THE WARD BECHER SCANDAL.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1218, 9 October 1874, Page 2

THE WARD BECHER SCANDAL.

[NEW ZEALAND TIMES] Such a scandal as this naturally directs attention to the whole church system which has been built, up in Now York by the Presbyterian body and its offshoots. There unfortunately,' it may almost ho said with literal truth that the Temple of the Lord has become a den of money-changers. Mr Ward Bcocher lias boon a ponulac preacher for many years. lie has long been regarded as one of the nio.sC eloquent pastors in a city in which it has become fashionable to attend church or chapel on a Sunday just na it is to bo present at the opera on a Tuesday or a Friday, or any other

" fashionable" night. But in this case Mr Beecher—like other eminent New York " divines" waa not content with tho cure of souls for even a handsome stipend. The days have loug sinco 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 tho 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 very 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 doors 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 begiu to think why he should not share with others the profits of a highly successful engagement, —profits that were obtained less by the holy character of the work, the 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." The 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 boxas 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 the unrcpenting 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 handsome 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 intolerable. 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 the 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 tho New York journals. It is out of this vicious system that the late scandal has arisen, and out of an (insatiable passion of notoriety which seems now to have been all but monopolised by the American people. JMr Tilton was ambitious of holding - a prominent place in the public e} r e ; but he was nor. gifted by nature to soar on the same glorious wings as the ambitious and reckless Woodholl. He was quietly dropped out of her train of admirers ; and then the suspicion become a new idea in his mind that he had been wronged by the fashnnahle preacher. Here was a splendid opprrtunity 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

follow whs easy, from the friendly relation of Mrs Tiiton with the Beecher family; and there was the splendid prospect before the disappointed freelover of being spoken of by the Press as the victim of the wiles of the most popular pastor in New York ; of being "interviewed" by sensation-loving reporters; of being made innch of as a long-enduring sufferer; and of.being applauded to the echo lor having torn the mask !rom "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 he has achieved the wretched popularity he courted. Tie had been "interviewed" He has been written nbout in leaders, and made the hero of "personals" innumerable. He and his affairs have been the one grand topic of conversation and discussion in New York, and the name of Tiiton has penetrated into many regions—into holes and corners of the earth—to which it never would have reached but for a morbid desire of notoriety on the one hand, and a church system on the other, which are happily exceptional. The Committee of the congregation of Plymouth Church have declared that the I\ev. 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, Ins not been of a different nature ; hut the whole miserable affair we cannot help regarding as a not uniiatiual result of the form which the worship of God litis assumed in seme preat capitals, and in INew York in particular; where the service of "his master" is Jess regarded by the preacher thou the utmost money value which his talents as pulpit orator may bring in; where notoriety is

cultivated rather than " the saving of souls;" and were it is hard to draw a line of distinction between the pulpit and tbe stage, the preacher and the player.