Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-10-12
GFrom the Lacrosse (Wisconsin) Democrat
Sunday schools of a New Style.

The Beechers are natural growths ol
| Puritanism-fair samples of that intOler.
ance of belief, which finally loses itself IN
| impracticable and unchristian ideas ol
rank infidelity. They have ceased to pos.
sess Christ's religion, and are full oI
Beechcr religion, altogether different
compound, a thing as changeable as the
hues of chameleon, or an Abolitionists
notion of what constitutes loyalty.
Ward Beecher's church has been for
years little better than Sunday warehouse
for the inculcation and dissemination ol
the blackest sort of Black Republicanism.
ThrOngs have been in weekly attendance
to applaud and laugh on Sundays as they
would hardly do on week days. He has
grown pOpular-has proved "paying
card" for the trustees, who invested money
in building the church in which he holds
forth-has received great salaries-pur-
chased lands, and is one of few OF the
clerical lights whose names figure in the
income lists. He affects oddity, and takes
real delight In startling old fashioned
Christians with new notions of liberality
toward worldly pleasures-advoca bill
lizards, occasionally punches" few him
self and drives as fast horse as any jockey
in Brooklyn. . .......
This Yankee Christian has a sister, not
to fortune and to fame eunknOwn"-she has
written books-books in which the ''color-
ed cusses" whose ancestral stock once wor-
SHIPPED fetishes in Africa, figure as heroes
and heroines, and wherein men of South
ern birth and white faces are "no better
than they should be-" viewed from the i'm
aginative Beecher's standpoint. The name
of the female since she ceased to be a
Beecher, is Harriet B. Stowe. She has some
peculiar notions, religiOusly, which she has
given to the world lately. Writing OF Sab
bath schools, she says:
''If the different churches of city would
erect building where there should be
billiard table, one or two nine-pin alleys, a
reading-room, garden and grounds for ball
playing, or innocent louDging, they would
do more to keep their young people from
the ways of sin than Sunday school"
How do some of our good Lacrosse ad-
mirers of and believers in, the Beecher
stock like these recommendations? Which
of the religious denominations in cur city
will take the necessary steps for the erec-
ton of such building as Uncle Toms
Harriet recommends as suitable auxiliary
for well conducted Sabbath
school? ..a ..--
Under the progressive ideas of Puritan
ism we may expect to hear some OF our
modern divines announce from the pulpit,
after feryent prayer, that at the close of
services himself and the Superintendent of
Sunday school will play the deacons four
handed game of billiards, five hundred
points up, for a new Bible, or hear one
Minister challenge another to roll him a
string of ten-pins for new contribution
box! It will be startling novelty for a
little time, perhaps, to seea champion bat
suspended over the pulpit of the religious
shop, boasting the best nine at base ball,
among those who oto Zion by the Beecher
route.
If this system of keeping "young people
from the Ways of sin" Is to come into gen.
eral use-if billiard rooms and nine-pin
alleys are suitable adjuncts for the Sunday
school, it certainly seems to us that first
class saloon should also be thought of. At
ter billiards and nine pins, 'drinks all
around" would be the thing, and afford a
means for intoxicating fine moral senti-
ments, religious toasts, and plous maxims.
New converts should pay for the "heavenly
cocktails" evangelical juleps," or "an-
gelic Tom and Jerry" Whenever min
lister received ''raise Of wages" he should
"stand the whisky"-and appropriations
for benevolent purposes could be decided by
rubbers at ''pea-knuckle," or ''seven up"
Is there anything more improper or out
of character In these suggestions, than in
the ideas advocated by Mrs. Stowe?
The fiendish character of the religious
precepts inculcated by New England fanat-
les has driven from Sunday schools and
churches hundreds and thousands, and 1t
is by such artifices as those suggested above
that the bIood-thirsty bigots seek to fill up
their ranks and kindle a new interest In
their pernicious system, borrowing of their
father, the devil, some of his chief attrac-
tions. It is not at all out of character
for New England, but will seem to those
not living in the "brain OF the Republic "
las the egotists term their narrow-minded
section) little out of character to yoke the
temples of the Living God with billiard
rooms and nine-pln alleys. What will be
the next freak of Beecher christianity?