Truth Falling in the Street by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1866

Truth Falling in the Street.

By Editor

AMONG all the indications of political trouble now darkening the horizon of this country, none are more significant for evil, than the apostasy to the side of disloyalty and oppression, of eminent men who have heretofore stood unflinchingly for justice and right. Yet such events are just what we might look for from the declarations of the inspired record that evil men and seducers at this very time should be waxing worse and worse; that the tendency of the age should be downward; and that even professing Christians should be guilty of the dark catalogue of sins mentioned in 2 Tim. iii, 2–5.

But when such men as Henry Ward Beecher desert the principles for which they have so long labored, braved so much opposition, and endured so many sacrifices, what may we not look for next?

Concerning Mr. Beecher’s apostasy, the N. Y. Independent of Sept. 6, 1866, thus speaks:—

“With profound surprise and grief, we have read Mr. Beecher’s letter to the Cleveland Convention. Our friends will find it in another column. Would to God it needed no other commentary in this journal than a regretful silence! But a sense of duty constrains us to accompany its publication with a solemn protest against the public course to which it commits its author. This letter quenches our last hope that Mr. Beecher was to unite with the friends, instead of the enemies, of his country. We know and love him well. No man’s motives are purer; no man more affectionately reveres his native land. But, under the spell of an unhappy blindness which has rested on his eyes for a year past, he has done more injury to the American Republic than has been done by any other citizenWe had secretly cherished the conviction that Mr. Beecher, during his last few months of silence concerning public affairs, had been a sad and thoughtful witness of the mischievous policy of the President. We could not force our minds to believe that in the great civil struggles of the approaching autumn, the minister of Plymouth church would be found on the side of Clement L. Vallandigham, the pirate Semmes, and the murderers at New Orleans. Of course Mr. Beecher loathes these men; of course his letter is in a loftier and purer strain than the common tone of Copperhead politics; but the humiliating fact remains that Mr. Beecher, deliberately and officially, under his hand and seal, has entered into league and covenant with the Johnson party:—a party whose only hope of victory is by a league of traitors against loyal men. This is Mr. Beecher’s position! It is a solemn hour for the nation. “He that is not for us is against us.” By Mr. Beecher’s past record, by his inherent sympathy with universal liberty, by his ancient scorn of treachery in public men, he belongs to the loyal party from whom, like a self-dishonored leader, he has become a voluntary deserter.

Mr. Beecher’s public attitude at the present moment, is the attitude of a man who is putting a great reputation to the ignoble use of debasing his country. If, in view of this awful fact, this journal were to lend through silence a seeming acquiescence, or even an implied palliation, we would justly be held an accomplice in the guilt. Since the occasion, therefore, compels us to speak, we have no other alternative than to choose the strongest possible words of condemnation. We have only to add that, if any of Mr. Beecher’s friends, or of our own, shall feel pain at reading this protest, let them imagine the greater pain of writing it.”