The Pocasset, Mass., Murder.
By Editor
Before the last number of the REVIEW went to press, a report had appeared in the dailies of a terrible murder in Massachusetts, by a Mr. Chas. Freeman, of Pocasset. The man was said to be an Adventist, and the crime was charged to his religious views. He conceived the horrible idea that he was to offer up a member of his family as Abraham offered up Isaac. Accordingly on the morning of May 1, he took his little daughter Edith, about five years of age, his wife, who had fallen under the same infatuation, consenting, and stabbed her to the heart, pouring out her blood upon a table improvised as an altar. Knowing that this man had no connection whatever with Seventh-day Adventists, we have waited further evidence in regard to his class and standing. It appears that there is a company of some twenty-five so-called Adventists in the place, more or less fanatical like himself, as they tried to conceal the deed. The man having been published as one of the Crisis party, that paper of date of May 7, shows that the Advent-Christian Conference, which it represents, has no church there, and the man had no connection with them. If other reports be correct, he had received the doctrine of the non-resurrection of the wicked. But, of course, the fault was in the unbalanced, fanatical, phrensied spirit of the man himself. No class of Adventists teach anything, so far as we are aware, which would legitimately or in any way lead to such terrible crimes. Yet we do believe that a consistent faith in God and his word would tend to balance weak minds and correct any disposition toward such horrible impulses.