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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4210, 17 September 1874, Page 2

The news telegraphed from the Bluff yesterday on tho arrival of the Otago is by no means destitute of interest. One of tho latest items is that which comes from New York, and relates to the Rev. Ward Beecher. Wo have not hitherto alluded to the scandal that had attached itself to the name of that popular preacher, and have permitted but sparing notice of it to appear in our columns, but we may now allude to the matter —not at length—as the investigation into the whole affair by a .committee of the reverend gentleman’s congregation has been closed and the committee have arrived Tit the conclusion that there is no foundation for the charges brought against him. Such a scandal as this naturally directs attention to 'the- whole church system which has been built up in New York by the Presbyterian body and its offshoots. There, unfortunately, it may almost be said with literal truth that the Temple of the Lord has become a den of money-changers, Mr. Ward-Beecher has been a popular preacher for many years. Up has lo g been regarded as ono of tho moat eloquent pastors in a city in which it has become fashionable to attend church’ or chapel on a Sunday just as it is to be present at the opera on a Tuesday or a Friday, or any other “fashionable” night. But in this case Mr, Beecher—like other eminent Now York “divines” —was'not content'with the cure of souls for even a handsome stipend. The days have long since passed away when sincere preachers considered themselves Passing rich with forty pounds a-year; and when “parish work”—the visiting of the poor and afflicted in their own houses, with the cheering’ words and sympathies of a Christian brother—was regarded as the highest aims of - a successful minister : one who not only spoke of heaven, but •in his own walk and habit “led the way.”. Mr. Ward Beecher became popular. His church was so largely “ patronised”—and the phrase is strictly accurate, harsh-sounding though it appears when applied to such a case—that it was necessary to auction the pews to the most wealthy bidders, rather than to open wide the doox-s to those who desired to worship within. The preacher shared in the commercial success which the “elders” or “deacons” were able to report. According to the balance-sheet was the salary/ What more natural than that the commercial idea should by and by take another shape in the mind of the successful preacher, and that he should begin to think why heshouldnot share with others the profits of a highly-successful engagement,—profits that were obtained less by the holy character of the work, tho humble labor of a shepherd in the field among the straying sheep which it was hoped to win back to the fold of the Lord, than to the dramatic power of the artist employed to “run them in.” Tho commercial idea did present itself. Plymouth Church, or Chapel, was built. It is the property of the rev. gentleman who ministers from its pulpit to a flock who pay, by the highest bids at auction, for the right to possess pews, or parts of pews ; to fit them up as luxuriously as boxes at the opera, and maintain them as exclusively ; in which only the remotest corners are open to the repentant sinner, and all the conspicuous places are reserved, through the power of wealth, to tho unrepenting' sinners who go to the church because to sit in a conspicuous place there is as much a mark of 'wealth and social position as driving in a handsomd equipage in the street, and because the church—so managed—is as much and as truly a place of fashionable resort as the, wells of Saratoga in the summer, or the Grand Opera in the winter. In such a church, and to such a congregation, the plain old-fashioned creed of the Christian would be intoler- ’ able. The doctrine of the, preacher must be adapted, not to the hearts of his hearers but to their vanities, and to the inflation their views have attained as to their own relation to the world and tho world to them. What other religion could the Rev. Mr. Ward .Beecher preach on a late occasion, with a dark, cloud hanging over him, than “the religion of joy”—a sermon severely commented upon by the New York’journals. _■ But it is out of this vicious system that the dale scandal has arisen, and out of an unsalable passion'for notoriety which seems now to have been all but monopolised by the American people. In the congregation of Plymouth Church were Mr. and Mrs. Tilton—the latter known from childhood to tho pastor. Tho husband, it appears, was possessed of extreme views on.sotne modern American ideas of religion, and the relation of tho sexes from a spiritual point of view. He became an admirer of Mrs. Victoria'Woodhull, one of the great apostles of 1 ' froo-lovo, ’’ to whom “ affinity” is everything, and the marriage tie nothing. Mrs. Woodhull has “stumped” tho country as tho advocate of the peculiar form which religion assumes in her eyes. She is President of a Woman’s Right Association, which does not stop short in its programme at the right to vote for senators or city councillors. Mr. Tilton became a disciple of Mrs. Woodhull, and when he was in the height of his devotion to his new form of religion and its feminine apostle, Mrs. ’Tilton oonsultedher pas tor, who rashly advised her to leave her husband. The lady did not do so, and Tilton did not seem to resent the reference or the advice so long as tho Woodhull passion lasted. But that lady, it appears, became coy. Mr. Tilton was ambitious of holding a prominentplace in the public eye ; but ho was not gifted by nature to soar on the same glorious wings as the' ambitious and reckless Woodhull. He'was quietly dropped out of her train of admirers ; and then- the suspicion became a new idea in his mind' that ho had been wronged by the fashionable preacher. Hero was a splendid opportunity of bringing down the eagle with a shaft guided by one of his own feathers. The old advice to separate was remembered ; the accusation that might follow was easy, from the friendly relation ■ of Mrs. Tilton with tho Beeoherfamily; and there was the splendid prospect before tho disappointed froe-lover of being spoken of in the Press as tho victim of the wiles of the most popular pastor in New York ; of being “ interviewed by sensation-loving reporters ; of being made much of as a long-enduring sufferer ; and of being applauded to the echo for having torn the mask from “a gay deceiver” in a clerical robe, who stood foremost in the society of New York. These, it would now appear, were Mr. Tilton’s views, and ho has achieved the wretched popularity he courted. He has been “interviewed.” Ho has been written about in leaders, and made the hereof “personals”innumerable.

Ho and his affairs have been tho one grand topic of conversation and discussion in New York, and the name of Tilton has penetrated into many regions—into holes and corners of the earth —to which it never would’ have . reached .hut for a morbid desire of notoriety on the one hand, and a church system on the ether, which are happily exceptional. The Committee of tho congregation of« Plymouth Church have declared that the Rev. Mr. Ward Beecher is innocent, and his accuser the victim less of a morbid fancy than an inordinate desire for notoriety at any price. It is satisfactory that the verdict has not been of a different nature ; but the whole miserable affair we cannot help regarding as a not unnatural result of the form winch the, worship of God has assumed in some great capitals, and in New York in particular ; where the simplicity of the Gospel has been utterly forgotten; whore the service of £ ‘Jiis master ” is leas regarded by the preacher then tho utmost money value which his talents as a pulpit orator may bring in ; where notoriety is cultivated rather than “ the. saving of souls;” and whore it is hard to draw a lino of distinction between the pulpit and the stage, the preacher and the player. '