THE POCASSET OUTRAGE by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 5, 1879

THE POCASSET OUTRAGE.

By W. H. Littlejohn

The readers of the REVIEW, in common with the reading public, have been shocked by the newspaper accounts of the cold-blooded murder, on the part of Charles Freeman, of his little five-year-old daughter. Had the deed been committed in a fit of passion, or had it been the result of unmistakable insanity, it would have occasioned the deepest sorrow; but as there is not the slightest evidence of malice on the part of the father, and as, if insane at all, his insanity is of a most unusual type, those who read the sickening details of the horrible tragedy are not only shocked but are also bewildered by the peculiar circumstances of the case. To all appearances the father and mother of the child had brought themselves to believe that in sacrificing their darling daughter they were performing an act of high religious duty. From the testimony already adduced, it has become manifest that Freeman, in a fit of hallucination, fancied that he had attained a high state of favor with God, and that the Almighty proposed through him to present to the world the most indubitable evidence that he would answer the prayer of faith, even in the resurrection of the dead child, before all men. It would seem that the father had been dwelling upon the experience of Abraham in the anticipated offering up of his son Isaac, until he was thoroughly imbued with a sense of the sublime lesson of confidence which was taught by the unhesitating compliance on the part of the patriarch with the command of the Most High, and that finally the idea seems to have taken possession of his mind that God had called him to a like sacrifice, and that his faith was equal to the emergency.

The deed having been accomplished, however, and the third day having passed, on which it was expected that the little victim of the father's fanaticism would be restored to life, it became manifest to nearly all that a terrible blunder had been committed. Had the resurrection taken place, that would have added the seal of God to the deed, and Freeman would have occupied the highest rank in the number of those who had given unmistakable evidence of the most complete devotion to the will of God, and the most unbounded faith in him as the God of prayer. As it is, however, his name will be handed down to posterity as one who has been deluded into the commission of one of the most terrible murders which has ever been

recorded; this being one of those cases where the complexion of the act may be determined by the results which follow.

But it is not our purpose in this article to occupy space in discussing the matter of Freeman's responsibility for what he has done; suffice it to say, that while we do not believe him to be insane in the common acceptation of that term, we do believe that his judgment has been clouded and his intellect warped, either through excessive mental strain or through the direct influence and power of the devil. While we pity the man, therefore, and while we feel that his case, legally speaking, might warrant the exercise of more or less lenity, we are nevertheless confident that he should be held accountable for his deed upon the same principle that a drunken man is made responsible for his acts, i. e., that his accountability consists in the fact that he surrendered himself to influences which were wrong in their character, and which, in the outset, he might and should have resisted.

The feature of the case which we wish just now to examine is that which relates to the fact that many have sought to take advantage of the incident in question to create prejudice against the people known as Second Adventists.

The only justification which they can offer for this course is found in the claim that he belonged to that class of Christians, and that his deed was the legitimate fruit of their teachings. So far as his connection with Second Adventists is concerned, we remark that such a fact—if it be a fact—would furnish no conclusive evidence that they were in any way to blame for the course of one who happened to be united with them in church capacity, unless they approved that course. On this point proofs need not be multiplied. It is sufficient to say that a case almost identical with that of Freeman is found in the recently published account of an attempted murder by a Mr. Truman Phinney, residing in the State of Ohio. It appears that his illusion took the form of the conviction that he must slay one of his children in order to prevent the balance of his family from being lost. This man, however, instead of being an Adventist, was a Methodist. Now we submit that if Adventism is to be held responsible for the one, Methodism must be for the other crime. But will any sound-minded man insist that the Methodist church is responsible for the attempt of Mr. Phinney, simply because he was one of their members? Assuredly not. So, too, the thinking public will not shoulder the responsibility of Freeman's deed upon Second Adventists unless, as is claimed by some, it is the legitimate fruit of their teachings.

We inquire, therefore, Is this the case? The answer, we think, must be emphatically in the negative. In the first place, all admit that there is no class of believers in the near coming of Christ who would for a moment justify infanticide; in the second place, the doctrine of the speedy advent of the Lord, which is a prominent feature in the faith of this sect, would naturally lead those accepting the same to the most rigid examination of every motive, and to the putting away of everything which bears even the semblance of sin.

But, says one, I concede that the doctrine ought to influence men as you claim; in this case, however, as in others, it does not seem to have done so. To this we reply that by this concession you virtually admit, to say the least, that the cases of Freeman and others are not, after all, the legitimate fruit of the faith which they held. The fact is that while they professed one thing, they practiced another; the difficulty consisting in the failure on their part to manifest in their lives the proper fruits of what they believed. That this is so will become apparent when we acknowledge—what we believe will be generally admitted—that the lives of Adventists are fully up to the standard of morality attained by their brethren of other denominations.

But, says another, if Adventism does not cause these things directly, it certainly does indirectly by teaching doctrines which lead to fanaticism. But we ask again, Is it true that fanaticism is a necessary concomitant of faith in the speedy coming of Christ? To say that it is would be to impeach the character of the last generation of Christians; since Paul clearly teaches that they will not be in the dark concerning the coming of Christ; or, in other words, that they will be believers in the nearness of that event. 1 Thess. 5:4. It is not enough that our opponents should be able to point to an occasional case of fanaticism on the part of those who hold the views of premillennialists, to show that the tendency of those views is to extravagance in speech and action on the part of those holding them.

The editor of the New York Sun, with uncommon good sense takes the position that Adventism is no more responsible for the irregularities of Freeman than is Presbyterianism for the wild aberrations which from time to time have characterized isolated believers in Calvinism. To this might be added also the statement that it is no more responsible for them than are Baptists for the terrible enormities perpetrated formerly by Anabaptists, or Methodists for the wild fantasies which from time to time have filled the brains and fired the hearts of some of the weaker members of their denomination.

The simple facts are these: There always have been, and always will be, extremists in the world. These men, though few in number, keep themselves continually in the foreground by their unbounded activity and their extravagant sayings and doings. This being the case, they occupy the eye and the ear of the world to the exclusion of the more sober and sedate membership which really constitute the body of any church.

The amount of discipline necessary to the proper restraint of such parties is not understood by those who have had no experience in that line. Some one has said, and well said, that the lack in Pocasset was the strong hand and clear head of a faithful minister to counterpoise the extreme tendencies of minds such as that of Freeman. He laid hold of the second advent faith, and through it he manifested the native weakness of his own mind. Had he belonged to any other church, the results might have been the same; for, mark you, the newspaper accounts do not make it clear that his fanaticism was in any way connected with any view peculiar to Second Adventists as a body. From beginning to end, so far as we have observed, there is no evidence that he was particularly exercised in regard to the near advent of Christ. The themes which seem to have occupied his mind were those of faith, sanctification, the resurrection, and the immortality of the soul, which was to be proved by the resurrection of his child.

Now, Adventists are no more strenuous on the doctrine of faith than are other denominations. So, too, as far as ultra sanctification is concerned, it is safe to say that as a body they have never given it the prominence which is given to it by the Methodist church, and more especially by the Free Methodist wing of that denomination. As regards the resurrection, they generally hold to it in common with other churches; but we think the majority of them are not believers in the natural immortality of man, holding that eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Here, then, we see that the doctrines over which Freeman stumbled are such as are common to Christians generally, instead of being peculiar to premillennial Adventists. If, therefore, the fault was with the faith instead of the man, the whole system of our divine religion, instead of an individual sect, must be held accountable for the atrocities of one who stumbled because he did not rightly apprehend those principles which are acknowledged more or less fully by all bodies of believers.

This being so, it is highly important that the case in hand should be settled upon right principles. If it be not so settled by the religious press of this country, they will yet learn that the enemy of all righteousness has in this Pocasset affair forged a bolt which they are enabling such men as Ingersoll to hurl with destructive force into the very stronghold of the Bible. The next effort will be to make it appear that Freeman is the unfortunate victim of a conscientious and—from his standpoint—a justifiable acceptance of what the Bible relates concerning God's requirement of Abraham to sacrifice his only son. When this is done, some of our doctors of divinity will find that it is well to discriminate between what is the legitimate fruit of faith in certain doctrines, and what is the abuse or perversion of that faith as manifested in particular cases.

We come now to the last feature of the subject. The term “Adventist,” like that of “Methodist,” covers a number of distinct organizations of believers. Among them there are two general divisions. The first are known as first-day Adventists, or observers of the Sunday, and the second are Seventh-day Adventists, or observers of the Lord's Sabbath, or the seventh day of the week. It so happens that many are ignorant of these distinctions, and class them all under one head; whereas they are really more distinct than are Methodists and Baptists, or Presbyterians and Lutherans. So true is this that if Seventh-day Adventists have a class of opponents more bitter than any other, that class is found among what are styled first-day Adventists. They even affiliate more readily with any of the orthodox denominations than they do with those who differ with them as mentioned above.

Now it so happens that Mr. Freeman was of the first-day Adventist school. It follows, therefore, that even should it be insisted that the church to which Freeman belonged is responsible for his course, nevertheless, Seventh-day Adventists should not be compelled to answer for the same; since they are entirely distinct.

Not only so; we still further assume that the implication of Seventh-day Adventists in this affair is without even a shadow of reason. If there is a church in the world that can wash its hands of this whole transaction, the Seventh-day Adventist church is the one. That this is so, a moment's reflection will satisfy any candid mind. What was the offense of Freeman? You reply, He was guilty of murder. Why did he commit that murder? You answer, Because he thought it would glorify God. If inquired of in what manner, you would respond, Through the resurrection. It appears, then, he somehow obtained the opinion that the doctrine of the resurrection needed to be emphasized just now more than does the law of God, which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” His sin, therefore, consisted in undervaluing the sacred character of God's holy precept and overrating the importance of the resurrection. But had he been a genuine Seventh-day Adventist, he could not have fallen into this error; for if that denomination makes one doctrine more prominent than another, it is that God at the present time is particularly emphasizing, through the especial message which they are giving to the world, the duty of all men everywhere to sacredly observe all the ten commandments, among which is found the one which Freeman violated in the murder of his child. So ardent and energetic are this people in defending and enforcing the law of God which this unfortunate Pocasset fanatic so rudely violated, that their enemies not infrequently, though unjustly, charge them with exalting the law even above Christ himself. Here, then, we leave the matter, feeling more grateful than ever before for the faith which we hold, and more thoroughly impressed with the importance of adhering more closely to the law of God; nor do we insist that first-day Adventists, and no-law Christians generally, are answerable for the crime of the Pocasset fanatic.

We inquire in conclusion, whether, after all, it does not appear in the light of this tragedy that the law of God is undeserving of the odium which they have sought to heap upon it. Do not men still need the thunder of Sinai as well as the blood of Calvary to keep them back from deeds which not only bring damnation to their own souls, but also reproach the cause of Christ? W. H. LITTLEJOHN.