Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1870-10-07
Henry Ward Beecher Oh the Devil.

| know that there are many who dlsbc-
lieve in spirit-agcncy. 1t is inconsistent
with their conception of u benevolent God..
that Ne Should permit % devif-to exist. j
wonder what such people do with their
ewes | wonder what they have been liV
ing about, aud in, and for. Did you ever
think that on every side there are just eX
actly that kind spirits i'll the flesh which
YOU disbelieve to exist out of the flesh, aud
that it is not, in point of fact, inconsistent
with the existence of a benevolent God i'll
whom you believe, that there should be
men who do, or attempt to do, all that
which is ascribed to the great master Spirit
of evil Are there not men whom you
may see on every corner, almost, that will
deliberately, and for the sake of a pitiful
pelf, lead men to drink up their property
to destroy their reputation, to utterly ruin
their households, yea, and, ut last, yield
up their loathsOme lives? Are not men
going through this process? and are not
pearls dissolved in liquor before their eyes
every day? And God spares them, and
lets others come when they die and the
world is never without them. Look upon
these men who live by the destruction of
their fellow men, and who may be said IN
some sense to drink blood for their sus-
tenance-look upon them, and say, if you
can, "I do not believe benevolent God
sistent with Divine benevolence! What
will you do with those facts? Look upon
men that lie in wait all along the ports of
out country. If there he one creature that
might be supposed to touch with pity the
heart of the most obdurate, it is the seasick
weary, overspent emigrant, whe has left
his home and all his associations behind
hinl-his country and his life, as 1T were
and is cast upon new shore, and comes
III. Il
uess and forbcarance and gentleness; and
yet there are men who set their traps for
that game. AS there are hunters for the
beaver and fur-bearing animals, so all
along our ports there are hunters for these
miserable, pitiful, suffering emigrants.
They skin them alive, and they eat them
bodily; and they do it knowing that they
turn them out into pain, into suffering,
into untold agonies. Women are plunged
almort of necessity into the very cauldrOn
of mems lusts, and men are driven to be
paupers and to become criminals; and
these men, confederated, lurk and lie in
wait to destry and devour; and you look
on that scene, and know it to be existing,
and know that it is being enacted in whole,
sale and in retail, and do not believe that
benevolent God could let devil live?
Why, society is knee-deep with men who
have no other function i'll life but TO de-
stroy their fellow men. There is large
class, an army, of men, the whole power of
whose brain is directed to wasting sub
stance, to perverting principle, ito de-
stroying good habits. They study. mems
weaknesses az robbers study the weak
point of a house where they would COM
nit burglary. Men there are who are
trained to wickedness, who are profess
sionally wicked, who are scoundrels scienA
tifically. And SO they live; and society
is perpetually gnawed aud rated with these
very men. And men say they do not be-
lieve benevolent God would ever let n
devil live. They say, 1t is not consis-
tent with his attributes. Oh !be ashamed
of your self, if you have ever reasoned so!
Never hang out your own folly again on
such reasoning as that. If there is a devil
incorporeal, if there is a mighty spirit that
does mischief and loves mischief, it is only
the same thing in the spirit-world that you
see in the bodily world, that you know to
exist, whose mischiefs are manifold ,sintri-
cate, continuous, widespread, self-prO-
pagating, and aboutwhich there can be no
contradiction. God suffers these things
here and where is the presumption that
he does not, for reasons which we do not
know, but which will seem infinitely wise
doubtless, when we shall know them, per-
nit spirits of evil elsewhere?