Valley Spirit

The great Radical statesmen in Congress who have for the last two or three years been tinkering at a bill to fund the debt of the United States at a reduced rate of interest, have succeeded in passing a funding bill at last. They got it through on the 13th, a couple of days before the adjournment of Congress. We can imagine the broad grin that overspread the faces of the leading financiers of the country as they read the bill. It must have been impossible for the greatest among them to repress a smile as he surveyed this Congressional bantling.

The bill provides for the issue of two hundred million dollars of bonds, bearing five per cent interest and redeemable in coin at the pleasure of the government after ten years; for three hundred million bearing four and a half per cent interest and redeemable in coin after fifteen years; and for one thousand million bearing four per cent interest and redeemable in coin after thirty years.--These bonds are to be sold at not less than par, for coin, and the proceeds of such sale are to be applied to the redemption of outstanding five-twenty bonds at their par value, or they may be exchanged for such five-twenty bonds at par for par.

This bill is not worth the paper it was written on. The youngest Banker's Clerk in the country could have drawn a better.--No capitalist will buy the new bonds and no holder of five-twenties will exchange for them. Congress might have made it obligatory upon the National Banks to take the new bonds and substitute them for those now deposited in the Treasury Department as security for their circulation, but there is no such requirement in the bill. There is nothing to induce or compel the taking of the new bonds, and they will not be taken. The Radical wiseacres who rule our destinies in Congress seem to be incapable of achieving financial successes, except in the matter of selling cadetships. They can make money for themselves, but they can devise no practicable plan to make or save money for the people. Things worked differently in Congress in the good old times when that body was composed of Whigs and Democrats. The Radical party is a stupendous failure. The honest men who have clung to it in hopes that it would do something for the good of the country ought now to abandon it, seeing as they must that all its measures are either impotent or mischievous.

Pursuant to notice, the Democratic County Committee met at the office of John R. Orr. Esq., in the Borough of Chambersburg, on the 18th day of July, 1870. On motion, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted, vis:

Resolved, That in accordance with the wishes of the last Democratic County Convention, the representation of the several districts in the County Convention shall be governed by the vote cast for Asa Packer, the Democratic candidate for Governor at the last October election, as follows: Each Election District shall have two (2) Delegates and one (1) additional Delegate for each hundred (100) and each fraction above fifty (50) Democratic votes cast at said election. Provided, That no District shall have less than three (3) Delegates, which will give the following result:

Resolved, That the Democratic voters of the several election districts hold their election for Delegates to the County Convention at the usual times and places, on Saturday, July 30, 1870, and that the Convention assemble in the Court House, in Chambersburg, on the following Thursday, August 4, at 11 o'clock A.M., to nominate a ticket.
J.N. SHILLITO, Secretary and H.M. WHITE, Chairman.

Proposals were received at the office of the County Commissioners, in this borough, on Saturday last, for building a new Bridge over the Conodoguinet at Roxbury. The Bridge is to be 110 feet long, of iron, with stone abutments--the stone work to be finished by the 15th of September and the iron work by the 1st of October. There was a wide range in the bids for the stone work, as will be seen by the following:

There was likewise considerable difference in the bidding for the iron work. The following were the bids received:

The contract for the stone work was awarded to John Agle--that for the iron work to Gilbert & Co. The contractor for the stone work is to remove the old Bridge. The bid of King & Son for the iron work, if accepted, would have saved the county $374. We have not heard the reason for its rejection.

Rev. J.G. Schaff, whose peculiar doctrines have excited some interest in this community, preached according to previous announcement in the Diamond, nearly in front of the Spirit office, on Sunday evening about five o'clock. At the appointed hour the Reverend gentleman mounted a chair and opened the exercises by singing a hymn. A small crowd soon collected under the shadow of the buildings on the north-west side of the Diamond and disposed themselves as comfortably as the limited accommodations would permit.--The first comers were rewarded with seats on the curbstones, whilst the more tardy drank their share of the discourse standing. Several of the occupants of front seats on the curbstones composedly smoked segars, and perhaps inwardly congratulated themselves that if the doctrines of the speaker were correct "Old Nick" would get no chance to "make them smoke" in the world to come. The weather was rather favorable to the enforcement of the speaker's views. With the mercury at 100, and the perspiration streaming out of every pore, most men would be willing to be convinced, if they could, that they would never be subjected to a great degree of heat.

Mr. Schaff is a very good speaker, with a full, clear voice and an earnest manner; but with all that we think he might preach a lifetime without converting any great number of people to his way of thinking.

We are not quite sure that we understand his doctrine exactly. The popular impression is that he "does not believe in hell,"--does not believe that the wicked will be resurrected after death and cast into everlasting fire. But on Sunday evening he said, "That the wicked will be cast into everlasting fire I do not doubt, but (he inquired) what will be the effect of that fire?" He answered this inquiry by saying that fire makes a speedy end of all that it acts upon. We understood him to say that "when the son of man shall come in his glory, the living wicked will be cast into fire which will consume them," that is to say, they will be utterly burnt up, soul and body, and there will be nothing more of them. What will become of the wicked dead? Will they escape the fire altogether? If the speaker said anything on this point, we failed to catch it. If only the "living wicked" are to be cast into fire at the last day, the wicked who die before that time possess an advantage we never before heard accorded to them.

He took ground against the immortality of the soul and said it was not a doctrine of the Bible and had only been made an article of faith by a Catholic Council held under Pope Leo about three hundred years ago. The Bible, he said, "affirms, that the soul that sinneth shall die: and such a phrase as immortal soul, or deathless spirit, though often found in hymns, prayers and sermons, never once occurs in the Bible." In conclusion he said the gospel is simply an offer of life to a dying world. Those who accept it are given life evermore in God's Kingdom--in other words, their souls are made immortal by their acceptance--whilst those who reject it go down to irretrievable death, and their souls perish with their bodies.

We have stated the Reverend gentleman's views as we understood him to express them. Of course we leave our readers to think of them what they please.