THE ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISTS AND MR.
BEECHER.
DR. PARKER, the Minister of the Congregational Church in London called the "City Temple," must either be a very inconsiderate person, or a very stupid one, or must entertain ideas very much at variance with those ordinarily possessed by English Nonconformists. As all the world knows, Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and far the most prominent preacher in the United States, has been under trial for many months on a charge of adultery with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of a leading member of his church, and recently editor of the religious paper, the Independent, with which Mr. Beecher's .name has been for many years connected. After a trial as long protracted, as careful, and almost as nasty in some of its details as that of Queen Caroline, after speeches from counsel which fill books, after a charge from Judge Neilson in which he carefully and avowedly abstained from the faintest expression of opinion on the evidence and confined himself rigidly to the law, and After eight days' of strict confinement, and we may presume, of careful study of the evidence, the jury declared themselves hopeless of arriving at a conclusion, three of them remaining obstinately convinced of Mr. Beecher's guilt. They were dis- charged, therefore, without a verdict. This obstinacy was the more remarkable, because under the Judge's charge an English jury would certainly have agreed almost at once on the acquittal of the accused. It is not too much to say that on the termination of the trial the case rested almost exactly where it did at the beginning,—that is to say, upon the two undisputed facts that Mr. Beecher had confessed in writing that he had wronged Theodore Tilton in some way which made him full of remorse and sorrow, and that Mrs. Tilton had confessed to her husband in writing her adultery with Mr. Beecher. Mrs. Tilton's confession was re- tracted immediately after, and she declared that it had been obtained from her by overmastering pressure ; and she was obviously so weak and hysterical a person that it went for very little, while the Judge's ruling practically struck out Mr. Beecher's letters altogether. Mr. Neilson, who is regarded in New York as honest and impartial, warned the jury that the letters by themselves could be no proof that adultery had been committed. That Mr. Beecher had signed them was clear, that he had in- tentionally or not confessed in them some wrong against Tilton was also clear, but there was no more evidence in them of adultery than there was of housebreaking or forgery. The two confessions disposed of, there was nothing for the jury to go upon except Mrs. Moulton's statement that Mr. Beecher had confessedto her—whichwas blankly denied, and which, we presume, the majority of the jury disbelieved, thinking Mrs. Moulton too nearly connected with the prosecution—and the most astounding amount of gossip ever imported into any trial. Under that gossip, and some direct testimony, Mr. Tilton's character as a faith- ful husband or a decent Christian disappeared ; but Mr. Tilton was not on trial, and as against the men and women who were there was no direct evidence of any sort, except proof that if Mr. Beecher is the kind of man described by plaintiff's Counsel he had plenty of opportunities ; no circumstantial evidence except the confessions; and no evidence from probabilities except some very inconclusive testimony that Mr. Beecher puts the old heretic in- terpretation on the text that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine righteous persons that need no repentance," and that he has a tolerance for Free Lovers, Sadducees, and his own accusers passing all com- prehensible limits of Christian charity. The inability of the jury to find a verdict amounts therefore—supposing them honest, and their honesty has been publicly impugned—at the best to a verdict of not proven,—a verdict, that is, which implies only a legal acquittal, and leaves the moral issue as doubtful as ever. That such a verdict should excite the enthusiasm of an English religious congregation for Mr. Beecher, that a leading Nonconformist Minister, without waiting for the text of the Judge's change, which had not reached London, should have asked them to telegraph their " unabated confidence and love" to Mr. Beecher, and that they should have unanimously
responded, is to us proof at least of this,—that if the religion of "gush " is confined to America, the habit of religious gushiugis not, and that " man-worship," as it used in older and sterner days to be called, that is, overweening confidence in individual ministers, has reached to dangerous heights even in our own city. That Congregationalists should rejoice in the absence of a verdict against Mr. Beecher is reasonable enough, and if they have con- vinced themselves of his innocence, not unbecoming ; but that after they have read any tolerably accurate account of the trial they should feel "unabated confidence" in him, such confidence that they should break all their own rules to proclaim it aloud to the whole world, seems to us, we confess, a dismal omen for the future. It shows that that subordination of the judgment to the emotions, that tendency to consider hysteric sympathy as the best.substitute for piety, that want of manly reserve, in fact, which is becoming the snare of the more orthodox creeds, which is sweeping like a Southern flood over Catholicism, which threatens the safety of the High Church, which has repeatedly destroyed the strangUrthatis the distinctive quality of Calvinism, and which may onn day sap the vitality of the Broad Church, is eating its way among a section of old, orthodox Nonconformists, who would have previously been pronounced, of all men,' the least liable to excess of purulent sentimentality.
For what is this man, in whom they have such "unabated con- fidence and love," as revealed to the whole world under the legal microscope at Brooklyn,—a Luther, a Melancthon, a Henry Martyn, a John Newton, or even, to put the case in a light many readers will understand, an American nineteenth-century King David? Nothing of the kind. If the evidence at the trial proves anything, it proves that Mr. Beecher, on the highest reading of his own de- fence, is himself, in character, position, and habit of life, precisely that person whom Nonconformists most dislike,---the ,typical Catholic Director, as described in so many Protestant books, the man who, while personally pure, is the most intimate friend of all women who confess to him ; who stands to them in a relation no one can safely occupy, as close as husband or father, yet without relationship ; who is the depositary of all secrets, who guides all acts, who can interfere between husband and wife, and who becomes in- voluntarily the object of an adoration, half religious, half emotional, and all the more subjugating because there is in it no personal sin. Mr. Beecher does not reject that position, does not impeach evidence of his slobbering relation to a dozen households, does not question that Mrs. Tilton was in love with him, does not deny that he was in all but name a confessor, makes of all that assumption to be above the cautions other men must keep the very ground of his defence. It is his nature, imply his counsel, to be always kissing, pardoning, slobbering, crying, and writing hysterical Americanese. Everything with him is extravagant, and moat especially his contrition. Is this the attitude in which any section of Nonconformists wish their ministers to pose ? If they do, they have found their exemplar ; but if they do, let them, at least, abandon their habitual denunciations of the Catholic priest- hood for assuming the very same position underguarantees which no Protestant Church can attempt to impose. If they know any- thing of the trial, they must know that Mr. Beecher appears in it, on the strictest theory of his personal innocence, precisely in the character which they themselves habitually and constantly ascribe to the typical and usually imaginary Jesuit Confessor. Is that what they like and are ready to worship in their religious leaders ?—because if it is not, the only excuse for them is that they have acted in an ignorant hurry, unworthy of men who think, and think justly, that piety, and sympathy, and fraternal love are not inconsistent with the possession of some modicum of that common-sense which an Englishman, of all men, needs, if he is to keep the rein over himself unbroken. A Frenchman with sentiment is generally better and stronger than a Frenchman without it, but an Englishman is almost invari- ably weaker and worse. His temptation is sensuousness, and the moment he makes of religion an opiate instead of a tonic—and that is the direct consequence of subordinating everything to an artificial affection for all mankind—his temptation is certain to get the better of him, though its victory be proclaimed to the world only by an easy-going indifference to all but ease. If the congregation of the, City Temple acted in ignorance, they should beware for the future of trusting either themselves or their leaders ; and if they acted with knowledge, the best thing they can do is to turn Catholics, and so get some security that their Becchers will not give occasion for months of scandalous gossip.
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