The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1883-12-12
HEEcHER AND THE THEATER.

At the age of three score and ten years,
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher has arrived at the
conclusion that theaters are not specially
designed to help the devil to maintain pos
session of any portion OF this mundane
sphere. Mr.. Beecher, like Grant in the Fitz
John Porter case, is satisfied that he has been
mistaken, as to the facts in the case, and now
in his old age, when nothing is to be gained
nor lost in the way of salary, Henry Ward
Beecher steps to the front and says to the
theater going people, you are right" He
confesSes virtually. that all his sntagonistic
attitudes toward the theater has been wrong.
He has seen Salvina In
"Othello." and Irving in the
"Bellis." and therefore surrenders. He
backs out and backs down, yields, surren-
ders. throws up the sponge. acknowledges
himself whipped. admits his ignorance,
brushes aside all his life long professions,
confesses his fanaticism and is ready to die,
asserting that the orthodox world has made
too much rumpus about Theaters. Is
Beecher honest? With one foot in the
grave, ard the other scarcely beyond the
margin of the narrow limits of an aristo-
cratic casket, can he afford to be dishonest?
He looks Plymouth Church and $4,000
year, square in the face, and says, "The
Theater will do to tie to-" He admits
that the stage is not a demoralizing
agent. He sees in it much to admire and
commend, and not content with that sort OF
an Endorsement takes English actor to
his home and dimes him in royal style. The
Church gives him the money, and he ex-
ponds it to exalt the Theater. He does this
in his old age when his locks are gray, when
his eyes are dim, when his step is lalterlng,
when his heart. like muffled drum, is beat
ing funeral march to the grave. In view
of such facts what of Beecher and the teach
iHgs of his life? He throws them to the
winds. He says they have been a mistake
from the first 20 the last What is the lesson
TO be learned from Henry Ward Beecher?
what are young men 70 say? Simply this:
Beecher has swallowed himself, and we dis
miss him. He has been a meteor rather than
a fixed star. His orbit has been as zigzag as
Virginia fence. A genius, no doubt, but
in religion always consulting his pocket.
until at last, having plenty of this worlds
goods laid by and Few days to spare before
he climbs the golden stairs, he tells "his
people, and the world: 1 have been all my
life proclaiming and advocating vagaries. /
have been magnifying fiction and making
it appear like fact. He now says God did
not make man in the beginning. He scouts
the atonement of Christ. He denies the fall
of man. He brushes aside the Bible, and
in religious matters, so far as his early teach
ings are concerned, be plays bull in the
china shop. He smashes things. 1t comes
to>fbis, millions of men and women, in the
past as now, have believed the stage to be a
civilizing, humanizing. and a civilizing
factor. They have stood by it amidst tidal
waves of fanatical obliquy. They have not
esteemed it perfect; they have recognized its
need of improvement, but they have
known, nevertheless that it was quite as
near perfection as the teachings
of Henry Ward Beecher, and far nearer per-
lection than his practices. And now that
Henry Ward Beecher indorses the Theater
adds nothing to its character. When it
would have cost Beecher something in the
way of salary to have said Just things OF the
Iheater he was wanting in manliness, cour-
age and conscience 20 say it; and now in his
dotage, theater-goers care little whether he
approves or disapproves. The Theater in
the past was more than equal to his anathe.
mas, and will pursue its shining way il the
fufure re0ardleSS of his annroval