or seed, God takes a malicious pleasure in defeating such schemes.”
This is exquisite! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, it is on an errand for God, and if I sprinkle it with sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God’s
messenger! When it rains—is not rain, too, God’s messenger?—does “Puritan” dare to open a blasphemous umbrella, and push it up in the very face of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by one of “God’s messengers”—measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scarlet-fever—would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on purpose that he might resist these divine messengers? There are insects which attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and against another sulphur. “Nay,” says Puritan. “If they are sent, they are on an errand for God.”
“Puritan” goes on:—