The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-17
Thinks He Is a Modern Moses.

To the Editor OF the indianapolis Journal;
The series of sermons on evolution as applied
to mans moral nature now being delivered by
Henry Ward Beecher the great Brooklyn divine,
are causing a terrible rafting among the dry
bones of orthodoxy, and it is to be hoped that it
will result in their being clothed upon with
flesh and new life infused into their rusty and
creaky joints. His last sermon, or lecture, as
some Mortified Christians insist on denominating
it, which was delivered last Sunday, has filed
the measure of his iniauity with the orthodox,
and henceforth to them he will be anathema
maranatha but when they are dead and forgotten
the name of Beecher will shine out with great
and increasing lustre, and the doctrines
which he advances now, and which are met with
such storm of denunciaton may then be the
creed of the churches and accepted by all be-
levers as sound theology. The shock which the
straight-laced orthodox church member expert
enceS when he reads Beechers latest exposition
is not, as the majority believe, a spasm of virtu-
Gus Indignation at what some are pleased to
term his sacrilegious utterances, but is merely
the natural shock experienced when theories
which have been accepted through life as based
on the solid foundation of truth are suddenly,
and without previous warning, shown to be but
the enunciations of creatures of flesh and blood
like ourselves subject to like passions
and possessed with 18th: the infrmiti les
start back in terror at discovering that the man
sion our blind faith had erected was founded on
the sands of human fallibility instead of the rock
of divine truth. Then is the man subjected to
test that either displays the spirit of a philoso
pher or the soul of the bigot. If the former. the
arguments both for and against the new doctrine
are set in array against each other, and the
golden grains of truth separated from the ehaff;
and if the latter, the arguments which conflict
with what he has been taught to regard as truth
are dismissed with contemptuous pooh,
pious snif1e over the dreadful fate in store
for the audacous innovator The spirit which
dominates the latter class is of the same charac-
ter that burned the witches at Salem and
expelled the Quakers from the colonies. and
their intolerance of dissent would be expressed
as forcbly now, if they had the power TO back
it. Fortunately for the world as well IS for the
dissenter, they have not, and as the sunlight of
science and reason penetrates further and further
into the caves of gloom and superstition in
which so many have lived and died, they have
to content themselves, like the Giant Despair
that Bunyan tells us of-sit in their
caves and gnash their teeth at
the detested iconoclast who so ruthlessly
smashes their idols. The majority of the civil
lized world who think of these things. see il
Beecher and others who have preceded and are
following in his footsteps, new Moses whom
they hope will lead them out of the wilderness of
doubt into the broad plains of light and life. and
view with admiration and delight the Thor like
blows he is delivering at those Internal doctrines
of predestination and REORGANIZATION, infant
damnation total depravity, eternal punishment
and other equally gloomy doctrines, which were
born in sin and conceived in iniquity and under
the weight of which humanity has groaned for
centuries. G. IT. s.
SHELBYyILLE, Ind, June l6. 1885.