The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-04-01


The verdict, as it was called. Of the Council
recently held in Brooklyn, will be talked OF for
at least week longer through the length and
breadth of the land We have read it care
| fully three or four times, have asked our pro-
fame as well as our religious friends what it
means, and have as yet found no one who can
give us an Ineligible answer The document
is a literary curiosity. We have consulted
eminent lawyers, and they have assured US
that no paper of equal ambiguity has ever
come under their notice before. We have
rushed frantically and with uncovered head
into the presence of renowned doctors of d.
vinity, whose furrowed brows indicate the pos
sibility of having attended every Council since
the Reformation, and who have dug among
the Councils Of previous ages, as the Palestine
Exploring Expedition are digging among the
ruins of Moab, and we have besought them,
with tears in our eyes, to tell US on whose
banners the victory perches in this great eccle-
sastica1 broil; but in vain. They have re-
quired so much time for deliberation that the
HERALD printing press would become werth-
less through rust before they could make up
their minds.
And now we sit anxiously in our easy chair,
in perfect despair OF ever being able to tell
our readers what the real rendering is. Never
in our lives were we SO befogged We have
had experience with every kind of document,
but never ran across one that came so near to
meaning something and missed the mark as
this does. We have read it with spectacles
on and with spectacles off we have put it
under powerful microscope, hoping thereby
to learn the subtle secret; we have had it
nailed to the steeple of Trinity and looked at
it for hours through telescope with four
teen inch lens, and we confess to being well
nigh distracted at our inability to get the first
glimmer of sense from the paper. Sometimes
we are half inclined to think that Mr.. Beecher
has been censured, and then, again, we feel
quite sure that Drs Burlington and Storrs
have been rhetorically ratanned; and then,
once again. We get the impression that the
Council thought all three bad boys and that
they had been duped in having been convened
to help somebody pick quarrel with some
one else. AS Stephen Blackpool said, '1ts aw
a muddle."
However, the Council has done a service to
the quidnuncs Of the community for which
they cannot be too grateful. 1t has made it
perfectly proper to talk gossip in respectable
society. That old scandal, which was just
closing its eyes in peaceful death, has been
revivifed by the electric eloquence of special
and specious plea 1t has been stamped with
the image and superscription of ecclesiastical
criticism, and will pass current, like the trade
dollar, in every climate. We do not say that
the two accusing churches had this end in
view, for that would be unfair to gentlemen
who have divine right to quarrel with any
one; but if this had been their purpose they
would have done exactly what they have done.
We do not say they were at all envious of
Mr.. Beecher's success and influence, for they
are too honorable to have such motives i'm
puted to them, but if they had been envious
they would have called just such Council and
laid before it the very propositions upon which
it deliberated. 1t is so far from us to impugn
any one motives that we beseech the entire
community to put such an opinion behind
them.
Still, Mr.. Beecher is in the way. That is the
stern fact. It would be such pity to lose an
opportunity to injure his influence that il
would be quite right, in our judgment, to call
Council at any time to decide, say, for in
stance, the northwest boundary Of theologi-
cal hair, provided Mr.. Tilton could be in
duced to send in couple Of letters about Plym-
NJ L.
pepper and salt, without which all ecclesiasti-
cal food is insipid. We seriously recommend
the clergy to lay aside their spectacles and
their white neckties and become cannibals for
a season. They might then institute a feast
and sup on the popular preacher Very happy
results might ensue. fit is true that what we
eat makes US what we are, and that a change
of diet effects corresponding change through
out, we have no doubt that after the banquet
better sermons would be preached than ever
before. Even the morsel Of Beecher allotted
to each one would make such general change
that preachers sore Threats would be less fire.
quent, the old dry bones of the usual Sunday
sermon would be laid in decent grave, and
there would be religious thunder and light
ming all round the horizon.
So far as we have been able to make it out
the clergy and lay delegates mean to say to
Mr.. Beecher by that verdict, "You have done
nothing that requires censure and you must
not do it again" Whereupon Plymouth
church seizes upon the first clause and
insists that the Council decided in its favor;
and the congregations of the accusing
churches seize upon the last clause and in
sist that the verdict is in their favor. This
fact remains-that it took the wisdom of the
whole country four days to put the opinion of
the majority into hieroglyphics. What is
greatly needed just now is another Council to
interpret the language of this one, and then,
in good time, we shall want still another to
&c fInf1