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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
PRINCETON, N. J. PRESENTED BY
MRS. ALEXANDER PROUDFIT
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Henry Ward Beecher: |
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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2009 witii funding from
Princeton Tlieological Seniinary Library
littp://www.arcliive.org/details/lienrywardbeecliOOabbo
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WARD BEEGHER;
A SKETCH OF
HIS CAIiEER:
ANALYSES Ui' iilS i'UWJLK AS A i'liLACiiiL: :, i.hl ^ ORATOR -A^'^^ T .r'r,x'*T r,;-- a ^ -, rv . :^vTc
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CDARACTEKIZATIONS AXD i'Ei'.^O'- ^^■ RKMrNJ? TUinTY-NIXK I.'JVEN
MR. BEECBER'S LIFE AS SKETCH il- at UIM^ UTS DbA-TH.
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HENRY WARD BEECHER:
A SKETCH OF
HIS CAREER:
WITH
ANALYSES OF HIS POWER AS A PREACHER, LECTURER,
ORATOR AND JOURNALIST, AND INCIDENTS
AND REMINISCENCES OF HIS LIFE.
BY
LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D.,
ASSISTED BY
KEY. S. B. HALLIDAY.
CHARACTERIZATIONS AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, CONTRIBUTED BY THIRTY-NINE EMINENT WRITERS.
MR. BEECHER' S LIFE AS SKETCHED BY HIMSELF SHORTLY BEFORE HIS BE A TH.
1887.
HARTFORD, CONN.:
AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Enterea, accordinf!; to Act of Congress, in tlie years 1883 and 188T,
By FUNK & WAGNALLS,
In the Oiflce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.
PREFACE.
The almost universal expressions of esteem, love, and affection which the death of Mr, Beecher has called forth from every part of the country, every class in society, and every religious denomination, indicate how wide and deep a hold he had upon the American people.
It cannot be questioned that no other man has exerted so wide and profound an influence on the pro- gress of thought — moral, political and religious— in this country for the past fifty years, as has Mr. Beecher. It may indeed be claimed that other re- formers have done more to change the political constitution from a pseudo-democracy governed by a slavocracy to a genuine democracy governed by its free indr strial classes ; that other teachers have done more to promote that political enthu- siasm out of which parties are born and by which they must be inspired — or die ; that other theo- logical thinkers have exerted a more permanent influ- ence on the religious thought of the jDulpit, the press, and the age ; but it will hardly be claimed that any one man has done so much" as he in each one of these three departments. The contemporary of Garrison and PhiUips, Chase and Seward, Park and Hodge, they have wrought each only in his own field, while Mr. Beecher has jDloaghed and sowed and lived to see
yi PREFACE.
harvesting in every field. The life of such a man is the life of his epoch. The story of a successful gen- eral is the story of his successful campaigns.
It is not such a story I have here attempted to write. The story of Mr. Beecher s life is indeed sketched in outline, but it is only in outline. This volume may be justly called a Portrait ; it is not a record of the achieve- ments, it is a personal introduction to the man. It is nearly thirty years since I first became acquainted with Mr. Beecher : he then in the full power of his prime, I a boy just out of college. During those thirty years our acquaintance has grown continuously more intimate. That intimacy has only served to in- crease my respect and deepen my affection. My close association with him during five years of editorial co- labor was unmarred by a single collision, and has left behind not the memory of a single jar. The more I have known him the more I have seen to admire, to honor, to love. I never met him without receiving from his presence and his words some inspiration — in- tellectual, or spiritual, or both. My object in this book — which has far outgrown the proportions of its original design — has been to bring Mr. Beecher into more intimate relations with the thousands who have known him only as a voice in the air ; to give to the many something of that personal acquaintance which has been only the peculiar privilege of the few ; and especially to afford the young men of the country a better understanding of his character than has been or could be afforded by the always partial and often distorted views afforded by the current publications of him in the daily press.
PREFACE. VU
For it is the compensating disadvantage of genius to be never compreliended by its contemporaries ; and Mr. Beecher is peculiarly liable to misinterpretation. His opalescent nature, his kaleidoscopic moods, his profound intellectual and spiritual insight, his impa- tience of the mere mechanics and formularies of relig- ion, which are of larger imi^ortance than he realizes, because the weak need props which the strong do not need, his intensely emotional nature, and his utter disregard of his own reputation, make him often an enigma to his friends, and always an easy subject for the misrei^resentations of envy, malice, and uncharita- bleness. That this volume will clear away all misun- derstandings I do not imagine ; still less that it will even mitigate misrepresentations. But I trust it may serve a useful purpose in making known the man to those who have loiown only the orator and the author.
It remains to give in a few sentences the history of the origin and j)reparation of this book, which is only in a qualified sense my work, though for its spirit and accuracy I am responsible.
Some years ago the Rev. S. B. Halliday, the Pastoral Helper of Plymouth Church, began to col- lect material respecting Mr. Beecher. The paj)ers in Part II. were all obtained by him. These papers, with much other material, he brought to me some year and a half ago, and requested my aid in arrang- ing, revising, and editing them. In looking over them I found abundant material for a book of the purjDose and scope outlined above, and so, with some misgivings on account of other engagements, but with hearty interest on account of personal attachment to
viii PREFACE.
Mr. Beeclier, the work was undertaken. The incep- tion of this book is Mr, Halliday's ; and his has been the large labor, little appreciated by the public but readily appreciated by all literary workers, involved in the voluminous correspondence which was necessary to collect the material. In the arrangement, revision, collation, correction, and general editorial work I have been assisted by Mr. S. A. Chapin, Jr., without whose co-operation it would have been impossible for me to cOmj^lete the work. He also has largely done the work of seeing it through the i^ress. The gentle- men whose pax)ers constitute Part II. and the many friends who have sent incidents will jDlease to accept this general acknowledgment of their kindness in lieu of more direct and formal acknowledgments.
L. A.
INDEX.
PART I.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Page
I. Childhood and Youth 13
II. Early Ministry 39
III, Mr. Beecher as a Preacher 69
IV. Methods of Study 75
V. Mr. Beecher's Theology 91
VI. Mr. Beecher as a Journalist 118
VII. Mr. Beecher as a Lecturer and Orator 134
VIII. Mr. Beecher in England during the Civil War. . . . 161
IX. Personal Traits and Incidents 186
X. Reminiscences by Rev. S. B. Halliday :
Mr. Beecher in Brooklyn 230
Centennial Year 226
Magnanimity 228
What would you have me to do ? 233
The Dying Calif ornian 234
Last Prayer-Meeting of the Year 238
Border Ruffian 242
A Sensible Woman 243
Women Speaking in Meeting 244
The Methodist Sister 245
Applicants for Help 246
Universal Adaptation 251
The Woman who Lost her Baby 257
XI. Plymouth Church 261
X INDEX.
PART II.
ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES BY CONTEMPORARIES.
[Written Specially for this Work.]
Pagb
I. By Rev. Thomas Armitage, D.D 285
II. By Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., England 297
III. By Rev. Charles E. Robinson, D.D 303
IV. By Hon. Amos C. Barstow 308
V. By Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, D.D 314
VI. By Rev. Samuel H. Virgin, D.D 318
VII. By Rev. Edward P. Ingersoll, D.D 321
VIII. By Rev. J. O. Peck, D.D 325
IX. By Peter MacLeod, Scotland 334
X. By Rev. Charles Hall Everest, D.D 340
XI. By Rev. W. Burnet Wright 344
XII. By Rev. E. P. Putnam, D.D 349
XIII. By Rev. A. H. Bradford 352
XIV. By Rev. Albert H. Heath 355
XV. By Rev. Leonard Bacon, D.D., LL.D 360
XVI. By Hon. Frederick Douglass 363
XVIL By Rev. Francis N. Zabriskie, D.D 363
XVIIL By Rev. C. K Sims, D.D.-. 364
XIX. By J. L. Cunningham, Scotland 367
XX. By Rev. Frank Russell 369
XXI. By Rev. Father Keegan, Vicar-General 385
XXII. By Jesse Seligman 385
XXm. By Rev. T. J. Conant. D.D 387
XXIV. By Rev. Prof. G. B. Willcox, D.D 388
XXV. By Rabbi Lilienthal, D.D 390
XXVI. By Rev. George Douglass, LL.D., Canada...,, 393
XXVII. By Gen. Clinton B. Fisk 394
INDEX. xi
Page
XXVIII. By John G. Whittier 395
XXIX. By Rev. Eugene Bersier, D.D., France 396
Extract from Sermon by Rev. David Swing, D.D 396
Article by Rev. Atticub G. Haygood, D.D 400
[From Magazines and other Articles.]
I. . By Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Atlantic Monthly 404
II. By Rev. H. R. Havteis, in Contemporary Review 411
III. By Rev. William M. Taylor, D.D., va. Scottish Review . . 414
IV. By Prof. Noah Porter, D.D., in Hearth and Home 428
V. By Rev. Edward Eggleston, in Hearth and Home 434
VI. By Rev. Prof. James M. Hoppin, in the New Englander. 438
VII. By Rev. A. McElroy Wylie, in Scribner's Monthly 447
VIII. By Rev. R. S. Storrs, D.D., Silver Wedding Address.. 457
PART III.
CHARA CTERISTW UTTERANCES.
Theological.— St .tement of Belief 479
Spiritual. — How to Become a Christian ^ 508
Political. — Speech in London 523
Mr. Beecher's Farewell Address 646
Descriptive.— The Alps 661
Philosophical. — Evolution and Revolution 566
Agricultural . — Political Economy of the Apple 574
Our Creed 585
Humorous. — Modern Conveniences and First-Class Houses 587
CLOSING YEARS.
CHAPTER I. Last Visit to Europe — Seventieth Birthday, etc 597
xil INDEX.
CHAPTER II. FAGE
/ His Life as Sketched by Himself — Last Discourse 604
CHAPTER III Last Hours — Death— Funeral Services 628
CHAPTER IV. Universal Tribute of Respect to his Memory 646
APPENDIX.
Scope ov Mk. Beecher's Preaching 663
Posters Placarded in Liverpool, etc 665
Plymouth Church Statistics 668
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Pagh HENRY WARD BEECHER Frontispiece
THE HOUSE AT LITCHFIELD, CONN., IN WHICH
HENRY WARD BEECHER WAS BORN 17
SCHOOL-HOUSE IN WHITINSVILLE, MASS, IN WHICH
MR. BEECHER TAUGHT IN 1831 AND 1833 51
CHURCH IN INDIANAPOLIS IN WHICH MR. BEECHER
PREACHED 51
A FAMILY OF CLERGYMEN 85
MR. BEECHER AT DIFFERENT AGES 119
THE CHURCH IN LAWRENCEBURG IN WHICH MR.
BEECHER FIRST PREACHED 153
MR BEECHER'S RESIDENCES IN INDIANAPOLIS 187
His Four-room House.
The Residence he Built, painting it himself.
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 221
PLYMOUTH CHURCH AUDIENCE 255
HENRY WARD BEECHER 290
PLYMOUTH CHURCH SUNDAY-SCHOOL 333
ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 357
"EYES AND EARS." 357
MR. BEECHER'S FAMILY 891
NEW RESIDENCE ON THE PEEKSKILL FARM 425
MR. BEECHER'S WORKSHOP 459
VIEWS AT PEEKSKILL FARM 509
A MAN OF MANY MOODS 559
MR. BEECHER LYING IN STATE IN PLYMOUTH
CHURCH 643
Part I.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
CHAPTER I.
BIOGRAPHICAL. I.
Maisty of the cliaracteristics of a life are inherited. Hence to know the intermingling of different bloods, the union of varying characteristics, the assimilation of inherited family traits in one organization, is as necessary in a study of a man' s character as to know something of the thread and shuttle and the weaving in the estimation of a rich fabric.
The tone of the home atmosphere, the lights and shadows of early life, the quality of the parental gov- ernment are all influences of such permanent effect on the after life, that familiarity with them in the contem- plation of a character is indispensable. Pre-eminently is this true when the early training produces such last- ing impressions as in the present instance, necessitating more than the simple statement that Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24th, 1813, the eighth child of Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher. The convergence of two long lines of sturdy
14 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
!N'ew England ancestry is represented by the union of these names, dating back on either side to the settle- ment of New Haven in 1638, when a widow, Hannah Beecher, and Andrew Ward, came over from England vdth Davenport, Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote, the descendants of these two pioneers, were married September 19th, 1799, and moved to East Hampton, L. I., and subsequently to Litchfield, Connecticut, where, as already stated, Henry Ward was born. His father at this time was ministering to a congregation at a salary of eight hundred dollars a year, out of which a family, soon increased to ten children, must be main- tained and educated. The importance which is attached to the training of children now, the rich provision for their care, education, and enjoyment, is a deviation from old methods of whicU the parents of iifty years ago could have had no conception. The child-world of Henry Ward was barren of all the beauty which graces that of modern youth. Mrs. Stowe says, in writing of the training of children at this period, " The commu- nity did not recognize them. There was no child' s litera- ture ; there were no children's books. The Sunday- school was yet an experiment, in a fluctuating, uncer- tain state of trial. There were no children's days of presents or fetes, no Christmas or New Year's festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only associated with one day's unlimited range of pies of every sort — too much for one day and too soon things of the past. The child- "iiood of Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's toy as a gift from any older person, or a single fete. Very early, too, strict duties devolved upon him ; a daily portion of the work of the estab-
BOYHOOD. 15
lishment, tlie care of the domestic animals, the cutting and piling of wood, or tasks in the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves ; and the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up, gave him early habits of vigor and^ reliance." Even this cheerless and somewhat hard experience had its advantage, and the entire freedom of the boy's life and thoughts led him into congenial fields of inquiry that methodical training might have left unsearched. The lack of the ordinary equipments of childhood, the playthings, the story books, and holidays, led him to find amusement where he could, and thus brought him into frequent contact with Nature and her children, and from these sources he drew truer lessons than might perhaps be found in the whole range of child' s literature. Of this period he himself says :
" I think I was about as well brought up as most children, because I was let alone. My father was so busy, and my mother had so many other children to look after, that, except here and there, I hardly came under the parental hand at all. I was brought up in a New England village, and I kn bw where the sweet-flag was, where the hickory trees were, where the chestnut trees were, where the sassafras trees were, wheie the squirrels were, where all those things were that boys enterprise after ; therefore, I had a world of things to do ; and so I did not come much in contact with family government."
In a city, such unrestricted freedom of action would have been impossible without impairing integrity and
16 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
purity of cliaracter, but the moral atmospliere of Litch- field, was as untainted and invigorating as the air of its surrounding mountains, and was fraught with no contaminating influences.
He was meiTy, bright, and affectionate as a child, and it is interesting to read from the family letters of this period bits of domestic history that give strong impres- sions of the child's character. A letter from his mother, written after a journey, says : "I arrived at sunset, and found all well, and the boy (Henry Ward) in merry trim, glad at heart to be safe on terra firma after all his jolts and tossings." In another, this pleasant picture of home life is given: "I write sit- ting upon my feet, with my paper on the seat of a chair, while Henry is hanging round my neck and climbing on my back, and Harriet is begging me to please make her a baby." Miss Catherine Beecher, in writing of the children to an aunt, says : "Henry is a very good boy, and we think him a remarkably in- teresting child, and he grows dearer to us every day. He is very affectionate and seems to love his father with all his heart. His constant prattle is a great amusement to us all. He t)ften speaks of his sister Harriet, and wishes spring to come, so that she might come home and go to school with him."
Mrs. Beecher, the second wife, soon after arriving in Litchfield, in 1817, writes home of the family : "It seems the highest happiness of the children (the larger ones especially) to have a reading circle. They have all, I think, fine capacities, and good taste for learning. Edward probably will be a great scholar. Catherine is a fine-looking girl, and in her mind I find
DR. LYMAN BEECHER. 19
all that I expected. Mary will make a fine woman, I think ; will be rather handsome, than otherwise. The four youngest are very pretty. George comes next to Mary. Harriet and Henry come next, and they are always hand-in-hand. They are as lovely children as I ever saw, amiable, affectionate, and very bright." Two years later she writes again : " George and Har- riet go to school to Mr. Brace and Miss Pierce ; Henry and Charles to Miss Osborne at the new school-house. Charles learns quite fast, and will overtake Henry, who has no great love for his books."
Dr. Beecher was actively engaged at this time in pastoral duties, and in religious work extending over a wide range of influence, while the high literary and intellectual character of Litchfield society, and pre- eminently of Dr. Beecher's intimate friends, opened up attractive and congenial fields of discussion and in- vestigation, which with the prosperous and happy con- dition of the home-circle, rendered these years the most joyous and least shadowed with care, of all his life. His lack of method and system was great, and this conduced to a, freedom and sociality of life which knew no rules, and within certain prescribed moral limits, allowed the children to do about as they chose. Simple purity in daUy life, parental conversation, and example were the guides by which the children were imbued with the moral qualities of conscience, of self- respect, and of truth. Of his father Mr. Beecher says in one of his sermons :
"I never saw my father do a thing that had du- plicity in it in my life. I recollect that, when a child, I mistook his appearance when talking with persons
20 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
that came to see Mm as inconsistent with his after state of feeling when they had gone away. I did not under- stand simple prudence ; and it looked as though father was one thing before their face and another thing be- hind their back. It distressed me exceedingly. Ex- cept in that one instance, a cloud or a shadow never passed over my mind with regard to my father's in- tegrity. I believed it impossible for him to think an untruth, and still less possible for him to tell one. And* my mother was the law of purity and the law of honor. Therefore, I did not need much teaching on these sub- jects."
Henry Ward's own mother died when he was but three years old. She was gentle, loving, and tender, with M'idest range of sympathy, and of a restful, pla- cid temperament, the peace and serenity of which re- mained undisturbed through all earthly trials. Her death deprived her husband of his strongest counsellor and support, and he is said to have declared that his first sensation was a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly thrust out alone in the dark. Mrs. Stowe writes of her recollections of this time : "Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I remember his golden curls and little black frock, as he frolicked like a kitten in the sun, in ignorant joy.' ' And again : "They told us at one time, that she had been laid in the ground, at another that she had gone to heaven ; whereupon Henry putting the two things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven to find her; for, being discovered under sister Cath- arine's-window one morning, digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to know what he
THE FIRST MOTHER. 21
was doing, and, lifting his curly head with great sim- plicity, he answered, 'Why, I'm going to heaven to find ma.' "
The trust and imagination of childhood have grown with years into the man's strong devotion to her memory, and at times reveal themselves in such pas- sages in his sermons as the following :
"And, on the other hand, who can measure the wealth of blessing that there is in father and mother to children ? Do you know why so often I speak what must seem to some of you rhapsody of woman ? It is because I had a mother ; and if I were to live a thou- sand years I could not express what seems to me to be the least that I owe to the fact that I had a mother. Three years old was I, when, singing, she left me, and sung on to heaven, where she sings evermore. I have only such a remembrance of her as you have of the clouds of ten years ago — faint, evanescent ; and yet caught by imagination, and fed by that which I have heard of her, and by what my father's thought and feeling of her were, it has come to be so much to me that no devout Catholic ever saw so much in the Virgin Mary as I have seen in my mother, who has been a presence to me ever since I can remember. And I can never say enough for woman for my mother's sake, for my sisters' sake, for the sake of them that have gathered in the days of my infancy around about me, in return for what they have interpreted to me of the beauty of holiness, of the fulness of love, and of the heavenliness of those elements from which we are to • interpret heaven itself. No child of Christian parents can ever measure the weight of the gratitude which he
22 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
owes to the father and the mother that not only took care of him, but taught him what he meant when he said, 'Our Father who art in heaven.' How power- ful should be this reflex-influence, then, of the truth symbolized, hidden, in this opening petition of the Lord's j)rayer."
Or again :
' ' Oh, that it could have been so in days past ! My mother died when I was but a small child, and I do not remember to have ever seen her face. And as there was no pencil that could afford to limn her, I have never seen a likeness of her. Would to God that I could see some picture of my mother. No picture that hangs on prince' s wall, or in gallery, would I not give, if I might choose, for a faithful portrait of my mother. Give me that above all other pictures under God's canopy."
At the end of a year. Dr. Beecher brought home a second wife to assume the duties of the household and the care of the children. She had been as a girl a brilliant belle of society, the possessor of great per- sonal beauty, a cultivated and intellectual mind, polished manners, and rich in all social acquirements. With her religious awakening and conversion came in- creased moral culture and force, which, from her natural propensity to rectitude and propriety, and from her unyielding conscience and undeviating pur- pose to do right herself, and have others do right also, assumed the character of a religion, solemn, inflexible, rigorous, and sombre. The freedom with which the children had been familiar had not instilled in them those graces and refinements which were to her natural
THE SECOND MOTHER. 23
and habitual, while the shortcomings and imperfec- tions which arose naturally from a crude and vigorous childhood were to her sins of serious magnitude. It was a matter of consequence with her to point out and pray with them over their faults, and the religious influence thus brought to bear upon them was one that concealed the sincerity of her motive, and caused her to appear in the children's eyes like her religion — dread, calm, and exacting.
No words so well as Mr. Beecher's own describe the effect on him of his mother's religious life :
"My dear mother — not she that gcive me birth, but she that brought me up ; she that did the oflice-work of a mother, if ever a mother did ; she that, according to her ability, performed to the uttermost her duties — was a woman of jDrofound veneration, rather than of a warm and loving nature. Therefore, her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep, yearning reverence. I re- member well the impression which it made on me. There was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sym- pathetic hold it had upon me ; but still, I always felt, when I went to prayer, as though I was going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come ; and I shrunk from it.
"The prayer of a poor man on my father's farm was of precisely the opposite character, and impressed me in precisely the opposite way. He used alternatively to pray and sing and laugh, pray and sing and laugh, pray and sing and laugh. He had a little room, in one corner of which I had a little cot ; and I used to lie and see him attend to his devotions. They were a regular thing. Every night he would set his candle at the head
24 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
of his bed, and pray and sing and laugh. And I bear record that his praying made a profound impression upon my mind. I never thought whether it was right or wrong. I only thought, ' How that man does en- joy it ! What enjoyment there must be in such prayer as his ! ' I gained from that man more of an idea of the desirableness of prayer, than I ever did from my father or mother. My father was never an ascetic : he had no sympathy with anything of a monkish ten- dency ; and yet, this poor man, more than he, led me to see that there should be real overflowing gladness and thanksgiving in prayer. I learned to envy Charles Smith, although I was a hundred degrees higher than he in society. I learned to feel that I was the pau- per and he was the rich man. I would gladly have changed situations with him, if by so doing I could have obtained his grace and his hope of heaven. I believe he rejoices in heaven now."
Under the training of such a nature the boy grew up^ at once inspired and repressed. Religious aspirations were aroused, but from lack of proper care, remained in a vague state or else disappeared. Mr. Beecher relates his personal experience at this time as follows :
' ' My mother — she who, in the providence of God,, took me in to her heart when my own mother had gone to see her Father in heaven — she who came after, and was most faithful to the charge of the children in the household — she often took me, and prayed with me, and read me the Word of God, and expounded to me the way of duty, and did all that seemed to her possible,. I know, to make it easy for me to become a religious; child ; and yet there have been times when I think it
THE FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 25
would have been easier for me to lay my hand on. a block, and have it struck off, than to open my thoughts to her, when I longed to open them to some one. How often have I started to go to her, and tell her my feelings, when fear has caused me to sheer off, and abandon my purpose. My mind would open like a rose-bud, but, alas, fear would hold back the blossom. How many of my early religious pointings fell, like an over-drugged rose-bud, without a blossom."
The family government was firm and decided and was administered wholly by the father, the mother's gentle nature not fitting her to enforce laws. The ne- cessity of discipline was not frequent, and consisted in impressing upon the children' s minds the need of will- ing, cheerful and quick obedience. In instances requir- ing special emphasis, the lesson was conveyed by a se- vere discipline, always feared and never forgotten, so that a mere word was ever after that effectual in secur- ing prompt obedience, uncomplaining and unquestion- ing. The warmest love and tenderest sympathy, how- ever, accompanied this firm and resolute discipline, and Mr. Beecher gives an amusing account of his own ex- perience in this field :
" My father used to make me believe that the end of the rod that he held in his hand, was a great deal more painful to him than the end which I felt was to me. It was a strange mystery to me, but I did believe it ; and it seemed a great deal worse to me to be whipped on that account. I used to think that if he would not talk to me, but would whip me, I could stand it a great deal better. So I could have stood it better, and not been benefited. For a child is not whipped till
26 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
the sensation goes to the heart, and touches the feeling. But when my father made me cry by talking to me, and then whipped me, and then made me cry by talk- ing to me again, I thought it was too bad. And yet it was the right way."
Dr. Beecher would come from his study and books to his children, with whom he would frolic and play queer pranks to the delight of both, on one occasion swinging his little daughter Catherine out of the garret window by the hands to test her courage, and again playfully tipping her head into a wash-tub as she was running by, to see what she would do.
Occasions for discii)lining Henry Ward were rare, and according to statements of his own in recollection of youthful depravity he was not always the respon- sible person.
"I think, however, as I look back and reflect upon the special acts which brought me into discipline, that, though perhaps I had better been punished, for nine out of ten of them I was not really to blame. I do not mean that there was not a certain element of wrong in them; but, considering how little a child knows, how weak and imperfect his reason is, what is the force of social sympathy upon him, and how liable he is to mistakes in judgment, I do not think much blame could have been attached to me.
' ' I recollect being banished from the gallery in my father's church, to sit in which was the height of my ambition. The pews were square. My father's was right under the pulpit. I did not, I believe, more than once or twice, see my father in the pulpit till I was of age, and had gone away from home, because we had
A NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 27
that minister's pew, in which I was always compelled to sit. The top of it was a foot higher than my head, and the sides were as straight as the plummet could make them. And, sitting there, I was expected to listen to the sermon, and hear every word, from a man I could not see ! And when I put my hands up, some little rollers that were attached to the pew would make a noise. It was the only agreeable sound that I recol- lect in those days to have heard in the sanctuary.
" I remember perfectly well, when I was thus brought up in that inland village, and in that inland church, "with a kind of mechanical government extending over me, all my sensations, all my little thoughts, all the little ranges of imagination through which my mind passed ; and judging from them, from my own chil- dren, and from the children of my parish, I cannot but feel that of the faults that I committed the greatest number of them were such as were inevitable to my time of life, and to the development that had taken place in my moral constitution, and that they did not indicate obliquity or depravity at all in the worse sense of the term, but simply and merely inexi^erience. Yet I was sometimes punished for them.
" For instance, after having been imprisoned in that pew for a long time, I desired to sit with the singers. My mother, in a day of unexpected grace, gave me permission, with many and multiplied charges of proper conduct ; and I went into the gallery with all the virtue of a dozen deacons, determined to behave well, and to earn the right of sitting there. Yes, men and angels should see that I conducted myself becom- ingly. But, as I sat there, a martyr of propriety, on a
38 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
hard seat, one of the roguish boys of the neighbor- hood gave me a shove, and pushed me off on the floor, and tore my coat. When I went home the hole in my coat was espied, and my mother said, ' Henry, how came that hole there ? ' I resolved in my mind what I should say. I wanted to tell her that it was not my fault ; and I thought I used the words that would con- vey that idea, when I said, ' Oh, mother, it was done in fun.' I did not know what the meaning of fun was ; but I found out ! and I was not allowed for years afterward to go into that gallery where in fun I had torn my coat, though there was not a person in the church that put forth half the effort that I did to behave. And it was only my want of a knowledge of language that brought me into disgrace. ' '
Another instance was the occasion of his first ' ' swear, ' ' when his own terror at the deed was sufficient atone- ment.
"I remember being very mad once, when I was a boy. I went out to the south side of the house, and, unable to hold in any longer, I said ' damn it ! ' In a minute the sky looked to me like copper. I thought that my soul was gone forever. The idea that I had sworn produced a terrible impression of horror upon me. It was the first time I had ever done it. I was brought up to look upon profanity with utter abhor- rence, and I was frightened almost out of my wits. I really expected that the house would fall on me, or that the earth would open and let me down. In my terror I started to run, and I clipped it to the kitchen quicker than I had ever done it before. The sweat stood out on me in great drops. I felt the shock all over."
THE VILLAGE SCHOOL. 29
His earliest scliool days were not such as to forecast' a brilliant future, for he was deficient in memory, pain- fully sensitive, very diffident, and embarrassed by a thick, indistinct utterance ; resulting partly from bash- fulness, and partly from throat troubles.
He began his education at a little school kept by a widow Kilbourn, where the idleness which generally prevailed was emphasized by the recital of the alphabet twice daily. From here he went to the district school, the dispensary of learning for the country children of the neighborhood, where the school-mistress wielded the switch and ferule, alternat- ing the use of these instruments with instruction in arithmetic and writing, ' ' readings from the Bible and the Columbian Orator." In one of Mr. Beecher's ser- mons occurs a passage recalling the school-house of his youth, which is of interest not only as a picture, but also as a strong figure in illustrating a beautiful thought. It is this :
"I very well remember going back, after having arrived at years of manhood, to the school-house where I did not receive my early education. I measured the stones which, in my childhood, it seemed that a giant could not lift, and I could almost turn them over with my foot ! I measured the trees which seemed to loom up to the sky, wondrously large, but they had shrunk, grown shorter, and outspread narrower. I looked into the old school-house, and how small the whittled benches and the dilapidated tables M^ere, compared with my boyhood impression of them ! I looked over the meadows across which my little tod- dling feet had passed. They had once seemed to me to
30 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
be broad fields, but now but narrow ribbons, lying between the house and the water. I marveled at the apparent change which had taken place in these things, and thought what a child I must have been when they seemed to me to be things of great importance. The school-ma' am — oh what a being I thought she was ! and the school-master — how awestruck I was at his presence ! So looking and wistfully remembering, I said to myself, 'Well, one bubble has broken.' But when you shall stand above, and look back with celes- tial and clarified vision, upon this world — this rickety old school-house earth — it will seem smaller to you than to me that old village school. "
At the age of ten years a more earnest course of study was inaugurated by his removal to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, in the town of Beth- lehem, near by. A year was passed in this place, where the unrestrained freedom of the kind, indulgent household in which he lived, allowed him long sessions of intercourse with woods and fields, through which he roamed at will, gratifying that love for nature which was a strong characteristic. Little advancement was made in his studies by such a derogatory course, his writing was bad, his spelling worse, and the smooth- ness of his Latin recitation showed unmistakable " cribbing," the result of necessity, and an unwise ex- pedient. He was recalled home, and soon after placed under the care of his sister, who was then at the head of a young lady's school in Hartford, where Henry was the only boy among forty girls.
The history of this period shows a minimum of scholarly acquirement and a maximum of careless fun.
LIFE IN BOSTON. 31
and practical joking, altliongli the impression pre- vailed that only the spur of necessity was needed to arouse a dormant ability, the existence of which no one doubted. He returned to Litchfield, and soon after, at the age of twelve, the whole atmosphere of his life was changed by the removal of the family to Boston. v-'' From the untrammeled freedom of his country life where the woods and fields were his play-grounds, the birds and forest-creatures his mates, to be suddenly com- pressed and limited to brick walls and narrow streets excited a depressing influence on his mind that increased the melancholy to which he had been prone from childhood. This was also augmented by his being en- tered at the Boston Latin School, where, repulsive and uncongenial as was the course of study, urged on by mingled feelings of honor, affection, fear of disgrace^ appeals to his conscience, paternal entreaties, and a sense of obedience almost religious, he finally accom- plished the work assigned. The Latin Grammar had been won, but at dear cost, for with it had come gloom, restlessness, irritability, and dissatisfaction with his present condition, that grew with secret strength, fos- tered by the reading of biographies and adventurous lives of Nelson and Captain Cook, vdth which his father strove to divert his thoughts, and by the temp- tation to similar experiences of which the docks and ship-yards were full. It finally assumed the form of a determination to seek a life of freedom and adventure, the sincerity of which was evident from his energetic preparations for a voyage, and from the testimony of his later years, for in one of his sermons he says : "I recollect three or four instances in which it seems to
32 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
me tliat if certain occurrences liad not taken place just as they did I should have been overthrown. If I had not been taken out of Boston at one time, as I was, I do not see what would have prevented me from going to destruction."
Through the subterfuge of a letter, purposely placed for his father's inspection, Henry made known his in- tention. Dr. Beecher received it with apparent appro- bation, and shrewdly suggested that the boy first take a course in mathematics and navigation preparatory to his departure. The youth gladly acceded to the prop- osition, and was soon established at Mount Pleasant J School in Amherst, Mass., where he was placed under the special care of a genial, manly young teacher, be- tween whom and the boy a firm friendship was com- pacted. Under the instruction of this Mr. Fitzgerald, he made good x^rogress in mathematics, and the diffi- culties in his voice, its indistinctness and thickness, were removed in a great measure by a course of elocu- tion under Prof, J. E. Lovell.
The change in temperament and disposition wrought by this return to country life and the renewal of old and loved associations was great and immediate, and was a suitable preparation for the reception of those religious truths which came to him at the end of the first year during a season of revival. He united with his father's church in Boston, whereupon his dreams of naval ambition were merged into aspirations for the ministry, with a view to which two years of happiness followed at Mount Pleasant in preparation for col- lege. His preparation was thorough and warranted his entering the Sophomore year, an opportunity which
COLLEGE LIFE. 33
his father thought best to yield, for he entered the Freshman year, occupying the leisure time which his advanced standing allowed, in becoming familiar with the library and in preparing courses of reading and self-culture for independent study.
An extract from a letter of recollections which Dr. Thomas P. Field, of Amherst College, and a classmate of Mr. Beecher's, kindly provides us, gives, in condensed form, the general outline and coloring of his college course, which Mrs. Stowe in her "Men of Our Times" elaborates into a detailed and highly finished picture.
"Amherst, September 13, 1881.""^ " Students, you know, are not looking at their classmates much with reference to their future, and do not treasure up particular facts in expectation of their fame. We knew very well that Beecher was a man of superior mental powers, but I cannot say that we antici- pated that he would reach the position he has attained. I entered the class of '34 in the beginning of the Sophomore year. Beecher was then a member of it. I knew he was Dr. Lyman Beecher's son. That fact at once made him a marked man. For Dr. Beecher was the great preacher at that time of New England, and indeed the greatest pulpit orator in the country.
"I first felt Beecher's power in the class prayer-meeting. On the first meeting I attended Beecher was present, and made an exhorta- tion on the duty of laboring for a revival of religion in the Fall term. There had been, I tliink, a revival in the previous Spring term. He thought it wrong to suppose there could not be a revival again so soon. I was struck with the fluency of his speech, with the earnest Christian feeling, and with the power and impressiveness with which he spoke. His extemporaneous speech, even when he was a student, was always able and eloquent.
**I was not impressed with his recitations at all. Indeed I knew very well that he had no desire, and made no effort, to be a good rec- itative scholar. He always argued against the study of mathematics, maintaining that it afforded no good discipline for the mind, and 8
34 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
gave himself, as it was understood, more to general reading than to the prescribed course of study — because he thought that was the best way to cultivate the mind.
" In the rhetorical department, however, he always showed hi* power. We were required at that time to write many more essays than the students of the present day do. When we were Sophomores, we had to prepare an essay for the Professor of Rhetoric each fort- night. We came together one hour every week, to hear the essaya read, or as many of them as there would be time to hear. I very well remember the first essay I heard Beecher read. It was on Pollok's 'Course of Time,' a poem which was then awakening much interest among orthodox scholars. Beecher instituted a comparison between Pollok and Milton, maintaining substantially, if I recollect right, that PoUok was the better poet. The essay was very interesting and well written. Mr. Beecher would be far, I doubt not, from entertaining any such opinion now, but the fact shows that he was not in the habit then of thinking in the beaten track. I think the essay was published afterward in one of our college periodicals.
" I remember that Beecher was greatly interested while in college in Phrenology, and I think that he gave lectures with Orson Fowler, one of our classmates (and who has since become distinguished as a phrenologist), in some of the country towns in the neighborhood. Mr. Beecher, I have the impression, did the lecturing and Fowler made the examination of heads.
" Beecher was interested, even in college, in matters of reform. I think he was then decidedly anti-slavery in his views, and ' totally abstinent ' in opinion and practice, in respect to the use of ardent spirits. He had then, as he has always had since, a decided vein of humor, and love of fun. And you would often see on the chapel steps a large number of fellows around Beecher, when there would be sure to be continuous roars of laughter.
"But I do not remember any particular witty sayings, though
there were doubtless many which might have been preserved if we
had supposed they would have been wanted for a biographer in the
future.
* ' Truly yours,
"Thos. p. Field."
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 35
Tlie study of Phrenology, which Dr. Field mentions, was begun in the form of a practical joke upon a fel- low-student who avowed himself a convert to the belief and was to give lectures on the subject in Mr. Beech- er's room. The interest of Beecher, Fowler, and others was aroused, and they were led by it into such an earnest course of phrenological and physiological research of metaphysics and mental philosophy, that a society was formed for phrenological interests, a simi- lar one was organized at Bowdoin, through Charles Beecher, and Henry Ward delivered lectures on the subject before village audiences. From the first he took a firm stand as a Christian young man, partici- pating in class prayer-meetings and sharing in religious labors among the neighboring country towns.
His religious nature was very deep and it was pro- foundly moved by a revival in college during the Sophomore year, which led to a self -arraignment and an examination of the hopes and enlightenments which had induced him to join the Church, that left" him in miserable anxiety and despair. His own ac- count of the subsequent revelation of the divine nature through Christ is better than any description that could be given.
"I was a child of teaching and prayer ; I was reared in the household of faith ; I knew the Catechism as it was taught ; I was instructed in the Scriptures as they were expounded from the pulpit, and read by men ; and yet, till after I was twenty-one years old, I groped without the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. I know not what the tablets of eternity have written down, but I think that when I stand in Zion and be-
36 HENRY WART) BFErHER.
fore God, me brightest thino- whicli I shall look back
•^fD'
upon will be that blessed morning of May when it pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the idea that it was His nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of them ; that He did not do it out of compliment to Christ, or to a law, or a plan of salvation, but from the fullness of His great heart ; that He was a Being not made mad by sin, but sorry ; that He was not furious with wrath toward the sinner, but pitied him — in short, that He felt toward me as my mother felt toward me, to whose eyes my wrong-doing brought tears, who never pressed me so close to her as when I had done wrong, and who would fain, with her ^yearning love, lift me out of troubled And when I found that Jesus Christ had such a disposition, and that when His disciples did wrong. He drew them closer to Him than He did before — and when pride and jeal- ousy, and rivalry, and all vulgar and worldly feelings, rankled in their bosoms, He opened His heart to them as a medicine to heal these infirmities ; when I found that it was Christ's nature to lift men out of weakness to strength, out of impurity to goodness, out of every- thing low and debasing to superiority, I felt that I had found a God. I shall never forget the feelino;s with which I walked forth that May morning. The golden pavements will never feel to my feet as then the grass felt to them ; and the singing of the birds in the woods — for I roamed in the woods — was cacophonous to the sweet music of my thoughts ; and there were no forms in the universe which seemed to me graceful enough to represent the Being, a conception of whose character had just dawned upon my mind. I felt, when I had.
CHRIST A FRIEND. 37
with the Psalmist, called upon the heavens, the earth, the mountains, the streams, the floods, the birds, the beasts, and universal being, to praise God, that I had called upon nothing that could praise Him enough for the revelation of such a nature as that in the Lord Jesus Christ,
"Time went on, and next came the disclosure of a Christ ever present with me — a Christ that never was far from me, but was always near me, as a Companion and Friend, to uphold and sustain me. This was the last and the best revelation of God's Spirit to my soul. . It is what I consider to be the culminating work of God's grace in a man ; and no man is a Christian until he has experienced it. I do not mean that a man can- not be a good man till then ; but he has not got to Je- rusalem till the gate has been opened to him, and he has seen the King sitting in His glory, with love to Him individually. It is only when the soul naeasures itself down deep, and says, ' I am all selfish, and proud and weak, and easy to be tempted to wrong. I have a glim- mering sense of the right, and to-day I promise God that I will follow it ; but to-morrow I turn the promise into sin. To-day I lift myself up with resolutions, but to-morrow I sink down with discouragement. There is nothing in me that is good. From the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, I am full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores' — it is only when the soul measures itself thus, and when it sees rising up against this conviction of its own unworthiness, the Divine declaration, ' I have loved thee ; I am thy God ; I have called thee by My name ; thou art Mine, and I will be thy salvation' — it is only then that a
38 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
piian has passed through death to life, from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy."
Upon graduating in 1834 he rejoined his father, who liad two years previous removed to Cincinnati.
CHAPTER n.
BIOGRAPHICAL, II.
Mr. Beecher's first steps and studies in preaching may be considered to have really commenced during ) his college course. His strict attention at meetings of / prayer and exhortation, both in college and in the neighborhood, combined with the intimacy of an upper classman, a zealous Christian worker, who exerted a strong influence on young Beecher, finally drew upon him the care of a meeting held regularly in a school- house near the village, and with unvarying earnestness he devoted himself to this charge, the beginning of his Christian Ministry.
One st^p had already been taken therefore, to which another was added when, upon his return to Cincinnati, after graduating, he entered upon the study of Theol- ogy at Lane Seminary. Here, after a short time, a strong attachment arose between himself and Prof. C. E. Stowe, a man of large attainments in ecclesias- tical and biblical knowledge, who, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe relates, inspired his young friend "with the idea of surveying the books of the Bible as divinely inspired compositions, yet truly and warmly human, and to be rendered and interpreted by the same rules of reason and common sense which pertain to all human docu- ments."
40 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Dr. Lyman Beecher was at this time holding a principal professorship at Lane Seminary, and, as the head and exponent of the New England new-school theology and the doctrine of man's free agency, was equipped for and launched in a strong controversy with Dr. Wilson, the advocate of the old-school theology of "Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Calvinistic fatalism," and the doctrine of native depravity and unworthiness. The battle was a fierce one, with strong adherents on either side, the students of the Seminary, and notably his own sons, upholding and assisting Dr. Beecher ; so that naturally their studies were from the standpoint of dialectic and theological attack and defence.
Altliough an earnest partisan of his father, Henry Ward had already formed a broader plan of belief for himself, differing in many respects from that of Dr. Beecher. Although maintaining the same view of the ministry, its aim and processes, with his father, Dr. Beecher' s methods and his unwavering confidence in them were, in the case of his son, so qualified by new lines of study and thought, that employment of them would have been not only inconsistent but inefficient. The salvation of humanity by Divine agency, through the salvation of individuals, was to him the great end to be obtained, but the means to this end was a problem, the complexity of which ren- dered him, as he neared the close of his theological course, the victim of deep depression and doubt.
This state of mind was enhanced by the retraction of a brother who had lately become an unbeliever, and withdrawn from the ministry, and the impulse to adopt some other course in life was often strong within him.
FIRST SETTLEMENT. 41
Several months of successful service as editor of the Cincinnati Journal, during which a pro-slavery riot gave opportunity for the ardent expression of his views of slavery and freedom, increased the tendency toward another profession, which, however, was for all time dispelled by a fortunate episode. He had assumed, during his final term at the Seminary, charge of a Bible class, and in the succeeding preparation and instruction there came in time a gradual clearing of all doubt as to his calling and its methods, followed by an increasing and definite apprehension of his mission, and of the manner of obtaining efficacious results.
Mrs. Stowe says: "To present Jesus Christ, per- sonally, as the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ as God impersonate, eternally and by a necessity of His- nature helpful and remedial and restorative ; the Friend of each individual soul, and thus the Friend of all society ; this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy object in entering the ministry."
With the eager enthusiasm and conviction consequent upon this spiritual revelation, he accepted at once the first opportunity that was presented after leaving the Seminary. This proved to be a call to Lawrenceburg, a small settlement near Cincinnati, on the Ohio River ; his experiences here he has himself related in his ser- mons in the following extracts :
"Where I first settled in the ministry the ground was low, and subject to overflow sometimes from the great Miami, sometimes from the Ohio, and sometimes from both. The houses that were built in the early days of poverty were low ; and generally twice a year — in the autumn, and in the spring when the snov/
42 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
melted on the mountains — tlie Ohio came booming down and overflowed ; and men were obliged to emi- grate. They found themselves driven out of their houses. Their cellars were submerged, and frequently the lower stories of their dwellings would fill with water. And they betook themselves to the table-land a little back, in boats."
" I go back now to my own ministry. I have got to begin to talk about myself as an old man, before long. I have been, thus far, talking as though I were young ; but I find that I am remembering back too far for that, when I go back to the time when I -first became the pas- tor of a. church. It was twenty years ago. I remember that the flock which I first gathered in the wilderness consisted of twenty persons. Nineteen of them were women, and the other was nothing. I remember the days of our poverty, our straitness. I was sexton of my own church at that time. There were no lamps there, so I bought some ; and I filled them and lit them. I swept the church, and lighted my own fire. I did not ring the bell, because there was none to ring. I opened the church before prayer-meetings and preaching, and locked it when they were over. I took care of every- J;hing connected with the building. And do I not remember every one of those faces ? I think there were but two persons among them that did not earn their daily living by actual work ; and these were not wealthy — they were only in moderate circumstances. We were all poor together. And to the day of my death, I never shall forget one of those faces or hear one of those names spoken without having excited in my mind the warmest remembrances. Some of
CALL TO INDIANAPOLIS. 48
them I venerate, and the memory of some has been precious as well as fruitful of good to me down to this hour."
After a short period of this ministerial apprentice- ship, he received and accepted a call to Indianapolis, where with his wife, whom he had married before leav- ing Cincinnati, he lived a simple, wholesome life of in- tense activity, where chief recreations were an indul- gence in agricultural study and pastime, a natural out- growth of the free country life of his boyhood, and that revealed itself now in an enthusiasm for choice breeds of domestic animals and an eager interest in farm and garden culture.
Here he began the study of his fellow-men, the searching after the principles of humanity, the analysis of human nature' sworldngs and processes, which, coup- led with the insight into methods and principles of sermon-writing gained by his close study of the Apos- tles' discourses, formed a style of preaching which was magnetic and popular.
The reputation thus gained w^as not, however, the realization of his highest aim. This was " the saving of souls" ; to do which, a Divine power seemed confirmed in him that evinced itself in the remarkable revivals of religion which arose in Terre Haute, under his influence, and in his own pastorate in Indianapolis. Of this time and this charge he makes feeling reference in one of his sermons.
" I pass to my second parish ; and how many beloved faces rise up before me there ! for at that period, after having preached about four years, I began to know how to preach a little, and how to gather souls into the
44 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
kingdom. I began to know what a revival was, and how to conduct one. I remember scores and scores of persons that were then so small that I could put my hand on their head, and that now have large families, who, from the day they were baptized to this hour, have been to a great extent under my care or influence.
' ' Well, I love those persons as I love my children, al- most. I have no time to think about them ; but that is nothing. Pearls and diamonds do not waste because the owner locks them up. They always retain their brilliancy ; and if he keeps them locked for a hundred years, and then takes them out, they will flash as brightly in the light as ever. And my memory of these persons will never grow dim. My heart goes out to them ; and I guess they think of me. I think they requite all the love I bestow upon them. When dying, many and many of them have sent me messages. Many and many of them, as they parted from this shore, bore testimony that the sweetest hours of their life were those passed under my instructions, and sent back messages of encouragement to me. How many times I think of five or six rare, beautiful, sainted ones, who sent me messages from the other side — I think they were half way across at any rate — that my preaching of Christ was true ; that they had gone so far that they felt it to be true ! I felt as though they were messages from heaven itself. And shall I have under my own roof spirits that are more sacred to me than these ? "
It was at the end of the eighth year of this faithful and happy ministry that Mr. Beecher received and accepted the call to his present pastorate, Plymouth Congrega- tional Church of Brooklyn, N. Y. He entered upon
ORIGIN OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 45
his pastoral duties here on Sunday morning, October 10th, 1847, a charge which, in its history, and in the remarkable career of its pastor, in various public functions as orator, lecturer, political advocate, and minister, is too well known to require more than a brief review.
The church to which Mr. Beecher had been called owed its origin to two facts. In 1846 there were but thirty-nine churches in Brooklyn, a city then of nearly sixty thousand inhabitants, and of these churches but one was Congregational. The need of more societies of this denomination was obvious, and was met by prompt action on the part of several prominent Chris- tian gentlemen. The First Presbyterian Church, then on the point of removal to the new edifice in Henry Street, were occupying the present site of Plymouth Church, which property they offered for sale for $25,- 000. These gentlemen after consultation made the purchase for $20,000, then called a meeting for the purpose of forming a new Congregational church, at which they offered the property thus secured for the use of the new organization. In a resolution then passed it was decided to commence regular services on Sunday, May 16th, the first Sabbath after the house should be vacated.
Eeports of the popularity and renown of Mr. Beecher of Indianapolis had already aroused Eastern interest in the man and his preaching, and through the influence of his friend and advocate Mr. William P. Cutter, of New York, Mr. Beecher, who was then in that city, was asked to preside at the opening of the new Congregational church in Brooklyn, May 16th,
46 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
1847. Mr. Beech er's discourses produced a strong im- pression upon his audience, and at a subsequent meet- ing in June, 1847, at which the name of Plymouth Church was adopted, he was elected unanimously by the society to the pastorate, and an immediate invita- tion was given him to assume the position.
Mr. Beecher had become strongly attached to his congregation in Indianapolis, and regarded with affec- tionate care their interests and welfare. Apart from this interest in the congregation as an object for which he had labored with love throughout a pastorate of eight years, the private intimacies and domestic asso- ciations which had grown with his life there plead strongly with him not to leave his home in the West, where the frankness, heartiness, and simplicity of the people, the hospitality, generosity, and artlessness of their customs and modes of life, found sympathetic response in his freedom-loving nature.
Two months passed before Mr. Beecher, influenced chiefly by the ill-health of his family, signified by let- ter his acceptance of the invitation ; he preached his first sermon on Sunday morning, October 10th, 1847. On this occasion he declared his standpoint and views on questions of national debate, his position with re- gard to slavery, war, temperance, and other reforms, and defined the purposes of his preaching, of which the chief was, "that it should be a ministry of Christ." The public services of installation as pastor did not take place until a month later, November 11th, 1847.
Under the preaching of its new pastor, the Plymouth Church grew in numbers and influence, and received large accessions almost yearly, as the fruit of frequent
THE PLYMOUTH PASTORATE. 47
revivals, of which, the most noted are those of 1852 and 1858, in the first instance ninety-one persons having united with the church, and in the second, three hundred and thii"ty-five persons being brought to make profession of their faith. Mr. Beecher's labors at this post have been zealous and unremitting, and through- out a pastorate of thirty-four years there have been but four occasions when his congregation have missed him from his pulpit for a protracted length of time.
These absences, all of them involuntary, are given in Plymouth Church Manual. "In March, 1849, the pastor was taken with a severe illness, which confined him to the house for two months, and disabled him from preaching until September, nor did he recover his full strength until the winter. In June, 1850, the society, of its own accord, gave him leave of absence to visit Europe, and he did not return until September. In 1856, the society, at the request of a number of eminent clergymen and others, voted him leave of ab- sence to traverse the country in behalf of the cause of liberty, then felt to be in peril.
"In June, 1863, the society requested him to revisit Europe for his health, which he did, returning in November. With these exceptions, the pastor has labored steadily at his post since 1847, at all times other than the regular summer vacation, which lasts on the average six weeks."
The truest record of this ministry are the words of Mr. Beecher himself, who, in sermons of later years, makes frequent reference to the early days of its his- tory, and reviews different periods of his connection with his people and his church.
48 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
"You know I have been here twelve years. It makes me feel gray to think of it ! When I came here the people in the houses in this street were not here. I am almost a patriarch of this part of Brooklyn ! With the exception of brother Storrs, of our own de- nomination, Dr. Cutter, and the Rev. Mr. Lewis, there is not a pastor in Brooklyn, that I recollect, who is in the church that he was in then. All, besides these, have removed, or gone to the other world, in twelve years' time. And what a populous period these twelve years have been ! How Time lias had to run ! What business he has had on his hands ! What developments of God's grace have taken j)lace, wliich, if they were to be unfolded and written, would fill so many books that the world could hardly contain them ; because every individual case would fill a volume ! And what a work has been accomplished in our own midst ! It is literally true that thousands have been converted and added to this church, of such as should be saved. The very number has prevented me from having any specialty of acquaintance v/ith them ; and yet it only needed that there should be such cases as one and another that have come under my immediate notice, to produce in me such an affection for this church that I never feel so near heaven as when I am in these meetings."
" I am, in the providence of God, so circumstanced in •/ reference to public speaking, which seems to be my specialty, that I put my whole strength into that, and give up everything else to it. Paul said that he could not administer ordinances, and that still less could he serve tables, because his call was to preach ; and it
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 49
would seem as tliougli my call was to confine myself to public speaking. Therefore I cannot follow out any detail of friendships and acquaintanceships with the different members of my congregation ; but that does not prevent my feeling the strongest heart-yearnings toward them. My sense of this is so exquisite that ■ sometimes, on Sabbath mornings, it seems to me as though I stand among the assemblies of the just. Oh, these Sunday mornings — how sweet they come upon the world ! and they seem sweeter and sweeter to me as I get nearer to heaven. How rich are the consolations which we derive from sweet fellowship with one another ! How glorious is our coming together in the assembly of the saints ! How our songs roll out, and storm the very gates of heaven ! How our coming together, our thinking together, our rejoicing together, our praying together, our weeping together, and our singing to- a gether, have knit us together ! How many pews have been knit to pews ! How many families have been prepared to live better ! How many men have made acquaintances of each other ! How many have gone out in bands to work together ! And how many there are in whom, though you scarcely know them, you take a warm interest — toward whom your heart is like the orient !"
Of Plymouth Church Mr. Beecher is still (1882) the pastor ; and it is safe to say that he will remain its pas- tor till the end of his active life. Several attemj)ts have been made to draw him away to other fields, without success. After thirty-five years of public ministry there is no sign of either diminished power or diminished popularity. The church is always crowded, 4
50 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
except for a few weeks in tlie latter part of the sum- mer, when the residents of Brooklyn have left their city homes for the country and Mr. Beecher has not yet left the pulpit for his usual summer vacation.
The spiritual resiilts of his ministry are evidenced by constant conversions and accessions to his church, and by its practical ministry of good works and active Christian philanthropy. Whenever he speaks else- where than in his own church (and no speaker is in greater request for public gatherings) he is always sure of a crowded house and a warm reception ; and it is certain that he is nowhere more a favorite with all classes than in his own home ; and this in spite of the great effort to drive him fi'om his pulpit and the city of his home.
I do not propose to enter in these pages upon any detailed recital of the ah-eady too familiar facts in re- spect to what is known as " the great scandal," a scan- dal through which it is certain no other man in America could have lived and retained his position and influence. In 1870 Mr. Beecher was the editor- in-chief and a principal owner of the Christian Union, which was then rapidly increasing in circu- lation and influence. He had formerly been editor of the Independent, a journal of similar character, but had resigned in favor of Mr. TUton, who for some years was extremely successful and popular, but had by this time fallen somewhat under a cloud. Finding his own morality impeached, he adopted the peculiar defence of darkly insinuating that Mr. Beecher was open to grave suspicion in the same direction, and finally formed a determination to drive him from his
School House in Whitinsville, Mass., in which Mr. Beecher taught in 1831 and 1833.
Church in Indianapolis in which Mr. Beecher preached.
MR. BEECHER FALSELY ACCUSED. 53
pulpit and from the city, by means of an accusation of some vaguely defined offence to Mr. Tilton's own family. This offence he soon stated to be one of im- proper advances, which Mrs. Tilton had repelled ; and while he whispered this to his friends, he persuaded Mr. Beecher, through a famous " mutual friend," that Mrs. Tilton had so far misconstrued his friendship for her as to be the victim of a morbid passion herself, which had utterly wrecked her happiness and health. Believing that this would never have happened if he had been sufficiently discreet himself, Mr, Beecher, with the instinct of a true gentleman, overwhelmed himself with reproaches, both by word and by letter. Mr. Tilton professed to be entirely satisfied, and invited Mr. Beecher to resume friendly relations ; but, at the same time, continued for years to whisper suggestions that there was some hidden fault, which would be dis- astrous to Mr. Beecher if exposed. At last, a direct charge against both Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton was made in some disreputable newspapers. But not until June, 1874, did Mr. Tilton himself assume any respon- sibility for a charge. So long as the charge was whis- pered privately or published only in a disreputable sheet, without a responsible accuser, neither Mr. Beecher nor the public paid any attention to it. As soon as it assumed a definite form with a responsible accuser, Mr. Beecher submitted the whole matter to the investigation of a committee, consisting of some of the most eminent and respected members of his church and society. They reported unanimously, after giving Mr. Tilton a full hearing, that the charge was entirely false ; and this report was unanimously
54 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
adopted by the cliurcli and congregation, Mr. Tilt on tlien brought an action at law upon the same charge. After a trial lasting six months, in which the only evidence against him consisted of the letters already referred to (which were ambiguous in meaning) and alleged verbal confessions, which he under oath ex- plicitly denied, the jury were discharged without a verdict, standing nine for unconditional acquittal of Mr. Beecher, one for unconditional conviction, and two who voted on some ballots for conviction, on others for acquittal. This suit was never tried again. The "mutual friend," however, brought another suit against Mr. Beecher, involving the same questions ; but when it was pushed to trial by Mr, Beecher' s counsel, the plaintiff became so well satisfied that he must fail, that he discontinued the suit, paying all costs.
The regularity of the church proceedings by which Mr. Beecher was acquitted having been questioned, a council of Congregational churches and ministers was called by Plymouth Church to advise with it respecting its proceedings. It was probably the largest council ever called by any church in the his- tory of Congregationalism, and it included repre- sentative men from all sections of the country, many of whom came to the council with strong prejudices against Mr. Beecher on theological grounds, and a considerable number entertaining serious suspicions, founded on previous public reports, respecting his moral integrity. While this council did not undertake a direct investigation of the charges, a task impossible of execution by such a body without power to compel
THE FAMOUS COUNCIL. 55
the attendance of witnesses or to administer an oath, it examined into the whole history of the proceedings of the church with respect to the case, subjecting Mr. Beecher to a searching cross-fire of qiiestions from all members of the council in an open session lasting for several days. After nearly a week spent in a most thorough and scrutinizing inquiry, it extended to Mr. Beecher, without a dissenting voice, the Christian fellowship and sympathy of the churches, and expressed the confidence of the entire council in his integrity. It appointed a tribunal of distin- guished jurists, wholly outside of Plymouth Church, ' to investigate any charges which might be made ; but no charges were ever brought before them. The New York and Brooklyn association of ministers, to which Mr. Beecher belonged, also appointed a committee of investigation, which publicly called for charges or evidence implicating him. To this public demand there was no resiDonse, and the association unanimously declared him entitled to Christian confidence and fellow- ship. The whole affair has been somewhat compli- cated in the public mind by Mr. Beecher' s unwisdom in the selection of some confidential friends at this trying period of his life, prior to the first publication of the scandal, and by his evident endeavor to keep it from becoming public, an endeavor not only not strange but abundantly justified by the injurious effects of its publication. Perplexity and doubt have undoubtedly been left in the minds of some who have never had the opportunity to ^investigate with care the charges and the singularly inadequate evidence on which they were based ; and suspicion
56 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
has been enhanced in some quarters, doubtless, by personal, political, and theological prejudices ; but as the final result of the whole matter, Mr. Beecher retains his position as the most eminent preacher and one of the great thought leaders in America, while his princijjal accuser, who at one time occupied a foremost position in journalism and literature, has almost disap- peared from public recognition.
The home life of a public man is not public property, and I have no right to introduce others to Mr. Beecher' s home. But those who have known him in the privacy of personal intercourse, and especially those who have seen him in his own home, surrounded by his grand- children, will always think that no one less privileged has truly known Mr. Beecher. His children are grown and married and have homes of their own. In winter he lives with his elder son, Henry Barton Beecher, in Brooklyn ; in the summer he lives at his country resi- dence at Peekskill, where the same son lives with him. He personally supervised the erection and interior dec- orations of this house, desiring, as he says, to express himself in an idealized American home. The foundations of this home were laid when, somewhat over twenty years ago, Mr. Beecher bought a farm at Peekskill, two miles or more back from the river, and occupied the little, low cottage that stood on the place. Near by rose the hill with the commanding view, where the present residence stands, and from the first this hill was re- garded as the site of a possible house, an air-castle, to be made the perfect Christian home. Meanwhile, as opportunity and time allowed, nature was invited to prepare surroundings for the imaginary house and
HOME AT PEEKSKILL. 57
eagerly accepted the invitation. The world was asked for trees and sent them, so that to-day the farm has one of the rarest and finest collection of trees and shrubs to be found in any private American demesne. England, Europe, China, Japan, the United States, all have been laid under tribute, and as a result there are two or three hundred varieties of trees and shrubs ; over twenty different maples, as many varieties of pines, and great beds of azaleas, rhododendrons, and the choicest ornamental flowering growths. The house is architecturally pleasing, but neither obtrusive nor ostentatious ; a basement of granite ; a two-storied superstructure of brick, a many-gabled roof, and a broad veranda — these are the features. The interior is a study in the combined beauty, simplicity, and har- mony of the rooms, for while each room possesses an individuality of its own, each yet lives in art fellowship with its neighbor. There is no paint in the house from garret to cellar, except in the vestibule ; the wood- work is all of natural woods — cherry on the first floor, ash on the second, pine in the attic. The mantels are of wood decorated with tiles, and walls and ceilings are papered, with patterns which Mr. Beecher him- self selected. While there are assuredly costlier houses imperiously and loudly demanding admiration, it is doubtful if there was ever one which by exquisite harmony of proportion and treatment more modestly invited it. Some one has characterized the great Eu- ropean cathedrals as "frozen music." Mr. Beecher' s home is a pastoral sym]3hony. Here he has a delight- ful retreat during the summer from the toils of his public work throughout the major portion of the year ;
58 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
here when the toils of his life are over, may he enjoy a well-earned leisure in a prolonged old age, surrounded by his friends and by those who are the best and most enjoyed of all his friends— groups of merry little children.
CHAPTEE III.
MR. BEECHER AS A PREACHER.
Mr. Beecher's career as a preacher has been with- out a parallel in the history of the Church in America. For thirty-five years he has preached in the metropolis of the country ; in the same pulpit ; with no consider- able rest ; with very rare exchanges ; in the same com- munity ; and to a congregation in which there are not a few who have been regular attendants for a large part of this third of a century. During all this time the church has been always crowded ; every sitting taken ; the aisles full ; frequently all standing-room occupied. To accommodate the demand for seats the pew-holders have generally consented to vacate their seats in the evening, so that every Sunday Mr. Beecher preaches to two congregations ; and it is no exaggera- tion to say that he has employed as much influence to induce his own people to stay away Sunday night as most ministers do to get them out to church. During a larger part of this time his sermons havQ been re- ported in full in one or two newspapers, at times in three or four, and partially in several others ; so that to repeat a sermon was practically impossible. He has seen the whole aspect of both public questions and theological problems change in this third of a century ; but the tide has not stranded him, and he is still
60 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
looked up to by a large body of progressive ministers ill the orthodox churches as their leader ; while his always bold and fearless and sometimes erratic utter- ances have not separated him from the evangelical con- nections and affiliations in which his spiritual sympa- thies as well as his birth and education hold him. Out of his ministry and in connection with it have grown Tip three Sunday-schools in Brooklyn, which were models when they were organized, and are still studied as patterns of what Sunday-schools may be and do. All three are liberally supported by the church. The name of Plymouth Church has been given to numer- ous Congregational churches all over the land, and the essential spirit and doctrine of its X)ulpit is taught in innumerable pulpits of both that and other denomina- tions. The sjoiritual work of the church has kept pace with its organic growth ; and while sporadic revivals, so-called, are less common in its history than for- merly, it is no uncommon thing at the Spring commun- ion to see a hundred converts sitting doA\Ti for the first time at the Lord's table. The power of this joreacher has been deep, wide-spread, and permanent ; and these three elements are all that are needed to demonstrate the reality of pulpit power. However men may differ as to its Dolue, its extent cannot be questioned. The study of such a pulpit j)henomenon is as valuable as it is interesting, even though there may be elements in the genius of the preacher which defy analysis.
1. The Sources of Ids Power. — Pre-eminent among the sources of Mr. Beecher's power stands his vital FAITH. In this respect he ranks with Paul, Luther, Wesley, Channing, with all men who have produced
LIFE OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. 61
great moral and spiritual results and whose moral and sx)iritual powers liave been founded on unwavering vital faith. Mr. Beecher is one who walks with God, "* who carries with him continually a conscious presence of God as of a friend, whose thoughts turn instinctive- ly and naturally to God, and who draws his life from God. The means of attaining this Divine companion- ship are, with different men, through different faculties ; they look out upon God through different soul-win- dows ; they approach by different avenues of thought and spmtual emotion. Mr. Beecher finds the fullest realization of companionshij^ through ideality and love, and its result is shown in his preaching. The sx:)irit of Christ imbues every sermon, and allegiance to Christ underlies them all. His texts are mostly from the New Testament ; in the New Testament largely from the Gospels. He owed his conversion, or at least his coming out into the clear light of day, to a reading of the life of Christ in one of the Gospels at a single sitting, and ever since that event he has been studying that life and unfolding his theology and his ethics from it. It is not merely the illumination of incidents of Gospel narrative, nor his inspiring faith in the Divine origin of the Gospel and Him whose life it records, that is the power of his preaching, but above all things else it is a certain indescribable but invaluable living sympathy with Christ, the result of years of study, of i)rayer, and of Christian experience.
A secondary element of his power is his intellect- ual INSIGHT, or, as Dr. R. S. Storrs has called it, "men- tal sensibility, emotional responsiveness. ' ' His mind is quick in action, far-seeing, arriving at truths, not by
62 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
logical processes, but by intuitions, and in this respect resembles the penetration of mind of a clear-headed woman, or still more the prophetic powers of the ancient Hebrew seers. This is at once a source of de- fect and excellency in his preaching. His keen insight will discover a distant glowing point of truth to which he at once attains, o'erleaping all the intermediate by- ways of logic and sequence, over which less brilliant minds must travel at slower pace to reach an under- standing of the final principle. He will present a truth which at the moment he perceives, with little or no effort to show its relation to other truths, and there- fore excej^tion will be taken to the logic and consis- tency of his preaching. These exceptions will rarely be valid however, for as all truth is really consistent, the inconsistencies of Mr. Beecher are those of expres- sion and form of statement, not of the fundamental and essential principles of truth.
While this intellectual activity has its defects it is of inestimable value in producing a vigor of mind which, says Dr. R. S. Storrs, " has made him apt and ready for every occasion ; that responsiveness which is called for in every minister, but which has been called upon in him more than in any other man, perhaps, in the whole American pulpit, during the last twenty -five years. He has never been found wanting in readiness for the occasion, no matter what the subject may have been, or what the scene. His mind has been full of vigor, and has kindled spontaneously^, by collision with persons, or with themes, or with circumstances, when- ever the occasion has been presented."
Akin to this intellectual insight, although not the
INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY. 63
same, is the wide extent and the keenness of his imag- inative FACULTIES. He has the power of imaging, of presenting in concrete and, so to speak, visible forms, the moral meanings of beauty and deformity. It is the unique faculty of not only perceiving "ser- mons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything," but the still rarer power of presenting these truths to other men, and educating a duller mind to perceive them for itself.
This element of his productions meets with most im- mediate recognition and fullest treatment at the hands of writers on Mr. Beecher's preaching, and it will therefore be pardoned if rather long extracts are intro- duced here from those who have said the best things in the best way about his imagination.
Prof. ISToah Porter writes: "Mr. Beecher is emi- nently imaginative. His jDower of drawing ideal pict- ures of the mind's eye, and of gilding them with the sunlight of his own warm heart, is marvellous, if it be judged from the images of a single discourse. But w^hen estimated by the streams of sermons, speeches, and lectures which seem to flow unceasingly from his fertile fancy in inexhaustible variety, it astonishes us by its productive power, as well as by the copious and felicitous dictation which this creative x)ower has ever at command,"
Prof. Hoppin discourses at greater length ujoon the imaginative quality of Mr. Beecher' s mind in the fol- lowing extract : *
* Henry Ward Beecher. Prof. James M. Hoppin. New Englander, Vol. 29, 1870.
64 " HENRY WARD BEECHER.
" We see in him as in tlie old preachers and prophets the high moral uses of the imagination. He has the poet's quick eye to see the spiritual sense in the home- liest things, in the most common facts and events. These are not always, it is true, of a highly religious character. Every one who has been a boy is delighted by the humorous description of a school- boy on a Sat- urday afternoon as he roams the fields and woods with an old rusty gun whose trigger is hopelessly out of order, a-nd who makes heroic efforts of achievements under immense difiiculties. Such an illustration forces a smile, perhaps broadening into a laugh, on the most solemn face, but it is by no means sure that wholesome humor in the piilpit, when it comes naturally, when sudden and irresistible, and when it is made subser- vient to more earnest objects, is always out of place. The mediaeval j^reachers, Latimer, Luther, and most of the old reformers, did not think so. At least this is Mr. Beecher' s effective way often of getting a hearing, of making his speech vivid, of rousing attention, of giving truth an incisive force, darting it into the open and unguarded place. Like Shakespeare, he first makes the people laugh and then weep ; as he says in his characteristic illustration (not this we believe a pulpit one) of a milk-pan filled with milk, that to tip it on one side is of a certainty to insure a correspond- ing rise on the other. This is very hazardous in such serious work as preaching, and few can imitate Mr. Beecher in this, and doubtless many are justly offended even in him. But who is there that cannot feel the beauty and force of such a natural and simple illustra- tion as the f ollovsdng from the sermon on ' The Prob-
PULPIT HUMOR. 65
lem of Joy and Suffering in Life ' ? ' When the rude ox or fierce wind has broken off the shrub, and laid it down on the ground lacerated and torn, it lies there but a few hours before the force of nature in the stem and in the root begins to root ; and some new bud» shoot out ; and before the summer shall have gone round, the restorative effort of nature will bring out on that shrub other branches. And shall the heart of man be crushed, and God send sweet influences of comfort from above to inspirit it, and that heart not be able to rise above its desolateness ' ? Mr. Beecher is a poet, and it takes something of a poet to preach Christ's gospel. Who cannot understand the rough vigor of words like these : ' If you choose to take a pole and stir up men from the bottom, you will find plenty of mud ;' or of the graphic and shrewd figure of digging up a tree and cutting off its long anchoring and hold tap-root, in the sermon entitled ' The Victo- rious Power of Faith ? ' Illustrations so fresh, apt, timely, natural, forcible, form an element of style that may be called its vital expression, and which is, after all, nothing more than stating truth itself in such liv- ing forms that it comes home to the common mind, and, while it pleases, fastens as with a nail."
Keen and comprehensive as are these analyses of Prof. Porter and Prof. Hoppin, that of the Rev. Wil- liam M. Taylor is even more graphic and apposite.*
" Another peculiarity that distinguishes Mr. Beecher, and one which largely contributes to that originahty
* Henry Ward Beecher. Kev. Wm. Taylor. Scottish Review, October, 1859.
66 HENRY WARD BEE HER.
of wliich we have spoken, is to be found in the power- ful grasp and wide range of his imagination. In this respect, we believe him to be, if not the first, at least in the first line of the preachers of his day. He is a true poet, albeit, so far as we are aware, he is entirely innocent of verse. Many of these sparkling fragments have as much of the creative element in them as would make the fortune of a score of poet laureates. To use one of his own comparisons, they are like beautiful sj)ring flowers, full of fragrant perfume, and worth more by far than acres of ' the dried hay ' which is stacked up in the pages of our would-be poets. He appears to be equally at home in the beautiful, the sublime, and the terrible ; but he is most in love with beauty. When he chooses, he can array himself in the rough garment of an ancient prophet, and bring before his hearers a vision of awful grandeur and ap- palling power ; and there are many passages in his ad- mirable Lectures to Young Men which are almost unequalled for the vividness with which, they bring dark life-j^ictures before the mind, and the weird spell with which they bind the reader, until, at the close, a cold shudder runs through- the frame, and the very hair is made to stand on end. The description of the progress and fate of the gamHer, with its four scenes and tragic end, is of the most graphic and dramatic character, and we know of few things in pulpit elo- quence which may be compared with the peroration of the lecture in which it is given. It reminds us of our great dramatist more than of any preacher ; and when uttered from the pulpit, it must have fallen like a thunderbolt upon the audience. But, though thus
EXQUISITE CRITIC OF ART. 67
a61e, like Prospero, to conjure np the tempest when he pleases, he delights rather to charm with the beau- tiful. He may occasionally visit Sinai mth its crash- ing thunder, but his dwelling-place is on Mount Zion the ' beautiful ; ' besides the ' waters of Shiloh that flow softly ; ' and his articles and discourses abound in the liveliest conceptions and combinations of beauty. There is in the ' Summer of the Soul,' 'a rhajDsody of the pen upon the tongue,' in the concluding paragraph of which we have a series of the most delightful imagin- ings, in which one follows another, like shower after shower of variated beauty, in the best species of fire- works. The possession of such a glorious imagination, too, has enabled him to understand and appreciate the creative works of others. No man has a truer sympa- thy with poetry than he, though he seldom quotes a line of it. The siglit of a fine painting will transport him into rapture, or melt him hi to tears ; and the strains of music, like those of Handel or Beethoven, or Mendelssohn, make his heart vibrate with responsive chords. He is qualified, from his own imagination, for being an exquisite critic of the fine arts ; and some- times, in his discourses and essays, he has given us specimens of his ability in this respect, which manifest the most refined taste, coupled with a most discrimi- nating judgment. There is in the first series of the *Life Thoughts' a comparison of the 71st Psalm to one of Beethoven's symphonies, which, for its own inherent beauty, as well as for its truthful description of that which is at all times most difficult to describe, must be admitted to be in the highest style of criti- cism ; and when he ventures to speak of the ' bards of 5
68 HENHV WARD BEECIIER.
the Bible,' it is in such a way as to mark at once liis strong sympathy with their impassioned utterances, and his nice appreciation of the differences which dis- tinguish them. ^
' ' But this is not all. The faculty of imaginative in- sight, which he possesses in such a high degree, enables him to see most wonderfully into those analogies be- tween the external and the internal, which it is ever the proj^erty of genius to bring to light. Hence his discourses are like strings of pearls. They are full of the finest illustrations, drawn from every source, and rising from the speaker's heart like water from a foun- tain. This is indeed their distinctive peculiarity — they are thoroughly spontaneous ; they are not laid aside, and hoarded up, as we have known some men to do, until an opportunity occurs for using them ; neither are they the result of the soul-travail of laborious effort, but they spring up out of the subject like way- side flowers, which are plucked as he passes, and given in all their freshness and fi^agrance to the companions of his journey. Nor does their naturalness strike us more than their abundance. There seems to be no limit to the exuberance of his fancy, or the wealth of Ms imagination.
" 'For rhetoric, he cannot ope
His mouth but out there iiies a trope.' "
Supplemental to his faith, his intellectuality, and his imagination, is his HUMAisriTY, It is the value which he places upon man, the solicitude for material comfort and spiritual welfare, the enthusiasm of his devotion to freedom, that have characterized him as a
INTENSELY HUMAN. 69
man of great emotion and broad sympathies. "What- ever interests men, interests him ; whatever stirs men' s hearts, stirs his heart deeply. This emotive power, this qnick responsiveness to appeal, this susceptibility to human experiences, is at once the generating and propelling power in Mr. Beecher. It is the steam and force of his activity, it gives fire and passion to all that he utters, and brings him into close relations with all classes of men. In brief, he is an intensely human preacher.
Dr. R. S. Storrs, in his estimate of Mr. Beecher' s sources of power, says of this characteristic : "I should put next, I think, his quick and deep sympathy with men ; his wonderful intuitive perception of moods of mind, which make these stand out before him, like a procession passing in the street. You say, ' This is genius.'' Of course it is ; but it is the genius you ob- serve, not of the dramatist or the poet ; it is the genius of the great preacher, who catches his suggestions, his inspiration even from the eyes or the faces, shining or tearful, of the people before him. In a lower sense, in a sense how infinitely lower and yet m a true sense, we may say that a man who has that power is like the Master who knew what was in men ; who discerned it intuitively ; who made every precept, every promise, every instruction, every invitation, drive at that precise state of mind which he saw palpable, and present, and personal before him."
This human sympathy can only come from a nature which includes in its breadth and generosity all classes of men, the poor and the rich alike, with whom he joys in their gladness and weeps in their sorrow. "No
70 HENRY WAPD BEECHER.
preacher, ' ' says Dr. Haweis, * ' ' ever impressed us more with the feeling of living with the life of his people. He wishes to be one with them, not under- rating their difficulties, not imposing imaginary and disheartening standards of life and conduct, but with each new standard supplying a motive power, that so none may put their hand to the plough and turn back. Although he would always rather rejoice with them than suffer with them, he is content to bear their sor- rows, hear their confessions, and be depressed by their doubts and troubles. There is something almost Pauline in the way he seems at times to lift the bur- den of each one individually, to hold on to the souls of his people as one who cannot bear to let them go, whilst feeling that they must go, and are going ' from the great deep to the great deep.' "
Professor Hoppin says to like effect : "The elements of common- sense, of reason, of nature, of a large hu- manity, are in such preaching. When he says of a child that as soon as he knows how to love father and mother, and to say 'Dear father,' and ' Dear mother,' then he knows how to love and worship God — people say * That is true, ' and they think they have thought like this themselves before Mr. Beecher thought it, notwith- standing that they have acquired a new idea. He thus makes the people a part with himself ; he takes them into his confidence ; he strikes into the real current of their thinking ; he speaks as if speaking out of their thought. There is a strong propulsion
* Henry Ward Beecher. H. E. Haweis. Contemporary Review, Vol. 19, 1872.
INTENSELY HUMAN. 71
given to his words by the combined unconscious con- sent of many minds who, as it were, listen apiDroving- ly as if to their own ideas. He has indeed found the great secret of popular power, such as John the Bap- tist had, such as St. Bernard had, such as Luther had. He is a ' king of men ' in moral and spiritual things. He takes hold of all classes. . . . He is encour- aging to those in doubt. He is a hope-bringer. He believes in man. He helps men. He is sympathetic to every kind of mind. He does not croak or scold. He is not solemn and stately, though he is in earnest, and sometimes terribly so."
This human sympathy, and the value which he places upon the human soul and its greatest interests, is the quality of Mr. Beecher's life and preaching which has, above all other characteristics, gained for him his renown as a preacher for and to the people. It has been a subject for the most expanded and most detailed treatment in all analyses of Mr. Beecher's preaching, and the extracts quoted here are but a small part of the great store of writings on this topic.
A fifth element of Mr. Beecher's power is his large fund of COMMON-SENSE. Faith, intellectual insight, imagination, humanity, all would be less prompt agents in his work as a preacher of the people, were it not for the sustaining power of his common-sense, which maintains an even balance between practical illustration and poetical imagery.
It is the fine adjustment of his faculties, and the power of a neutralizing judgment, that keeps him wdth- in the sphere of his hearer's understanding, and that recalls him by an instinctive impulse when he is con-
72 HEXRY WARD BEECHER.
scious of too great a flight of fancy or imagination. Many who lack this quality of level-headedness, whose efficiency is impaired by a preponderance of idealism, are termed visionary, and exert but a small degree of popular influence, but he who possesses this mental equipoise has that jDOwer of dispensing comfort and contentment which warrants brilliancies of thought and speech that weary us, "no more," as says Dr. R, S. Storrs, "than do the red banners of the cardinal- flower by the mossy brook-side, or the gorgeous flame of the golden-rod amid the ferns and brake." " The late Mr. F. W. Robertson," says an English re- viewer, estimating this characteristic of Mr. Beech- er' s preaching, ' ' managed to draw the teeth of many an offensive dogma, by attaching a highly spiritual meaning to the doctrinal letter. This is not always Mr. Beecher's method, but the most exasperating shib- boleths become harmless in his hands, owing to his singular faculty of seeing a common-sense side to every question : in short, his gospel is emphatically the gos- pel of common-sense. In his highest flights of thought, in his deepest expressions of religious feeling, he never loses a certain solid sobriety. To combine this with an impetuous temperament and a burning enthusiasm, such as he undoubtedly possesses, is a rare if not an original gift. How well Mr. Beecher employs thought and passion, common-sense, and a quiet, mystical re- ligious fervor, perhaps they only can quite estimate who, to use a slang expression, 'sit under him.' "
The employment of humor as an element in preach- ing has often been excepted to. Humor is not, how- ever, a characteristic of Mr. Beecher alone, for other
SARCASTIC BUT GENIAL. 73
great preachers are open to tlie same accusation. The wit and humor of Mr. Beecher, although keenly sar- castic on occasions, is invariably tempered by genial good -feeling, a quality that is often lacking in the sar- casm of his contemporaries. The true apprehension of this ]3oint, however, is given by Dr. Taylor in the ar- ticle previously quoted from.
"But we must pass on to speak of Mr. Beecher' s humor, without some mention of which any sketch of him would be signally incomplete. This power is pos- sessed by him in large measure, and, like everything else about him, it is jDerfectly natural. He never goes out of his way to say a funny thing, nor does he ever say it merely for fun's sake, for it is with him a power more telling than the artillery of logic. We grant, indeed, that ridiciile is not always a right test of truth, . and we are disposed to admit that, in ordinary circum- stances, the puljjit is not the place for the disjjlay of humor ; yet there are some arguments which can only be met by a reductio ad ahsurdum, and it does strike us as somewhat strange that preachers who, like Rowland Hill, Berridge, Spurgeon, and many others, have given loose rein to their bit have been among the most eminently successful in their ministry. Whether this may be in consequence of their wit or in spite of it, we are not prepared to say, we simply in- dicate the fact ; but we fearlessly express our convic- tion that a witty something, even in the pulpit, is by no means so sinful as a witless nothing, however solemn it may sound. Mr. Beecher's humor is always ex- pressive, but it sometimes borders on the coarse, and in this, perhaps, more than in anything else, one feels
74 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
disposed to qnestion the fineness of his taste ; but, then, much allowance must be made for a man of his natural temperament and rollicking disposition. He says many of these things, we believe, before he is aware that anything out of place has escaped him, and in justice to his reputation it must be mentioned that many of his most grotesque and humorous expressions have occurred in connection with the public intimations he makes, and not at all in the body of his sermons. It is his custom to make such announcements before he gives out his text, and sometimes he will talk for half an hour on topics which come thus incidentally before him, in a strain of bold and caustic criticism, which must often try severely the gravity of his audi- ence. The great redeeming feature of his wit is the sturdy common-sense that constantly pervades it ; yet it must be confessed, that the very sharpness of his ' hits ' tends, however paradoxically it may seem, to blunt the effect Avhich they produce, and may not un- frequently take away from the power of appeals which otherwise would be absolutely irresistible. When, however, his humor is under the restraint of his pen, it is everything that can be desired, and the fine taste which, in the heat of extempore utterance, is for the time dethroned assumes its wonted sway."
His common-sense, his balance of faculties, in spite of the vehemence of his emotions, the clearness of his in- sight, and the brilliance of his imagination, hold him in close relations vdth the actualities of life. He is wings to the song, but he does not fly so far away from earth that he cannot be seen and heard. His common-sense, in spite of his ideality, makes him a practical teacher.
CHAPTEE ly.
METHODS OF STUDY.
There is a very general impression, that Mr. Beecher is a brilliant man with a vivid imagination, a paint- er's power of description, a genial humor, a large heart fnll of fervid feeling, and that he is in conse- quence a brilliant off-hand extempore speaker ; but that he is no student, is the common remark of innu- merable critics, who would have us believe that this ever-flowing scoring is never filled, yet never gets dry ; that he is a sort of widow's cruse, that supplies un- ceasingly, but is never supx:)lied. Young men, am- bitious to emulate his genius, imagine they will do it best by learning to talk brilliantly, and never guess that it is equally essential to success to have something to say. In fact, however, Mr. Beecher is no mean stu- dent. That he is a peculiar and somewhat irregular one, that he studies by moods and not by the hour, is true ; but it is also true that, as a rule, he never speaks on any subject which he has not made his own by previous study ; and that there are few minis- ters in the New York pulpit who are more familiar with the course of modern thought than he, though there are many who keep a better account of what is in the books, and where to find it. And although it is fair to assume that he is now drawing largely
76 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
from accumulated resources, as most men do who liave passed the line of sixty years, he is still a very con- siderable student, both of men and of books.
He is, in the first place, and has been from the begin- ning, a hard student of ministerial helps. In his early ministry, perhaps before, he made a careful study of English Literature, and of the celebrated English cler- gymen. "I was," says Mr. Beecher, speal-dng of his €arly experience at Lawrenceburgh, ' ' a great reader of the old sermonizers. I read old Robert South through and through. I saturated myself with South ; I formed much of my style and of my handling of texts on his methods. I obtained a vast amount of instruction and assistance from others of these old sermonizers, who were as familiar to me as my own name. I read Barrow, Howe, Sherlock, Butler, and Edwards partic- ularly." The best analysis we ever heard of the great preachers of England, we heard once in a private con- versation from him, in which he pointed out which preacher to study for the use of adjectives, which for the purest Anglo-Saxon, and which for other proper- ties of style. He also gave the best discrimination be- tween Dante and Milton we have ever heard or seen.
Not only has he been a student of the Greek and Latin classic authors and of English Literature, but the whole range of Literature comes within his hori- zon. A friend once met him in a bookstore poring over a medical book. "Going to turn doctor, Mr. Beecher?" said he inquiringly. "No, sir," said Mr. Beecher promptly; "but I study everything— except theology." The latest works on mental science are on Ms shelves, and their leaves are cut, and their edges
HIS GENIUS FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE. 77
show signs of use. His seeming contempt for theology is not for the science of religion, but for that form of It which is borrowed from the scholastic period, and which abounds in modern theological treatises ; his contempt is not for abstruse study, nor for abstruse science, but for what, whether rightly or wrongly, he regards as science falsely so called.
Coupled with study of all sorts of literature, is a rare aptitude for study. His genius for acquiring is as great as his genius for imparting. It is reported that Mrs. Beecher has said that he can go into a book- store and come out again, and give a good account of the information the books contain, from having read their titles as they stand on the shelves, a divination as startling as the power attributed to He Quincey, of translating his morning newspaper into Greek, for the sake of recreation. His power of rapid absorption is illustrated by an incident in my own j^ersonal ex- perience with Mr. Beecher. I once had occasion to submit to him the proof-sheets of a new work of over two hundred pages on certain aspects of phrenology. We were at dinner ; while the rest of us were finis iiing the second course he took a seat by the window, turned over the pages, passed on their contents, stop- ping here and there to read with more care a page or paragraph, and to criticise or commend, and at the close gave us an analysis of the book, which most men would have acquired only in a morning's study.
We believe he read Fronde's History of England be- tween the dinner courses. Such readino; is an unsocial habit which we do not recommend, but it is one which certainly never would be fallen into by a man who was
78 HENRY WARD BEECHER,
'' no student.' ' We do not think Mr. Beeclier pretends to be a Hebrew scholar ; in fact we have a strong recol- lection of his somewhere disavowing Hebrew scholar- ship. But he is no mean proficient in the Greek of the New Testament. We do not suppose he would contest the palm for supremacy with the Greek professor who, on his death-bed, said he had given his life to the eluci- dation of the first declension, but he had made a mis- take, he should have confined himself to the dative case. But his chief reliance among commentators is Alford's Greek Testament, which is comprehensible only to one who has at least a respectable familiarity with the Greek ; and that he is so familiar is evident alike by occasional sermons, and by his "Life of Christ," He has also a habit of relying upon special- ists in different departments for information on special points, and by their aid verifies his own impressions or less thorough information. The gold which they have dug out of the mine he mints and puts into cir- culation. The best evidence of his accuracy is the fact, that speaking and writing on so large a variety of topics, and as a combatant in controversies so many and so hot, it is very rare that critics have been able to prove him at fault in any important fact, whether stated as an argument or used as an illustration.
Turning from Mr. Beecher's general methods as a student to his more special methods of pulpit prepa- ration, he exhibits three characteristics which have in- tensified his power as a preacher.
By far the greater portion of his time is spent in gen-_ eral study and a much less proiDortion of time in special preparation for particular sermons than most
HIS GENIUS FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE. 79
ministers. He is always studying, whereas his habit, at least in later years, has been to prepare his Sunday morning sermon on Sunday morning, and his Sunday evening sermon in the afternoon, selecting his text, analyzing his subject, making his skeleton and notes, and writing, whatever he does write, on Sunday.
The Rev. S. B. Halliday, of Brooklyn, L. I., gives the following account from a long and intimate association with Mr. Beecher: "To many, indeed, Mr. Beecher's preparations for the pulpit will seem as remarkable as almost anything else that may be written or said of him. The manuscript taken to his pulpit is a mere brief, emphatically a skeleton. These notes could be written usually on a single note page. Earlier in his ministry, many of his sermons, if not all, were delivered from quite full manuscripts ; now only on very special occasions, perhaps half a dozen times in the last fifteen years, as when he has been severely criticised or cen- sured by the papers or pulpit, has he written out and read a reply to what had been said. Not infrequently his utterances on important points have been so grossly distorted as to be only caricatures, and these discourses were for the purpose of correcting misstatements, and were always carefully prepared. But such sermons are exceptional. He is a speaker rather than a writer ; and when he writes it is always at a heat, as it were, extemporaneously. I doubt if Mr. Beecher could be asked to do anything that would be more objection- able to him than to sit down to the table to write sev- eral hours a day through the week. I know several strong dislikes of his, but none other seems so invet- erate to me ; and if exigencies potent enough com-
80 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
bined to secure a promise to write regularly, I would not be willing to guarantee the pledge. This dislike may have something to do with the uniform brevity of his skeletons.
" I have never asked Mr. Beecher, but I have never seen anything that would lead me to suppose that he was at all guilty of studying after the manner of min- isters in general, and yet, in his way, I suppose him to be always studying, reading much, seeing much, hearing more, always and in all things a digger for facts, truths, illustrations, which are stored away, and so registered as to be ever available. No memory is more miserable than his in many directions, so that ordinary arrangements or appointments are quite nnreliable un- less written doAvn and some one made responsible as prompter. In other directions it would seem as if the things he needed were produced as if to order on all occasions. In sj)eaking he is never hesitant, except when the appearance is as if the provision was too abundant for the speaker's easy selection. Often it is quite apparent that when about to illustrate a point so many illustrations clamor for use as to be a perplexity.
' ' Idleness is as much a straiiger in Mr. Beecher' s brain as perhaps in that of any man's living. As much in recreation as at any time accumulation is going on. Many of the best sermons doubtless that Mr. Beecher has ever preached have been woven warp and woof from material gathered from the subsoiled furrow, the broadcasted seed, the growing and ripened grain, the fruits and flowers, forest and meadow, mountain and stream, trees and birds, flocks and herds, highways and hedges. The special or . mechanical preparation
NEVER PREACHES A POOR SERMON. 81
for the pulpit is made only immediately preceding the appointed time for service. This is true not only of sermons at home but of special discourses. On one occasion when he was to preach a dedication sermon he arrived rather late at the minister' s house ; after supper, and but a brief time before the service, he prepared his notes on the margin of a newspaper in tifteen or twenty minutes, preaching from them, as was represented to me, a sermon that held the almost breathless attention of the congregation from the be- ginning to the close, occupying more than an hour in delivery.
' ' I am sometimes asked if Mr. Beecher never preaches any poor sermons. My answer is I have four classifi- cations for his sermons. First : poor ; for Mtti very poor, but the opportunity seldom occurs to accuse him of preaching one of this variety. Second : he preaches a few that could be called for him no more than good ones. Third : much the larger part of his sermons are truly excellent and satisfying, and though absorb- ing from an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, or even more, people are not often discovered looking at the clock. Fourth : not infrequently a sermon is preached that is marvellous in power and eloquence, in which preacher and people are carried up heavenward together. Such was the character of a sermon which he preached one Sunday evening some eight or nine years since, on a passage in the 8th chapter of Romans. It seemed to me and to others as well as if Mr. Beecher had been given a new dispensation, that addi- tional visions of the glory and goodness of God in Jesus Christ were vouchsafed to him ; so that to say
82 HENEY WARD BEECHER.
the congregation were electrified seems very tame. For my own part, I found no time to attempt to de- termine whether I was in the body or out of it. When the service closed I had the desire to have the opportunity to lay hands on some calm, self-possessed, thoroughly good judge of preaching, that I might de- termine how much my judgment was affected by ex- citement and partiality. Looking over the house I saw Professor Stowe standing in the pastor's pew. Has- tening to him I said : ' Professor, what about that ser- mon \ ' Very deliberately he answered, ' The first half of it was the most wonderful thing I ever listened to ; but the thing that is most wonderful to me is how he prepared it. After dinner this noon, I was walking in the library, and when he came up I said, "Henry, I would like to have you preach from those words some time," to which he immediately responded, "Mayas well preach from them to-night as any time." ' He went to his afternoon sleep, came down toward six o' clock, took a cup of tea, went into his study, and made the preparation from which he preached this sermon. This sermon I of course place in the fourth class, and would as soon think of attempting to describe Niagara as to describe it, or its effects upon myself or others. I was very glad to have Professor Stowe speak as emphatically as he did. I think that in the fifteen years that I have heard Mr. Beecher preach I have never heard a sermon from him that in any respect ex- celled this one, prepared in less than two hours.
" Mr. Beecher places no value upon a manuscript, and after being used it may be obtained for the ask- ing. His sermons are never repeated. I do not be-
FACILITY OF PREPARATION. 83
lieve Mr. Beeclier could preach a sermon the second time so that those who heard it first would recognize it. He has a sort of contemj^t or disgust for what he has written or used. When it was first proposed to issue his sermons in volumes the understanding was that he should revise those that should be selected and prej)ared by the gentleman who was to edit them. I heard him say that when the first was sent to him at the farm, reading a little while he was so disgusted with it that he went to the window, gave it a kick, sat down and wrote the editor if he had not preached anything better worth publishing than that, not to send him any more, and added, 'I am never so re- minded of the dog returning to its vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire, as when I undertake to look at what I have written or preached.' Ordinarily in preaching very little attention is given to the notes or memoranda. Many times I have known them not to be looked at once from beginning to end. Some- times he appears to be reading for several minutes, and it is always with deliberation, and the statement of some particularly important point, and his eyes are not raised until the statement is completed. But all this time he is not reading, as I have ascertained again and again from his manuscripts, there being nothing written that would occupy a half minute in reading.
" The readiness of his facility of preparation is just as manifest in addresses on special occasions as in his own i)ulpit. He was requested to make an address at the anniversary of the American Missionary Association In the autumn of 1873. The services were held in the Congregational Church, Newark, of which Dr. Wm. B. 6
84 HENRY WARD BEECHER,
Brown was the pastor. Sitting in the pew Mr. Beecher listened perhaps twenty minutes to the proceedings, then covering his eyes with his hand for some two minutes, he took up one of the programmes and wrote on a blank leaf in pencil the following memoranda :
" ' I. Missionary work — highest of all or disinterested work. "'II. Of all great work going on now — this seems least — and for its lack of interest — the high- est power. 1 Cor. over again. " 'III. These men must he educated.
1. For their sake.
2. Liberty without education a curse.
3. For our own.
*''IV. America. God's test of Christianity.'
' ' The above is an exact copy of what he took into the pulpit, and which he threw in my lap when he came down, saying, ' There's my sermon. ' In the account of the proceedings published in the Society' s magazine for December is this allusion to the address :
" ' The speech of Mr. Beecher, in which many of his friends thought he surpassed himself, was so far ex- tempore that the notes for it were written after he entered the church, on the blank leaf of an " Order of Exercises," which he found in the seat. We exceed- ingly regret that no full report was taken of it, for it deserved a larger audience than that which listened to it — large as that was.' "
II. But rapid and brief as is Mr. Beecher' s for- mal preparation, he rarely, if ever, speaks on any subject unless he has made thorough study of it, a
A FsM- ly of CI 'fy /men.
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*' ' IV. America. God's test of Christianity.'
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I
A Family of Clergymen.
NEVER PREACHES A SERMON NOT RIPE. 87
study often extending over months and years. It is a mistake to suppose, as many do, that he speaks with- out preparation, because there are occasions when his oratory is the ]product of a sudden inspiration.
Mr. Beecher is conscientious above most men, not to speak on any subject unless he is familiar with it, nor unless he has a clear conception in mind of what he is going to say, and why he is going to say it. The preparation thus made, Mr. Beecher broods his sermon. He rarely or never preaches a sermon that is not ripe. He rarely or never breaks the shell before the bu-d is ready to come out. His sermons are never addled eggs. On his study-table there lies, or used to, a little note-book with flexible covers about the size of a sheet of commercial note-paper. It is full of sketches of sermons, hints, subjects, themes, with occa- sionally a fully drawn out skeleton. His pocket is generally hall full of letters, and on the back of from one to half a dozen of these, thoughts for sermons are jotted down as they strike him in the cars, the hotel, the steamboat. And there they wait till, revolved over and over in his fertile brain at all odd moments, they have drawn to themselves juice from much thinking and are ripe and mellow, and ready to be plucked and pre- sented.
Several years ago he was to preach an ordination sermon in New England. I was then carrying Harper's edition of Mr. Beecher' s sermons through the press, and meeting Mr. Beecher on the street, he said, "I think I shall preach a sermon at 's ordi- nation which you had better look at, on pulpit dynam- ics— that is, on the origin of pulpit power, and the
88 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
methods of pulpit ministration." When the sermon came ont it proved to be a description of the advantages and happinesses incidental to the ministry as a pro- fession. The next time I met him I asked for an ex- planation. "Where is that sermon on pulpit dynam- ics?" said I. "Oh, it wasn't ripe," he replied; "I shall get something out of it yet, however." And he has ; has got out of it what seems to us one of the best pieces of work of his life, the ' ' Yale Lectures on Preaching. ' ' Thus he rarely goes into the pulpit or on the platform with crude or unfonned thoughts. During the week, two or three topics lie in his mind as those from which he will, most probably, select his next Sabbath's discourses. His thoughts turn to them ; his eyes gather illustration for them ; his pencil some- times, though not often, jots them down. The sermon, however, is rarely definitely outlined in his mind until the Sabba,th comes. Then after breakfast he goes into his study, feels his various themes, takes one that seems ripest, skeletons the outline, selects his text, and makes his notes. But while he does not speak on any subject until he has thoroughly familiarized him- self with it, he then speaks with perfect abandon. All i^ his caution is exercised in the decision of the question ^ whether he will speak at all ; none in the actual speaking.
III. Mr. Beecher studies men as he would liter- ature, and indeed even more. If he desires information on any subject he seeks men who are eminent in the different departments of life, obtains their knowledge, assimilates it, and reproduces it with the stamp of his own mind and personality. This familiarity with men
STUDIES MEN. 89
in all walks of life is a chief element of his success, and thus one of the first conditions of his work in the pulpit or on the platform is a knowledge of his audience.
When he first visited England during the Civil War, he was besought to speak, but he persistently declined ; waited, during his travels, first in England, then on the continent ; studied the English temper ; studied the needs and sentiments of each separate locality; and then prepared for his campaign. Another man would have spent the time in writing one oration ; he spent it in unconsciously studying his audiences, so that when he came to his work, he made no two speeches alike, and adapted each one with marvellous slvill to the particular locality where it was uttered. It is thus that the study of human nature is not only an integral part but an essential part of his preparation for the pulpit. As a sharp-shooter studies his mark, Mr. Beecher studies his man. Some one in prayer- meeting alluding to one of his sermons and its effect, referred to the arrow shot at a venture. "I never shoot at a venture," said Mr. Beecher; "I always aim, though I often miss my mark and bring down unexpected game." When Mr. Beecher was about to deliver his famous course of lectures to young men in Indianapolis, which was then a great gambling centre, he succeeded in getting one of the gambling fraternity, and a leader among them, to visit his study. They spent the morning together, and the result was a sermon on gambling, the character of which is indicated by the following incident. A few evenings after its delivery, Mr. Beecher met a young man at
90 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
an evening party, who thought to crack a joke at the expense of the preacher. "How could you describe a gambling-saloon so accurately," said the young man, "if you have never been there ?" " How do you know it is accurate, if you have never been there?" re- plied Mr. Beecher. Rev. Wm. M. Taylor says : ' ' Those who know him best say that he studies his sermons in the shops and stores, in the streets, and in the ferry- boats ; and we believe it, for they are like the produc- tions of a man who has gone through the city with his eyes open. They seem to have been struck out of him, if we may use such an expression, by the sights he sees and the sounds he hears in the midst of that whirling tide of human life that bubbles and seethes and hisses and roars around him; and his purpose by them is to descend into its depths and bring up " thence the souls of struggling men, to him more precious far than the silver cup or glittering pearl in the diver's eye."
CHAPTER V.
MR. BEECHER'S theology.
In speaking of Mr. Beecher's theology, it miglit seem to be suflScient to i^rint simply some one of the several sermons wMch he has preached and published, in the course of his lifetime, defining his theological position. But it is always possible for the critic to assert that these sermons do not really embody the spirit and drift of his teaching ; that, intentionally or unintentionally, they are more conservative than the general course of his instructions. It is indeed not uncommon for j)ublic men to retreat, or at least to j)rovide a way of retreat, from positions taken in a moment of impulsive frank- ness, and which they find too far in advance for permanent occupancy. This is very common among political orators and it is not unloiown in the pulpit. Instead, therefore, of referring the reader to any of these general and comprehensive statements prepared and published by Mr. Beecher himself, I undertake the more difficult task of indicating Mr. Beecher's general theological position as exhibited in the whole course of his public ministry. In doing this I confine myself to no one epoch ; the quotations from various utterances, ranging through a third of a century, show what is certainly the case, that with changes of opinion respecting particular formulas, there has been a steady
92 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
increase of spiritual faitli, and an undiminislied hold lipon tlie great central truths of the Gospel as held by the great body of Evangelical teachers. That this is his own belief respecting himself is very certain from a comx)aratively recent sermon on Religious Doubt. '^
"There have been things which I supposed were true, but which year by year, as I learned what they were, and understood their measure and their worth, I have dropped one after another ; and yet the change has been, not in the direction of loss, but in the direction of gain. I differ from most of my brethren in the ministry who suspect my orthodoxy, not in that I have abandoned so much, but in that I have taken on so much."
Not only Mr. Beecher's methods of expression are peculiar to himself, but his system of j)hilosophy is also his own. And while isolated paragraphs taken from their connection might naturally enough seem to put him in antagonism to the Evangelical churches on some important points, any candid and comprehensive survey of his published sermons abundantly justifies his own declaration, that ' ' for twenty-five years, in newspapers, in x^rinted volumes, as well as from the pulpit, I have preached and printed, in every conceiv- able form, the truth of the inspiration of the sacred Scripture, the existence and government of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ as very God, the universal sinfulness of man, the atonement of Christ, the doctrine of a change of heart, the effi- cacious influence of the Holy Spirit in regeneration,
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Dec. 19th, 1880 ; published in Christian Union, Jan. 4th, 1881.
NOT INDIFFERENT TO CREEDS. 93
and tlie doctrine of retribution, both, here and here- after."*
Nor is it true, as often asserted, that Mr. Beecher is indifferent respecting belief, or hostile to creeds. His preaching has always been essentially doctrinal, em- phatically so during the last ten or fifteen years. He has again and again presented his own theological views in systematic form, the latest of these statements being a sermon entitled "A Statement of Belief," preached July 11th, 1880, published in the Christian Union for July 14th, 1880, and afterward reprinted in tract form.f He has repeatedly emphasized in sermons the importance of clear and careful thinking and of definite and positive belief. This is accompanied, how- ever, with a very emphatic and positive declaration that Christian faith is more than orthodox belief ; that men may be either better or worse than their creed ; that Z//(g, not oyinion, is the test of Christian experi- ence ; that if a man lives like a Christian he is to be recognized as a Christian without regard to the church or the creed to which he belongs ; that a great many of the questions about which theologians have quar-
* From a letter by Mr. Beecher to Eev. Mr. Morrison, editor of the Presbyterian Weekly, written in reply to one asking for information re- specting his theological views>. The letter bears date January 8th, 1878.
f Since this chapter was put in type Mr. Beecher, in withdrawing from the New York and Brooklyn Association of Congregational Ministers, has made a statement of his theological opinions which is reprinted in the closing pages of this book. This chapter remains unaltered, and thus the reader can judge for himself how far this general summary and Mr. Beecher's special statement of his views agree.
S4 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
relied are questions about wMcli they are wholly igno- rant, while concerning others belief is relatively unim- portant, because it produces no apjDreciable influence on character or conduct. But with these qualifications or limitations, if such they be, he lays great emphasis upon correctness of belief. A single quotation will suffice to represent his position on this subject.
"It makes all the difference in the world what you believe in respect to those truths that are connected with godliness, with purity of thought, purity of mo- tive, purity of disposition. You must believe right about them. About those truths that are related to the ordi- nances of the Church ; to the framework of the Church ; to the question as to whether the ministry are suc- cessors of the apostles, or whether each one receives his commission direct from the Spirit of God in his heart — about those truths you may believe either way. You may believe that the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Baptist, the Congregational, or the Presbyterian Church 'Is the true Church ; you may believe that the Sabbath should be observed in this or in that way— you may believe any of these things, and be a good man. But with reference to the truths that are related to the character of man as a sinner having need of a spiritual change ; with reference to the truths that stand related to man's responsibility to God^ and to the government of God ; with reference to the truths that relate to your immortality — with reference to all these great, vital, experimental truths of the Bible, if you believe at all, you must believe right, or woe be upon you ! There is a right way and a wrong way of believing in respect to them. The wrong way leads to disaster, and
RIGHT BELIEFS IMPORTANT. 95
the right way to benefit. Although with regard to ordinances, and creed-forms, and usages, it does not matter much how a man believes, yet with regard to those truths that relate to his immortal well-being it is very imjDortant how he believes." *
This view underlies all of Mr. Beecher's methods of presentation of theological truths. He believes that right belief is important, and that it should be accurate, careful, and well defined, but he believes also that it should be practical, that religion should be not a theoretical but an applied science. From many itera- tions of this view I select one only, nttered twelve years later than the one quoted above: "Now I tell you that in religious matters it is in the ratio of right-know- ing that a man is likely to be a right-minded man. The knowledge does not need to be of an abstract form ; practical knowing may take the place of philosophical knowing ; but to think, to think rightly, to think sharply and definitely, and to link thoughts with each other, is indispensable. Right-thinking, sedulously" carried forward to mark out the path of life and character, is important. And he who teaches the young that they must scorn the idea of jDrecise beliefs, and that the better way is to come up generally, is a traitor to the young. Every school, every academy, every college, every university, and every dei^artment in them, is a protest against this notion of mere loose, vague, indifi'erent thinking. Object to this system if you please ; object to that system if you please ; object to
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church. Sabbath morning, Oct. 6th, 1861. Harper's edition, vol. ii., p. 297.
96 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
abstract forms if you please ; make as many criticisms about proportions as you please ; but the great fact that men need to believe accurately, and that their beliefs are the foundations on which they build, is of transcendent importance." *
A broad gulf separates the Rationalistic and the Evangelical schools of thought. Evangelical faith re- gards man as not merely an imj^erf ectly developed being, but also as sinful and guilty before God, and needing divine forgiveness and a new and divine impulse in order to enter upon a true and godly life. It believes that this divine forgiveness is disclosed and assured to man through the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ. It believes that in Jesus Christ there has been made a manifestation to man, not merely of the character and attributes, but of the very person and being of God Himself, so that man need no longer grope like an orphan after an unknown Father. It believes that this God perpetually vouchsafes His presence and His power to His children, inspiring and guiding them in their endeavor after a divine life, and it teaches their accountability to Him, not merely for their moral con- duct in daily life one toward. another, but for their ac- ceptance or rejection of that aid which He proffers them and that life to which He invites them. To one who thus holds the helplessness of man left to him- self and the helpfulness of God vouchsafed to him, it is very easy to believe that this helpfulness has been disclosed in a written or spoken revelation, in an in-
* Preached in Plymouth Church, June, 1873 ; printed in Plymouth Pulpit, tenth series, page 304.
HIS BELIEF. 97
carnate manifestation, in a divine providence, in a spiritual experience given in answer to prayer, and in miracles afforded as the seal, or witness, or evidence authenticating the revelation and manifestation. In other words, the doctrines of Atonement, Incarnation, Regeneration, Inspiration, and Prayer all centre around and grow naturally out of the fundamental belief that man is helpless in his sin, and that God is a helpful and a saving God. Now while it is true that Mr... Beecher differs from most of his Evangelical brethren in his philosophical interpretation of some of these doc- trines, notably the doctrines of Inspiration, Atonement and Incarnation, it is certain that he is emphatically and distinctively Evangelical in the general structure of his mind and his teaching, that he lays more emphasis even than most ministers. on the actual and active help- fulness of God toward men, and the helplessness of men without God.
1. He maintains and emphasizes the distinction between inspiration and revelation. Eevelation he re- gards as exceptional and episodical. The Bible is a book which contains matter revealed by the Spirit of God to men selected to receive and communicate the revelation. Inspiration, on the other hand, he holds to be not an exceptional or episodical phenomenon.
" I believe," he says,* " that God in every age and in all nations has moved upon the hearts of men by His Holy Spirit, inspiring them to whatever is true, pure and noble. I believe that the Scriptures, the Old
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, July 11th, 1880. Christian Union, July 14th, 1880.
98 HE^^RY WARD BEECHER.
Testament and the New, contain the fruit of that in- spiration as it was develoj^ed in the Hebrew nation, and I fully and heartily accej^t the Bible according to the apostolic and only declaration of divine inspiration : All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. ' ' He holds that there are different degrees of inspiration in different books of the Bible; "that the teachings of Jesus Christ are of larger scope and of more value than the teachings of Moses ; the narratives of the Gospels are more valuable than the history of Ruth and Esther, ^^ beautiful as these are." He does not believe that the Scripture is a guide to scientific knowledge, and he re- jects and repudiates vdth great vigor the notion of ver- bal inspiration, and even of plenary inspiration in the full and proper sense of that tenn. He regards the Book as inspired for moral and spiritual purposes and to be measured only by its moral and spiritual uses. He says :
"The Bible is a practical book, set up for the guidance of life. If you have seen old charts you have noticed strange forms, all sorts of animals, represented in them ; you have seen grotesque ornaments around about them ; and yet in the middle there was the ocean ; and there were, I had almost said, some of the great landmarks of the sea by which the sailors steered ; and the charts were good in spite of all the curious and vain imaginings that had been described around their borders, or stuck here and there into them. Now in this chart of life, the word of God, the current is clear
THE BIBLE THE GUIDE. 99
and the channel is obvious. There never was a man in the world that wanted to live right, and to be a better man, who could not find out from the Bible how to do it. It is a guide to right living. That is all that it professes to be. It does not undertake to open the whole of divinity ; it simply undertakes to give a glimpse of it. It does not undertake to unpack, and develop, and analyze, and lay out before us all the mighty volume of the unsearchable God — it would be preposterous folly to claim that it could do such a thing ; it undertakes to teach men in this immoral and tempting world how to live better and better, to rise higher and higher, until by and by they are prepared by the earthly life to unite themselves with God." *
2. He disowns the doctrine of original sin, and denies any moral connection between Adam's fall and individ- ual sinfulness. Indeed he denies the doctrine of the fall altogether, regarding the story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory or parabolic poem, valuable for its spirit- ual lessons, but not for its ethnology or its history. He holds that the human race began in a low-down con- dition, or, at all events, that as far back as we can histori- \ cally trace the race, it is found to be more imperfect in / moral and spiritual as well as intellectual elements ; that ") as out of the babe the man is developed, so out of the \ race in its infantile condition the race in its manhood is , to be developed. Scientifically, he accepts in the main ' the hypothesis of Darwin concerning the origin of the human race — that is, that it was developed from lower
* Preached in Plymonth Church, Dec. 19th, 1880. Published in Christian Union of Jan. 5th, 1881.
100 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
animal forms. Theologically, he may be described as a Christian evolutionist. This has been his view for many years, though declared, perhaps, in later years with increasing clearness.* As far back as 1861 he said:
" There has been, from the beginning of the world, a steady evolution from the seminal point in individuals and races. Childhood has developed into manhood. There has been going on, since the world began, a con- tiuous education in physical skill, in intellectual en- dowments, in energy, and in ethical qualities. And revelation teaches us that this fourfold, complicated education is going on, not only for time, but for eter- nity." f-
This education he believes is being carried on under the direction of ' ' One who sits in Heaven and controls the elements of our being, and holds in his hands the threads of our destiny for time and for eternity." Nor has he in the least modified his faith that this process of development is carried on under the direct and im- mediate contact of the Spirit of Grod. If his interpre- tation of experience and history as an evolution is clearer, so also is his recognition of God as the inspir- ing and controlling Master of the great current of human life. He thus defines this belief in 1881 :
* Since this chapter was in type he has declared his general belief in evolution, and his rejection of the doctrine of the fall in an article in the North American Review, which created no little stir by the boldness of its indictment of the Westminster Catechism as embodying false and degrading conceptions of the Divine character.
f Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Fall of 1861. Harper's edition, vol. ii., p. 123.
EDUCATION NOT THE ONLY NEED. 101
"I confess that while in regard to the under king- dom of the world, the vegetable kingdom, I stand where I suppose every intelligent and well-read man of to-day stands ; yet when I consider the theory of devel- opment, and the substantial nature of the moral or religious feeling in man, I do not see any way in which that could have been unfolded without the direct inter- position aud guiding influence of the Spirit of God Himself. That God established that as the point to- ward which humanity should steer, and then left the winds and the currents to waft men in that direction — the reason of men, the ingenuity of men, and the very passions of men, restraining their wrath, and causing the remainder thereof to praise Him — that this has been the Divine method I think cannot be contradicted ; and that is a great deal," *
But education even under a Divine teacher is not the only need of the human race. Repudiating the theo- logical philosophy which denies that there is any good in the "natural virtues," holding up habitually for commendation every good and praiseworthy act, deny- ing in toto the old theological assumption, that every act of an unregenerate man is necessarily sinful, stig- matizing the phrase "total depravity" as one of the most unfortunate and misleading terms that ever afiiict- ed theology, and as untrue as it is unscriptural, "a mis- chievous phrase," "an unscriptural, monstrous and unredeemable lie," his whole preaching is neverthe- less founded upon his profound sense of human sinful-
* Preached in Plymouth Church, Dec. 26th, 1880. Published in Christian Union of Jan. 12th, 1881.
7
102 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
ness. One confession of his faith in this regard may- serve as a type of many.
"We believe, with continual sorrow of heart and daily overflowing evidence, in the deep sinfulness of universal man. And we believe in the exceeding sin- fulness of sin. We do not believe that any man is born who is sinless, or who becomes perfectly sinless until death. We believe that there is not one faculty of the human soul that does not work evil, and so re- peatedly that the whole human character is sinful before God. We believe man's sinfulness to be such that every man that ever lived needed God's forbear- ance and forgiveness. We believe that no man lives who does, not need to repent of sin, to turn from it ; and we believe that turning from sin is a work so deep and touches so closely the very springs of being, that no man will ever change except by the Kelp of God. And we believe that such help is the direct and per- sonal out-reaching of God's Spirit upon the human soul ; and when, by such Divine help, men begin to live a spiritual life, we believe the change to have been so great that it is fitly called a beginning of life over again, a new creation, a new birth. If there is one thing that we believe above all others, upon proof from consciousness and proof from observation and experi- ence, it is the sinfulness of man. Nor do we believe that any man ever doubted our belief who sat for two months under our preaching. Nothing strikes us as so peculiarly absurd as a charge or fear that we do not adequately believe in men's sinfulness. The steady bearing of our preaching on this subject is such as to plow up the soil and subsoil, and to con-
HUMAN SINFULNESS. 103
vict and convince men of their need of Clirist's re- demption." *
Any fair examination of Mr, Beecher's published sermons will abundantly justify the closing declaration in the above paragraph. He has his own peculiar way of preaching the doctrine of human sinfulness. He may even be said not to preach it as a doctrine, but to bear witness against men by indicting them in the court of their own conscience, not only of sinfulness in general, but of every phase and form of sin, from the minuter social delinquencies on which the pulpit rarely touches, to that forsaking of God which is the secret source and cause of all sin.
3. Holding to this general doctrine of human sinful- ness, he holds to man's need of "Divine interposition for correction and for forgiveness." He holds accord- ingly to the reality of that momentous change which is usually called conversion or regeneration. "This change does not require violence to be done to the mental organization. A man has the same faculties, intellectual, moral, social and animal, before conversion as after. Neither are the constitutional functions changed, nor the laws of mind under which all mental life exists. The change is analogous to that which happens to the thoroughly and chronically diseased body when it becomes decidedly convalescent." The whole object and purpose of his preaching is and has been twofold, to bring about this change in men, and to develop, enrich and educate them in the Divine life after once they have been persuaded to enter upon it.
* Views and Experiences of Keligious Subjects, p. 184;
104 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
The formation of Christian dispositions in men, the de- velopment of Christian character, the beginning and the nurture of a Divine life, the making men godly, Christ-like, the building up, not of doctrines nor of a church, but of a Divine manhood — this has been Mr. Beecher's aim from first to last ; and in the prosecu- tion of this aim his preaching has been accompanied with frequent revivals and many conversions. Empha- sizing always human instrumentality in this work, be- lieving always that God would do His share whenever men were willing to do theirs, he has nevertheless dis- tinctly and emphatically taught that the work is one which cannot be done by man alone, that the produc- tion of the Divine character can be accomplished only by Divine influence. He says :
"When it is declared, that unless a man is born again he shall not see this new kingdom, it is simply the declaration that a man, in his animal being, or in his lower, passional nature, never will come into the experience which belongs to the purity of these higher feelings ; that he will never know what is the joy, the strength, the sympathy, the beauty, the power of this higher life ; that he will never know what is in him- self, nor what he can do. God has amplitude in him ; but man does not know what that amplitude is until by the Holy Ghost the nobler elements of his being are developed and brought into supremacy. Until we are bom of the Spirit, until that part of us which is in sympathy with God is touched by the Divine Heart, and we are brought into communion with God, we shall not see nor know the substance of that kingdom in which God and man dwell together.
; THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 105
' ' This I understand to be the general enunciation of the doctrine of Chi^ist, specially and personally. It is trae in respect to every one, as it is true in respect to races and generations of men, that he cannot, except by the Divine contact, rise into this higher sphere of life. N'o man can come to himself except the Father draw him. No man can come to God except God lead him. No man can come to his own highest nature ex- cept under the influence of the Divine Spirit." *
Thus while Mr. Beecher rarely uses the word regen- eration^ perhaps scarcely more frequently than it is used in the New Testament, he has not laid less stress upon it than did Paul himself.
4. The same may be said respecting the doctrine of ' the Atonement. The Apostles' Creed contains a decla- ration of belief in the "forgiveness of sins ;" but no statement respecting the Atonement, that is, the method provided for securing and assuring this Divine forgive- ness. The spirit of Mr. Beecher's preaching has been somewhat that of the Apostles' Creed. He has abun- dantly proclaimed the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ ; this and the coiTelative truth, the Divinity of [ ^ Christ, have been indeed the central truths of his teaching. This fact is so universally recognized that we need not cite any illustrations. Perhaps for no one thing has Mr. Beecher been so much criticised as for the emphasis which he has put upon the tenderness, the compassion, the forgiving kindness of God, which his critics have thought he preached out of due pro-
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Jan. 29th, 1871. Eeported in Plymouth Pulpit, Sixth Series, p. 447-8.
106 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
portion, to the ignoring of tlie Divine justice and the punitive element in the Divine government. He has not, however, contented himself with merely pro- claiming the pity and mercy of God. This pity and mercy which he believes are inherent in the Divine nature, not produced, nor evoked, nor even made effica- cious and, so to speak, workable by the death of Christ, he nevertheless teaches have both been mani- fested and set in operation upon the human race through Christ' s death. The theory that it was neces- sary that Christ should suffer in order to fulfil, by a literal equivalent, the threatenings of the law, or that those sufferings and that death were necessary to vin- dicate the justice of God and make pardon safe, he does not accept. His general teaching on this subject may be stated in two propositions : first, that they were "a means of disclosing the atoning nature of God;" that they "manifested the mind of God in such a way as to cause it to appear sweet and blessed and attractive forevermore ;" and second, that the sufi'er- ings and death of Christ were necessary for reasons known to the Divine Being, but not made known to us.
"The sufferings and death of Christ were not inci- dental. They were divinely ordained. There was not only a use in them, but a necessity for them. Not alone is this declared, but it is the great undertone of the New Testament. The fact that man's salvation is through faith in Christ, and that the power of Christ to save men is connected with, or dependent on. His suffering for them, cannot be taken away from the New Testa- ment without abstracting its very life. It would be
CHRIST THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 107
]ike an organ without diapasons. It would have no basis. " *
5. Indissolubly connected with Mr. Beecher's preach- ing in connection with the forgiveness of sins is his view of Christ as the manifestation of God. It may "^ be emphatically said that Mr. Beecher has been a preacher of Chiist ; not of theories about Him, but of Christ Himself as a personal, living Saviour. How the view of Christ as the manifestation and disclosure of Ood early received by Mr. Beecher permeated his whole experience and transformed his whole character has been narrated in a previous chapter. His whole theological teaching has been founded on and grown out of this experience. On this as on other subjects Mr. Beecher has not expressed himself very frequently in philosophical or theological forms. He has, how- ever, very distinctly repudiated the common view of Christ's nature as a composite, in which the perfect God and perfect man are inexplicably united. ' ' The Bible," he says, "teaches just this, that the Divine mind was pleased to take upon itself a human body. We have no warrant in Scripture for attributing to Christ any other part of human nature than simply a body." And again :
"Let me, in order to prevent all misapprehension, say that in every sense that man can understand, I believe in the Divinity of Christ. It is fundamental to
* From Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Fall of 1861. Harper's edition, vol. ii., p. 120. See his statement of belief in the closing part of this volume, for a careful statement of his views respecting the Atone- ment.
108 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Hay system of thought, to my conception of power, and to the whole of my ministry, and has been, with- out variableness or shadow of turning, from the day, many, many years ago, when I learned to preach with any success. I believe that Jesus holds to mankind the same relations that God does ; that He is perfect by His very nature ; that He has all power ; that He has supreme authority ; that all that human reason can conceive of Divinity resides in Him ; that He is the ob- ject of the highest love in heaven, and should be on earth ; that the most absolute obedience is due Him ; and that now and forever 'every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.' " *
The same view of Christ as the Divine Spmt, "mani- fested and expressed under the limitations of material laws and in a human body," he has more fully ex- pressed in his Life of Christ, f
" The Divine Spirit came into the world, in the per- son of Jesus, not bearing the attributes of Deity in their full disclosure and power. He came into the world to subject His spirit to that whole discipline and experience through which every man must pass. He veiled His royalty ; He folded back, as it were, within Himself those ineffable powers which belonged to Him as a free spirit in heaven. He went into captivity to Himself, wrapping in weakness and forgetfulness His divine energies while He was a babe. ' Being found
* Preached in Plj'moiith Church, Feb. 6th, 1881. PubHshed in Chris- tian Union of Feb. 16th, 1881.
j Life of Jesus the Christ, chap. iii. "The Doctrinal Basis."
GOD CAN PUT HIMSELF INTO FINITE CONDITIONS. 109
in fashion as a man,' He was subject to that gradual unfolding of His buried powers which belongs to in- fancy and childhood. 'And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit.' He was subject to the restric- tions which hold and hinder common men. He was to come back to Himself little by little. Who shall say that God cannot put Himself into finite conditions? Though as a free spirit God cannot grow, yet as fet- tered in the flesh He may. Breaking out at times with amazing power, in single directions, yet at other times feeling the mist of humanity resting upon His eyes, He declares, ' Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' This is just the experience which we should expect in a being whose problem of life was, not the disclosure of the full power and glory of God's natural attributes, but the manifestation of the love of God, and of the extremities of self-renun- ciation to which the Divine heart would submit, in the rearing up from animalism and passion His family of children. The incessant looking for the signs of Divine power and of infinite attributes, in the earthly life of Jesus, whose mission it was to bring the Divine Spirit within the conditions of feeble humanity, is as if one should search a dethroned king in exile, for his crown and his sceptre. We are not to look for a glorified, an enthroned Jesus, but for God manifest in the flesh ; and in this view the very limitations and seeming dis- creiDancies in a Divine life become congruous parts of the whole sublime problem."
This philosophy of Christ's character is not, however, that which Mr. Beecher has made prominent in his
110 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
preaching. The prominence has been given to his per- sonal experience of love for, reverence toward, and trust in Jesus Christ as a personal God and Saviour. It is in this personal faith that he recognizes his own irre- concilable opposition to the rationalistic school of thought.
" Could Theodore Parker worship my God ? — Christ Jesus is His name. All that there is of God to me is bound up in that name. A dim and shadowy effluence rises from Christ, and that I am taught to call the ■Pather. A yet more tenuous and invisible him of thought arises, and that is the Holy Spirit. But neither are to me aught tangible, restful, accessible. They are to be revealed to my knowledge hereafter, but now only to my faith. But Christ stands my manifest God. All that I know is of Him and in Him. I put my soul into His arms, as, when I was born, my father put me into my mother's arms. I draw all my life from Him. I bear Him in my thoughts hourly, as I humbly believe that He also bears me. For I do truly believe that we love each other — I, a speck, a particle, a nothing, only a mere beginning of something that is gloriously yet to be, when the warmth of God's bosom shall have been a summer for my growth ; and He, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Ever- lasting Father, the Prince of Peace ! " *
To Mr. Beecher the divinity of Christ is not a dogma to be defended by scholastic methods ; it is an expe- rience to be confessed, a food to be eaten and lived upon, and his whole heart goes out in worship to
* Views and Experiences of Religious Subjects, p. 197.
MR. BEECHER BELIEVES IN INSPIRATION. Ill
Clirist as the one altogether lovely, to whom every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall make confes- sion.
"And shall I follow Christ through all my life ; be- hold His beauty ; twine about Him every affection ; lean upon Him for strength ; behold Him as my leader, my teacher ; feed upon Him as my bread, my wine, my water of life ; see all things in this world in that light which He declares Himself to be ; in His strength van- quish sin, draw from Him my hope and inspiration, wear His name and love His work, and throughout my whole life at His command twine about Him every affection, die in His arms, and wake with eager upris- ing to find Him whom my soul loveth, only to be put away with the announcement that He is not the recipi- ent of worship ! Well might I cry out in the anguish of Mary in the garden, 'They have taken away the Lord, and we know not where they have laid him.' " *
6. Holding to the inspiration of the Bible, the divine influence of the Holy Spirit in the regeneration of man, the atoning work and the divine character of Christ, it is almost a matter of course that Mr. Beecher be- lieves in the authenticity of the New Testament, and in the reality of the miracles. NoAvhere in either preach- ing or writing is there a sign of that feeble rationalism which attempts to reduce the supernatural to a mini- mum without rejecting the Bible altogether by finding naturalistic explanations of the miraculous events re- corded in the Scripture.
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, May 6th, 1860. Harper's edition, vol. i., p. 85.
112 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
" We scarcely need to say that we shall take our stand with those who accept the New Testament as a collection of veritable historical documents, with the record of the miracles, and with the train of spiritual phenomena, as of absolute and literal truth. The mi- raculous element constitutes the very nerve-system of the Gospel. To withdraw it from credence is to leave the Gospel histories a mere shapeless mass of pulp." *
Mr. Beecher has always occupied this stand in the pulpit, on the platform, and in all his published writ- ings.
7. It remains only to speak of his views respecting future retribution ; vi^ws which have been sometimes misquoted and even honestly misapprehended.
It is not uncommon for ministers to give their con- gregations so much of their views as they think can be given without subjecting them to charges of heresy, and Mr. Beecher's published views on the subject of retribution have frequently led to the imputation to him of views which he does not hold, and which he has distinctly repudiated. His general teaching in its prac- tical aspects on this subject may be characterized as undogmatic. He holds to a future retribution, but confesses his ignorance respecting its nature, character, and duration. A paragraph from a sermon preached twenty-two years ago illustrates the spirit with which he treats this theme in his practical ministry.
"For all those who have been clearly taught, who have been moved by their wicked passions deliberately to set aside Him of whom the prophets spake, whom the
* Life of Jesus the Christ. Introduction.
EETRIBUTION. 113
apostles more clearly taught, whom the Holy Spirit, by the divine power, now makes known to the world through the Gospel — for them, if they reject their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, there remaineth no more sac- rifice for sin. If they deliberately neglect, set aside, or reject their Saviour, He will deliberately, in the end, reject them. Sometimes, in dark caves, men have gone to the edge of unspeaking precipices, and, wondering what was the depth, have cast down fragments of rock, and listened for the report of their fall, that they might judge how deep the blackness was ; and listening — still listening — no sound returns; no sullen plash, no clinking stroke as of rock against rock — nothing but silence, utter silence ! And so I stand upon the preci- pice of life ! I sound the depths of the other world with curious inquiries. But from it comes no echo and no answer to my questions. No analogies can grapple and bring up from the depths of the darkness of the lost world the probable truths. No philosophy has line and plummet long enough to sound the depths. There remains for us only the few aathoritative and solemn words of God. These declare that the bliss of the righteous is everlasting ; and with equal directness and simplicity they declare that the doom of the wick- ed is everlasting." *
There is no doubt, however, that Mr. Beecher' s views have been modified since this sermon was preached. He has never himself formulated them fully in any public utterance. It is doubtful whether he has yet
* Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, Oct. 9th, 1859. Harper's edi- tion, vol. i., p. 109.
114 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
clearly formulated tliem in Ms own mind ; but the results which he has reached he has declared with his accustomed boldness. They include the following points :
1. That there is a retribution, an after-death punish- ment; and that Christ taught this truth* "when He declared with solemnity and earnestness that the pen- alty of wickedness in the world to come was such as to warn every transgressor, and should be a motive to every good man to turn back his fellows from evil.' '
2. That there is a provision of mercy in another life for those for whom no adequate provision has been made in this ; that there is no authority in Scripture for the commonly received notion that all probation ends with this life ; that it is equally impossible to be- lieve that the great mass of the human race up to this time have gone from death into heaven without any further preparation, or that they have been doomed to eternal death without any further opportunity for re- pentance, or larger moral influence to bring them to repentance. This view he has stated with characteris- tic power and eloquence in his famous discourse on " The Background of Mystery." f
' ' If, now, you tell me that this great mass of men, because they had not the knowledge of Gfod, went to heaven, I say that the inroad of such a vast amount of mud swept into heaven would be destructive of its purity ; and I cannot accept that view. If on the other
* Sermon preached in Plymonth Church, July 11th, 1880 ; published in Christian Union, July 14th, 1880.
f See eermon published in Christian Union, December 26th, 1877.
ETERNAL SUFFERING. 115
hand you say they went to hell, then you make an inli- del of me ; for I do swear, by the Lord Jesus Christ, by His groans, by His tears, and by the wounds in His hands and in His side, that I will never let go of the truth that the nature of God is to suffer for others rather than to make them suffer. If I lose everything else, I will stand on the sovereign idea that God so loved the world that He gave His own Son to die for it rather than it should die. To tell me that there is a God who for unnumbered centuries has gone on creating men and sweeping them like dead ffies — nay, like living ones — into hell, is to ask me to worship a being as much worse than the conception of any me- diaeval devil as can be imagined ; but I will not wor- ship the devil, though he should come dressed in royal robes, and sit on the throne of Jehovah. I will not wor- ship cruelty. I will worship love, that sacrifices itself for the good of those that err, and that is patient with them as a mother is with a sick child. With every power of my being I will worship such a being as that."
3. That any one of God's creatures will exist in eternal suffering he does not believe. The alternatives are of course either that the impenitent will be re- claimed in another life or that their life will finally be- come extinct. Mr. Beecher does not accept, or at least he does not teach either of these alternatives. The one would make him a Universalist, the other an Annihilationist. He is neither. His position is that, if not of ignorance, at least of one who holds his mind in abeyance waiting for further light. He neither ac- cepts the dogma of Universalism, that all men will be restored, nor that of Annihilationism, that some men
116 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
will be destroyed. He contents himself with preaching simply that persistent sin in this life involves a terri- ble doom in the life to come, respecting the nature and outcome of which the Scriptures leave us in uncertain- ty. The following declaration on this subject is recent and explicit : '^
"Whatever I believe beyond the simple statement of our Lord that the consequences in this life go over and are terrible in the life to come, whatever is beyond this, the explicit Scripture, is a belief founded upon analogy, philosophy, etc., and is an opinion, and not a definite knowledge. This is the point which dis- criminates between my position and that of Univer- salists, Restorationists, Annihilationists, and Retribu- tionists. They hold their respective views as dogmas ; that is, as facts based on the authority of Scripture. I hold simple retribution as Scriptural, but its duration, its nature, and its results I hold simply by conjecture, and not by dogmatic assumption. They are my opin- ions ; they are very positive, but they do not pretend to be founded upon express Scriptural warrant. I be- lieve that what Scripture teaches is that evil done here does not cease with death, but goes over, with pains and penalties beyond."
What are the opinions held in conjecture, here hinted at, he has nowhere publicly disclosed ; but we believe that it is safe to say that they involve a combi- nation of Restorationism and Annihilationism ; a belief in a future probation the result of which will be the restoration of some and the final extinction of others.
* Sermon published in Christian Union, July 14th, 1880.
THEOLOGICAL POSITION PECULIAR. 117
We have now gone over Mr. Beecher's general theo- logical views, summarizing them, as the limit of our space compels us to do, with brevity. It would be easy to multiply quotations to enforce and illustrate every position. We have shown that Mr. Beecher, in his fundamental faith in the helplessness of man, and the helpfulness of God, belongs with the Evangelical as opposed to the Kationalistic school ; in his view of the divinity of Christ and the necessity for an atone- ment, with the Orthodox as opposed to the Unitarian school. But in the Orthodox School he occupies a po- sition as a theologian peculiarly his own : in his view of the Bible, regarding it rather as a peculiar product of inspiration than as the product of a peculiar inspira- tion ; in his view of human nature, regarding sin as an individual fact in experience, and history as a course of evolution under divine guidance ; in his view of redemp- tion, regarding regeneration as a restoration of the soul to its normal condition by divine influences, and atone- ment as a provision for pardon and reconciliation af- forded by God through Christ, the reasons and nature of which are inexplicable ; in his view of Christ as the Divine Spirit manifested in a human body and under the limitations of a human life ; in his view of miracles as the real and natural attestations of divine revelation, working through nature, not in violation of it ; and in his view of future retribution as a terrible fact, the nature and end of which are unrevealed.
CHAPTER YI.
ME. BEECHER AS A JOURNALIST.
Mr. Beecher's first venture as an editor was in Cincinnati, a short time before entering npon his ministerial work. "He was," says Mrs. Stowe, "for four or five months editor of the Cincinnati Journal^ the organ of the N. S. Presbyterian Church, during the absence of Mr. Brainerd. While he was holding this post, the pro-slavery riot which destroyed Birney's press occurred, and the editorials of the young editor at this time were copied with high approval by Charles Hammond, of the Cincinnati Gazette, undoubtedly the ablest editor of the West, and the only editor who dared to utter a word condemnatory of the action of the rioters. Mr. Beecher entered on the defence of the persecuted negToes with all the enthusiasm of his nature. He had always a latent martial enthusiasm, and though his whole life had been a peaceful one, yet a facility in the use of carnal weapons seemed a second nature, and at this time, he, with a number of other young men, went to the Mayor and were sworn in as a special body of police, who patroled the streets, well armed. Mr. Beecher bore his pistol, and was de- termined, should occasion arise, to use it. But as usual in such cases, a resolute front once shown dis- solved the mob entirely."
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MR. BEECHER AS AN EDITOR. 121
Indianapolis, as — Heaven save the mark — a recreation ! He was settled at the time at Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana. There were nothing but political papers in the State — no religious, or educational, or agricul- tural, or family papers. The Indiana Journal proposed to add an agricultural department, to be reprinted monthly, under the title of Western Farmer and Gardener^ and Mr. Beecher undertook to edit it. His editorship was solely a labor of love ; his preparation for it was his rest. He shall tell the story in his own words ; no one could better the telling.
" It may be of some service to the young, as show- ing how valuable the fragments of time may become, if mention is made of the way in which we became prepared to edit this journal. The continued taxation of daily preaching, extending through months, and once through eighteen consecutivve months, without the exception of a single day, began to wear upon the nerves, and made it necessary for us to seek some re- laxation. Accordingly we used, after each week-night' s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our head by some alterative reading. In the State Library were Loudon's works — his Encyclopaedias of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture. We fell upon them and for years almost monopolized them. In our little one-story cottage, after the day's work was done, we pored over these monuments of an almost incredible industry, and read, we suppose, not only every Une, but much of it many times over ; until at length we had a topographical knowledge of many of the fine English estates quite as intimate, we dare say, as was possessed by many of their truant owners.
122 HENRr WARD BEECHER.
" There was something exceedingly pleasant, and ia yet, in the studying over mere catalogues of flowers, trees, fruits, etc. A seedsman's list, a nurseryman's catalogue, are more fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through several years, we gradually accu- mulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the way for our editorial la- bors. Lindley's Horticulture and Gray's Structural Botany came in as constant companions. And when at length, through a friend's liberality, we became the recipients of the London Gardener' s Chronicle, edited by Professor Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours unable to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden or to the more than Oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devonshire's grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discussions, in that little bedroom at Indianapolis, with Yan Mons about pears, \Y\th. Vi- bert about roses, with Thompson and Knight about fruits and theories of vegetable life, and with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the horti- cultural world. This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such relations to the mate- rial world, that, we speak with entire moderation when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England could not have given us half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies."
The habit of learning from men as well as books was characteristic of the young and enthusiastic editor,
REMARKABLE DESCRIPTION OF A FLOWER. 123
then as ever since. There is a story, for the details of which we will not vouch, that he was accustomed to at- tend a club meeting of farmers, paper and pencil in hand, always modestly refusing to join in the discus- sions, but always keeping careful note of them ; and that his subsequent embodiment, not however usually in form of reports, of the sifted results of the discus- sions, was one of the features which gave the Western Farmer and Gardener its early and national reputa- tion. It was one of the first, if not the very first, suc- cesses in agricultural journalism in this country. Another story, for the substantial truth of which I can vouch, shows what good use he made of other people's knowledge, gathered wheresoever he could find it. He wrote a description of some remarkable flower, which was caught up and copied far and wide as a rare portrait of a rare plant. He had never seen it, however, having gathered the materials for his pict- ure from the books and vitalized them by his own pic- torial imagination. Several years afterward he was visiting an Eastern hothouse, and was introduced to the gardener as the editor of the Western Farmer and Gardener. The host, proud of his possession of an un- usually fine specimen of the flower which Mr. Beecher had so graphically described, took him straight to see it. Mr. Beecher examined, admired, and asked its name. The astonished gardener gave its scientific title. "Yes! yes!" said Mr. Beecher; "but its common name. What do folks call it?" Whereat the indignant gardener, thinking his learned guest was chaffing, told him to his astonishment that he was looking on the original of his own description, and
124 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
could hardly believe Mr. Beecher's solemn assertion that he had never set eyes upon the flower till that moment.
When in 1847 Mr. Beecher came to Brooklyn the anti-slavery struggle was beginning to assume portent- ous dimensions. Into it he threw himself heart and soul, from the outset being a leader among leaders in his intense radicalism. The religious press was almost wholly either pro-slavery or silent. The attitude of the great body of the churches was fairly represented by that of the American Tract Society and the Ameri- can Board. The one would publish nothing about slavery because all evangelical Christians were not agreed concerning it ; the other would bear no witness against slavery in its missions among the ISTorth American Indians, because to speak was to ensure exile from the missionary fields. The Tract Societies of Boston and Cincinnati were formed in protest against the silence of the one ; the American Missionary Asso- ciation in protest against the silence of the other. In this epoch, and out of the same intense feeling, the New York Independent was born. It was the child of the battle-field ; its god-fathers and god-mothers were warriors. Its financial support was furnished by three or four Congregationalists who were also abolitionists. Its editors were a trio of Congregationalists, then in their prime and full of the fire of youth in the most fiery epoch of their country's history — Drs. Storrs, Bacon, and Thompson. The latter was stroke oars- man. He had a genius for organizing, and for patient and steady work. The young and eccentric preacher was engaged as a regular contributor. He was too
A GREAT EDITOR. 125
impetnons and too independent to work in a team ; his associates preferred that he should alone be respon- sible for his own utterances ; he preferred to be free to utter what he would, untrammeled by any sense of divided responsibility. Mr. Beecher, like General Grant, has never held a council of war. He listens to advice, but rarely asks it ; takes counsel, and is often influenced, but never governed by it. Though not one of its editors, he did perhaps as much as either one of them to give the paper its tone, and to make its voice heard throughout the United States. During Cal- houn's last illness one of Mr. Beecher's contributions to the then infant Independent was read to the dying statesman. Paper and writer were then alike compar- atively unknown. The title of the article, " Shall we Compromise V indicates its theme ; its character can- not be easily imagined except by one who puts himself back in a time when " compromise" was the theme of Clay and Webster in the Senate, of Stiles and Adams and Blagden in the pulpit, of the N. Y. Observer and the Boston Recorder in the press, indeed of almost every politician, pulpit, and newspaper of note in the land. " Read that again," said the dying Calhoun to his secretary. It was read again. " Who writes that ?" he asked. The name of the unknown writer was given to him. "That fellow understands his subject," was Calhoun's final comment. " He will be heard from again. He has gone to the bottom." It is not without good ground that the author of the " History of Jour- nalism in America" counts Henry Ward Beecher one of the two great editors of the United States, one of the two journalists par excellence of America.
126 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
. His method of preparation, then and during the short subsequent term in which, after the resignation of Drs. Storrs, Bacon, and Thompson, he acted as editor-in-chief of the paper, was peculiar. The con- trast between the methods of Dr. Thompson and Mr. Beecher was characteristic.
Dr. Thompson had his regular day at the office. He rarely missed it ; was never early, never late, always exactly punctual. He calculated to an inch the amount of matter required, and never gave too little or too much. He never outstayed his time, and never hurried away before it had expired. He was never idle and never in a hurry ; he was never greatly excited and never absolutely at rest. As an editor he was the delight of compositors and publishers, Mr. Beecher came in somewhere about the time his manu- scrii)t was expected ; sometimes boiling over with ex- citement ; sometimes bubbling over with humor. He sat and talked of anything and everything but the business before him till the printer's devil made his final and imperative demand for copy. Then he caught up his pen, turned to the nearest desk, shut himself up in his shell as impenetrably as if he were a turtle, and drove his jDen across the paper as if it were a House printing machine and he were an electric bat- tery. He threw off the pages as he wrote them, left the boy to pick them up and carry them off to the compositors' room, and, the work done, was off, leav- ing some one else to read proof, correct errors, and sup- ply omissions. But what he wrote in a heat and at a sitting went like a ball from a minie rifle, from one end of the land to the other. Wise men shook their
ALWAYS READY AND THOROUGHLY PREPARED. 127
heads over Ms " imcautious utterances," but they kindled thousands of hearts into a blaze. The leaders which characterized the Independent during his short editorial charge of the paper have never had their equal in kindling force in American journalism. It was on the eve of the civil war. It required the man, the time and the audience to produce them. Never before were such man, such time, and such audience combined.
The onlooker might imagine from this picture that Mr. Beecher is a careless workman, throwing off crude impressions, half -formed and ill-digested, and trusting to genius to take the place of conscientious study. The onlooker would be greatly mistaken. Mr. Beech- er's mind works like lightning in production because it has worked thoroughly in preparation. As a partial preparation for his anti-slavery editorials he made himself thorough master of Story on the Constitu- tion, Kent's Commentaries, and Lieber's Civil Liberty and Self-government, and other kindred authorities. For details he always went to well-informed specialists. His memory of principles is as tenacious as his memory of names and dates is slippery and evasive. Whatever he has once learned always comes at command ; he is like a many-barrelled revolver ; the ammunition is all stowed away in the right place, and in the time of bat- tle always responds to the click of the trigger. He is always sure of his ground ; hence he walks with a free and firm tread. When three years ago he published his caustic criticism on the Bible Society for suppress- ing a revised edition, and publishing one condemned by its own committee as full of errors, he had so thor-
128 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
ougMy grounded himself in every detail that no an- swer could be made, and none was attempted by the Society.
The ideal editor fulfils a threefold function : he is creator, administrator, and writer. He forms his own conception what the journal is to be, what place it is to fill, what work it is to do, what circle of readers it is to address ; he organizes it to do that work, se- cures the writers, examines their contributions, meas- ures them by their relation to his conception and theu* adaptation to its execution ; and he moulds all writers by his own strong, clear, vigorous writing, leads by his pen, and others follow, Now it is very rare that any editor fulfils all three functions. Mr. Delane, of the London Times ^ it is said, never wrote a word for his own journal ; he was creator and administrator. His genius was that of organizer ; selector of men to write better than he could what he wished written. One of the ablest editors in American history was Fletcher Harper. He never wrote a line for publication ; rarely if ever read a manuscript. But he created Harper' s Magazine^ Harpefs Weekly and Harpef s Bazar ; selected the editors ; pervaded as well as inspired their administration ; gave each periodical its distinc- tive character and made it what he willed. Horace Greeley was both creator and writer, the Tribune was a new birth ; but he was not an administrator, he has often been surpassed in the art of organization. On the other hand, Henry J. Raymond followed ex- amples set before him in shaping the Times ; other writers have surpassed him in both force of thought and compactness of expression ; but he was absolutely
"THE CHRISTIAN UNION." 129
without a rival in the art of managing a great news- paper. Henry Ward Beecher is not an administrative editor ; he has never attempted for any length of time to manage a newspaper ; but he has created a new school of journalism, and he has given it impulse and inspiration by his own pen.
Immediately after his withdrawal from the Inde- pendent^ capital was offered him to start a new paper. The idea of the capitalists was to make it a new Con- gregational journal, but that was not Mr. Beecher' s idea. He had engaged to write "!N"orwood," and the newspaper enterprise was laid aside for the time. A little later J. B. Ford & Co. purchased the feeble Church Union, living with a scanty subscription list on the verge of bankruptcy, and announced Mr. Beecher as its future editor. The scheme of the Church Union had been to unite all Protestant sects in one organic church. This chimerical project had no support from Mr. Beecher' s practical mind; he or- dered a change of its name to Christian Union, and the new name was unfurled upon its banner before the new commander had assumed the responsibility of command. Its title indicated its essential character. Mr. Beecher determined to have a paper as broad as Christianity, as free from sectarian bias as the Sermon on the Mount. He determined to invite to its columns men of every name, united by no common creed nor in any common organization, but only in a common si)irit of love for men and faith in Clirist as their Lord and Saviour. We have often heard him say, "It is i)os- sible to have a church in which men of all traditional faiths and systems shall unite in work and worship
130 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
•for Christ. We have it in Plymouth Church, where Quaker and Episcopalian, Calvinist and Arminian, Unitarian and Trinitarian, sit side by side at the same communion-table and work side by side in the same Sunday-school. I believe it is possible to have a journal which shall embody the same principle." That was his thought when a year or two before he had been asked to start a new Congregational paper. That was his thought for the Christian Union from the day of its christening with its new name. From that funda- mental thought he never wavered or turned aside. It was a radical thought then. Fifteen years ago unde- nominational religious journalism was absolutely un- known if not unthought of. It was supposed to be necessary to have a church constituency behind each church organ. In England each great Review repre- sented a religious school ; such monthly symposia as the Nineteenth Century and the Contemporary^ in which atheist and Roman Catholic churchman sit down at the same table, were not dreamed of. In this country the Christian at Work, the Golden Rule and the Alliance were not born ; the N. Y. Observer was the organ of the Old School Presbyterians ; the Inde- pendent, started, as its name indicates, as a Congrega- tional journal, on money furnished by Congregational capitalists, to j^romote Congregational ideas, and edited by three leading Congregational divines, was still so far recognized as a Congregational organ that a junta of Congregational clergymen in the ^Yest did not hesi- tate to call it to account for its loose theology and take bonds of its owner for better behavior in the future. It was at this epoch that Mr. Beecher launched the
THE MISSION OF "THE CHRISTIAN UNION." 131
Christian Union as a simply Christian newspaper. He appealed from the hierarchy to the people. He had always done this in his pulpit ; he now made a wider appeal in the newspaper.
Along with this fundamental idea was another, equally fundamental. Dr. William M. Taylor, now pas- tor of the Broadway Tabernacle, in an article published in 1859, in the Scotch Remeio^ refers to Mr. Beecher's ' ' assertion and reiteration of the great truth that religion is a life and a power for all places and circumstances." To assert and to reiterate this was from the first the mission to which he ordained the Christian Union. He determined to make a i:)aper primarily for the com- mon people, and therefore a paper primarily helpful to them, and therefore a paper of "life thoughts." To make life the text-book ; to lind the themes in daily events, public and private ; to expound Providence rather than the Bible, and the Bible rather than dogmatic theology ; to teach religion as an art rather than as a science, as a practical art rather than as a species of aesthetics :— this was the purpose with which he imbued the paper from its birth. Organ of party sect or person he would not have it ; not even an organ to defend its own editor when every other religious journal was closed against his friends. And so it was by his imperative orders that it kept silence when policy would have dictated vigorous speech ; and its managing editors could avoid the possible suspicion of lack of fealty to their slandered associate, only by seizing the occasion of his absence from the city to put in their own protests, over their own names, against their misconstrued silence. It was a part of
/
132 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
this same determination that the paper should teach a practical godliness, which made him resolute that it should practise what it preached. He would have no word of editorial or quasi editorial utterance paid for by advertiser. Of Insurance Department, with its paid puffs or its paid silence, and Financial De- partment, with its apparently guileless commenda- tions of certain stocks at so much a line, the Christian Union was always absolutely clear in all administra- tions. '
The history of the paper, of which he was the father, like that of all journals, has been one of varying fortunes. It sprang into a marvellous success at its birth, reaching, in an incredibly short time after its birth, a circulation of upward of a hundred and thirty thousand. Then came adversity : financial diflBculties in the business management, odium theologicum ex- cited against it on account of the religious views of some of its subordinate editors, the "great scandal," and, more influential of all, " hard times," compelling great reduction of receipts both from subscribers and advertisers. But the paper has long since passed through all that experience, retaining, in minor changes of scope and administration, its name and essential character. And when, in the fall of 1881, Mr. Beecher sold his interest in it to personal friends, and left its direction in other hands, it was because its character and future were established beyond peradventure, and because the treble duties of preacher, lecturer, and editor had grown too arduous to be longer continued. His editorial work is probably ended, but his editorial influence will never cease to be felt in the larger
THE MISSION OF "THE CHRISTIAN UNION." 133
charity, the broader views of life, and the greater in- dependence of thought which he, as much perhaps as any living man, has helped to impart to American journalism.
CHAPTER VII.
MR. BEECHER AS A LECTURER AND ORATOR.
In "Men of Our Times" Mrs. Stowe writes of lier brother as a boy of ten years : "Henry Ward was not marked out by the prophecies of partial friends for any brilliant future. He had precisely the organization which often passes for dullness in early boyhood. He had great deficiency in verbal memory, a deficiency marked in him through life ; he was excessively sensi- tive to praise and blame, extremely diffident, and with a power of yearning, undeveloped emotion which he neither understood nor could express. His utterance was thick and indistinct, partly from bashfulness and partly from an enlargement of the tonsils of the throat, so that in speaking or reading he was with difficulty understood. In forecasting his horoscope, had any one taken the trouble then to do it, the last success that ever would have been predicted for him would have been that of an orator. ^ When Henry is sent to me with a message,' said a good aunt, 'I always have to make him say it three times. The first time I have no manner of an idea more than if he spoke Choctaw ; the second, I catch now and then a word; by the third time I begin to understand.' "
That a youth so eminently unfitted by nature to be an orator should have become subsequently one of the
HIS ELOCUTIONARY EDUCATION. 135
greatest of modern orators, argues an application to the study of oratory, and a determination to overcome its difficulties, not less arduous than were shown by De- mosthenes, who, to correct a stammering tongue, prac- tised speaking with pebbles in his mouth, and to strengthen a weak voice proclaimed i:)oems in the diffi- culty of breath which was caused by running up a hill.
Mr. Beecher's study and training, although of a dif- ferent nature, were no less thorough and efficacious than the methods of the old Athenian, and he has lately given an account of his elocutionary education. He says : " I had from childhood a thickness of speech arising from a large palate, so that when a boy I used to be laughed at for talking as if I had pudding in my mouth. When I went to Amherst, I was fortunate in passing into the hands of John Lovell, a teacher of elocution ; and a better teacher for my purpose I cannot conceive. His system consisted in drill, or the thorough practice of inflexions by the voice, of gesture, posture and articulation. Sometimes I was a whole hour prac- tising my voice on a word, like justice.
"I would have to take a posture, frequently at a mark chalked on the floor. Then we would go through all the gestures ; exercising each movement of the arm, and the throwing open the hand. All gestures except those of precision go in curves, the arm rising from the side, coming to the front, turning to the left or right. I was drilled as to how far the arm should come for- ward, where it should start from, how far go back, and under what circumstances these movements should be made. It was drill, drill, drill, until the motions almost became a second nature. Now I never know what move-
136 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
ment I shall make. My gestures are natural because this drill made them natural to me. Tlie only method of acquiring an effective education is by practice of not less than an hour a day, until the student has his voice and himself thoroughly subdued and trained to right expression.'"^
As a preparation for the work of his life, which was to be largely occupied in public speal?:ing, such a thorough course in elocution even to one unembarrassed with defects of voice, was of great value ; for an intel- lect, however powerful and rich, without the adequate means of expression and emphasis, would be crippled in its power of benefiting mankind in no small degree. Mr. Beecher's study of oratory at Amherst has un- doubtedly been one of the most efiicient means in the acquirement of his success, and has been an attainment the value of which he could not at that time have fore- seen. The familiarity with the ways and means of pro-