, as
leaguing with Satan, who is "Prince of the powers of the air," and
therefore as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch
Church. Instructive it would be also to note how the introduction
of railways was declared by an archbishop of the French Church to
be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers
who set meat before their guests on fast days, and who were now
punished by seeing travellers carried by their doors; how railways
and telegraphs were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds
of Antichrist; and how in Protestant England the curate of
Rotherhithe, at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so
destructive to life and property, declared it from his pulpit a
just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.
The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to
the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on
account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of
in the Old Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have
also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.
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