MR BEECHER AND HIS CRITICS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1266, 2 May 1883, Page 3

MR BEECHER AND HIS CRITICS.

. ■ — : ♦ •It- v^Ca&sTiAN World.) -She^Betf /Henry Ward Beeeher's confessional faith— with which oiir readers have been made fully acquainted. JlB3 been making a great stir in Aqwrjoa. -„ One Boston daily journal '♦ toerriewed " a considerable number of &j!niinißters of that city and devoted aomeieolumns to their several opinions Oti'^aVmitter. Tue astute editor, in forw^Jy!gPrcopy to Mr Baecher asked him. to reply to his critics, and this is his good-humoured and pleasantly sarcastic answer : — My Dear Sir, — I thank you for the letjjers and papers. I have read the somewhat large expressions of these maj^y and excellent men in regard to my orthodoxy, consistency, influence, and general merit, without wishing for — .a-iapraont to rftply^jts, you kindly reqaest me. a dead man is lying on the dissecting table under the hands of experts, it would be unbecoming in him to rise up suddenly and discuss with his surgeons the propriety of their methods and the truth of their results. / Ibis not often tint one can see liimself'as others see linn, or especially as Boston sees him. I am reduced to pulp but,, thank Heaven, not to ashes. When yo*i suggest a reply to these, I am sure you can have no conception of the subdued and enlightened state of my 'mind. I am bent on improvement. Laying aside all my old notions of my beliefs and of my standing, I am carefully putting together the real man that I now am taught that I am. When I get my personal identity togather and in a working shape, I intend to study theology somewhere, through in my confusion I cannot], yet see whether I shall study at Andover, or Boston. ' New Haven is nearer, but Dr Smyth has baen settled there, and I fear laxity of doctrine in his neighbourhood. Princeton is not far to the south of me, bu£ Dr M'Cosh is a Christian evolutiontist, and it would be folly, after what I have suffered, to comer under the malarial influence of that philosophy. On the whole, I in--line to study at Park street- But, wherever I may go, I am determined hefoctf t die to find a theolojy which will pass muster at Eangor, at Andover, Cambridge, at New Haven, at Princeton, ' kt_ Alleghany, at Cberlin, at Chicago,...,, and at Park street — then I shall "jpillingly die. — Yours, \r>HEXBY .Ward Beechke. Brooklyn; " Oct. 23. Thre full humor of this lettsr can only -lie understood by those who know .the diversity of teaching that prevaiis at the different colleges specified. • •« Park street " is, of course, Mr Beeeher's own place.