The Findlay Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio) 1870-1881, 1874-08-07
BEECHERISM.
A Graphic Sketch by George Alfred
Townsend

This racy correspondent of the Chi
cago Tribune, under his well-knOwn
nom de plume of Cath" thus truly
touches up the scandal:
Ibid you ever see the like of the
Beecher excitement 1t is the topic of
Saratoga, TO the exclusion of every 9th
er rtheme,-regatta or turf; the late Wal
worth horror of which the enactors
were residents; or stocks, or pools, or
President Grant. \ great man walks
on a perilous ridge, and Beecher walked
there with his forehead in the heavens,
shining with the light thereof. He
was always drawing us up towards him,
and he made religion a kind of Fourth
of July-squibby, and audacious, and
explosive. Brought up i'll plain way,
and having no religion of my own, but
a sort of belief that what my fathers
had was pretty reliable for squalls, |
was always afraid of Beecher. He was
too generous with his beattitudes. He
didn't blister anything. There was
neither Sinai nor Gethsemane in his the
ology. He praised fast horses, billiards,
ten-pins, and rich men. He discover
ed that a rich man was the most availa-
BILE conservator of Christianity; and, in
this respect, advanced upon an old be
lief. that it was harder for camel to
90 othrough the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.
1t is not well.
TO LIBERALIZE THINGS TOO MUCH,
and Mr.. Beecher was really down TO OPP
tia..ism some time ago. where no part of
nay Bible ever got. Tennyson drew "A
Charseter' IA little near him in the poem
of that name where he described man
with a ack-luStre. dead-blue eye, de
volving his rounded periods" and yet
with chiseIesl features clean and sleek,
| remarking that The earth was beauti-
full" The poet says, Himself unto
himself he sold" Did Beecher.
The style of Mr.. Beecher did not III
volve either religious or heroic charac-
! tiers as examples to men; for to all such
| there should be a sternneSs at times,
\ such as Moses and Mahomet, Christ and
| Calvin. Knox and Cranmer, had. You
| cannot beautify your Divinity by paint
ing Him in and in, till. in the softness
1 of your tints. the portrait loses the
| outline of the God This world that
| Christ left with pain on His face, prom
| ising TO return. and never vet doing il,
\ must still wear a little Of that cloud i'll
7 which the sun was veiled. Mr.. Beecher
had come TO be so optimistic that his
| world looked to be croquet-groUnd.
and his Gods feared. then, to use the
mallets. Entering life with pain, leav-
! ing it with pain, life must not be the
| highest We were meant for. nor Heaven
too like the world. and yet there has
1 long beena
SILENT SENSUALITY
| of this form in Mr. Beecher's Gospel;
his Prodigal Son did not repent, but had
! the good time; his Dives was a very
! good parishioner; lie baptized with Law
ender. and read the burial-service out of
pastoral. Things had got TO be so
volatile in his faith that whatever was
Beecher was the whole solemn mystery
of our religion: and, in our idoliZation
of the man for his many noble but too
| frequent liberaliZatiunS, We played the
holiday in church. and lost the princi-
pies of piety and restraint New conI-
mandments were being given us every
Sabbath: new veneering was put Oh the
grand old church-furniture Love one
another was said with too much
unction; faith had lost the bones which
gave it recognition, and was pulpy a. a
banana or a clam.
Sometimes it did really seem apparent
that Plymouth Chapel aud lis pastor
were slowly working in the line of
A SOCIAL REVOLUTION
OH this earth. too vast to let them dare
explain what it was The feet of the
Divine Martyrs were washed too Otter
with the box of precious ointment, as i
the laying on of hands was to be ad
visible all round. The idea has leapeC
to my mind, knowing the amount of So
| eiaIism abroad in literature and society
tnat Henry Ward Beeeher was moving
his mind toward that point reached b!
ST. Simon and Stephen Pearl Andrews
f a vast phalanstery and carouse, with
| q, II property, or poverty, or family-sov