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209 THE AKRON OFFERING. October, 1849. For the Offering. Bible Influence. The stability of all civil and moral institutions, depends upon the intellectual and moral improvement and elevation of the mind.—This position has become an admitted axiom, and needs no argumentation to sustain its truthfulness. But how to attain this and by what means, has been and still is a subject, which elicits much speculation; and the different theories which have been proposed, by which to arrive at this desirable end, are almost legion. Amidst the speculations of the age, the one great, important means for securing this end has been almost entirely overlooked, and indeed its adaptation to improve the mind and give stability to our republican institutions , has been seriously questioned, by many of the self styled Philosophers and Political and Moral reformers of the times; viz: the influence of Bible truth. It will be admitted, that the mind may expand intellectually, so far as the mere acquisition of science is concerned, without direct Bible influence. But man being constituted a moral as well as an intellectual being, will be left, by such training, without any moral balance, exhibiting a monstrous, one-sided development of the mind; and appearing on the stage of real life, presents the spectacle, like a ship in a storm without ballast or rudder, at the mercy of every wave, incapable of steering the ocean of life, and in safety reaching the haven of repose, the high and heavenly destination of man as an intellectual and moral being. The Akron Offering 210 If such then are the phenomena of mind, when under the influence of science, refinement and cultivated society, what must be expected from the mass of uncultivated mind, unrestrained and unsanctified by Bible influence? In the language of Franklin to the infidel Paine: “If men are so wicked with religion what would they be without it?1 The true answer to this question is presented to us, in the history of the infidels’ native country, during the period when France abjured God, rejected the Bible and the institutions of religion—deified reason—voted God and the Sabbath out of existence and enthroned the Goddess of reason in their place. The consequences were, bloodshed, rapine, wars, intemperance, and lewdness together with every other corruption that could debase and degrade a nation.2 What was then witnessed in a single nation, would be seen and felt again throughout the world, under the same circumstances. In truth, the world would present one vast theatre of crime and debauch. Facts as they even now present themselves to the observing mind, fully warrant this assertion. From whence are all the civil, social and moral evils, with which this nation and the world are afflicted and cursed? We unhesitatingly affirm from those, who are not under Bible influence, whether they be intellectually cultivated or ignorant. Let us specify a few of the immoralities and locate them if we can. 1. We notice sabbath desecration. It is the great effort of infidels and profane men, to beget a disregard for the christian’s sabbath in the minds of the people.3 And why? Because with it goes the Bible and the moral influence 1. “If men are so wicked with religion” is the start of a famous passage from a copied and incomplete letter by Benjamin Franklin (1812–78), commonly assumed to have been addressed to the American deist and political pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1737–1809) on the occasion of reading a draft of his “infidel” writings. See Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Cambridge : Folsom, Wells, and Thurston, 1840), 10:281–82, Google Books, http://books.google.com /books?id=GFcCAAAAQAAJ. 2. Critics of the French Revolution often interpreted its excesses and failures as the work of atheism and deism. For an example of such reasoning in another Western literary magazine for women in the 1840s, see Edward C. Merrick, “Philosophy of Modern Infidelity,” The Ladies’ Repository, and Gatherings of the West 8, no. 12 (or 9, no. 6) (December 1848): 359–61, Google Books, http://books.google .com/books?id=z8YRAAAAYAAJ. A frequent contributor to The Ladies’ Repository, “Professor Merrick” was one of the seven faculty members at the Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, about twenty miles north of Columbus in the center of the state. He taught French. See Catalogue of the Officers and Students at the Ohio Wesleyan University, for the Academical Year, 1846–1847 (Cincinnati, 1847), 7, Google...

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