The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1875-08-25

! is the ground of his popularity? For ne is
popular, and will continue so for few more
years, when like orator Henley he will be
forgotten. He can never achieve lasting
reputation. Well then, startling assertions
novel opinions that surprise,
not from their sublimity or elegance, but
from their strangeness, walking to and fro
in his pulpit as if it were stage, the fling
of his arms, and a serio- comic manner, to-
gether with the depraved taste of his pell-
nell congregations, make up the staple and
unfold the secret of his popularity. A dis
NAL success. We read his speech on Burns,
delivered in 1859, and any peasant in Scot
land could have defined far better the genius
of the great ploughman. We read his fu-
neral sermon delivered at the obsequies of
young Dahlgreen at Washington. The
young hero was killed at Walkerton, Va,
near the Mattapony, in the late war. The
composition was meagre, noble text was
perverted, the sentences were disjointed, and
the euOgium extravagantly fulsome. lie
represented that choirs of angels had con-
Quoted the brave young man to the throne
of God. But stern truth compelS me to say
that he was guilty of an omission. He
should have stated that few hours before
his death, at ford of the James river, the
hero had taken the bride from his own horse
and hanged an ebony of twelve years old
till he was dead. A Scotchman who wit
messed the execution stated to the Spy all
the circumstances, and the deed should at
least have moderated the eulogium. Beech
er at times puts forth reckless assertions.-
For example he has lately said in print that
in 1918 the whole country was ringing with
opposition to slavery. Not so, the Spy
AYERS. DR.. Franklin and the Quakers had
been long neutralized by public sentiment,
and in the year of which he speaks the Rev.
George Bourne was about the only agitatOr
engaged in the irrepressible conflict, and in
1919 Bourne was deposed from the ministry
by unanimous vote of the General Assem-
bly,, under an appeal which he brought
against decision of the Presbytery of Lex
ingtOn. The good feeling inspired by the
vote of the North, laid the basis of the anti
slavery resolution of the General Assembly,
which has since become so celebrated and to
which such cesseless allusion has been made.
If there were any violence in the Assembly
at that time, then we ask him to explain, if
he can, the deposition of Bourne. At that
time even a score of Beechers could have
been depOsed for the desecration of their Of
fee by political haraDgues. The agitator
was heard in his defence for two days in
Market Street church, Philadelphia, and
there were two Quakers present, and they
might have taken him to be martyr. Pos |
sibly Beecher may yet become Puseyite, |
for he has introduced floral crosses into his
conventicle, and perhaps, like our country
man Edward Irving, he may revive the gift Of
Tongues to the amaEement of Brooklyn Sol |
omons Beecheris Jealous in throwing down,
but building up in the place of what has been
subverted is the difficulty. Domestic servi- |
tude has been abolished, and to use homely |
illustration, slavery may have been an i'm
mense frying pan, but was it wise to catch
hold of the handle and toss those in the pan |
into Nebuchadnezzar' furnace?
The Memoirs of DR.. Cheever in three TO-
ios, We presume have not yet appeared in
this book. creating age. Such volumes may
issue from the press some time in the coming
century. Forgive my ignorance of his rise
and progress, as the Spy is but poor An
tiquarian. He is a book maker, like many
others of the Northern clergy. His talents
are very versatile. At one time he attacked
the distillery of Deacon Giles, and then the
Dred Scott decision The Deacon made him
pay, but the Supreme Tribunal not courting
his smiles lolled as carelessly as ever in their
judicial robes, for their worships care moth
ing about man unless he chop the logic of
Mansfield before the busts of Ellsworth and
John Jay. They regard such an one as
poppinjay. Our Doctor has published lee
lures on Pilgrims Progress, and he has been
abroad and reposed awhile in the shadow of
the Jungfrau, Swiss hill thirteen thousand
feet above the level of its nearest sea. The
American clergy are distressingly fond of
foreign sights; but if they would study
Alright they might become acquainted with
Europe by staying at home. One goes to
see Calvins stone pulpit, another to saw off
limb from some tree in the garden of the
Epworth Rectory, third to bring home
splinter from the bedstead on which Luther
slept at the Waterbury, and fourth to buy
piece of muslin out of the lawn sleeves of
Canterbury Archbishop, and a fifth wants
to pick up the garters of Strauss, that he
may return Knight of the Theological Bathos,
and sixth wants to grasp fake from the
Theological snow storm which has descended
on Germany, where the time for the singing
of birds has passed away.
The Spy is equally at fault about the an
tecedents of DIR. Cuyler, of Brooklyn. He
is rather better versed in the genealogy of
Melchisdec, king of Salem, than in the de-
scent Of the author of Stray ArroOs,' the
caption under which he builds up the Church