The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-27
SUNDAY SNEERS.
From the N. Y. World.

From the ~ Y. World.
There are many Beechers, but SO far as we
know there is now but one rockingham. The
particular E Pluribus Unum Beecher (never
mind the gender), whose cooperation with the
one rockingham at q certain marriage death
bed made the latter famous, has been all
summer at a rural retreat and his church con-
sequently-like the theatres-closed. Last
Sunday being the opening of the autumn sea-
son, his pulpit was filled with another Beecher
(James) clearly chip of the old Litchfeld
block, and one who knows how, in the spirit
of the venerable Lyman,
"To deal damnation round the land'
in the most liberal measure. He thus de-
scribes the community in which our wretched
lot is cast-and we do not wonder that
even in Brooklyn the sketch produced
Sensation
sit had been his fortune to travel very largely
among heather nations, but there was, he said
among the Hottentots OF the Cape OF Good Hope.
have seen the Bengalee Indians, the Chinese, the
and the Sand Killers of South Carolina, and never
never on the surface OF Gods earth, have l seen
such men and women as have the last week or two
in New York city. They cannot be found London
may equal it. Hell does not surpass it,"
At the same moment the one Frothingham
was blowing his trumpet on this side of the
river. He thinks as badly of New York as
does the fraternal Beecher, though his incul-
patton has different bent Beecher abuses
us for overmuch heathenism; rockingham
for extravagant piety:-
"The superstition that prevails, even in this ilu
minated city Of New York, is worse than famine
pestilence war, despotism, slavery, for it is the
source ana substance OF all these evils 1t is taint
OF the soul that clouds the sun, polues the EARTH
and demoralizes all our ideas of God and virtue"
That rockingham means Christianity by
superstition" is made apparent by a death
bed anecdote which, with characteristic dis
regard of decency, he thus narrates:-
''Ihere was an ex-Presdent of the United States,
good man, honest sincere, and pure In his private
and public life who, when he was laid on his death
bed, called for minister, and expressed his desire
TO be sprnkled In baptism, hoping, as he said, that
1t was not too late. This strong, good man, when
he came to breathe his last, had no faith in his
virtue, his uprightness, his fidelity in public ONCE
but in that supreme hour hoped to obtain, by some
miraculous grace hidden in few drops OF water,
that which well-spent and honorable life would
not give him."
Who this ex-President was we are not in
formed. 1t certainly was not Washington
He was ''christened" in the old-fashioped
manner, down in Westmoreland, and we
know all about his death-bed. 1t certainly
was not Lincoln, who was murdered in a
theatre on Good Friday night, and, more
over, was not an ex-President. 1t must we
imagine, have been John Quincy Adams. If
it were, then surely the bowing down in
humility of SO masculine a spirit as his, the
abnegation of all personal merit, the recog-
milton by visible sign of his reliance on
something surer and higher than his own
self sufficiency, was the noblest consumma-
tion possible to 'a well-spent and honorable
life." Such death-bed in any case could
provoke the sneers only of a nature which
had learned to adulate popularity instead of
adoring Providence. In the case of John
Quincy Adams, if his it were, the scoffer out
RACES the ties of kindred and the sanctities
of Christians home to insult the affairs of q
Christian faith.