Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-12-15
Gotham and sodom.

A weekly publication of Henry Ward
Beecher's sermons is now made by Ford
& Co, of New York, styled the "Plym-
outh Pulpit" Beecher has no conceal
ments. He is as frank as model artistic
exhibition. What he has to say he plumps
out without drapery and in the nude
state. As pastor of an upper-ten Brook
lyn church, he draws no veil before the
pictures which he presents to the female
fashionables that attend his weekly exhi-
bitions. If there is any iniquity going
on about town, like McDowcll's Direc-
tory" published some years ago, he tells
them all where to find it, and by his por-
traiturss makes them sure they will know
when they get there. he utterly ignores
the danger limited by the poet, that vice,
though monster, seen too oft, may be-
embraced. And so, now that he has done
with slavery as the sin of sins, he has
gone to work to cleanse the whited sepul-
chre Of Gotham, laying bare its rottenness
to the common gaze. He is no timid
talker-not be. He tells others what to
do, and to 90 ahead as brsvely as any
body. From his sermon on "abhorrence
of evil" we subjoin, as samples, few
extracts:
If pulpits were what grossness wants
them to be; If in respect to lewdness and
drunkenness and dissipation, they were
to preach the meek and lowly Jesus v;
if they were, so to speak, with wool to
wrap up the wickedness of meh; if they
were to act on the principle that their
parishoners were not to be annoyed, and
that great public matters were not to be
disturbed, and that lusts were to have
their own way, what would pulpits be
good for? What ore pulpits good for that
20 piping music over the heads of men
who ere guilty of gigantic trsnsgressions
1t is @ pitisble sight to see pulpits that
are so cowardly that they do not dare TO
call things by their right name. A man
had better be John, and 90 into the
wilderness, clothed in cameps hair, and
eating locusts and wild honey, than to be
fat minister in fat pulpit, supporting
himself luxuriously by betraying God
AVID playing into the hands Of the devil.
Do you know how capitalists, confede-
rated, are using the whole community as
a sponge, and squeezing them at their
pleasure2 Crimes are committed in our
day, which, if they were reduced to their
exact chemical elements, would include
every shade of crimes that are known at
Sing Sing or Auburn; and they are COM
mitted by great men, by millionaires. L
do not say that it is my business TO hunt
them down; but do say this: that men
who walk through our streets, and whom
most stupendous frauds. They are men
whose palm ought not to cross mine.
They ought not TO be allowed TO be re-
spectacle. Somewhere there ought to be
men who feel adherence at such things,
and who dare let these men know that
they feel this abhorrence.
There is no more alarming feature to-
day than the corruption Of our politics.
beginning with the buying and selling of
votes.
The legislatures of these United States
are 40 generally corrupt that those which
are not corrupt are the exceptions. lido
not think slander when say that the
general rule to-day in legislatures is
bribssr- 5c-ing and selling. / do not
mean that men consult each others in
terests. do not mean, in other words,
that what is called in the West log
rolling" prevails merely, and that men
openly aud undisguisedly buy and sell,
but that men form plans or rules, in which
all public interests are bought and sold.
Bribery and corruption the most pro-
found, the most atrocious, aud apparently
increasing, is in our Legislatures. And
that is not the worst Of IT, Il is known
in every town and iu every county that
the next Legislature win be a. bad as the
one that went before II, and Il Is de-
nousced accordingly. When the Rspub-