New-York tribune., 1872-04-24
MR.. BEECHERS LECTURE.

Mr. Beecher's lecture upon the opening OF
the public Libraries was one of those efforts
which, however effective at the time, are yet
rather the signs than the occasions of change.
There are certain subjects on which men may
be converted, but there are Others on which
they must convert themselves. You may
push political candidate or a line of policy
on the public by speech-making; but
any change of action which touches
their religious sentiment or moral sense
is invariably the fruit of slow
growth in education and habits of
thought. One hundred years earlier, Luther's
light would have gone out like candle in
maarious fog: it needed Tetzel and Leo X.
to oxygenize the people, so to speak, in order
that it should burn. Not all the miracles of
Moses or oratOry of Aaron would have led
the children of Israel one rod towards any
Promised Land until they felt the whips of
the Egyptian task masters on their backs.
Not all the pleading of temperance orators in
the last generation, the threats or noble
motives they adduced, sufdced to bring the
people of this country away from their alle-
glance to alcohol. Now, when the brains and
stomachs, as well as the whole moral nature
of the nation, is diseased and debauched by it,
the movement for relief is spontaneous and
effective. We seek help precisely as from the
smallpox.
All of which goes to show that men
must be educated not only by sharp ex-
perience but by a development in their
common sense and breadth of outlook before
they accept reform. There is no thrusting it
t1,,r UI.k. o.-l.
lures or leaders have had with Cotton Mather
or his compeers in favor of open libraries on
Sundayf We are no wiser in our generation
than our Puritan ancestors, not a whit less
stubborn in our beliefs. But the world has
moved there lies the secret. Men have
different opinion of each other and of God,
simply from the fact that their range of vision
is broader. To the average cOvenanter of
Claverhouse's day the world consisted of his
own village, his prosecuted sect of saints, and
the tyrant oppressor His knowledge of his
Creator was gained principally through Jewish
eyes looking upon the terrOrs of the Jewish
law; of the chaos outside of his own home
he had but vague knowledge. France and
Italy were the far off Ultima Thule, abcdes of
the Scarlet\Woman and tidings came from
them as terrible and not much moe fre-
quently than from the pit itself 1t is liffer-
ent with us. The most housekeeping and
thOughtless of us shakes hands daily with his
brother in Crete and Arabia and the farthest
islands of the sea. lie sees not only how God
has dealt with few thousand Jews, but all
his children, wearing fur or caftan or
naked in tropical suns. and finds what
truths they have learned Of Him. We begin
TO gain some glimpses of His work, the mean
ing of the mysterious forces under Out feet
and about us, their order and harmony. Each
man, after ali, makes his own god out of the
best he knows and sees 1t is no merit of
ours that lie speaks to US with so many more
voices than to our forefathers, and that the
cloud has lifted for us from His world
Naturally, the religion of the Christian world
has wdened of later years, and has takeI q
higher point of view. But few men who have
gained any intelligent conception of the great be
neficent First Cause working through and con-
trolling the physical maryes of the universe,
and all countless forms of human nature, ar viii
ling to accept the old dogma that He is only
to be worshped by narrow formula of gloomy
looks, church going, and ascetic temper There
Is day set apart for rest and to come nearer
to this secret Power and Love. If He is the
God who has filled all creation with sunshine
and rejoicing, why should that day be made
Que of penitcntial Wrctcnedness alone Ii Tic