The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-04-17

whom that foundation was due Co stare and
gasp, the department Of divinity has thus far
been kept comparatively free from the loose
and liberal ways Of thinking which pervade
alike the college and the caucus of our eposb.
Under these circumstances we are grieved
TO record that Yale, moved thereto, as ap-
pears, by the sordid prospect of endow-
ments, has consented to call the Reverend
Henry Ward Beeoher to the inoumbency of
theological lectureship. The students of that
department of learning will soon be at his
mercy. The same eloquence which has
hitherto been employed in berating tho
tricks of trade in Wall street and the social
sins of Brooklyn will now be expended in
the exposition of Paley and the reconstruc-
tion of Butler. line students who may sit at
the feet of Beecher in New Haven will soon
be reduced to the same painful incertitude
which affiicts the parishioners who crowd to
catch the dreppings of Mr.. Beecher in
Brooklyn as to what the real doctrines of
Mr.. Beecher are. One thing is clear. 1t is
not given to mortals to know what Mr.
Beecher believes.
But we are vouchsafed the knowledge of
what he disbelieves. One, of the things of
which he persistently denies the existence is
place of eternal torment. What home is
without mother that is theology without
hell. With Tophet daily held before their
shrinking eyes the undergraduates Of Yale
have been known to wrench from their sockets
the gate-posts of peaceable citizens and to
seal the doors of obnoxious tutors. With an
official assurance of the non existence of that
final restraint upon juvenile depravity it is
absolutely painful to imagine the excesses
into which they will precipitate themselves.
The student of divinity is not commonly
riotous nor even a convivial parsonage. On
the contrary, he is meek youth, who teaches
innocuous arts in female seminaries during
vacation and addicts himself to vegetable
diet during term time. But with the precept
and the example of a Beecher before his
eyes he will infallibly discard the choker and
the pallor which have hitherto been the
main marks of his vocation, and become
young and lusty as an eagle. From the
ballast he will become the sail of the academic
craft and under the guise of piety lead his
carnal colleagues into desperate adventures
and strike into dumb horror the quiet burgh-
ers of the town. Parents and guardians will
decline to send the hopes of their houses to
an institution where divinity is inculcated by
a divine who describes the respectable st.
Paul as q "blear-eyed Jew." The faculty
which bas weakly consented to the introduc-
tion into their body of pedagogue SO frisky
as Mr.. Beecher will turn out to be, will carry
| their gray hairs with sorrow either to the
| grave or to remote rural parsonages where, in
| interminable clauses, they may discuss the
sin of Esau in peace. Mr.. Beecher will be
left as a solitary PROFESSIONAL owl in the col
legiate desert to preach the duty of friskiness
and ''the uses of mirth." Young men of 9
sporting turn will assiduously attend him and
put his precepts into practice.
Iron jointed, supple. sinewed, they shall dive and
they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair and hur their ance
| In the sun.
Whistle back the parrots call and leap the rainbow
Of the brooks;-
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable
| books.
With the advent of this fierce and warlik,
race the peaceful population will grid thei
loins and flee, until the price of real estate il
| New Haven becomes q remote tradition of tn,
past, and where the college green now stand
will be vast silence, broken only by the CRY
of the wild divinity student and the louder
wboop of the theological lecturer.
This is dreadful picture to contemplate
But the only way to prevent its realization il
for the authorities of Yale to reconsider thei
rash decision, and Indignantly to refuse per
mission to MIR. Beecher to break in upoI
their drowsy solitude with lectures on the
ology.