A HORRIBLE PICTURE

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1868

A HORRIBLE PICTURE.

The following is an extract from a sermon by H. W. Beecher, preached in Plymouth church, Brooklyn, Sunday evening, Nov. 15, 1868:

“The want of indignation at flagrant wickedness is one of the alarming symptoms of our times. We are living in the midst of an amount of corruption second only to that of Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems as though society must dissolve, as though it must be unable to cohere much longer. And the most alarming thing is not the condition of our pulpits; it is the most absolute torpor of the public conscience. We are in cities that are full of churches in which the most monstrous ebullitions of wickedness seem not much to disturb the tranquility of the house of God. The Christianity of New York is no match for the depravity in that city. And what is true of that city is not untrue of many others. There has been a fair field, and a fair conflict; and to-day the conscience of New York is overwhelmed and put down.”

“Consider, too, the gigantic dishonesties that are taking place almost unrebuked in what I may call the money-power of the land. Do you know the nature of the swindles which are taking place in our midst? Do you know how capitalists, confederated, are using the whole community as a sponge, and squeezing them at their pleasure? Crimes are committed in our day, which, if they were reduced to their exact chemical elements, would include every shade of crimes that are known at Sing-Sing or Auburn; and they are committed by great men, by millionaires.”

“The corruption of the franchise is another subject that ought not to pass without a word of remark. This Government is built on a vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands; and a government built on them is built on quicksand, and cannot stand. There is no more alarming feature to-day than the corruption of our politics, beginning with the buying and selling of votes.”

“We might expect that the next stage of this corruption would be found in the legislative halls. I am sick when I think of it. The legislatures of these United States are so generally corrupt that those which are not corrupt are the exceptions. I do not think I slander when I say that the general rule to-day in legislatures is bribery—buying and selling. I do not mean that men consult each other's interests. I do not mean, in other words, that what is called in the West ‘log-rolling’ prevails merely, and that men openly and undisguisedly buy and sell, but that men form plans or rules, in which all public interests are bought and sold. Bribery and corruption the most profound, the most atrocious, and apparently increasing, is in our legislatures. And that is not the worst of it. It is known in every town and every county that the next legislature will be as bad as the one that went before it, and it is denounced accordingly. When the Republican goes down, and the Democratic comes up, it is just as bad; and vice versa. Whichever party goes to Albany, it is all the same. Men are about alike after being dissolved in that caldron. If they go there honest, they are sure to come back corrupted—such is the subtle nature of the disease which rages there.”

“I would that it stopped even here; but corruption has gone still higher. The last refuge of justice is in our courts; and yet, so corrupt are our courts become that the name of judge stinks! There is nothing that excites my indignation more. There is no treachery so base. There is nothing that I forgive myself so unwillingly for as meeting a corrupt judge and not frowning upon him—yea, and striking him! Not but they are subjects of mercy; but if there was only some man holding the relation of parent, that could take some of these sturdy judges and renew the scenes of their youth, I should heartily rejoice. They plunder, and are known to plunder. They make decisions, and hold them up for sale. They make actions of justice, and among the seekers for justice they bid for bribers. And what then? They are elected again to the supreme bench, or to the circuit courts. They are elected because they are corrupt.”

“Friends and brethren, I have borne my testimony. I have not overstated anything. I have understated everything. I have not exaggerated either the corruption or the danger. It is not less, it is far greater than I have stated it.”

We quote this the more freely because no one can set it down as an ebullition from the excited brain of an alarmist or a croaker. And what must be the state of things which can compel such a description from one who is disposed to put the best construction upon all phases of society, one who believes in the progression of the race, a good time coming, a Christian millennium? Let the reader judge. But can such evils continue and the judgments of God long delay? Is God partial? Could he justly destroy the antediluvians and Sodomites, and pass unpunished equal wickedness in these days? No, the judgment of this sinful generation cannot long delay. Are we not in the midst of the perils that are to usher in the last great day, our opponents themselves being judges?