THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Mrs. S. M. Newmark '^2^/^hz HENRY WARD BEECHER. A SKETCH OF HIS CAREER ANALYSES OF HIS POWER AS A PREACHER, LECTURER, ORATOR, AND JOURNALIST, AND INCIDENTS AND REMINISCENCES OF HIS LIFE. Commemorative of Ms entrance upon Jiis .seventieth year EDITED BY LYMAN ABBOTT, B.D. New York: FUNK & WACNALLS. PUBLISHERS, 10 and 12 Dey Street. 1883. Copyright, 18&i, By FUNK & WAGNAIA.S. /w^ - / \ 7Z£ O u TO AT.T. THOSE WHO HAVE PELT MB. BEECHER'S INFLUENCE ASA TEAC UEK. AND WHO DESIKE TO KNOW MORE INTIMATELY THE MAN. THIS VOL UME, IN COMMEMORATION OF SEVENTY YEARS OF WELL-SPENT LIFE, IS RESPECTFULLY pcintatcb. 94G452 PREFACE. The Life of Mr. Beecher cannot be written while Mr. Beecher is living. It can then only be written by- one who should give to it years of preparation ; should acquaint himself fully with the progress of thought — moral, political, and religious — in this coun- try for the past fifty years, and should thus fit himself to describe Mr. Beecher 1 s relation to his country and his age. For it cannot be questioned that no other man has exerted so wide and profound an influence in this threefold domain of life. It may indeed be claimed that other reformers have done more to change the political constitution from a pseudo -democ- racy governed by a slavocracy to a genuine democracy governed by its free industrial classes ; that other teachers have done more to promote that political enthusiasm 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 pulpit, 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 Phillips, Chase and Seward, Park and Hodge, they have wrought each only in his own field, while Mr. Beecher has ploughed and sowed and lived to see vi 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 bis successful campaigns. It [a not Bucha 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 is nol a Life, but a Portrait ; it is nol a record of the achieve- ments, ir 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, 1 a boy just out of college. During those thirty years our acquaintance has grown continuously more intimate. Thar intimacy lias only served to in- crease my respect and deepen my affection. My close ciationwith him during five years of editorial co- labor was tmmarred by a single collision, and has left behind not the memory of a single jar. The more 1 have known him the more T have seen to admire, to honor, to love. T never meet him without receiving from his presence and his words some inspiration — in- tellectual, or spiritual, or both. My object in this hook— 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. Vll For it is the compensating disadvantage of genius to be never comprehended 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 importance 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 misrepresentations 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 known only the orator and the author. It remains to give in a few sentences the history of the origin and preparation of this book, which is only in a qualified sense my work, though for its sjDirit 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 papers 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 purpose and scope outlined above, and so, with some misgivings on account of other engagements, but with hearty interest on account of personal attachment to v in PREFACE Mr. Beecher, the work was undertaken. The incep- tion of this book is Mr. Balliday's ; and his has been the large labor, little appreciated bj the public but readily appreciated by all Literary workers, involved in the voluminous correspondence which was necessary tocollecl til.- 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 wonld have been impossible for me to complete the work. He also has largely done the work of seeing it through the press. The gentle men whose papers constitute Part II. and the many friends who have sent incidents will please to accept. this general acknowledgment of their kindness in lieu of more direct and formal acknowledgments. It only remains to add that Mr. Beecher had no knowledge respecting this book until the arrangements for its publication were completed, and that, while it is published with his consent, he has not seen a page of it, and will not till after its publication. I doubt whether he will give it even then more than a casual glance. " I rarely read anything about my- self," he once said to me ; "it is not healthy reading." L. A. INDEX. PART I. HENRY WARD BEE CHER. Page I. Childhood and Youth 13 II. Early Ministry ° 39 III. Mr. Beecher as a Preacher 59 IV. Methods op Study 75;^ V. Mr. Beecher's Theology 91 VI. Mr. Beecher as a Journalist 118 ix VII. Mr. Beecher as a Lecturer and Orator 134 VIII. Mr. Beecher in England during the Civil War 161 IX. Personal Traits and Incidents 185 X. Reminiscences by Rev. S. B. Halliday : Mr. Beecher in Brooklyn 220' 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 Q4j£/ Women Speaking in Meeting (244 The Methodist Sister 245 Applicants for Help 246 Universal Adaptation 251 The Woman who Lost her Baby < 257 XL Plymouth Church 26L — "" x INDEX. PART II. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES BY CONTEMPORA HIES. [Written Specially for this Work.] Page 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 302 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 t 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 362 XVII. By Rev. Francis N. Zabriskie, D.D 363 XVIII. By Rev. C. K Sims, D.D 364 XIX. By J. L. Cunningham, Scotland 367 XX. By Rev. Frank Russeli 360 XXI. By Rev. Father Kekoan, Vicar-General 385 XXII. By Jesse Seligman 385 XXIII. 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. Wihttier 395 XXIX. By Rev. Eugene Bersier, D.D., France 396 Extract from Sermon by Rev. David Swing, D.D 396 Article by Rev. Atticus G. Haygood, D.D 400 [From Magazines and other Articles.] I. By Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Atlantic Monthly 404 II. By Rev. H. R. Haweis, in Contemporary Review 411 III. By Rev. William M. Taylor, D.D., in 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 CTERISTIC UTTERANCES. Theological.— Statement of Belief 479 Spiritual.— How to Become a Christian 508 Political. — Speech in London - 522 Mr. Beecher's Farewell Address 546 Descriptive.— The Alps 561 Philosophical.— Evolution and Revolution 566 Agricultural . —Political Economy of the Apple 574 Our Creed 585 Humorous.— Modern Conveniences and First-Class Houses 58 APPENDIX. Scope of Mr. Beecher's Preaching 597 Posters Placarded in Liverpool, etc 599<- Plymouth Church Statistics 602 ILLUSTRATIONS. Page HENRY WARD BEECHER Frontispiece THE HOUSE AT LITCHFIELD, CONN., IN WHICH HENRY WARD BEECHER WAS BORN 17 SCHOOL-HOUSE IN WH1TINSVILLE, MASS., IN WHICH MR. BEECHER TAUGHT IN 1831 AND 1833 17 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 Between Parts I. and II. PLYMOUTH CHURCH SUNDAY-SCHOOL 323 ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 357 "EYES AND EARS." 357 MR. BEECHER'S FAMILY 391 NEW RESIDENCE ON THE PEEKSKILL FARM 425 MR. BEECHER'S WORKSHOP 459 VIEWS AT PEEKSKILL FARM 509 A MAN OF MANY MOODS 559 Part I. HENRY WARD BEECHER. HENRY WARD BEECHER. CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHICAL- I Many of the characteristics 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 !ii;.\i;v w.uil) BEECHEE. New 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 with Davenport. Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote, the descendants of these two pioneers, were married September 19th, 1799, and moved to East Hampton, L. T.. and subsequently to Litchfield, Connecticut, where, as already stated, Henry Ward was born. His father at this i inie was ministering to a congregation at a silary 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 w^hich the parents of fifty 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- hood 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 lisliment, the 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 knew where the sweet-flag was, where the hickory trees were, where the chestnut trees were, where the sassafras trees were, where 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 11 F.N KV WARD BEECHER. purity of character, but the moral atmosphere of Litch- field was as untainted and invigorating as the air of surrounding mountains, and was fraught with no contaminating inlluences. He was merry, 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 ns all. Tie often 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 line-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 chosen Simple purity in daily 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, T mistook his appearance when talking with persons •mi IIKNKV WARD BEECHER. thai came bo see aim as inconsistent with bis after state of feeling when they bad goneaway. 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- cepl in that one instance, a cloud or a shadownever passed over my mind with regard to my father's in- tegrity. I believed ir 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 bul three years old. She was gentle, loving, and tender, with widest 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 liist 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 Mi.- 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 TIenry 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, diguing 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 IIKN'KY WARD BEECHEB owes to the father and the mother that not only took care of him, but taught him what he meant when lie -aid, 'Our Father who art in heaven.' How power- ful should be this retiex-intiuence, then, of the truth sj mbolized, hidden, in this opening petition of the Lord's prayer." 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. ]N"o 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 gave me birth, but she that brought me up ; she that did the office-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 profound 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 M HENRI WARD BEECHEK. of his bed, and pray and sing and Langh. And I l)* i nr record thai his praying made a profound impression upon my mind. I never thought whetherit was righl <>]• wrong. 1 only thought, ' Bow that man does en- joy il ! What enjoyment then* must he in such prayer as bis!' I gained from thai man more of an idea of liif desirableness of prayer, than I ever did from my father or mother. My father was never an ascetic: he bad no sympathy with anything of a monkish ten- dency ; and yet, this poor man. more than he, led me to sec that there should be real overflowing gladness and thanksgiving in prayer. I learned to envy Charles Smith, although T 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 Gtod, 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 tome the way of duty, and did all that seemed to her possible, I know, to make it easy for me to become a religions child : and vet 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 1 started to go to her, and tell her my feelings, when fear has cansed 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 i m 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 •Mi BENRT WARD BEECHER. the sensation goes to the heart, ancl touches the feeling. Bui when my father made me cry by talking tome, 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 righl 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 disciplining 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 inexperience. Yet I was sometimes punished for them. k ' 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 II I'.NKY WARD BEECHER. hard seat, one «>l the roguish boys of the neighbor- hood gave me :i shove, and pushed me off <»n the floor, and tore my coat. When T 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. 1 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 1 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 tome like copper. I thought that my soul was gone forever. The idea that I had -worn 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 school days were not such ns 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. Beechers 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 1 rf/V/ 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 were, 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 BENRY WARD BEECHER. '•<■ broad lipids, but now but narrow ril>l)t)ns, lying between the house and the water. 1 marveled at the apparent change which had taken place in these things, and thought what a child 1 must have been when 1 1 icy 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 yon 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, although 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. 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, with 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 ODe of his sermons he says : "I recollect three or four instances in which it seems to :\-> HENRY WARD BEECHER. me that it* certain occurrences had nol taken place jii>i as they did [ should have been overthrown. It' I dad nol been taken out of Boston al one time as I was. I do nol see what would have prevented me from going to destruction." Through the subterfuge of a letter, purposely placed tor his lather's inspection, Henry mad <• 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 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 progress 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 lather'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 fa tlier thought best to yield, for lie 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 tin 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 think, 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 34 BENRY 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 his 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 essays 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 Pollok 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. 1 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, "Tnos. P. FrELD." RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 35 The 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. tk 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 WARD BEECHER. fore God, the brightesl thing which I shall Lookback upon will be that blessed morning of May when if pleased God to reveal to nay wandering soul the idea thai ii was His nature to Love a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of them ; thai He did not do ir out of compliment toChrist, or to a law. or a plan of salvation, but from the fullness of His greal heart ; that II<' was a Being not made mad by sin, but sorry ; that He was tiol furious with wrath toward the sinner, but pitied him— in short, that Tie felt toward me as my mother i'< 'It 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 trouble. And when I found that Jesus Christ had such a disposition, and that when His disciples did wrong. He drew them closer io 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, t felt that I had found a God. I shall never forget the feelings with which I walked forth that May morning. The golden pavements will never feel to my feel as then the gi ass 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 re] tresent the Being, a conception of whose character had just dawned upon my mind. T 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 measures 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 BEEOHER. man has passed through death to life, from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy." Upon graduating in 18:>4 he rejoined his father, who had two years previous removed to Cincinnati. CHAPTER IT. BIOGRAPHICAL. II. Mr. Beectier'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 step 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." in HENRY WARD BEECHER. Dr. Lyman Beecher was at this time holding a principal professorship at Lane Seminary, and. as the head and exponenl of the New England new-school theology and the doctrine of man's five 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 woe from the standpoint of dialectic and theological attack and defence. Although 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 1 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 snow 4-..' HENRI WARD BEECHER. melted on the mountains — the Ohio came booming down and overflowed ; and men were obliged to emi unite. They found themselves driven out of their bouses. 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." k> 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 thai the Hock 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 lumps there, so I bought some ; and I rilled them and lit them. 1 swept the church, and lighted my own fire. I did not ring the bell, because there was none to ring. T opened the church before prayer-meetings and preaching, and locked it when they were over. T took care of every- thing connected with the building. And do I nor remember every one of those faces I 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. Sum.- nf CALL TO INDIANAPOLIS. 43 them I venerate, and the memory of some lias 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 1 s workings 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 was not, however, the realization of his highest aim. This was " the saving of souls 1 ' ; 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. wc 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 il HENRY WARD BEECHER. kingdom. 1 began to know what a revival was. ane 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 I " It was a t t he 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 loth. 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 our 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. Reports 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. (hitter, 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, 16 HENRY WARD BEECHER. L847. Mr. Beecher's discourses produced a strong im- pression upon his audience, and at a subsequent meet- ing in June, L847, at which the name of Plymouth Church was adopted, he was elected unanimously l>y 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 fust 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 bea ministry of Christ." The public services of installation as pastor did not take place until a month later. November 11th. 1847. I fader t he 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 L858, in the first instance ninety-one persons having united with the church, and in the second, three hundred and thirty-live 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. ' v 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 jjeople and his church. t8 HENRI 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 streel were qo! 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. Lew is, I here 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 has had to run! What business he has had on his hands ! What developments of God's grace have taken place, which, if they were to be unfolded and written, would lill 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 with 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 lie 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 though 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- 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 attempts 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, 50 HKNIIY WARD BEECHER. except for a few weeks in the latter pari of the sum- mer, when the residents of Brooklyn have Left their cii\ homes for the country and Mr, Beecher has ao1 yet Left the pulpit for his usual summer vacation. The spiritual results 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 clse- 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 tins in spite of the great effort to drive Lini from his pulpit and the city of his home. I do not propose to enter in these pages upon any detailed recital of the already 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 I?iclepen<7< ///, a journal of similar character, but had resigned in favor of Mr. Tilton, 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 Whiti nsvi lie, 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 denned offence to Mr. Til ton'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 rrnblic 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 E1ENR1 WARD BEECHER. adopted by the church and congregation. Mr. Tilton then 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 thai he must fail, that lie 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 wis 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 ;iLr;iiiisr Mr. Beecher on theological grounds, and ;i considerable number entertaining serious suspicions, founded on previous public reports, respecting his moral integrity. While this council did notundertake a direct investigation of the charges, a task impossible of execution l>y such a body without power to compel THE FAMOUS COUNCIL. DO tlic 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 questions 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 response, 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 wlio have never had the opportunity to investigate with care the charges and the singularly inadequate evidence on which they were based; and suspicion 56 BENRY WARD BEECHER. lias been enhanced in some quarters, doubtless, by personal, political, and theological prejudices; bul as the final resull of the whole matter, Mr. Beecher retains his position as the most eminent preacher and one of thegreal thought leaders in America, while his principal accuser, who at one time occupied a foremost position in journalism and literal lire, 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- lience 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, t wo 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 1 s home is a pastoral symphony. Here he has a delight- ful retreat during the summer from the toils of his public work throughout the major portion of the year ; :,s HENRI WARD BEECHEK here wheD the toils of his life are over, mayheenjoj a well-earned leisure in a prolonged old age, surrounded by his friends and by those who are the best and in«>st enjoyed of all his friends— groups of merry little children. CHAPTER III. MR. BEECHER AS A PREACHER. Mr. Beecher's career as a preacher lias 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. Paring 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 emplo3 7 ed 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 have 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 bodyof progressive ministers in 1 1 1« ' orthodox churches as their Leader; while his always bold and fearless and sometimes erratic utter- ances have aol separated him from the evangelical con- nections and affiliations in which his spiritual sympa- thies aswell as his birth and education hold him. Out of his ministry and in connection with it have grown n]i three Sunday-schools in Brooklyn, which were models when they were organized, and are si ill 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 pulpit is taught in innumerable pulpits of both that and other denomina- tions. The spiritual 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 down for the first time at the Lord's table. The power of this preacher 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 value, its extent cannot be questioned. The study of such a pulpit phenomenon is as valuable as it is interesting, even though there may be elements in the genius of the preacher which (h'h' analysis. _JL The Sources of Ms 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. GI great moral and spiritual results and whose moral and spiritual powers have 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 spiritual emotion. Mr. Beecher finds the fullest realization of companionship through ideality and love, and its result is shown in his preaching. The spirit 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 prayer, and of Christian experience. A secondary element of his power is his t intellect -. ial iNsiGiiT r 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 HENRY WARD BEECHER. logical processes, bul by intuitions, and in this respect resembles the penetration of niind of a clear-headed woman, or still more the prophetic powers of the ancient Eebrew seers. This is at once a source of de- ft -cr 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 oi* 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 exception 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-live years, lie 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 fall of rigor, 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 kaciltiks. 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 23ardoned if rather long extracts are intro- duced here from those who have said the best things in the best way about his imagination. Prof. Noah Porter writes : "Mr. Beecher is emi- nently imaginative. (His power 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 when 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 power has ever at command." Prof. Hoppin discourses at greater length upon the imaginative quality of Mr. Beecher 1 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 the old preachers and prophets the high mora] uses of the Imagination. BLe has the poet's quick eye to see the spiritual sense in the home- liesl things, in the most common Tacts mid events. These are not always, ii is true, of a highly religious character. Every one who lias been a hoy 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, and who makes heroic efforts of achievements under immense difficulties. 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 pulpit, 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 preachers, Latimer, Luther, and most (.!' 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 following from the sermon on 'The Prob- PULPIT HUMOR. 05 lem of Joy and Suffering in Life ' X ' 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 buds 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 originality * Henry Ward Beecher. Eev. Win. Taylor. Scottish Review, October, 1859. HENRY WARD BEBI BER. of which we have spoken, is bo be found in the power I'ul grasp and wide range of his imagination. In this respect, we believe him to be, if nol the first, ;it least in the first line of the preachers of his day. lie is a true poet, albeit, so far as we are aware, he is entirely Lnnocenl of verse. Many of these sparkling fragments have as much of the creative elemenl in them as would make the fortune of a score of poel laureates. To use one of his own comparisons, they are like beautiful spring 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-pictures 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 gambler, 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 dramatis! 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 able, like Prospero, to conjure up the tempest when he pleases, he delights rather to charm with the beau- tiful. He may occasionally visit Sinai with 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 rhapsody of the pen upon the tongue, 1 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 sight of a fine painting will transport him into rapture, or melt him into 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 IS HENRY WARD BEECHER. the Bible,' it is in such a way as to mark at once his strong sympathy with their impassioned utterances, mid 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 property of genius to bring to light. Eence 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 Ave 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, hut they spring up out of the subject like way- side flowers, which are plucked as he passes, and given in all their freshness and fragrance 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 his imagination. " 'For rhetoric, he cannot ope His mouth but out there flies a trope." " Supplemental to his faith, his intellectuality, and his imagination, is his: humanity. If is tne value which In- 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 quick 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 1 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 geniusS 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 in 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 ;<) IIKMIV WAPD BEECHBR. preacher," says l>r. Haweis,* k 'ever impressed us more with the feeling of living with the life of his people. He wishes to be one with them, nol under- rating their difficulties, not Imposing imaginary and disheartening standards of life and conduct, bul with each iifw standard supplying a motive power, that so none may put their hand to the plough and turn back. Although lie 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 h< >w 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. K. Haweis. Contemporary Review, Vol. 10, 1ST-.' INTENSELY HUMAN. 71 given to his words by the combined unconscious con- sent of many minds who, as it were, listen approving- ly as if to their own ideas. He has indeed found the great secret of popular power, such as John the Bap- fist had, such as St. Bernard had, such as Luther had. He is a 'king of men' in moral and spiritual things, lie 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 v 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 line adjustment of his faculties, and the power of a neutralizing judgment, that keeps him with- in the sphere of his hearer's understanding, and that recalls him by an instinctive impulse when he is con- HENRI WARD BEECHER. scious of too greal a tliu.li t of fancy or imagination. Many who lack this quality of level-headedness, whose efficiency La impaired by a preponderance of idealism, are termed visionary, and exert bul a small degree of popular influence, bul tie who possesses this mental equipoise has that power of dispensing comfort and contentmenl which warrants brilliancies of thoughl and speech that weary as, "no more," as says Dr. \l. >. Storrs, "than do the r< d 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. llobertson," says an English re- viewer, estimating this characteristic of Mi'. 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 religions 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 the 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 point, 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 perfectly 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 ridicule is not always a right test of truth, and we are disposed to admit that, in ordinary circum- stances, the pulpit is not the place for the display of humor ; yet there are some arguments which can only be met by a reducbio ad dbsurdum, 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 ■J I HENRY WARD BEECHER disposed to question the fineness of his taste ; but, then, much allowance must be made for a man of his natural temperament and rollicking disposition. Ee says many of these tilings, we believe, before be is aware that anything out of place has escaped him, and in justice to his reputation it must be mentioned thai many of bis most grotesque and humorous expressions have occurred in connection with the public intimations he makes, and not at aU in the body of his sermons. It is his custom to make such announcements before he gives out his text, and sometimes lie 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 which they produce, and may not un- f requently 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 -lose relations with 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. CHAPTER IV. 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 full 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 spring is never filled, yet never gets dry ; that he is a sort of widow's cruse, that supplies un- ceasingly, but is never supplied. 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 ;»; HENRY WARD BEECHBR. from accumulated resources, ;is most men d<> who have passed the line of sixty years, tie N still a very con- siderable student, both of men and of books. Be is. in the first place, and lias 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, speaking of his early 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- t ween 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 his shelves, and their leaves are cut, and their edges HIS GENIUS FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE. 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 ;i 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 De 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 personal 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 finishing 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 reading 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 1IKXKY WARD BKKOIIKR. "' no student." Wedonot think Mr. Beecher pretends to be a Hebrew scholar: in fact we have a strong recol- lection of his somewhere disavowing Hebrew scholar- ship. Bui In- is no mean proficient in the Greek of the New Testament. We do nor 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, bul he had made a mis- take, he should have confined himself to the dative case. But his chief reliance among commentators is A 1 ford'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 ( Jhrist." 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 proportion of time in special preparation for particular sermons than most HIS GENIUS FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE. ?.> 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, 1 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 1 have never seen anything that would lead nie 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, leading 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 unreliable un- less written down and some one made responsible as prompter. In other directions it would seem as if the tilings he needed were produced as if to order on all occasions. In speaking 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 stranger 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 NEVE 11 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 fifteen 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. • k 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 him 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 iii:m;\ WARD BEECHER. the congregation were electrified seems very tame. For m\ own part, I found ao 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 Ikiim Is <>n 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 St owe standing in the pastor's pew. Has- tening to him I said : ' Professor, what about that ser- mon I ' 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, " May as 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. r< Mr. Beecher places no value upon a manuscript, and after being used it maybe obtained for the ask- ing. His sermons are never repeated. 1 do not be- FACILITY OF PREPARATION. 83 lieve Mr. Beecher could preach a sermon the second time so that those who heard it first would recognize it. He has a sort of contempt or disgust for what he has Avritten 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 prepared 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 sj)ecial occasions as in his own pulpit. 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. M HENRY WARD BEECHER, Brown was the pastor. Sitting in the p.-w 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 ,,n a blank Leaf in pencil the following memoranda : •■ ' I. Missionary work— highest of all or disinterest e HENRY WARD BEECHER. increase of spiritual faith, and an undiminished' hold upon the greal central truths of the Gospel as held by thegreal bodyof Evangelical teachers. That this is his own belief respecting himself is very certain from a comparatively recenl sermon on Religious Doubt.* "There have been things which I supposed were true, init which year by year, as 1 Learned what they were, and understood their measure and their worth, T have dropped one after another : and yet the change lias been, not in the direction of loss, but in the direction of gain. I differ from most of my brethren in the ministry who suspecl my orthodoxy, not in thai T have abandoned so much, but in that I have taken on so much." CJot only Mr. Beeehers methods of expression are peculiar to himself, but his system of philosophy 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 p id dished sermons abundantly justifies his own declaration, that "for twenty-five years, in newspapers, in printed 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. 1th. 1881. NOT INDIFFERENT TO CREEDS. 93" and the 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 lias 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 life, not opinion, 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 belongsY that a great many of the questions about which theologians have quar- * From a letter by Mr. Beecher to Rev. 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. 94 HENRY WARD BEECHER. relied axe questions about which they are wholly igno- rant, while concerning - others belief is relatively unim- portant, because it produces no appreciable influence mi 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. lw 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- th < >, purity of disposition. You must believe right abou t 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 t 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 important how lie 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. J From many itera- tions of this view I select one only, uttered 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 precise 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 department in them, is a protest against this notion of mere loose, vague, indifferent 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 HKXRY WARD BEECHER abstract forms if you please; make as many criticisms about proportions as yo u 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 imperfectly developed being. but also as sinful and guilty before God, and needing divine forgiveness and a new and divine impulse in older 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. Revelation 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. '.is HENRI WARD BEECHER. Testament and the New, contain the fruit of that in- spiration as it was developed in the Hebrew nation, and 1 In 11 v and heartily accept the Bible according to tin- 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 scien title knowledge, and he re- jects and repudiates with great vigor the notion of ver bal inspiration, and even of plenary inspiration in the full and proper sense of that term. 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 (rod. 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 Plymouth Church, Dec. 19th, 1880. Published in Christian Union of Jan. 5th, 1881. 100 HENRY WARD BEECHER. animaJ forms. Theologically, lie 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 1801 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 God. 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 ia 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 afflict- 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. 102 1IKNIJY WARD BBECHER. ttess. One con Cession 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 help 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 Pi vine 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 Christ'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 Eeligious Subjects, p. 184. 104 BENRl WARD BEECHBR. The formation of Christian dispositions in men, the de velopmenl of Christian character, the beginning and the nurture of a Divine life, the making men godly, Christ-like, the building up, nol 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 pleaching lias 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 th«' Holy (J host the nobler elements of his being are developed and brought into supremacy. Until we are born 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 oi the doctrine of Christ, specially and personally. It is true in respect to ev r ery 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. No 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 correlative 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. Reported in Plymouth Pulpit, Sixth Series, p. 447-8. L06 BENRY WARD BEECHER. portion, to the ignoring of the 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 suffer- 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 < ml y 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 like an organ without diapasons. It would have no basis. " * 5. Indissolubly connected with Mr. Beechers 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 Christ ; 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 God 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. L08 BENRY WARD BEECHER. my 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 Ee 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 1> i 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 Spirit, "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.! - k 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, lie veiled His royalty ; lie 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 Plymouth Church, Feb. 6th, 1881. Published in Chris- tian Union of Feb. 16th, 1881. f 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- crepancies 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 BENRY WARD BEEC1IER. preaching. The prominence lias been given to his per sonal experience of love Tor, reverence toward, and trust in Jesus Christ as a personal God and Saviour. It is in (his persona] 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 Father. A yet more tenuous and invisible film of tli ought 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. T 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 thai 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 Christ 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. Nowhere 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. 1 L2 BENR1 WARD BBECHER. •• \\V 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 ; views 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 undogmatie. 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. RETRIBUTION. 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 authoritative 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. Ill HENRI WARD BEECHER. clearly formulated them in his own mind; but the results which he has reached he has declared with his accustomed boldness. They include t lie following points : 1. That there is a retribution, an after-death punish- ment; mid that Christ taught this truth* "when 1I<' 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 he 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 lias 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 character^ tic power and eloquence in his famous discourse on " The Background of Mystery." t "If, now, you tell me that this great mass of men, because they had not the knowledge of God, 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 othei * Sermon preached in Plymouth Church, July 11th, 1880 ; published in Christian Union, July 1 1th, 1880. f See sermon published in Christian Union, December 26th, 1877. ETERNAL SUFFERING. H5 hand you say they went to hell, then you make an inn 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 Hies— 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 lit; ih:m;y WARD BEECHER. will be destroyed. He contents himself with preaching simply thai persistent sin in this life involves a terri- ble doom in the life to conic respecting the aature and outcome of which the Scriptures Leave as in uncertain- ty. The following declaration on this subject is recent and explicit : * •• Whatever 1 believe beyond the simple statemenl of our Lord that the consequences in this life go over and are terrible in the life to com-', 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 thai they involve a combi nation of Restorationism and Anmhilationism ; 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, 1S80. 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 Rationalistic 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 aw 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 VI. mi:, beecher as a journalist, Mr. Beecher's first venture as an editor was in Cincinnati, a short time before entering upon his ministerial work. "He was," says Mrs. Stowe, "for four or iive 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 negroes 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 sec< Hid 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." But journalism as a real a vocation lie first took up in Mr. Beechcr at Different Ages, (i) At 23 years of age. (2) At 30. (3) At 40. (4) At 50. (5) At 65. 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 1 s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our head by some alterative reading. In the State Library were Loudon's works — his Encyclopedias 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 line, 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. L22 BENR1 WARD BEECHER. "There was something exceedingly pleasant, and is 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 ut 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 ( i ;i rden 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 Van Mons about pears, with 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 oidy 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 TM HENRI WARD BEECHER could hardly believe Mr. Beeeher's solemn assertion thai lit* had never set eyes upon the flower till thai moment. When iii 1847 Mr. Beechei came to Brooklyn the anti-slavery struggle was beginning to assume portent- ous dimensions, [nto it Lif threw himself hearl 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 fchegreal 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 North 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 ont 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 supporl 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. L25 impetuous 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 comrjar- 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 V ' 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. L26 HENRI WARD BEECHER. 3 lis method of preparation, thru and during the shorl subsequenl 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- trasl between the methods of Dr. Thompson and Mr. Beecher was characteristic. Dr. Thompson had his regular day at the office. I [e rarely missed it ; was never early, never late, always exactly punctual. He calculated to an inch the amount of matter required, and never nave 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 la- was the delight of compositors and publishers. Mr. Beecher came in somewhere about the time his manu- script 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 pen across the paper as if it were a House printing machine and he were an electric bat- tery. He threw oil 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. 1^7 heads over his " uncautious 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 1 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- L28 BENRY WARD BEECHER. oughlj grounded himself in every detail thai ao an- swer could be made, and none was attempted by the Society. The ideal editor fulfils a threefold function: be is creator, administrator, and writer. Ee forms bis 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 their adaptation to its execution ; and be 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 tin' London Times, it is said, never wrote a word for bis own journal; he was creator and administrator. His genius was that of organizer ; selector of men to write better t ban be could what lie 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 lie created Harper's Magazine^ Harper's Week/// and Harper'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 Tribunt 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. llaymond 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 absolutelj "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 1 s idea. He had engaged to write ''Norwood, 11 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 spirit of love for men and faith in Christ as their Lord and Saviour. We have often heard him say, "It is pos- sible to have a church in which men of all traditional faiths and systems shall unite in work and worship 130 HENRI \\ AIM) BEECHER. for Christ. We have it in Plymouth Church, where Quaker and Episcopalian, Calvinist and Arminian, Unitarian and Trinitarian, sil 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 yearor 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 thai 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 Christ fan 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 promote Congregational ideas, and edited by three leading Congregational divines, was still so \'nr recognized as a Congregational organ thai a junta of Congregational clergymen in the West 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. Tf 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 Review, 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 paper 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 find 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 miscons trued silence. It was a part of L32 iii:m;v WARD BEECHER. this same determination that the paper should teach a practical godliness, which made him resolute that ii should practise what it preached. He would have in* 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 lather, 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 difficulties in the business management, odium theologlcum 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. Beeclin 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 worJc is probably ended, but his editorial influence will never cease to be felt in the larger THE MISSION OF "THE CHRISTIAN UNION." 133 charily, 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. ME. BEECHER AS A LECTURER AND ORATOR. In "Men of Our Times" Mrs. Stowe writes of tier 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 difficult v 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 hav«- to make him say it three times. The first time I have no manner of an idea more than if he spoke Choctaw ; tin- 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 1>p an orator should have become subsequently one of the HIS ELOCUTIONARY EDUCATION. L35 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 poems 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- L36 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. input I shall make. My gestures are natural because this drill made them natural to me. The 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 speaking, such a t Ik .rough 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 efficient 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- ducing elocutionary effects, the management of his voice, the carriage of his figure, and the use of hands and arms in gesture, were thus acquired before he entered college, and he did not cease his study and practice after entering, for we learn from Mrs. Stowe : " Oratory and rhetoric he regarded as his appointed weapons, and he began to prepare himself in the department of how to say— meanwhile contemplating with uncertain awe the great future problem of what to say." For the formation of style he began a course of Eng- lish classical study : Milton's prose works, BacOn, Shakspeare, and the writers of the Elizabethan period * Christian Union, July 14th. 1880. HIS LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 137 were his classics, read and re-read, and deeply pon- dered." The resources thus acquired were then, as now, fre- quently drawn upon, not only in college exercises, but in occasional appearances before the village audience where, it will be remembered, he delivered three lectures on Phrenology. These are, however, of interest only as historical facts, and as the first steps in the field of platform- speaking. The series of "Lectures to Young Men," delivered during Mr. Beecher's pastorate in Indianap- olis, are the first that stand out conspicuously with the seal of the man' s maturity and earnestness of purpose. They were preached first as sermons, and were called forth by the depravity and vice and immorality which at that time characterized much of Western civilization. Mr. Beecher relates of them : " The lectures were writ- ten each one during the week preceding the day of its delivery. I well remember the enjoyment which I had in their preparation. They were children of early en- thusiasm." Although addressed to young men, they are full of important lessons for all ages from youth to old age. The topics reveal the character of the lectures. Indus- try and Idleness, Dishonesty, Gamblers and Gambling, The Strange Woman, Popular Amusements, Practical Hints, Profane Swearing, Vulgarity, Happiness — under these titles Mr. Beecher presents impressive warnings, draws vivid pictures of vice and its results, expresses important truths, and appeals to the highest manhood of every youth. The illustrations are fresh and happy, frequently humorous, and throughout the lectures there 138 HENRY WARD BEEGHBR. is such genuine interest iii and sympathy with the lives- of vomit;- people, that they at once feel the writer's ear- nestness and integrity of purpose and recognize the truth of his teachings. The style is rigorous, forcible, earnest, abounding in life-like pictures that convey a fuller meaning and a stronger moral than any amount of abstract treatise on immorality. The forcible and realistic scenes that lie describes in the lecture on Gambling, for instance, carry such a weight of meaning in their words, and are so full of signifi- cance, that they need no extended explanation to bring home to his hearer's hearts the sad moral they convey. In ;i series of word-pictures he portrays the career of a young man, -> a whole-souled fellow, who is afraid to seem ashamed of any fashionable gayety." Scene first introduces the reluctant and conscience-stricken youth at a quiet little card and wine-party in a genteel coffee- house. Scene second is a silent room in the early morning. Candles burn dimly oh a table, round which are seated four men, motionless, haggard and watchful, intent on their cards and each other's faces. At length they rise and withdraw: some with their gains, others sullen over their losses. The young man is the most sullen and the fiercest of them all. Scenes third and fourth we quote entire : 'Scent tin tliinl. Years have passed on. He has seen youth rained, at first with expostulation, then with only silent regret, then con- senting to take part of the spoils ; and, finally, he has himself de- coyed, duped, and stripped them without mercy.* Go with me into- that dilapidated house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew dealing cards GAMBLERS DESCRIBED. L39 smouched with tobacco, grease, and liquor. One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy ; a shock of grizzly matted hair, half covering his villain eyes, which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. Close by him wheezes a white-faced dropsical wretch, vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel Spaniard and a burly negro (the jolliest of the four) complete the group. They have spectators— drunken sailors, and ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died long ago when all that was womanly died. Here hour draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, sometimes with threat and oath and uproar. The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each with cheating, and high. words ensue, and blows; and the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, scratching and rolling over and over in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest the drunkenest, of the four is our friend who began by making up the game. " Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day stand with me, if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that multitude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hanged. At last a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows' ladder his courage fails. His coward feet refuse to ascend ; dragged up, he is supported by bustling officials ; his brain reels, his eye swims, while the meek minister utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed, the signal is given ; a shudder runs through the crowd as he swings free. After a moment his con- vulsed limbs stretch down and hang heavily and still ; and he who began to gamble to make up a game, and ended with stabbing an enraged victim whom he had fleeced, has here played his last game, himself the stake." Such, pictures as these, considered artistically, possess a power, an accuracy of detail, an artistic sense of coloring and composition, an arrangement of light and shade, that mark the author as an artist ; con- sidered morally, they possess a depth of significance, a directness of application, a sincerity of purpose, and a power of instruction that show a great teacher. 14D HENRY WARD BEECHER. They bear a strong resemblance to the works of Hogarth, and the word -pictures of Mr. Beecher might have been the interpretation, if one were needed, of the works of the great English artist. But neither the word-pictures nor the painted pictures require interpretation. Both speak for themselves. With equal i>ower, the British artist with his brush and the American preacher with his sermons have pre- sented the lessons to be drawn from the follies of their respective times ; and while, on the one hand, the scenes of Hogarth possess a power of satire that is lack- ing in those of Mr. Beecher. there is, on the other hand, an earnestness of moral purpose in the scenes of Mr. Beecher that is wholly wanting in the paintings of the English master. The paragraphs here quoted are but solitary examples of pictures that abound throughout these lectures, which, dealing with moral subjects, are thoroughly practical, and calculated to awaken the dormant perceptions of young men to the dangers that surround them. These lectures were first collected and published in 1845 ; a second edition was brought out in 1846, and of these two editions more than sixty thousand copies were sold. A third edition was published in 187:5 by J. B. Ford & Co. of New York, who included it in their "Uniform Edition" of Mr. Beecher' s works. In the preface to the third edition Mr. Beecher gives this humorous account of the lectures and the narrow ness of their escape from oblivion: "Dr. Isaac Bar- rows' sermons had long been favorites of mine. I was fascinated by the exhaustive thoroughness of his treat- ment of subjects, by a certain calm and homely dignity, ENCOURAGEMENT. 141 and by his marvellous procession of adjectives. Ordi- narily adjectives are the parasites of substantives — courtiers that hide or cover the king with blandish- ments — but in Barrow's hands they became a useful and indeed quite respectable element of composition. Considering my early partiality for Barrow, I have always regarded it as a wonder that I escaped so largely from the snares and temptations of that rhetorical demon, the Adjective. Barrow has four sermons on 4 Industry/ I began reading them. Before half fin- ishing the first one, I had found that he had said every- thing I had thought of and a good deal more. In utter disgust I threw my manuscript across the room, and saw it slide under the bookcase, and there it would have remained had not my wife pulled it forth. After many weeks, however, I crept back to it, led by this curious encouragement. A young mechanic in my parish was reading with enthusiasm a volume of lec- tures to young men, then just published. Every time I met him he was eloquent with their praise. At length, by his persuasion, I consented to read them, and soon opened my eyes with amazement. After going through one or two of them, I said, ' If these lectures can do good, I am sure mine may take their chance ! ' I resumed their preparation, but I kept Barrow shut up on the shelf." Mr. Beecher has appeared as a lecturer and an orator for many seasons and on many occasions. "In 1856 the society," says the Plymouth Church Manual, "at the request of a number of eminent clergy- men and others, voted him leave of absence to traverse the country on behalf of the cause of liberty, then felt L42 iikm:\ w.UiD BEECHER. bo be in peril." At the time of the "fugitive slave Law" bill, when there was instituted a Union Saving Committee at Castle Garden, New York, for the pur- pose of making out black lists of those merchants who were to be ruined financially unless they consented to change their principles, Mr. Beecher labored manfully in maintaining the proscribed merchants, and urging them to resistance. He also lectured upon this subject throughout New England and New York, and wrote a srri.-s of articles for the Independent* Pie has de- livered single lectures, and lectures in courses, in many of the principal cities of New England, the Middle States, the South and West, and it is stated on good authority that his beautiful country home at Peekskill <.ii the Hudson was built from the proceeds of two years' lectures. Mr. Beecher came to the East in the midst of the intensity of the anti-slavery conflict, threw himself into it. in the metropolis, with all the ardor of his passion- ale nature, and at once occupied a front rank on a platform which abounded with orators, and in an epoch which evoked oratory such as has at no other time in American history been heard in America. From 1847 to (he outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 the nation was steadily rising from a red heat to white heat, till it became molten in war. The volcano underne;it!i vv ;is heaving ; the eruption was preparing to take place. Slavery was becoming more and more lordly and arrogant, and was steadily extending its aggres- sions. It had long since purchased Louisiana. It * Mrs. Stowi's ''Men of Onr Times." THE ANTI-SLAVERY EPOCH. 14:5 hud swooped down upon Mexico, to make of Texas a slave empire of enormous proportions. It followed this act of spoliation by trampling under foot its own covenant, destroying the Compromise line, and open- ing all the farther West to slavery. The Douglas device of " Squatter Sovereignty" — the absurd no principle that the first handful of immigrants in a Ter- ritory should be permitted to determine its perma- nent character and destiny — was next invented. Kansas was thus flung open to the border ruffians, with pistol and bowie-knife, who wanted no better sport than the guerilla campaign to which this invited them. The North proved herself equal to the emergency : emi- gration societies were organized ; the emigrants were equipped with Sharps rifles ; and at public meetings held in churches at the North collections were taken up to aid them. It was at one such collection that Mr. Beecher, in one of those epigrammatic utterances which are sometimes the best fruit of genuine oratory, declared that a Sharps rifle was better than a Bible to convert a border ruffian — an epigram that ran through all the country, and earned for the rifle the name of " Beecher's Bible. " Popular Sovereignty failed, and Kansas was made free by her own vote. Then the next step was taken : slavery was declared not local but national ; and the right of the master to hold his slave in every State of the Union was gravely argued on constitutional grounds by lawyers, and even seri- ously defended on moral grounds by Doctors of Di- vinity. Mr. Toombs made his famous boast that he would call the roll of his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill ; and it did not seem then the presump- L44 HENRY WARD BEECHER. tuous boast thai ir seems now. The demoralization of the public conscience was frightful. The church-hells all over the country called men i < ^ether to save not fellow-men from chains and slavery, but the Union by perpetuating slavery and fastening the chains upon \ the slave. The doctrine of a "higher law" than the law of the land was not only jeered at by politicians but denounced by ministers. The Fugitive Slave law made it a crime to aid a man escaping from bondage ; to feed him, clothe him, guide him, shelter him. Ministers from the pulpits preached the duty of obedi- ence to this infamous law, on the text, " The powers that be are ordained of God/' The crime against humanity was ignored ; the condemnation uttered by Christ against those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, was practically erased from the New Testament. I well remember the impression produced upon the audience by Mr. Beecher one Sunday morning by a single sen- tence, solemnly uttered with upraised hand : " If I had a son who was a slave, and he did not seek for liberty at every hazard and at every cost, I would write across his name the word ' Disowned.' " The sentence seems simple enough now, but it thrilled the audience then "^4 like a flash of electricity from a powerful battery. Such an epoch was prolific in orators and oratory. The audience, the time, the theme, the men, were all there. Among the men it is certain there was no one who was more execrated and admired, more feared and loved, than the young preacher from the West. ,His practical sense and his catholic spirit, no less than his passionate earnestness and his dramatic genius, MR. BEECHER'S POSITION. 145- made him a power among men of power. He believed with the Abolitionists that slavery was a crime against humanity and against G-od, but he never joined them in personal execration of the slaveholder. He be- lieved with them that it was the sacred and solemn duty of the North to rid itself of all responsibility for slavery, bnt he repudiated the Garrisonian charac- terization of the Constitution as a " compact with hell," and regarded it with respect, as an instrument possessed with the spirit of liberty, but not with a superstitious reverence, as a divinely inspired oracle which common hands could not improve. In the pulA pit, on the platform, in lectures and addresses, all over / the North he labored to arouse the public conscience, toj 7 stir the public feeling, to shake off the public lethargy./ One of the most dramatic acts of his life belongs to this epoch. It was in the old Broad way Tabern acle, which was packed from floor to ceiling. The chains with which John Brown had been bound had been brought into the meeting, and lay upon the table on the platform. The orator kindled as he spoke ; the chains before him became a symbol of the chains that I ^ bound the wrists of three million slaves, and in an out- I burst of passion he seized upon them, cast them upon/ the floor, and ground them beneath his heel as though/ he would then and there grind the whole power or slavery to dust beneath his feet. The effect was inde- scribable. The whole audience cheered till the roof rang, and all hearts took a new vow to march on till every chain should be broken and every slave set free. A book might be filled with illustrative incidents of the oratory of that period ; and of all its orators— 1 t6 HENRI w Ai:i> BBECHER. Seward, Chase, Sumner, Phillips, Grandson, Parker, Thompson, Bacon — none in immediate power overan audience equalled Mr. Beecher. One such instance must serve here. It occurred a little over a year after Mi'. Beecher had occupied the pulpit of Plymouth Church. He was called to a meeting held at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City, October 23d, L848. The people were assembled to raise a ran- som for two suffering slave-girls, and the occasion was one that called for an orator's most earnest efforts and the most hearty co-operation of individuals. Mr. Beecher has said of late, looking back to that time, that "he considered it one of the most memorable evenings of his ^6/' A private letter of that date from one who was present gives the following simple but graphic picture of the scene. For it we are indebted to a friend. It has not, we believe, before been published : October 24, 1848. Last evening we went over to a great meeting held in the Broad- way Tabernacle for the purpose of raising two thousand dollars for the redemption of the Edmistons, two poor slave-girls, in whose case Mr. Beecher was much interested. The speakers announced were Mr. II. W. Iieecher, Dr. Dowling, and Alvan Stewart, Esq. As Stewart did not make his appearance, the two reverends had it all to themselves. The immense house was crowded. The building, you know, is an amphitheatre, with the speakers platform mi the floor, or but slightly raised. We sat in the singers' seats, directly behind the speakers and facing the great congregation. Such a sight is in itself alone very impressive, and full of solemnity. It has a judg- ment-day effect upon the imagination. I need not tell you, T am sure, that Mr. Beecher spoke well. and with great power, and that as he poured forth the breath- ing thoughts and burning words of indignation, scorn, contempt. SLAVE GIRLS PURCHASED. U7 and pity, his audience seemed completely in his hands, and the breathless silence, the flowing tear, or the thunder of applause gave unmistakable evidence that he made himself understood and felt. He seemed to enjoy the hurrahs ! " I thank you for that noise !" said he, after a tremendous burst ; " it cheers me, and makes me feel that I am among men — men and brethren." As you may suppose, he got, it again. In speaking of the old man, the father of these girls, he stopped short. '■'The father .'" he exclaimed. " Do goods and chattels have fathers ?" Do slaves have daughters? The father! would to God Will Shakespeare was living ! He might make a drama out of that sentence more touching than any he ever wrote !" After Dr. Dowling's address, which was very good, and in some respects letter than Mr. Beecher's, a collec- tion was taken up, and reported as .$600. This was not satisfactory to ministers or people. A voice from the crowd, " Take up an- other !" Another collection was made, but still several hundreds were lacking. Mr. S. B. Chittenden gave his name for another $50 ; his brother, Henry Chittenden, another $50 ; H. C. Bowen, $100 ; Chittenden, another $25 ; and so the ball rolled on, the ministers on the platform making short and appropriate remarks, the audience calling out, " How much is wanting now ?" Mr. Beecher seemed to be on his feet and talking all the time, popping about like a box of fireworks accidentally ignited, and going off in all shapes and directions — a rocket here with falling stars, a fiery wheel there, and before you could think, a nest of ser- pents right in your teeth. During one of the pauses Mr. Beecher sprang up, exclaiming, " Where is Captain Knight, of the !New World ? I thought I saw him!" "Here!" cried a manly voice from the gallery; " he has contributed twice, and if you will come on board the ship in the morning he will contribute again. 1 ' A hearty burst of applause fol- lowed. " We want him on the platform," said Mr. Beecher. He came in a few moments, amid the cheering of the audience. Mr. B. urged him to speak, to which he seemed to demur, turning slightly from the people. " The Captain does not feel quite so bold here as on the deck of L48 HENRY WARD BEECIIKR. his ship, but he'll give us a good speech," said Mr. Beecher, patting him on the shoulder, and gently turning him toward the audience. A.s the Captain is a fine, handsome-looking fellow, well whiskered, and a head and shoulders taller than Mr. Beecher, the effect was irresistibly comic, and brought another round from the crowd. Captain Knight made a short speefih, and without mentioning what he had given before, gave another fifty. When the whole sum was raised but fifty dollars, " Now," said Mr. Beecher, " I never did hurrah in a public meeting, but when this account is closed up, I will join in three of the loudest cheers that ever rang through this old building." " I'll take the balance," called out Mr. Studwell of Plymouth Church. And then there was a mighty shout ! Hats were swung, handkerchiefs waved, mouths were on the very broad- est grin, and more ministers than Mr. Beecher joined in the row. Three cheers were given for Captain Knight, three more for Mr. Beecher, and then the people quieted down under the influence of one of those rapid transformations of his by which he instantly becomes the model Presbyterian minister. He made a few remarks upon the gratitude we owed to God, and proposed the singing of the Dox- ology as our universal expression. " Praise God from whom all blessings flow" was sung — not with unbounded applause, but with tender and tremendous effect. After a benediction, implored by Dr. Edward Beecher, the great multi- tude quietly dispersed, and the Edmiston sisters were no longer slaves, but free women. Since the war Mr. Beecher' s oratory has been called forth chiefly in his own pulpit and on the lecture plat- form. He has lectured extensively all over the North, and has made at least two expeditions into the South. It is stated on good authority that his beautiful home in Peekskill was built out of the proceeds of two ^-yea rs' le ctures. ^ He has generally met a warm welcome ( wherever he has gone, and there has rarely been any- \ thing to evoke that peculiar kind of oratorical power- MR. BEECHER'S LECTURES. 149 which only a great occasion and intense opposition can evoke. But he has spoken everywhere to great audi- ences, easily filling the largest houses, and often leav-j ing many outside unable to get in. He has discoursed on every uppermost topic in the public mind : Recon- struction of the South ; Education ; the Financial Question ; Free Trade ; the Chinese Question ; Tem- perance ; as well as upon all sorts of moral, social, and theological subjects. In these lecture tours he has travelled from St. John's to the Golden Gate, and from Montreal to Memphis. I believe lie lias never visited the Gulf States. He lectures at night and travels by day ; but often his engagements are such that he drives directly from the lecture platform to the sta- tion, where he may have to wait for an hour or two before his train arrives and he gets his sleeping-car. He sleeps, however, by day as easily as by night. Never an epicurean or self-indulgent eater, he is phi- losopher enough to eat what is set before him, asking- no questions — a lesson which he learned probably in his itinerant ministries in his early experiences in the West ; at all events, he takes whatever accommoda- tions are provided for him, never grumbling. He rarely, however, consents to receive hospitality, though it is often extended to him. As with most successful speakers, the drain of social intercourse un- fits for the duties of the platform, upon which the lect- urer must go with mind undisturbed and undiverted by previous conversations. He always carries a bag- full of books and papers ; always gets the morning- papers as early as he can, but rarely spends a great deal of time over them. His mornings on the cars are 150 lillNin WARD BEECHER. spent with liis itinerant library. ■• lie generally has some dry old work on theology," says his lecture agent. " I have sometimes asked him, ' What are you reading that for i ' To which lie has replied, ' Well, I never can tell when any one may be going to pitch into me; and then these old fellows come in very handy. I read it and lay it away in the garrel where I can use it when I want it.* " ' lie always carries his Bible with him: is a continuous student of it; often takes it out of his pocket to read a. passage which he desires to quote in a friendly discussion, and lie rarely fails to tit am to the desired passage with facility. He never /delivers the same lecture twice in the same form; irarely if ever uses notes. His introductions are often, his general divisions sometimes, and his illus- trations always more or Less varied. Incidents that have occurred during tin 1 day, suggestions from the day's conversation, suggestions from the day's reading, ;|re woven in, or are added to the train of thought, or even give it a new form and color. He never spea k s to entertain, though he never speaks without enter- taining ; but I doubt whether he could make a speech without a definite and earnest moral purpose. I hare sometimes heard him try — in speeches of reply to com plimentary allusions on public occasions, or after- dinner gatherings, and inner yet heard a success. He is not a good after-dinner speaker unless he takes a t heme and aims at a result ; then sometimes his suc- cess is brilliant. Such was the case at the dinner to Herbert Spencer in New York in L882. He was the last speaker of the evening. It was late ; the audience were already weary ; and the speeches ap to that time THE HERBERT SPENCER DINNER. 151 had been purely and coldly scientific, unrelieved by any elements of emotion, and, except in the casual remarks of the chairman and the single speech of Carl Schurz, unillumined by any wit or humor. Be- ginning with a play of humor as irresistible as it was spontaneous, Mr. Beecher secured the sympathy of his audience in the first few sentences. Irradiating his address throughout with it in the most unexpected places, he kept alive and alert the interest and atten- tion. Gradually, insensibly to them, perhaps insensi- bly to himself, he lifted his auditors above the cold, dry, intellectual light in which the meeting had been kept, into the warm and sunny atmosphere of spiritual and emotional life. When, as he drew toward the close, he appealed to the personal consciousness of his hearers to confirm Paul's testimony to the strife for ever going on in all awakened souls between the lower animal and the higher spiritual nature, the responses of ''That's so," like Amen in a Methodist meeting, came from different quarters of the room ; when, with a voice tremulous with emotion, he expressed his own personal sense of obligation to Mr. Spencer for intel- lectual and spiritual light and strength, conferred in the new vantage-ground given to theologic thought, the audience showed its sympathy by its breathless and almost solemn silence ; and when he had closed, with good wishes for their guest, phrased in the form of a prayer to " Him who holds the stars in his hands," the whole assembly rose to its feet, and with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs greeted both the orator and the guest. This is perhaps a digression ; yet it serves to empha - 152 BENRT WARD BEECH ER. size the fact that an earnest and definite purpose is always necessary to evoke Mr. Beecher's power; and he is never so powerful as when opposition makes that purpose most definite and most earnest. Oi' this his lect- ure course on the Pacific Coast affords another example. His views on the Chinese Question were pronounced and had been widely circulated. He had preached and lectured on it in the East, and his utterances had of course preceded him. The Pacific papers were all opposed to him. But though, it is needless to say. lie neither modified his views nor toned down his utter- ances, he lectured to immense audiences. Engaged to deliver a course of four lectures in San Francisco, lie delivered nine, the proceeds of the last one being $4200. His lectures were published verbatim, and it was afterward declared that he had done more than any one had ever done to check and modify the public sentiment against the Chinese, which race prejudice and political interest had done so much to inflame, and religion had unfortunately done so little to allay. The most striking illustration, however, of this effect of opposition to rouse into full play all Mr. Beecher's powers, is afforded by his experiences in Richmond, Virginia, where he went to lecture in Jan- uary, 1877. Mr. Pond, his lecture agent, was with him, and thus tells the story of his experience and his victory : In all the five hundred lectures which I have heard from Mr. Beecher— and I have travelled with him over 200,000 miles— there was no one so remarkable as that delivered in Richmond. I had sold his lecture for $500 to a man by the name of Powell, who owned i ■$&$&& , / The Church in Lawrenceburg in which Mr. Beecher first preached. IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. 155 the theatre. We went to Washington January 23d, 1877, and I was telegraphed by him that we must not come, as Mr. Beecher would not be allowed to speak in Richmond. I said nothing to Mr. Beecher about it, but telegraphed Powell that we should be there. As we arrived at Richmond in the morning, be came aboard the train and said to me, " It won't do for Mr. Beecher to speak here, 1 ' and he showed me a four-page circular issued by a State official, the heading of which ran something like this : " Shall Beecher be allowed to speak in Richmond ? The Brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Author of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ! ' Henry Ward Beecher, who sent the Sharps Rifles to Kansas ! Henry Ward Beecher, who is famous for drawing the Bead, and Probably is as Liable to Draw a Bead on one of His Auditors as Any ! Henry Ward Beecher, who Helped to Dig the Graves of Mill- ions of our Best Sons of the South ! Henry Ward Beecher, who has been False to his Country, False to his Religion, and False to his God ! Shall this man be allowed to speak in Richmond ? ? ? " When we got into town the newsboys were selling anti-Beecher poetry and songs on the streets. We reached the hotel ; Mr. Beecher registered and left the room in the midst of g&neral tittering and sneering. When he went into the dining-room, even the waiters tittered and sneered, and it was hard to get waited on. We were simply insulted in every way, but Mr. Beecher said nothing. I remember as we walked out of the dining-room he caught up a little golden-haired baby, when a lady rushed up, and snatching the child away ran off with it. Mr. Beecher went up to his room, while I w 7 ent up to the theatre to see Powell. Affairs went quietly enough that day, and at night, when the lecture was to come off, we went up together to the theatre. The Board of Trade, the Tobacco Board, and the Legislature then in ses- sion had all by resolution agreed that none of their members would go. But when it came time to open the doors, as every man knew his fellow was not going, he went, and as a consequence the Gov- ernor was there, and all the legislators, and they w r ere having quite a laugh at each other's expense. The house was filled with men, and they were a noisy lot ; but Mr. Powell had secured a detail of thirty L56 HENRY WARD BEECHER policemen to insure quiet. After I entered the stage-door — there were five or six policemen to keep the crowd back— I heard them making a great noise in front, and Powell came to me and said, " Don't you introduce him. You'll be egged as sure as you go out there." Mr. Beecher knew that it was to he a wild meeting, but at last said to inc. " Well, I'm ready." and together we went out and took seats on the stage. As we sat down, the vast crowd of men and the few ladies in the gallery commenced to applaud, and some turbulent characters gave a regular rebel yell. I rose at last and introduced Mr. Beecher, merely saying that there was no act of my life that gave me such pleasure as introducing so great and good a man as Henry Ward Beecher. I sat down, and they went at it again. We speak of a man's rising to an emergency. He stood up there, in his old way, and let them yell until they got tired. He was to lecture on Hard Times, and his first words were that there was a law of God, a com- mon and natural law, that brains and money controlled tin; universe. He said, " This law cannot be changed even by the big Virginia Legislature, which opens with prayer and closes with a benedic- tion." As the legislators were all there in a body, the laugh went around. It w r as not five minutes before the house was clapping. Mr. Beecher talked two hours and a half to them, and of all the speeches that I ever heard that was the best one. ne said, first, he would eulogize Virginia and the bravery of the men of the South, and then he would tell them just what they did that was wrong. In his peroration he eulogized Virginia as a commonwealth ; she who had bred her sons for Presidents ;. how great she was, etc., etc. ; and got them all perfectly wrought up, and then he continued : " But what a change when she came to breeding her sons for the market ! ,v Then he would draw that terrible picture of slavery and its effects,, and they had to sit quietly and take it all. After the lecture we left the theatre quickly, got into a carriage and went down to the hotel. Then, once in his room, Mr. Beecher sat back in his chair and laughed, as much as to say, "We have captured Richmond, haven't we ?" Then came a knock at the door, and as it opened, there in the hall stood a crowd of these gentlemen ; they walked IX MR. MOODY'S CHURCH. 157 right in, and the spokesman said, " We want to thank you for this lecture, Mr. Beecher. This is the Hon. , and this is the Hon. , and Lieutenant-Governor — — ," and so on, introducing everybody ; and " We want you to lecture here to-morrow night for us. Why, this is good enough for our wives to hear." Mr. Beecher stood up, and said, " Gentlemen, I am a piece of artillery here that Mr. Pond pulls around and touches off when lie wants to." At this they showed hundred-dollar bills, and offered anything if he would only lecture again, but as he was booked for Washington the next night it was out of the question, and he had to refuse. They came in crowds the next morning at seven o'clock to see him off. Mr. Beecher s lecture- tours are generally so arranged as to enable him to get to his home in time for his Sabbath services ; indeed he is rarely absent from his Friday evening meeting, often travelling night and day to reach it. But when he is absent he is always ready to preach on the Sabbath, and no consideration of the possible effect of such a course in cheapening the tickets to his lecture on Monday night has the slight- est influence on him. It is rare, however, that he preaches when away from home more than one sermon on the Sabbath. He is a believer in the one-sermon theory, holding that it is enough for the hearer and quite enough for the preacher. It is hardly necessary to add that he always has more invitations than he can accept, and more auditors than he can address. One of the most notable of these preaching occasions was that at Mr. Moody's church in Chicago, in the winter, I think it was, of 1878-79. A friend who was with him says : "I rose early to go to the church, and as we started out from the hotel noticed people hurrying up from every quarter, though it was nearly or quite a mile to the church. As to reaching the church itself. L58 HENRY w ai;i> BEECHER. thai was an impossibility ; one could not get within a block of it. Street preachers were scan erf* I about ad dressing the crowd, which was estimated to number not less than fifty thousand. The sermon itself is de scribed by some who heard it as worthy of such an occasion."'' An analysis of some of Mr. Beecher's elements ol power as a preacher has already been given in a pre ceding chapter. The same characteristics of thought, of imagination, of common-sense, of sympathy, of hu- mor, mark him as a lecturer and an orator; though the public platform allows a somewhat greater freedom of action, an unlimited range of topic, and a greater opportunity for a display of eloquence or wit than is ordinarily afforded in the pulpit. An analysis of one is in most respects an analysis of the other. The same instruments of power are wielded in both in- stances, though with a somewhat different spirit, and for different ends. The spontaneity of thought, the soundness of judgment, the common-sense, the deep sympathy, the responsiveness of feeling, which char- acterize his preaching also mark his oratory. To these traits Dr. Storrs adds, in his address at the silver wedding : " His wonderful animal vigor ; his fulness of bodily power ; his voice, which can thunder and whisper alike ; his sympathy with nature, which is so intimate and confidential that she tells him all her secrets, and supplies him with continual images; and. above all, put as the crown upon the whole, that enthusiasm for Christ to which he has himself referred this evening, and which has certainly been the animating power in ELEMENTS OF POWER. 159 his ministry — the impression upon his soul that hb, having seen the glory of the Son of God, has been set here to reflect that glory upon others ; to inspire their minds with it ; to touch their hearts with it ; to kindle their souls with it, and so to prepare them for the heavenly realm — put all these together, and you have some of the elements of power in this great Preacher — not all of them, but some, snatched hurriedly from the great treasure-house. There you have a few, at any rate, of the traits and forces of him whose power has chained you, and quickened and blessed you, dur- ing all these years." ****** " Then, when you unite with these other things of which I have spoken, as elements of his x^ower, a some- what vehement and combative nature, that always gets quickened and tired by opposition, as you have found, and that never is so self-possessed, so serene, and so victorious, as when the clamor is loudest around him and the fight is fiercest — and if you add very fixed and positive ideas on all the great ethical, social, and public questions of the time — there you have the champion Reform-fighter of the last twenty-five years. I never saw a man that it was more dangerous, on the whole, to arouse by opposing him — a thing which, therefore, I never do." * * ■* * * -/; "Well, when Mr. Beecher was in England, they made volcanoes around him, on no small scale, at Liverpool, at Manchester, and the other places. But that fluent thought within, and that fluent eloquence on his lips, put out the volcanoes ; or, if they did not 160 HENRY WARD BEECHER. pui them out, they made the fire shoot the other way, till the ground became too hot for the English Govern- ment to stand on, if it would permit its evident sym- pathy for the Southern Confederacy to be formulated into law." It is thus that a brother preacher, himself an orator, Ikis characterized Mr. Beechcr's oratory, although lie confesses himself no more able to do so than is a man to describe Niagara having never seen it. These traits are but a few that have conspired in making him one of the greatest of modern orators. "His power," to close the chapter with another extract from the same address, "conies from many sources. It is like a rushing royal river which has its birthplace in a thousand sidings. It is like a magnificent oak, which has its grand uplift of trunk and stem, and its vast sweep of branches, by reason of the multitudinous roots which strike down deep, and spread through the soil in every direction. These supply the mighty timbers for the battle ships and the building !" CHAPTER VIII. MR. BEECHER IN ENGLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR. It is not easy to get " reminiscences 1 ' out of Mr. Beecher. He rarely talks of himself, even to his intimate friends ; and he is far more interested in pres- ent and future questions than in the problems of the past already solved. But he had at various times promised good-naturedly to different personal friends, that he would give them an account of his English experiences. One evening he yielded to their com- bined pertinacity, and to a group of twenty or so in his parlors he gave the long-promised narrative. One of his auditors contrived to have a short-hand reporter present for the benefit of a wider circle. This report he has put into my hands, and with some slight revis- ion it is printed here, without, however, any revision from Mr. Beecher. In 1863 I found myself pretty well worn out. I had been lecturing for the three years before the war came on. I was particularly busy in the year 1860, but grew more so after the election of Lincoln before his inau- guration, which was really one of the most critical periods in the history of the war, when there was a demand made all through the North by the Democratic party that we should throw up the election, and when there were a great many men that were very uncertain 162 HENRI WARD BEECHER. whether we had better not do it, so that I preached Sunday night after Sunday night and went all over the North lecturing to sustain the courage of the people and to hold things up, as it were. Then came on the war, and you all remember that, and the intense excitement of the times, and how the first three years were largely years of defeat. In the spring of 1863 I cnncluded that two or three months in Europe would give me more power to serve the public than if I stayed at home ; so with Dr. John Raymond and the Rev. Dr. Holme, now a Baptist clergyman in New York City, 1 embarked and went to England. It has been often asked whether I was sent by the government. The government took no stock in me at that time. Seward was in the ascendancy. I had been pounding Lincoln in the early years of the war, and I don't believe there was a man down there, unless it was Mr, Chase, who would have trusted me with anything. At any rate, I went on my own responsibility, and with no one behind me except my church. They told me they would pay my expenses and sent me off. When I reached England and saw what was the condi- tion of public feeling there, I refused to make any speech and declined all invitations. I would not go under the roof of any man who was not a friend of the North in this struggle, and throughout the whole of my stay in England I refused to let any man pay one penny for me. I never would let any one pay my expenses on the road nor my hotel bills, nor would I go as guest to the house of any man, unless he had been forward to promote our cause. Everywhere my answer was, " My church pays my expenses, and I can- ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND. 1(>3 not afford to take any hospitality or money from the enemies of the North, and I won't take it." Well, as I lay on my back on board the shij) going over — I can scarcely get out of my berth at sea, and am only in tolerable comfort when I am lying on my back — I turned the matter over in my mind and said to myself : " I have no doubt whatever of the final success of this cause, and I am perfectly certain that slavery is going with it. I have been for at least twenty-five or thirty years studying the Constitution of the United States, the history of the debates, and laying up all manner of material for discussion on the subject of slavery, and now w^e have got so far along that this question, I suppose, is settled, and all this material must go to profit and loss. I never shall want to use it again ; so let it go." Whereas, in point of fact, all these accu- mulations and investigations were brought about by direct providence in an unforeseen way, as it were, to enable me to go through the campaign that I after- ward entered into in England. I reached England, at the Mersey, in a storm. A little tug- boat came off with Mr. Charles Duncan on board, and a committee from Manchester with a request to have me lecture there. I was of the color, I sup- pose, of a collier just out of the mine. I had been lying under the smoke-stack, and my old hat, that was white when I started, was now of a doubtful color. 1 was so thoroughly indignant at the state of England — at the course that had been pursued there — that I had made up my mind that I would neither preach, lecture, speak, nor do anything else of a public charac- ter. I had seen Dr. Campbell, who was a personal 164 iii;m;v ward BEECHER. friend of mine and always had been an ardent one, and who, in anticipation of my coming, had said, "Mr. Beecher thinks lie can twist this English public around his finger as easy as he does the Americans, but he will find he has a different set of men to deal with;" he also put in here a very ungenerous paragraph that " Mr. Beecher is a man who at a time when his coun- try is in the greatest distress finds it convenient to take a vacation and conies to Europe to enjoy himself." This remark and others of the same kind were soon abroad. I went right to Charlie Duncan's house in Liverpool, and afterward made with my companions a little tour in England, violating twice my determina- tion not to speak in England. This was at Glasgow and at London, and was before I went on the Conti- nent. I attended a temperance breakfast in Glasgow —I think it was possibly Edinburgh— under the pledge that nothing should be reported, and that what was said there should be considered simply as social inter- changes and should not go into the newspapers. But the next morning my speech was out in all the papers, was published all abroad, and Avas sent back to this country. The other exception I made was in London. The Congregational clergymen of London and vicinity were very urgent that I should meet them at a breakfast, and I at last consented. We had there, I should think, a hundred and fifty persons, and after the eating was over and some speeches had been made, I was called up and made a statement expressing my indignation at the position of the Congregational clergymen of England in view of this war. The kev-note of it was ADDRESS BEFORE CONGREGATIONAL CLERGYMEN. 165 that they were the men who were seeking to know the signs of the times, and to have the interpretation of the feeling of the age, and that they, as a whole body, had gone wrong and had thrown their sympathy on the side- virtually of slavery and against liberty.* I said to myself, "They will say, of course, that I am an enthusiast, and that this speech is to be taken with a good deal of allowance ; so that if I can clinch the point with a speech from a calm minded man it will help the cause.' ' Therefore, I said to the chairman that Dr. John Raymond, President of Vassar College, was with me and would add some views of his own. Dr. John Raymond was a man not easily excited, but when he did get kindled up ! I sat and looked at him in per- fect amazement. He went at them like a hundred earthquakes, with a whirlwind or two thrown in. It was a magnificent speech, of such towering indignation ■as I never heard before or since. Soon after I was visited by the Anti- Slav erjiJJnion — I think that is the name. There were in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and almost all the principal cities, an elect few who understood the conflict, and who took the side of the North and organized to attempt to change the public sentiment of England. They endeavored to persuade me to make some speeches, but I refused. I started from England, refusing to make any engagements or say anything publicly. I Avas in a towering indignation. Almost every man in England * Rev. Henry Allon, of London, who heard this speech, afterward said that it was the best speech that Mr. Beecher made in England. L66 HENRY WARD BEECHER. mho rode in a first-class car was our enemy. The great majority of professional men were our enemies. Almosl aU bhe Quakers were agains I us. All the Con- gregational ministers in England — not in Wales — were either indifferenl or Lukewarm, directly opposed. The government was our enemy. It was only the common [people and mostly the people who had no vote that were on our side. Everywhere the atmosphere was advers e. In Manchester our American merchants and men sent our to buy were afraid, and knuckled down to the public feeling. The storm in the air was so por- tentous that they did not dare to undertake to resist it. No man ever knows what his country is to him until he has gone abroad and heard it everywhere de- nounced and sneered at. I had ten men's wrath in me, and my own share is tolerably large, at the attitude assumed all around me against my country. We went on the continent, and I sunk everything out of sight, determined that I would forget the whole thing, and for two or three months I wandered through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and came around to Paris again. This was before the ocean cable was laid. While at the Grand Hotel at Paris, word came of the victory of Giant at Vicksburg. I p>t the news on Sunday morning. I went to church, but I walked in the air. I took a seat in our minister's pew — Mr. Dayton's. His daughter, a young women of twenty-two or twenty-three, and a young friend of about the same age were seated together, and after the preliminary services were over and the minister was giving some notices for the week, I turned to her and said, " Grant has taken Vicksburg !'' She started up CAPTURE OF VICKSBURO. 167 and then she whispered to her friend, and says to me again, " Is it true V 9 " Yes," said I, " it is certain." Then we rose up when the hymn had been given out. She stood by my side and began to sing, and as she finished one line she broke into a flood of tears and down she sat, and down sat the other, and they just shook, they were so overwhelmed with feeling. I thought that was very good for Sunday morning ; but about noon George Jones, of the New York Times, came over from America, bringing the news of the other great victory at the same time— Gettysburg. I Now Jones told me about it, and I was so elated that I called a cab and rode around to Dayton's house. He had gone to his room to take a siesta, and I got him up and told him of the second instalment of good news, and the whole family were clustered together to hear it, I made a short stay, and going downstairs, who should I meet but Jones himself, coming up to tell the news. I was very sorry to think I had fore- stalled him— was mortified, in fact, because it was his privilege to have given the news first, as I had received it from, him myself ; but he had not been quick enough. In the Grand Hotel there was a great glass- covered court, and as I would stand at the landing and look down there would always be a group of Southerners in the left-hand corner. It had come to be a resort of theirs, and there were ever so many there. Up to this time when I had walked through I would be insulted in every way— by whistles and sneering re- marks, etc— and they would tell the servants to carry messages to me, which I learned afterward the pro- prietor would not allow to be sent. As I went in this 168 HENRI WARD BEECHER. day of the double victory there they sat, a dozen or fifteen of them. I had never taken any notice of them hitherto— not the least— but after 1 got this news I walked in and strode right down in front of them with- ont saying a word, but carrying my head high, lean tell you, and went upstairs to my room. [ never saw- one of them there afterward, and I was there myself several days. I came over to England again and was met in Lon- don by the same gentlemen who had urged me to make addresses. I said, " X'o ; I am going home in Septem- ber. I don't want to have anything to do with Eng- land." But their statement made my resolution give way and changed my programme entirely. It was this : " Mr. Beecher, we have been counted as the off- scouring, because we have taken up the part of the North. We have sacrificed ourselves in your behalf, and now if you go home and show us no favor or help, they will overwhelm us. They will say, ' Even your friends in America despise you,' and we shall be nowhere, and we think it is rather a hard return. Be- sides," said they, "there is a movement on foot that is going to be very disastrous, if it is not headed off." To my amazement I found that the unvoting English possessed great power in England ; a great deal more power, in fact, than if they had had a vote. The aris- tocracy and the government felt : " These men feel that they have no political privileges, and we must admin- ister with the strictest regard to their feelings or there will be a revolution." And they were all the time under the influence of that feeling. Parliament would at any time for three years have voted for the South ARRANGING FOR THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. L69 against the North, if it had not been for the fear of these common people who did not vote. A plan, therefore, was laid to hold great pnblic meetings dur- ing all that autumn and early winter among the labor- ing masses, to change their feeling, and if that atmos- pheric change could be brought about, Parliament would very soon have done what it was afraid to do, but wanted to do all the time — declare for the Southern Confederacy. The committee said, " If you can lecture for us you will head off this whole movement.' ' Those considerations were such that I finally yielded. ; I consented at first to speak at Manchester ; and very/ soon it was arranged that I was to speak at Liverpool also, and out of that grew an arrangement for Glasgow and Edinburgh, and then for London. There was a plan for Birmingham that failed. Dr. John Raymond could not stay and went home, and I was left alone ; I think I never was so lonesome and never suffered so much as I did for the week that I was in London before my tour began. I had been making the tour of Scotland, and came down to Man- chester just one or two days in advance of the appoint- ment. The two men that met me were John Escort and young Watts. His father was Sir Something- Watts, and had the largest business house in Central England. He was a young man just recently married, and Escort was the very beau ideal of a sturdy Eng- lishman, with very few words, but plucky enough for a backer against the whole world They met me at the station, and I saw that there was something on their minds. Before I had walked with them twenty steps, Watts, I think it was, said, " Of course you see there is 170 HENRI WARD BEECHER. a great deal of excitement here." The streets were all placarded in blood-red letters, and my friends were very silent and seemed to be looking at me to see if I would flinch. I always feel happy when I hear of a storm, and I looked at them and said, " Well, are you going to back down r " No," said they, " we didnt know how you would feel." " Well," said I, " you'll find out how I am going to feel. I'm going to be heard, and if not now I'm going to be by-and-by. I won't leave England until 1 have been heard!" You never saw two fellows' faces clear off so. They looked happy. I went to my hotel, and when the day came on which I was to make my first speech, I struck out the notes of my speech in the morning ; and then came up 'a kind of horror— I don't know whether I can do any- thing with an English audience— I have never had any ' experience with an English audience. My American ways, which are all well enough with Americans, may utterly fail here, and a failure in the cause of my country now and here is horrible beyond conception to me ! I think T never went through such a struggle of darkness and suffering in all my life as I did that afternoon. It was about the going down of the sun that God brought me to that state in which I said, " Thy mil be done. I am willing to be annihilated, I am willing to fail if the Lord wants me to." I gave ir all up into the hands of Clod, and rose up in a state of peace and of serenity simply unspeakable, and when the coach came to take me down to Manchester Hall I felt no disturbance nor dreamed of anything but success. SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 171 We reached the hall. The crowd was already begin- ning to be tumultuous, and I recollect thinking to myself as 1 stood there looking at them, " I will control you ! I came here for victory and I will have it, by the help of God !" Well, I was introduced, and I must confess that the things that I had done and suffered in my own country, according to what the chairman who introduced me said, amazed me. The speaker was very English on the subject, and I learned that I be- longed to an heroic band, and all that sort of thing, with abolitionism mixed in, and so on. By the way, I think it was there that I was introduced as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Stowe. But as soon as I began to speak the great audience began to show its teeth, and I had not gone on fifteen minutes before an un- paralleled scene of confusion and interruption occurred. No American that has not seen an English mob can form any conception of one. I have seen all sorts of camp-meetings and experienced all kinds of public speaking on the stump ; I have seen the most disturbed meetings in New York City, and they were all of them as twilight to midnight compared with an Eng- lish hostile audience. For in England the meeting- does not belong to the parties that call it, but to who- ever chooses to go, and if they can take it out of your hands it is considered fair play. This meeting had a very large multitude of men in it who came there for the purpose of destroying the meeting and carrying it the other way when it came to the vote. I took the measure of the audience and said to my- self, " About one fourth of this audience are opposed to me, and about one fourth will be rather in sympa 172 HENRY WARD BEECIIEK. thy, and my business now is nor to appeal to thai por- tion thai is opposed to me nor to those that are already on my side, but to bring over the middle section.*' How to do this was a problem. The question was, who could hold out longest. There were five or six storm centres, boiling and whirling at the same time; here some one pounding on a group with his umbrella and shouting, "Sit down there;" over yonder a row between two or three combatants ; somewhere else a group all yelling together at the top of their voice. It was like talking to a storm at sea. But there were the news- paper reporters just in front, and I said to them, " Now, gentlemen, be kind enough to take down what I say. It will be in sections, but I will have it connect- ed by-and-by." I threw my notes away, and entered on a discussion of the value of freedom as opposed to slavery in the manufacturing interest, arguing that freedom everywhere increases a mans necessities, and what he needs he buys, and that it was, therefore, to the interest of the manufacturing community to stand by the side of labor through the country. I never was more self-possessed and never in more perfect good temper, and I never was more determined that my hearers should feel the curb before I got through with them. The uproar would come in on this side and on that, and they would put insulting questions and make all sorts of calls to me, and I would wait until the noise had subsided, and then get in about live minutes of talk. The reporters would get that down and then up would come another noise. Occasionally I would see things that amused me and would laugh outright, and the crowd would stop to see what I was laughing at. SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 173 Then I would sail in again with a sentence or two. A good many times the crowd threw up questions which I caught at and answered back. I may as well put in here one thing that amused me hugely. There were baize doors that opened both ways into side-alleys, and there was a huge, burly Englishman standing right in front of one of those doors and roaring like a bull of Bashan ; one of the policemen swung his elbow around and hit him in the belly and knocked him through the doorway, so that the last part of the bawl was outside in the alley- way ; it struck me so ludicrously to think how the fellow must have looked when he found him- self " hollering" outside that I could not refrain from laughing outright. The audience immediately stopped its uproars, wondering what I was laughing at, and that gave me another chance and I caught it. So we kept on for about an hour and a half before they got so far calmed down that I could go on peaceably with my speech. They liked the pluck. Englishmen like a man that can stand on his feet and give and take ; and so for the last hour I had pretty clear sailing. The next morning every great paper in England had the whole speech down. I think it was the design of the men there to break me down on that first speech, by fair means or foul, feeling that if they could do that it would be trumpeted all over the land. I said to them then and there, " Gentlemen, you may break me down now, but I have registered a vow that I will never return home until I have been heard in every county and principal town in the Kingdom of Great Britain. I am not going to be broken down nor put down. I am going to be heard, and my country shall 1?4 HENRI WARD BEECHER. be vindicated." Nobody knows betterthan I did what it is to feel that every interest that touches the heart of a Christian man and a patriotic man and a lover of liberty is being assailed wantonly, to stand between one nation and your own and to feel that yon are in a situation in which your country rises or falls with you. And God was behind il all : I felt it and I knew It, and when 1 gol through and the vote was called oil' yon would have thought it was a tropical thunder- storm thai swept through that hall as the ayes were ti Hindered, while the noes were an insignificant and contemptible minority. It had all gone on our side, and such enthusiasm 1 never saw. 1 think it was there that when 1 started to go down into the rooms below to get an twit, that a big. burly Englishman in the gallery wanted to shake hands with me, and I could not reach him, and he called out, " Shake my umbrella !" and he reached it over ; I shook it, and as 1 did so he shouted, " By -lock ! Nobody shall touch that umbrella again !" 1 went next to Glasgow. Glasgow was the headquar- ters of a shipping, building interest that was running our blockade. I gave liberty lor questions everywhere, promising to answer any question that should be writ ten and sent up, provided it was a proper one. They were to go into the hands of the presiding officer of the meeting, who would hand them to me and I would answer them. In Glasgow I discussed the question of the relation of slavery to workingmen the world over, carrying along with it the history of slavery in this country. The interruption at that meeting was very- bad, but not at all equal to the tumult in Manchester ; SPEECH AT GLASGOW. 175 but after they were once stilled you would have thought we were in a revival. I demonstrated the unity of labor the world over, and discussed the rela- tions of the laboring man to government and to the aristocratic classes, showing the power of wealth, and how slavery had made labor disreputable, and how it was their bounden duty to make labor honorable every- where, and how it was a disgrace to them to be build- ing ships to put down the laborers of America, and to cast shame and contempt on themselves and on every man on earth that earned his living by the sweat of his brow. I told them they were driving nails into their own coffins. My interruptions lasted about an hour there, and the rest of the time was fair weather and smooth sailing. The questions that were put to me ther< i were the shrewdest of any I encountered in England. They included constitutional questions as well as others. There was one question that was very significant and revealed the difficulties that honest men felt there. Q. " You say this war is a war in the interest of liberty ?" A. "Yes. 11 Q. "How, then, is it that your President, in writing to Mr. Greeley, says that if slavery permitted will maintain the Union, slavery will continue, and if the destruction of slavery is necessary to the maintenance of the Union, then it shall be de- stroyed. The Union is what we want." It threw me upon the necessity of proving the honor of the North, and showing its ethical difficulty in maintaining its obligations under the Constitution to all the States of the Union, not trespassing upon their guaranteed rights and prerogatives, and our moral relation to free dom and to the workingmen of all the world. L76 HENRI WARD BEECHER. Prom there I went to Edinburgh, where I discussed the effecl upon literature mid Learning and institutions of learning and genera] intelligence of the presence of slavery, on I lie basis again of the history of slavery in America, and the existing state of things. 1 thought 1 had seen a crowd before I went there, but when I went through the lower hall and tried to get into the assembly-room the people were wedged in there so tight that you might just as well try t<> find a passage through the wall, and I was finally hoisted over their heads and passed on by friendly hands and up to the gallery, and down over the front of the gallery on to the platform, in order to get to the position where I was to speak. There I had less commotion than any where else. There was a different audience there ; there was an educated and moral element in it. I went from there to Liverpool. If 1 supposed 1 had had a stormy time I found out my mistake when i not there. Liverpool was worse than all the rest put to- gether. My life was threatened, and I had had com- munications to the effect that 1 had better not venture there. The streets were placarded with the most scur- rilous and abusive cards, and I brought home some of them and they are in the Brooklyn Historical Society now. :: " It so happened, I believe, that the Congrega- tional Association of England and Wales was in session there, and pretty much all of the members were present on the platform. 1 suppose there were five hundred people on the platform behind me. There were men in the galleries and boxes who came armed, * See Appendix. SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 177 and some bold men on our side went up into those boxes and drew their bowie-knives and pistols and said to these young bloods, kt The first man that fires here will rue it." I heard a good many narratives of that kind afterward, but knew nothing of it at the time. But of all confusions and turmoils and whirls I never saw the like. I got * control of the meeting in about an hour and a half, and then I had a clear road the rest of the way. We carried the meeting, but it required a three hours' use of my voice at its utmost strength. I sometimes felt like a shipmaster attempt- ing to preach on board of a ship through a speaking- trumpet with a tornado on the sea and a mutiny among the men.* By this time my voice was pretty much all used up, and I had yet got to go to Exeter Hall in London. I went down to London, and by this time all London and all the clubs had seen my speeches, four of which had been fully reported. It is said that a man who has made the conversation of a club over night and had a report of one speech in the London Times is famous. I had had four speeches, occupying three or five columns each, reported, and had been incessantly talked about in the clubs. So I was famous. When I first went to London I stopped at the " Golden Cross," and they put me in a little back room right under the rafters. When I came back from the Continent there had been * Dr. Campbell, who was present, is reported to have said that he had never heard anything like it since the days of Daniel O'Connell ; that he had heard some of his best things, and he thought, on the whole, that not one of them equalled Mr. Beecher's effort at that time. 178 HENRY WARD BEECHER. considerable said, and thej received me much more politely at the " Golden Cross," and pul me in a third- story front room. On the third visit I was received by flic landlord and his servants in white aprons, and wa- llowed in and put in the second story, and had a front parlor and bedroom and everything beautiful. As the cards can if in and gentlemen of distinction called I grew in the eyes of the servants every moment. •' Hut Naman was a leper, though he stood the highest in his master's favor." I had had a successful career under difficulties, but had talked and strained my voice so much, that when I went to bed the night before the day I was to speak, I could not be heard aloud, and here I had come to London to close my course by speaking on the moral aspect of the question, and ap- pealing to the religious feeling of the English people. It was the climax — and my voice was gone ! I said. "Lord, Thou know estthis. Let it be as Thou wilt." The next morning I woke up in bed, and as soon as [ came to myself fairly, and thought about my voice, I didn't dare to speak for fear I should find I could not ; but by-and-by T scut of spoke, and then I would not say another word for fear I should lose it. Other- wise T was well and strong : but the hnskiness of my voice was such that when I did speak there was no elasticity. There seemed to be one little rift that I spoke through, and if T went above or below it 1 broke. Then came to me Dr. Waddington and- Brother Tompkins, most excellent and devout men they were, and very faithful to our cause. They called on me, and seeing that I was in bonds they cheered me and said, " No matter, you have done your work. What SPEECH IN LONDON. 179 you have already done is sufficient, so it is no matter, if you only make your appearance and bow." They prayed with me and it lifted me right out of my de- spondency. So I plucked up courage and went to the hall that evening, and the streets of London were crowded. 1 could not get near the hall except by the aid of a policeman. And when I got around to the back door, I felt a woman throw her arms around me — I saw they were the arms of a woman, and that she had me in her arms— and when I went through the door she got through, too, and on turning around I found it was one of the members of my church. She had married and gone to London, and she was determined to hear that speech, and so took this way to accomplish an ap- parently impossible task. She grasped and held me until I had got her in. I suppose that is the way a great many sinners get into heaven finally. Well, I had less trouble and less tumult in London than any- where else.* The battle had been fought, and my * A correspondent who was present gave an account of this Exeter Hall meeting, from which I condense some extracts, as presenting a picture of one of these famous meetings from a spectator's point of view. " When Mr. Beecher arose, there were five minutes of the most tre- mendous cheering I have ever witnessed, in the midst of which stood Mr. Beecher, calm as a rock in the midst of the surges. His voice was scarcely as sonorous and clear as it usually is. ' I expect to be hoarse, he said ; ' and I am willing to be hoarse, if I can in any way assist to bring the mother and daughter heart to heart and hand together.' This senti- ment was received with great applause ; and Mr. Beecher's hoarseness was thus impressed to the service of his cause. But he so economized his voice, that every word was distinctly heard by the vast assembly. 180 HKNRY WARD BBEOHER. address there was a good deal more of a religious ad- dress than anywhere else, though I discussed in all these places very thoroughly the whole subject of slavery. But the way was broken and the storm had passed away, and the cause was triumphant. That which I had had in mind was effected. The idea of mow raising lecturers, under Spence & Co., to go through England and turn the common people away Erom the North and Toward the South was now aban- doned. The enthusiasm of the whole country ran strongly in the other direction. And here, let me say that everywhere the weavers, the laborers, that were by the famine of cotton thrown out of employment and into the greatest distress, were stanch and true to . At one time when there was an interval of a few moments, arising from the effort of the hisses to triumph over the cheers. Mr. Beecher, with a quiet smile, said, ' Friends, I thank you for this inter- ruption. It gives me a chance to rest. The hisses thereupon died away, and had no resurrection during the evening. . . . Again did Mr. Beecher level his lance ; it was at those who were making capital out of what they call ' American sympathy with the oppressor of Poland.' Nothing could exceed the drollery with which, almost blush- ing, he presented the loving and jealous maiden who, when her suitor is not attentive, gets up a flirtation with some other man. 'America flirts with Russia, but has her eve on England.' The presence of war ships from Russia at New York has been the leading card of the Con- federates here in their game to win popular sympathy for the South. Consequently, when Mr. Beecher said, 'But it is said it is very un- worthy that America should be flirting with the oppressor of Poland,' there were violent shouts. Yes. yes.' Mr. Beecher waited until the cries had entirely subsided : then leaning a little forward, he put on an indescribably simple expression, and said mildly, ' I think so too. And now you know exactly how we felt when you flirted with Mason at the Lord Mayor's banquet.' I cannot attempt to describe the effect of theso TESTIMONIAL MEETINGS. 181 the right instincts of the laboring man. They never flinched, and our cause was successful in England by reason of the fidelity of the great, working, common people of England. Then came a series of breakfasts. They were all given by friendly men, and by men who were really in earnest to know all about the facts of the case. I had to discuss the questions of taxation, the issue of such an enormous quantity of greenbacks, and the ability and the willingness of our people to pay ; and I had to go into finance a good deal, and what little knowledge I had came wonderfully handy. When yon stand up at a breakfast-table and are questioned by shrewd men who do understand these things, the intellectual words on the throng. The people arose with a shout that began to be applause, but became a shout of laughter. ... In the heart of Mr. Beecher's oration was given a denunciation of slavery more power- ful than I have ever heard from his lips. He scom-ged and scourged it until it seemed to stand before us a hideous monster, bloated with human blood and writhing under his goads. He told, apropos of those who said, ' Why not let the South go?' the story of Fowell Buxton's seizing the mad dog by the neck and holding him at the risk of his life until help could come ; then asked what they would say if the man who, witnessing this, should have cried, 'Let him go. Let him go.' 'Shall we let this monster go ? ' he cried. ' No ! No ! No ! ' surged up from the crowd. At this moment a colored inan, lately come here from the South, stood up in his seat, which was exactly in the centre of the building, and waved his hat. Other colored persons rose and waved hats and handkerchiefs, the audience cheering until the city outside seemed to be waked up. for .we heard a storm of shouting voices outside. The crowd also caught sight of an old lady (white) in the gallery, who had a huge umbrella, which, having expanded to its utmost dimensions, she waved to and fro like a mighty balloon, which had a very comical effect indeed." 182 HENRY WARD BEECHER. ordeaJ is much severer than the physical exhaustion in the night speeches. There were five of these break- fasts in nil ; by the time I was through I was very glad of it. It was now coming on toward November. They wanted to publish the speeches I had made, and I went down to Liverpool to Charlie Duncan's house and the proof-sheets were sent to me there, and 1 worked on them to get them ready until about the middle of November, I think, and then I took ship for home. Now, as there was no telegraph under the sea, and there had been no time for me to hear anything about my speeches, and as I never had been treated with very great luxury in the debates of the slavery that a company of ladies get together, and they sew up their collars and I'.l-I HENRI WARD BEECHEK they sew up their neighbors [accompanying the words bj an illustration with his hand, as if sewing]— in fact it is a sort of a sew-cial cannibalism/ There is one scene which occurred in his pulpit dur- ing the war that will never l»c forgotten by me, as it was the first time I had ever heard .Mr. Beecher preach, and my young heart was filled as I listened to him. lli> iiad given oul the closing hymn, when the little sliding door behind him was pushed aside and a paper handed to him. He read it. turned to the choir -the organ had already commenced the hymn and said, •'Stop! turn to "America" while I read I his despatch." lie then read with a voice fall of emotion the despatch, which was from Secretary Stanton, proclaiming a great victory for the Union army under Sheridan. A thrill went through the audience, and "America' was sung that day with the spirit and the understanding also. fn isr>4 the " Centra] Union Club of Brooklyn" en- gaged Miss Anna Dickinson to speak upon national affairs in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After the Academy had been engaged, the directors sent word that they could not consent to have the building opened for Miss Dickinson to speak in. The fads were brought to the notice of .Mr. Beecher, which so aroused his indignation that the following Sunday morning he called the attention of the people to the action of the managers of tin- Academy of Music in such language that it was but a short time before the Academy was opened to Miss Dickinson, and many other buildings throughout the country which pre- MR. BEECHER AND DR. LEONARD BACON. 195 viously had been considered too sacred for a woman to speak in. A gentleman once called at Mr. Beecher 1 s house, very early in the morning, before the servant had swept the parlors. Mrs. Beecher came in first, and casually stopped to pick up a bit of thread from the carpet. Instantly, Mr. Beecher, who was following her, went all around the room, stooping here and there to pick up imaginary bits, and laughingly exclaimed, " Why don't we always pick up things lying around loose? No telling how much we might accumulate." A friend sends the following incidents. The first re- lates to an effort of one of his early teachers to impress upon his mind the distinction in the use of the definite and indefinite article. Said the teacher, " You can say a man, but you cannot say a men.' 1 " Oh, yes, I can," was Henry's quick response, k ' I say it very often, and my father says it at the end of all his prayers." The second occurred at the close of one of his famous lectures, delivered in the Lyman Beecher course, before the students of the Theological Class of Yale College in the winter of 1874. These lectures were greatly ad- mired by professors; clergymen, and students. At the close of one of these which was of marked interest to all present, Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon came up to him, and laying his hand upon his shoulder, said, ' k Brother Beecher, I fear the devil whispered in your ear just now that this was a fine lecture." " Oh, no," quickly replied Mr. Beecher, " he left that for you to do." 196 HENRY WARD BEECHER A fellow-traveller with Mr. Beecher on the Hudson River Railroad between New York and Peekskill, remarks always how he goes through a crowd : He is the first off the train, first at the top of the Elevated Railroad stairs, lirst on thronged platform, ferry, etc. At his age, in the heat of midsummer, with his basket of green stuff on his arm (from •"the farm"), ho is al- ways for the lirst place. A young man must hurry to keep up with his bulky, red-faced, companion. It is not once, it is always, and hence characteristic. It >lio\\s the man. II<; complains of the heat, but de- spises it. He " wishes there was a thermometer about." " But it makes you hotter to consult if." "No. f want a rational excuse for being so uncom- fortable." His travelling dress you know: the old duster blowing in the wind, carelessness as to his soil of travel, etc. Tn a trying day for a younger preacher, set upon by an unreasonable faction in liis church, he said, " My boy, 1 am watching you. If you are of the true met- tle, a real man, this will only prove you." Grasping the young man's hand with a never-to-be-forgotten warmth, he continued, " Yes, this will be the making of yon." He came through crowded rooms of a dis- tinguished assembly to say this, voluntarily. Once, meeting the same younger preacher, he asked, " How long have you been at it ?" (preaching). "About ten years," was the reply. '* A fair start ; just a fair start, ten years." And he straightened him- self up. half wearily, half exultingly, as if the thoughts of his thrice ten years and their battles came over him like a Hood. INCIDENTS IN THE PULPIT. L97 A member of Plymouth Church thus relates in- stances showing Mr. Beecher's rhetorical power: I remember one Sunday morning, during those troublous times when a certain enemy was threatening severest injury, Mr. Beecher read the account of Paul's shipwreck, and his being cast upon the island of Melita. He read the whole account in a thrilling manner, until he came to the story of the viper which fastened itself upon the hand of Paul, then, in reading the words, " He shook off the beast into the tire, and felt no harm," he made one single gesture with his hand, as if he too would thus shake off the viper that was ready to sting him. Word or comment was not necessary. It was as if an electric thrill passed through the great congregation, and every one understood the unspoken comment. A well-known elocutionist was heard to say at the close of the service, that it was one of the finest things he ever listened to. " It was absolutely perfect," he said. I recall another occasion, when Mr. Beecher read at opening service the 23d chapter of Matthew. I never shall forget, though it is impossible to describe the effect he produced as he read that long list of woes Christ pronounced against the Pharisees. I seem now to hear his tone and emphasis of intense scorn as he read again and again the words, " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites /" In his voice and manner he seemed the personification of righteous wrath and denunciation. I shivered and grew nervous as I listened, and the whole congregation L98 HENRI WARD BEECHER. sal as it spellbound. I erhaps, they do ; few have as strong a love for precious stones as he. and few have the time to devote to the study of them. Whenever I receive anything out of the ordinary line, my thoughts invari- ably turn to him, and I read up about it, and then show it to him. and often I find he knows all about it, and has some story to tell about one he has seen some- where. It is his habit to go into jewelry stores and lapidaries' shops, in his lecture trips through the conn- 200 HENRY WARD BEECHEH try, seeking curiosities and desirojus of finding some- thing better than he has already, for he always carries in his pocket sonic precious stones. I have met him on the ferryboats, when he would beckon to me to come ;m the committee to ask anj other (pn -st ions, and all else were silent, 1 asked, rather to oover the whole ground at once than any single point, '" Have you ever been troubled, sir, by serious doubts concerning any of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel ?" " None, sir," he answered, and his ex animation then terminated. Mr. Beecher turned toward me, as I sat very near, and said, in clear but very low voice, inaudible except to me alone. " Brother 11 — , you may suspect an apple-tree is full of owls, but it is not worth while to throw a stone or club up into it to find out." 2. As pastor, he aims to make good Christians more than to train up theologians. At an annual pew-let- ting, I heard a member say. " Mr. Beecher, we hope you will preach a very sound gospel next year, be- cause some things you have lately said did not sound very orthodox to us New Bnglanders." With leisurely and tranquil composure, he replied, " Well, as for you, brother, you are very sure to hear quite as much gospel as you will live up to." His an- swer was geometrically perfect. 3. lie measures the value of men by their actual pow- er and fruitfulness. When Rev. J. E. Roy, D.D., first introduced me to him, when Roy and 1 were students in the Union Theological Seminary, Mr. Beecher asked, "Who is your Prof essor of Pastoral Theology?" and when told " Rev. Thomas II. Skinner. I ).!).," added : " That is the most important chair in a seminary, and the test whether the professor is a suitable man is whether he turns out good pastors. It is very much like fishing. A gentleman may read up on ichthy- INCIDENTS OF HIS PASTORATE. 203 ology and angling, and equip himself with the finest rod and hooks and flies, but not catch a half dozen trout all day, whereas a boy may come down to the brook barefoot, when the sun is only an hour high, with a plain hook, string, and pole from an alder-bush, and catch a basketful by dark. The boy is the real fisherman." He turned to others in the crowd that thronged around him in the old " Social Parlors," but his illustration had hooked us. See what Brother Roy has become. A volume might be written of the incidents in those " Parlors," one of the best features of his earlier pas- torate. 4. As a pastor, Mr. Beecher is predominantly the ruling head and powerful heart of his church and con- gregation, as instinctively by his own nature he must be, and as, according to Congregational polity, he is delegated and appointed to lead. He sees all symptoms at a glance. He foresees swiftly the upshot of any movement, the motives of active men, the drift of an argument toward conduct. He is very adroit in pre- venting difficulties by foresight, and, perhaps, even more so in dispersing or dissolving them when actually risen as thunder clouds in his sky. By warmth of love, by glowing sympathy of numbers, he rallies the majority to the right side, and trims the steamer to the storm. When the Congregational Council met in Ins church, to investigate the question of his innocence, he said to a group of us, and his face beamed with the triumphant certainty of the result which his intimate friends foresaw, " Yes, the best place for the dele- gates will be in the homes of our people. They will Jul HENRY WARD BEECHEH come resolved and determined do! to be influenced, but the spirit of our people will melt them down, just as a hard winter apple resolves to defy the blazing fire when it lias been put down to roast. Bless you! the old fellow loses all his firmness, cooks clear through, and in a little while is rousted and sputtering and singing with joy." In a short talk after prayer.-meeting, to a handful of old members, he rather soliloquized than other- wise, in regard to himself, and the chief bent of his mind in contrast with Dr. . " He reasons with the greatest power and most nat- urally from the past to the present : I reason forward. He points out very clearly t he duties of t he present day : 1 naturally look ahead to see and anticipate what topics of thought will till men's minds in the future. It is natural and it is hereditary for each of us to think and work in his own way. He revels in historical studies, whereas 1 foresee from current events what way the tides are setting, and try to form opinions for myself and m\ people in advance, to be ready in time of need." About ten years ago, as the Sabbath approached in which Plymouth Church was to take up a collection in behalf of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and 1 had spent some time in ob- taining pledges from prominent members as to the amount they would contribute to the cause. I called upon Mr. Beecher. It was late on Saturday evening. He had just arrived home from a weekly lecturing tour. I laid before him my errand. It was to ask him to give THE BETHEL. 205 us a sermon on the cause of missions the next morning. He answered, ' ' Perhaps I will, and perhaps I will not. I have just reached home, have been absent all the week, lecturing every night. I am quite tired out. If I get rested and feel bright I will give you the sermon. " The next morning he appeared in the pulpit as fresh and vigorous as ever. The opening reading of the Scriptures clearly indicated the subject on which his mind was engaged. He announced his text Acts 17 : •26 : " And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. ' ' It was one of his happiest efforts, and the contribution was one of the largest ever made by Plymouth Church in behalf of that cause A gentleman relates an incident that occurred in the year of 1866 or '67, a year or so previous to the build- ing of the " Bethel" in Hicks street, Brooklyn, " The Bethel Mission of Plymouth Church. 1 ' " I was present one Sabbath when Mr. Beecher was making an urgent appeal to his congregation to contrib- ute openly to the fund for building ; after urging it upon all his people, in his own good way, which he knows so well how to do, he said, ' Now, I want you to go down into your jackets, and go down deep ; I want you to put up a building which will be for mechanics, workingmen, and women, and the poorer chisses of this ward (First Ward), where they can all worship together ' (this beside the Sunday-school). It struck a chord in my heart then, that I firmly believe vibrates still, and caused me to believe that one more at least " cared for my soul." 206 HENRY WARD BEECHER. In any account of Mr. Belcher's life mention ought surely to be made of the stand he took for freedom of speech in I860, during the excitement attending the passage of the coinpromi.se measures of thai period. The tide of opposition to the anti-slavery movement at that time was higher and more tempestuous than al any other period since the mobs of 1835. There was a deliberate determination on the part of men eminent in public station, and representing both the great political parties, to put that movement down, to overawe its champions, and consign its leaders to public infamy. Webster, in his seventh of March speech, had lent the weight of his influence to promote this design, and Professors Stuart and Woods at Andover, with a large following of other eminent clergymen, were struggling to reconcile the conscience of the North to the infamies of the Fugitive Slave law then pending before Con- gress, and to persuade the people to stamp out the anti- slavery agitation as a fanatical and scarcely less than treasonable war upon the very life of the nation. Many who had taken part in that agitation were affrighted, and some had even gone over to the pro-slavery side. Timid men on every side trembled lest the heavens should fall and the country be left to destruction, un- less the people would consent to stop the discussion of slavery and obey the demands of the slave power. In this state of affairs the American Anti-Slavery Society held its anniversary at the Broadway Taber- nacle in New York, in May, 1850. This society had openly repudiated " the compromises of the Constitu- tion," and the Constitution itself on their account, and was therefore the object of special hostility and oppro- MR. BEEGHER AND WENDELL PHILLIPS. 20? brium. Its meetings were invaded by a mob, led by a notorious political " rough," and turned into a scene of excitement dangerous to property and life. Public sentiment in New York winked at tlie mob as excusa- ble, if not patriotic, and it was a serious question whether the liberty of speech could be preserved. Mr. Beecher, though hostile to slavery, did not agree with Garrison and his associates in their attitude toward the Constitution and the Union, but thought them very unwise. He might, as others did, have made of this difference an excuse for coolly consenting to see their meetings broken up by violence. But he was sagacious enough to perceive that if freedom of speech were to be preserved, it must be preserved for all, and if it were to be lost for any it would be lost for all. He de- termined, therefore, to make a conspicuous protest against the New York mob. He was by no means sure that his own church and society, if consulted be- forehand, would support him. He took counsel of a few personal friends, whom he could inspire with his own enthusiasm for liberty, and by a sort of moral coup d'etat forced open the doors of Plymouth Church for a speech by Wendell Phillips before those who would have prevented the measure, if possible, had time to rally. By judicious effort the city officials were in- duced to lend their support to an effort to set Brook- lyn, in contrast with New York, as the home of free speech for all men on the slavery question. The meet- ing was"held, and the lecture of Mr. Phillips delivered in peace, though a mob gathered in the street and howled around the doors. Tt would hardly be possible to exaggerate the value JUS HENRI V\ MM) BEE( BER. of this testimonial to the priceless righl of free discus- sion ;it thai solemn crisis. The pro-slavery party [masked its teeth with rage, bul the friends of freedom look fresh courage and hope. The action- of Mr. B sher gathers additional lustre w hen contrasted with that of another clergyman who took pains to persuade the proprietors of the Broadway Tabernacle to shut irs doors thereafter against the American Anti-Slavery Society, thus compelling it to hold its anniversary for two successive years in the interior of the State. Mr. Beecher, however, had the privilege of welcoming the society to New York again in L853. Speaking of sounds, Mr. Beecher said. " It is curi- ous to note the elective power of tin- ear, how it will search out and choose the sound it wants to hear amid a multitude of others. The other day 1 was in that Babel, the Gold Room. 1 sat by the secretary ; and amid all the clamorous shouting and hallooing of the frantic brokers, when 1 could distinguish nothing but a general din, he quietly noted and set down the bids, the offers, the sales, as they occurred. •• In a room full of chatting women, if one of them has a child upstairs and it whimpers, how quick she will catch the sound, separate and know it from all the clatter about her, and go to the child ! •• And just so it is in all hearing; weare continually training our ears to selecl and take note of special things. How you know the creak of every door and the peculiar snap of every lock in the house ! Every friend"s footstep is characteristic to us of his coming and of his person. We insensibly train ourselves to HIS SUSCEPTIBILITY TO SOUND. 209 hear, and just as truly we train ourselves not to hear. I am so used to # my little French clock at my bedside. that strikes the hours and quarters, that I never notice it. And sometimes when T have wanted to know what, time it was and waited patiently for the next quarter, I have known myself to lie, listening at first, but pretty soon getting into a train of thought and hearing noth- ing of my busy little clock for a whole hour with its four quarter-strikings. " For the matter of that, though, I have sometimes been so lulled to thought! illness by the sound of my own voice that I forget that I am reading. Last Sun- day, for instance, T had been reading away, nearly a whole chapter of the Bible, in church, and suddenly started into consciousness of it, having been at the same time led off into an intense study of my sermon that was to come. I was scared. I asked myself, • Why— what — have I really been reading, and going on all right I ' I looked at the congregation, but they were serene enough, and my machine had evidently been going on straight all the while : so, with a gulp of relief, I finished my chapter. " Sounds have a distinct physical effect upon me. Music always affects me very strongly. At first I list- en to it ; but soon it lulls my outward senses, and I begin to have nil manner of imaginations and fancies teeming in my brain. 1 forget the music and only recognize the effect it has had upon me after it has stopped.'* When Mr. Beecher was about to begin the first of his three years of Yale Lectures on Preaching (on the -.'ID 1IKNKY WARD BEECHEK. Sage foundation for the " Lyman Beecher Lecture- ship," in the Yale Theological School), it had been arranged to have Mr. Ellinwood reporl them fur The Christian Union and for book publication. They were generally expected to be important and interesting, but many wondered how he would acquil himself in so unaccustomed a position, as they were to >><> given, not only before the whole body of theological students, bur. before the theological faculty as well (and, us it turned out, not only these but the collegiate faculty also was largely represented, and the clergy of all the region round about |. The day before he \\;is to go up to New Haven to open the course 1 asked him, "Have you got your plan pretty well laid out '." •'IF mi — well-yes — no: well, 1 know where the woods arc that I'm going to hunt my game in, and that's about all I can expect yet awhile." lit- had ;i bad night, as it happened, not feeling well; took the LO o'clock train next morning to New Haven : went to his hotel, got his dinner, lay down and had a nap. About 2 o'clock he not up and began to shave, without having been able to gel at any plan of the Lecture to be delivered within an hour. Just as he had his face lathered and was beginningto strop his razor, the whole thing came out of the clouds and dawned on him. lie dropped his razor, seized his pencil, and dashed oil' the memoranda for it. and afterward cut himself badly, he said, thinking it out. That was the Lecture on " What is Preaching?" of which the venerable Dr. Leonard Bacon said. •• If I THE YALE LECTURES OX PKEACHING. 211 had heard such talk as that before I began to preach it would have made a different preacher of me." The first series on " The Personal Elements which Bear an Important Relation to Preaching,' 1 and the second on " The Social and Religious Machinery of the Church,"' were upon themes familiar and easy to him ; but the third, in which he had committed himself to treat of " Methods of Using Christian Doctrines," he rather dreaded — or rather, under all the circumstances, he felt it a somewhat difficult and critical task, and therefore he might have been expected to prepare it somewhat more formally and completely than he had done the others. The day before he was to begin I asked him as be- fore, "Do you know pretty nearly the line of treat- ment you are to take '." " Yes, in a way. I know what I am going to aim at, but of course I don't get down to anything specific. I brood it, and ponder it, and dream over it, and pick up information about one point and another ; but if ever I tliinlx I see the plan opening up to me I don't dare to look at it or to put it down on paper. If I once write a thing out, it is almost impossible for me to kindle up to it again. I never dare, nowadays, to write a sermon during the week ; that always kills it ; I have to think around and about it, get it generally ready, and then. fuse if when the time comes.' ' It was at the close of this third series that the entire theological faculty of Yale united in a letter to Mr. Beech er (March 19th, 1874). in the course of which they said: "Seldom, indeed, is the opportunity offered of listening to discourses or topics connected 212 HENRY WARD BEECHER. with th«' Christian ministry, which are at once so ear- nest, inspiring, and instructive :" and expressed a con- viction that ,- they must prove eminently quickening and permanently useful.' 1 It is worth while, perhaps, to have felt how utterly impossible it is to preserve in types or even afterward to deline tlie impression which is given to most men merely by being in his presence. It is an ineffable personal influence, and must be felt to be entirely known. T had heard of Henry Ward Beecher from afar all my life, but thought of him as a fixed star afar off. My first impression of him was disappointing. I had expected to be awed with a kind of solemn fright in the presence of so great a man. But here was the most ordinary of mortals sitting in his aim-chair talk- ing as freely and simply as a child. I said to myself, '• Is this my great man *" He joked at me about the wear and tear of light- haired nervous people, a text to suggest several characteristic remarks upon the relations of temperament to religion. I should have gone away in some wonder at such a man's reputation, if he had not been led out into a general talk about religious re- vivals. In this conversation the greal imagination of the man began to excite my interest. It was during the winter of therevival at Plymouth Church, 1881 '82. Mr. Beecher referred to the revival method in a very discriminating figure, or rather flood of images if I may say, that seemed to spring out like scintillations of aurora lights. Comparing the work that was going on in his own church to that which he had witnessed in his boyhood and with other work which was progress- REVIVALS. 213 ing at another Brooklyn church, he said : ' k We try to win everybody. If they do not come now they will be better prepared to come next year. It is like feeding humming-birds. You get a few of them to eat out of your hand, but the others will keep growing tamer every year if you don't frighten them. We don't tire many guns, perhaps, though we might shoot a little more game for the time, but in the end we get all who would be likely to come at all, and don't frighten away the others, and the shy ones come, and they are the best ones." Speaking of the crude revival statements which he had often .heard in his younger days, such as i¥ that God is here now, and may not come this way again," he made this among other figures : Man is open to in- fluences on both sides of his nature. He opens up and he opens down. If he makes himself susceptible to the Divine Spirit the Spirit comes ; if he is susceptible through his lower life to the other influences they come. If you put out on your garden-plot red clover and honeysuckle and sweetbrier, the bees and honey birds flock there, but if you cover it with filth and carrion it will attract the crows and buzzards and jackals. The Holy Spirit doesn't come and go except as man himself changes, etc. These figures and images were as spontaneous as the flow of waters, and seemed to crowd out of themselves. They lead me to think that Mr. Beecher is Shakespea- rian and Oriental in his imagination. I know of no one, except John in the Apocalypse, Paul in his Epistles, and Shakespeare in Hamlet and the Tempest, who ex- hibits such habits of picture-thinMng as Mr. Beecher. 214 HENRY WARD BBECHER. I s:iw him once at his best. It was not a burst of oratory nor any moment of triumphant power. It was a quirt moment ; it was as if the very air was weighted with the moisture of Divine tenderness. He was giv- ing the charge to a young man who was about to go to the far West as a missionary. There were not a hun- dred people present, unless the heavenly host was there. But the great preacher was stirred by the oc- casion to memories of his own early struggles in the West. His voice was low and at times broken, and the tears in his voice broke the fountains loose in all our • ■yes. 1 wish I could remember what he said. It was in substance a charge to love men and to love Christ, to look for sources of power only in heaven. I felt that it would have been happiness to go anywhere, to any work, followed by such words, rather by such a presence^ for it was after all only such words perhaps as any man might have said. A phrase which I once- heard him coin has stayed by me ever since. He was expressing the office of the ministry. He said of Christ that he went about set- ting men right, making them whole. " That is our mission,'- he said. " we are men-menders." He is very tender to the foolishnesses of young men. At our club on one occasion the question arose whether a lie was always wrong. " Christ is the stand- aid.'" said Mr. Beecher. "You can decide by asking if Christ would tell a lie."* T had the temerity to say that if it were not in- herently wrong he might be conceived of doing it. It was a thoughtless and shocking remark. as I made it. 1 was ashamed of it, and at the conclusion of the HIS BRILLIANCY IN CONVERSATION. 215 meeting I asked Mr. Beecher if it were irreverent to speak so. " Oh, no !" lie said, k " you were serious and candid. It was well enough as you said it." and more to the same effect. In fact, lie never lias any small moods in which he holds any contempt, even for the weakest of men. It seems to me that he has such an instinct at understanding a good motive that he never fails to know whether one is to be understood as erring or vicious. His greatness is even more apparent in conversations perhaps than in the pulpit. It has frequently occur- red that in the most natural manner possible a dozen men, all of them men far above ordinary calibre, would find themselves suspending the eating, the whole length of the table, as it were unconsciously, to listen to him. At our last meeting this occurred. Mr. Beecher was explaining his position upon the question of reason as an authority in religious matters concurrently with the Bible. I think the superiority of the man appeared here in the large reach of his views. " I hold," he said, "the catholic idea of inspiration in the church, not in the organism as they say, but whatever men — all good men— most enlightened by Christian and human education and by divine influences think to be true, at last and on the whole, that is true whether the Bible directly reveals it or not. It is a revelation, and God so is constantly revealing himself." Mr. Beecher went on thus at some length, and it was not until he stop- ped that any one happened to notice that the entire company had suspended conversation to listen. It was not respect for a great man's words, for lie is as 216 HENRY WARD BEECHER. familiar and common in a company as the smallest man there: ir was a natural attraction. Mr. Beecher is quick at ;i joke or in repartee, and says the most crushing things without offence. Bro- ther N. relating his vacation experience, said thai he had been kindly allowed a double-length vacation this year. " Was it on your account or their own J" quickly asked Mr. Beecher. You cannot describe the drollness of it. but it was sufficient to convulse the company. Dr. P., a noted temperance advocate, had just re- turned from the Continent. He was relating his ex- periences. It came to a point where he would natu- rally have alluded to the drinking habits of the Euro- peans. Dr. P. seemed to shy rhe topic, and Mr. Beecher, who saw a look of anxiety on the faces of the company, with an inexpressibly simple sort of manner asked cunningly : " How did you like ihewateron the Continent, Doc- tor '." It was a long time before we recovered from the shock, which so upset Dr. P. that he did hot rally for the evening. He seems to know everything. An old and well known pedagogue in Brooklyn was relating at the club- table reminiscences of the early movements for the ed- ucation of women. Mr. Beecher was busily conversing nearly at the other end of the table. The pedagogue named Mrs. L. as the first lender in the movement, and related an incident or two. Mr. Beecher, who seemed ns if he had not heard at all, finished his own conversation, and then turned down the table and said. " Yon are wrong about Mrs. L.. Brother W. She HIS TENDERNESS. ^17 was four years later than Miss A. The movement began — " and from that point lie went on with a history, giving names, dates, incidents, and general facts, as if that had been his study for life. In all the many attempts to delineate the character and characteristics of Mr. Beecher, none have ever ad- equately touched upon his remarkable power of com- forting those who are bereaved. The tenderness and exquisite pathos of his words in the house of mourn- ing have drawn the hearts of hundreds toward him during the many years of his ministry. A wonderful insight has been given him into the very recesses of the sorrowing soul, and an equal gift of expression for those themselves dumb with anguish. His words of comfort and cheer (I cannot call them addresses) at funerals alone would till a volume. I attended, thirty three years since, the funeral of a babe eighteen months of age, whose mother had died in giving it birth, and left it to the care of a maiden aunt. Under the cir- cumstances it would not have been strange had the services been merely perfunctory. Instead of this, Mr. Beecher, to my surprise and grateful admiration, entered as by intuition into the feelings of this ' ' friend who had borne the dear child in her heart, and cradled it in her bosom/' His prayer for her was most tender. One expression I have never forgotten— that she might be strengthened " when sharp remem- brances shoot forth from unexpected places." Was there ever a more incisive touch \ It is like piercing between the joints and the marrow. Who that has been bereaved by death but understands it \ Who has 218 HENRY. WARD BEECHER. ever before put the experience into words? And the months and years that have passed since that tirsl strong impression was made upon me have added innu- merable expressions of similar strength and beauty. So delicate and tenuous are they, and so struck through with " the lighl thai never was on sea or land/' but that cometh down from heaven, and are full ofspirituaJ effluence, that I despair of giving even you my own impressions. At the funeral of one of his own grand- children abotit six years of age while two other chil- dren were lying very ill, and the house seemed dark with sorrow- his first words were: " We are met to- gether to-day to rejoice that this dear child has ful- filled her mission, has delivered her message of glad- ness and happiness in this household, and is so soon permitted to return to her Father's house in heaven/' What followed I know not. The one bright comfort- ing- thought of the little angel messenger, sent with sunshine on her brow, and in her winning ways bring- ing love and joy to earth, took possession of me, and the words "permitted to return 11 has never left me. Speaking of the death of a young man in whom he was much interested, Mr. Beecher said, " 1 cannot feel, 1 do not feel that he has left us. I stand expectant as one sometimes in summer stands waiting for a bird to begin its song again, and does not know that it has flown out of the tree. I was always patiently waiting for . Tie had never shown himself. Much as there was very striking about him, I always felt that we had only seen the edge of color in an unopened bud. There are many who are never so fair again as in youth. "Rut his was a great nature that I felt would HIS VIEWS OF DEATH. 219 never get its full swing and power except in the broad movements of human life. He was made to be a man among men. But I am conscious that 1 have trans- ferred that dear and bright soul to heaven, not merely to heaven in the technical sense, but to everything toward which my thoughts move. Nature to me takes hue and color from every one who is gone, and the spirit seems to have mingled in such a sense with the universe, that it presents itself from every element. For God took him. He is with God, and where is God not?" CHAPTER X. REMINISCENCES RY REV. S. B. HALLIDAY, PASTORAL HELPER OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH. MR. BEECHER IN BROOKLYN. As already mentioned, Mr. Beecher came to Brook- lyn from Indiana in the autumn of 1*47. This city had then sixty thousand inhabitants, now it has more than half a million. Churches had then commenced rapidly to increase, so that Mr. Beecher had old and popular churches and ministers with whom to compete from the beginning. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, learned, eloquent, and popu- lar, of the same denomination, was already thoroughly established within a few minutes* walk of the site chosen for the Plymouth Church edifice. Other de- nominations had preachers in their pulpit whose fame had even spread to other lands. All these ministerial brethren gave a cordial welcome to Mr. Beecher, and he soon found a place in many of their hearts. One. how- ever, of the brethren docs not seem to have had much confidence in the permanence of Mr. Beecher's popu- larity, which was. he said, like wildfire and would soon go out. He would give him " just six months to get through." Yet for thirty-five years the Plymouth pastor has been among this people, preaching the Gos- pel, advocating on many a platform all kinds of local. Plymouth Church. MEETINGS IN BROOKLYN. 223 national, and foreign needs, has always stood in the front rank of orators, and has enjoyed to this day as much of the sympathy and approval of the masses as any man has ever had in similar circumstances. By his own people he has always been regarded with al- most idolatrous affection and confidence, and all who know him, with perhaps here and there an exception, would doubtless join good old Dr. Hodge in saying as he did, after hearing his lecture to the students of Princeton Seminary, "Whatever there may be wrong about Mr. Beecher 1 s head, his heart is right. 11 As an instance of the affectionate regard in which the Plymouth pastor is held by the multitude, the fol- lowing may suffice. Some time since when a sad ca- lamity had befallen our city, a meeting of clergy and influential citizens was called by the authorities to consider and devise some plan to raise means for the re- lief of many sufferers. During the discussion the pas- tor of one of the most influential churches arose and said, " Obtain the Academy of Music, secure the ser- vices of Henry Ward Beecher, and you will get all the money you want. 1 ' That single utterance voices to- day the thought of Brooklyn as to his influence and power to move the people. The following half dozen meetings were held at the Academy of Music. This is the largest public hall in the city and holds perhaps 4000 people. In the Au- tumn of 1879, the Republican party called a ratifica- tion meeting in the Academy of Music, to be addressed by Senator Conkling and others. Mr. Beecher, who had not been invited to speak, went to hear Mr. Conk- ling, and arrived some time before the senator. On '.'•M HENRI WARD BEECHER. Mr. Beecher's appearance at the rear of the platform, tin' vast audience, composed of all classes, rich and poor, laboring, mercantile, and professional, rose i n masst and cheered most enthusiastically until 1 the arrival of Mr. Conkling, while cry after cry, " Mr. Beecher," "Mr. Beecher,'' came from every pari of the thronged building. Again, at the close of Mr. Conkling's speech, a similar course was pursued by the great audience, until the chairman was constrained to ask Mr. Beecher to speak. The Parnell Reception Meeting occurred soon after, when Mr. Beecher was chosen by the representatives of Ireland, to give their welcome to the man whom they considered was serving their race most earnestly and successfully. The generosity of Mr. Beecher s relig- ious views and his tolerance of those of others give him a just claim upon the appreciation which the Irish manifested to him on this occasion, and which they never lose opportunity fully to accord. The admira- tion manifested for Mr. Beecher was unbounded. Few weeks only had elapsed when Mr. Beecher was again invited to address " The Women's Temperance Union" presided over by Rev. Dr. Cuyler. While his views on this question, as t«> measures, are not so rad- ical as those of others, and while he earnestly and un- hesitatingly declares total abstinence to be the only sat'- ground, yet he cordially extends his hand to those who (Mitci tain different views and advocate interme- diate measures. Again, but a brief period elapsed, when a great char- ity meeting afforded another occasion for the citizens of Brooklvn to call to their aid their much-esteemed MEETINGS IN BROOKLYN. 225 townsman. A brave officer in arresting a man was so beaten by k ' roughs" that he died, leaving a dependent family. The case excited the warmest sympathy of the Police Department — a committee appointed to de- vise measures for relief — this committee decided to ask Mr. Beecher to deliver a lecture on behalf of the fam- ily ; he consented, fifteen thousand tickets were sold, the Academy of Music could not contain the many thousands who flocked to hear him, and the wildest enthusiasm prevailed in the meeting. The great Channing Memorial Service, held in April, 1880, has seldom been equalled by any meeting either in New York or Brooklyn. The Academy of Music was literally packed. The clergy, irrespective of denomination, were there in large numbers. Addresses were made by representative men of all sects, and half past ten o 1 clock had arrived be- fore Mr. Beecher was introduced. It was no easy task to take a wearied audience at that hour and hold them for forty-five minutes, but he did it, scarcely a person leaving the hall during the address. The welcome accorded him at the beginning of his address was most enthusiastic, and the cheers and waving of handker- chiefs which greeted his paragraphs were continued till the close. The Garfield Ratification Meeting closely followed, when Mr. Beecher was among the chief speakers, and when the old enthusiasm on seeing him and hearing his eloquent utterances showed that the pastor of Plym- outh Church still lived in the hearts of the citizens, and that not one jot or tittle of their regard for him had abated. 226 11KNKY WARD BEECHER. Thus in the City of Brooklyn, in the same audience- room, within :i period of six months, were there six great meetings at which Mr. Beecher spoke, and on each occasion an ovation was given to the man to whom they had been listening for the third of a century. CENTENNIAL YEAR. During the entire period of the Centennial Exhibi- tion in Philadelphia, Plymouth Church and Mr. Beecher 1 s residence were daily sought by great num- bers of people, some on foot, many in carriages, stop- ping in front of the plain building that is such a resort for strangers on the Sabbath, taking the opportunity to enter and inspect the place where the man preaches that everybody wants to hear. Mr. Beecher was away on his vacation during part of July and the whole of the months of August and September, and yet it was evident in the audience during these Sabbaths that • many visitors to the Centennial were present. There are six hundred free sittings in Plymouth Church, and if the pew-holders are not in their seats ten minutes before the time for commencing the services, the ushers are directed to fill their seats with strangers. On Mr. Beecher' s return so great was the throng of strangers, and so eager were they to hear him, that his own peo- ple, always so anxious to hear their pastor after his vacation, abandoned their seats during the whole month of October for the accommodation and gratification of these Centennial visitors. It w^as a goodly sight to see at least three thousand of these people every Sabbath, hanging with breathless silence upon the lips they had CENTENNIAL YEAR. 22? longed to hear. Probably every State and Territory in the Union had its representatives in each of the con- gregations during that month. Possibly twenty thou- sand strangers enjoyed the hospitalities of Plymouth Church during that season, and in various ways man- ifested their appreciation of the kindness thus ex- tended. The scene which the church presented at these services was very remarkable, and such as are rarely witnessed. The old and the young, the rich and the poor, persons arrayed in the extremes of fash- ion, could be seen sitting side by side in the same pew ; and the whole house thus tilled ! The old farm- er's motherly wife from the prairies arrayed in the quaintest possible garb, her bronzed and sturdy com- panion by her side ; an eminent jurist and his re lined, handsome, and fashionable daughters occupying the balance of the pew. It was an occasion that might well stir the heart of Mr. Beecher, and it did, for the eight sermons which he preached during that month were all that could be expected — even from It im. At the close of each of these services great multi- tudes availed themselves of the opportunity to shake hands with Mr. Beecher, and to mention to him their names. Their feelings appeared to be profoundly stir- red, and their manner of expressing them was often very touching. A large matronly woman stayed till all had left the house at one of the morning services, seeming loath to leave the place. She was evidently an intelligent, warm-hearted, spiritually-minded Chris- tian woman, and walking from the church toward the pastor's house, she said, " Well, I have heard that some of the people in Brooklyn talk against Mr. 228 HENRY WARD BEECHER. Beecher. 1 live in Ohio, and if you have got tired of him here, we would like to have him out there." MAGNANIMITY. Mr. Beecher's career has been distinguished, for generosity and magnanimity. Tie shuts no one our from sympathy because of his religious views. Other things beingequal, he would as soon help a Mohamme- dan or a pagan as a Christian. All men, with him, are brethren, having only one God, one Saviour, one Sanctifierand Comforter. In Catholic, Protestant, and sceptic are seen men for whom Christ died, and whom he would brood into love to himself and mankind. Mr. Beecher has probably been too generous, and his sympathy and love too indiscriminate. Hut his yearn- ing toward, the bad lias been like His who ate with publicans and sinners. Tie maintains that a good man, though an infidel, is better and less harmful than a had Christian. Tie has even maintained that the Pope is his brother, in face of the fact that the Pope will not respond to his fraternal declarations. He lias eulo- gized the conduct of some men whom the Church has advertised and shunned as very dangerous. I think he would be quite willing to have any of the Catholic bishops orpriests occupy his pulpit, and should Mr. In- gersoll, in any way, be permitted to tell Plymouth peo- ple how to be saved, the pastor would see that they should no! be harmed by his statements. Mr. Beecher is not made of butter and oil. He can become quickly and readily indignant, even awfully angry ; but he does not seem to need, as much as most MAGNANIMITY. 229 men, the admonition, " Let not the snn go down on your wrath." His wrath is as quickly aroused by in- juries inflicted upon others as upon himself, but it soon subsides. He may be also quick to take offence, but he has the happy faculty of concealing it from others, although there are times when he does not care to con- ceal it. I have never dared to quarrel with him. The nearest approach to it was in arranging an engagement he had made to dedicate the new Congregational Church at Middletown, N. Y., a few years since. After the time appointed for the dedication, the good pastor from Middletown called upon me, looking as if his last friend but one had abandoned him, and in a most despondent mood said, " Yesterday was the time ap- pointed to dedicate our church ; notice had been wide- ly circulated that Mr. Beecher was to preach the ser- mon, and before the time for commencing the services had arrived, the house was crowded. But Mr. Beecher was not there. The people waited and waited, but he did not come, and after waiting more than an hour, the dedication was postponed and the people dispersed." The minister was greatly dejected, as the officers were depending on the collections and subscriptions they hoped to obtain on the occasion, to aid them in meet- ing some pressing claims. To relieve the good man, I said, " Now you may go right home and I will see that Mr. Beecher makes an appointment and that he does not overlook it." In the afternoon I called upon the pastor and inquired if he had a good time at the dedication yesterday. With a most forlorn expression on his face he declared he " had forgotten all about it." " Yes," I said, " the poor minister called on me 230 BENRY WARD BEECHER. this forenoon sad and sorry enough. I told him you would come up still and fulfil the appointment." He immediately said with earnestness, " I //•///, when shall [go?" "Oh," [ replied, " you must decide that ; when can you go '. Gret your docket and see whal your en- gagements are." He and Mrs. IVcchcr looked over for vacancies, and finally fix* ■< I upon a date, and asked if that would do. I said, " Von can make the time when you please, and they will conform to it,'* and ac- cordingly he telegraphed at once the time to Middle- town. Calling upon Mr. Beecher, two or three days after, the moment I entered he exclaimed with em- phasis, " You have got me into another scrape. 1 had an engagement already on that date you selected, and I have telegraphed to Middletown I cannot come." I answered, "If you are in any scrape, you arc to blame, I am not, nor did I make any mistake, and you must telegraph immediately that you will go to Mid- dletown at the time appointed." " You did make a mistake, I had an engagement, and I won't telegraph again, 1 ' was uttered with more emphasis than the first accusation, and a rejoinder equally emphatic was ten- dered, with a request for a reproduction of the docket for examination. Turning to a particular date, when there was an engagement, " There, didn't 1 tell you I had an engagement then V k ' Who said you had not \ I did not." Looking on a little farther, and discover- ing that I was right and he was wrong, " Well, I always did need a guardian," was his admission, and I added, ' ' I wonder your father did not appoint one for you be- fore he died." " Oh, he needed one himself," was his answer, and as he will always have the last word, I re- MAGNANIMITY. 231 tired from the field. All I wanted was that he should go and dedicate the church, which he did to t^e great comfort and satisfaction of the formerly disappointed minister and people. I never knew any attempt on Mr. Beecher' s part to revenge an injury. So ready is he to overlook and for- get, and almost to bless a man for abusing Jiim, that his magnanimity appears sometimes a weakness. Just subsequent to the war, a minister came into the prayer- meeting who had been absent from the country for several months. Throughout the war he had seemed to delight in speaking and writing all the mean and ugly things possible of Mr. Beecher, and as nearly false and libellous as they could be. He was equally abusive also of other upholders of the government. On the evening alluded to, Mr. Beecher, calling him by name, said, "You have just returned from Europe ; I am sure you can speak of something that you have seen and heard that will interest us, and we would be glad to hear them." For some minutes this man spoke of various religious matters' in London connected with missions among the poor, ragged schools, lodging- houses, etc., so as to interest those who w r ere present. Calling at Mr. Beecher's house after the 'meeting, I found him reclining in his library. I said, rather abruptly, " The only thing I get mad with you about is the way in which you treat those men who go round misrepresenting and abusing you and the church. And an angel might come into the lecture-room and he would not get half the attention you bestowed on that man to-night." To which he answered, " I believe in a fel- low practising once in a while what he preaches." •.':;--' HENRY WARD BEECHER. This ended the interview. In this manner be generally disposes of those whose treatment of him has been un- kind. Another incident will illustrate this. Mr. Beecher, in calling at my house one morning, met with a gentleman of the press who said he had jnsi come from the house of — mentioning the name of a Legal gentleman — and he declared he had never met a man who would say anything favorable of him. The newspaper m;m added, "Nor can I," and a gentleman standing by added, "Nor can I, though I have been in Brooklyn and New York nearly a lifetime." Mr. Beecher interposed and said, " I can tell you of a good many things that are creditable to him that I have known personally, and much that I have learned of others. I know his life in his family has been beau- tiful, the training of his children has been everything that could be expected from a sincere and intelligent Christian gentleman, and his family, in order, in har- mony, in affection, have shown the effects of his train- ing. Then [ know the treatment of the large number of employes, both men arid women, in his service has been testified to by them as that of real courtesy, kindness, and sympathy." Yet this man was considered to have been one of Mr. Beecher' s bitterest enemies, and was ;ii this time supposed to be utterly inimical. So emphatic was this testimony given of his supposed enemy that if he had appeared at that moment asking almost any favor he could afford, Mr. Beecher would have conferred it in- stantly. Nor is there a man living to whom I think Mr. Beecher would not be delighted to be reconciled, no matter what wrong he may have perpetrated, or what WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME TO DO? 233 help he may have withheld, when help was most need- ed. It would be ' k a joy day " beyond all that he has ever experienced, if the best and the worst of all those whom he thought had even enmity toward him would simply say, " Let bygones be bygones.' 1 ' As David said in haste, " All men are liars," so under stress of the moment, in haste, Mr. Beecher has said some sharp things. This he would admit, but he would not ask, nor suffer others to make admissions to him. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME TO DO? At a Friday evening meeting Mr. Beecher had been dwelling on the subject of kindness and gentleness on the part of Christians in their intercourse with men, and how essential it was to cherish this spirit toward men who were angry and abusive. In the course of his remarks he alluded to some cases coming under his own observation where very violent and bad men had been won from hatred and opposition to the warmest friendship and devotion, by the gentle self-possession and kindness of those against whom they had been angered. Every one at all familiar with Plymouth Church knows that Mr. Beecher, in his own social meetings, permits criticisms and questions on the sub- jects presented. On the evening alluded to, one of the brethren of the church, who has a mind of his own and freely expresses it, arose when Mr. Beecher con- cluded and asked, " What would you do in such a case as this ? There is a poor widow living in Brook- lyn who has a boy she cannot control ; he won' t go to school, is constantly playing truant, living on the •j:;i HKNliY WARD BEECHER streets, and associating with others as bad or worse than himself. I met the boy in the street the qther day, and took hold of him to take him to his mother, who is greatly troubled about him, and wanted him placed in the Truant Home. The little vagabond raised a great cry and gathered a crowd around. A loafer interposed to release the boy. wanting to know what I was going to do with him. As he attempted to take the boy from me, I told him, if he laid hands on either of us I would smite him between his two eyes. I ask again, what are you going to do in such a case (" The pastor responded, " What do you want me to do I Shall I do as a minister did who was preaching at a camp-meeting in the West \ During his sermon a fellow in the audience disturbed the meeting and re- fused to aesist, paying no attention to the efforts made to quiet him ; the minister stopped preaching, went down to the disturber, gave him a good sound thrash- ing, went back to the stand and finished his sermon." THE DYING CALIFORNIAN. A year or two after entering the service of Plymouth Church, at the close of a Sabbath morning service in May, a tall, fleshy gentleman spoke to Mr. Beecher, who called me to him, and handed me the man's ad- dress, saying that his wife was ill and he wanted some one to visit her. I told him I would call and see her. Owing to a pressure from other engagements, and as nothing had been said about the lady being particu- larly sick, I did not call till Tuesday at two o'clock. When calling, I sent up my name, and the nurse THE DYING CALIFORNIAN. 235 came down and said that the lady was so feeble she could see visitors only in the morning. Accordingly I called about 9± o'clock the following morning. I was shown into the sick-chamber, where I found a woman sitting up supported by pillows, in her bed, with a Plymouth hymn-book in her hand. She was a mere shadow, as nearly a skeleton as any person I had ever seen. Her voice was so weak that she could only speak in a low whisper. As her throat was completely ulcerated, speaking was very painful, and swallowing almost impossible. She expressed great gladness at my coming, and with intense animation made the fol- lowing narration. I use her own language as nearly as I can remember it. " I am a member of the Mount Vernon Church, Bos- ton. Seven or eight years ago we were living in Brooklyn, and we went to hear Henry Ward Beecher ru-each. My husband was taken ill ; his physicians said he had consumption, and told us that if we wished to save his life we must go to California. We made our preparations and went, and you see the result : he weighs two hundred pounds, is well and vigorous, and I am a skeleton. He improved at once on reaching California, but after a few years I began to run down, and this continued until my physician came in one evening and said, ' You will not live till morning.' I answered him, ' You could not have brought me better news.' But I did live until morning, and after several days I told my husband I would not die in California, I must go back to Brooklyn and hear Henry Ward Beecher again before I died. My husband settled up his business and we came back, and here I am." 236 HENRY WARD BEECHER. It would be difficult for me to describe the effect of this story upon me. Here was a woman who would not die in California, mould hear the Plymouth pastoi before she died, had come all the long, long way in the fulfilment of her desire, and here was 1 thrust in to fill the place of the only one on earth she cared to hear. I had to say something, and it was. %1 1 am Borry you have so poor an apology for the one you came so far to see, but Mr. Beecher does no pastoral work, and I have come in his stead." Quickly she replied, " It makes no difference ; I am ever so glad to see you, just as glad as if Mr. Beecher had come/' I felt that she saw that I was embarrassed by the position in which I was placed, and her sympathy for me led her to speak words that were quite as strong as her real feeling would permit. I would have gladly left, but could not get away. Her animation and warmth were to me surprising. For nearly two hours I was held by her questions, the re- la t ion of her experiences, of the great kindness of the Lord to her in all her life, and that now He came so near to comfort and cheer her as she was passing through the valley and the shadow of death. She was ready and waiting, yea, longing to have permission to cross the river to the promised land. She was antici- pating the hour with a perfect enthusiasm of delight. Her vision was from the standpoint of the immortal Watts : '•Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green." We sang, " My Faith looks up to Thee," " Rock of Ages," and other hymns. 1 say we sang, for in her THE DYING CALIFOKNIAN. 237 whispered tones she joined, and now and then a full round note would sound out clear and distinct as that of a bird. After reading the twenty-third Psalm and the last talk of Jesus with his disciples, and prayer, I rose to leave, and asked her if she would like to have the Lord's Supper administered to her, that I fre- quently did that service for the sick. She was greatly delighted at the suggestion ; I went at once and told Mr. Beecher her story, and that I wanted him to go himself and administer the communion to her. He readily consented to go on the following Saturday morning at nine o'clock. When we went in that morning to the house of the sick woman, we were escorted to an upper room, where we found her sitting in an invalid's chair, with her husband and three or four friends about her. I was struck, on entering the room, with Mr. Beecher' s appearance. He was not at all at ease or at home, spoke in a mere whisper, and through the whole service it was quite apparent that he was entirely dissatisfied with himself or the way in which he was doing his work. Had it been some men, I might have said, they are afraid they will make some mistake, or that they had not done this thing before, and they did not know how to perform the service smoothly. As it was, Mr. Beecher came downstairs with a dissatisfied and dejected manner, and as he stepped on the sidewalk, with a sudden jerk of the arms downward, he exclaimed, " There, if I do pastoral work it spoils me for preaching, and if I preach it spoils me for pastoral work ; but if I should give up preaching altogether, and do nothing but pas- toral work, I could cut a big swathe, don't you think 238 HKMiV WARD BBECHER. 1 could?" I only smiled and said, " I should like to see vou try it." LAST PRAYER-MEETING OF THE YEAR. The last Friday evening of the year 1866, the meet- ing, at the suggestion of the pastor, was quite different in character from the usual prayer-meeting service Almost invariably when conducted by the pastor the first exercise is singing, followed by a prayer, singing again, another prayer, followed by singing, and then the pastor's address, varying in length from fifteen to thirty minutes. Ordinarily these services absorb most of the hour which is the time allotted for the meeting. When Mr. Beecher has closed his remarks, he general- ly asks if any one wishes to put to him any question. Many times the invitation is accepted, but often no one improves the opportunity, and the meeting is closed by singing and the benediction. This is the only prayer- meeting of the church. At the meeting alluded to, after the customary open- ing, the pastor said, "As it is the last meeting of the ycni'. it seems an appropriate thing to look back upon. th*' year and to speak to each other of its expcii ences." There was a great deal of freedom among the brethren, and a large number gave testimonies, very varied in kind, and comprehending the whole space between great prosperity and sore adversity. Great afflictions accompanied with much suffering had been the lot of some, while others had passed through the year unscathed. In spiritual things some had been walking in high places, others in the valleys. There LAST PRAYER-MEETING OF THE YEAR. 239 Avere many more apparently desiring to speak than there was time to hear, and shortly before the usual time for closing the meeting the pastor said, " I'm speaking of my own experience ; it seems proper that I should speak of what has come out of my own rela- tions and connections as your pastor. Some say to me, ' I should think it would make you proud to have such throngs come to hear you year after year.' I don't need that to make me proud. " Others say, ' I should think you would feel it a ter- rible responsibility to have such great congregations to preach to, when you remember what consequences are involved.' I don't feel any responsibility. I go into the pulpit and look round upon that great congre- gation, and my heart is filled with unutterable yearn- ings for them ; often I lose all desire to preach, and if I should consult my own feelings would devote the whole service to prayer. But as to responsibility, as I have already said, I feel none. God knows I do the very best I can ; I put the best I know in my sermons, and leave the results with the Lord, and am not troubled in regard to that." On a similar occasion, when several had spoken of the year as one of growth both in temporal and spiritual things, the pastor in- terposed and said, " This will do for one side ; now let us have the other. Let some one who has had a hard time with others and especially with liimself — some of you that have been proud, arrogant, self-willed, speak." One of the brethren answered playfully, " Suppose you speak to that." Brethren often take such liberties with Mr. Beecher, and sometimes criticise what he may say or do. He 240 HENRY WARD BEECHER. may warmly advocate a course which the church may condemn,and when he has been defeated, those who have been victorious cannol be more pleased than the pastor himself. But his judgment and good sense are so admirable that he rarely advocates a measure thai • lues not gain the approval of the church. There are no wranglings, ao factions, and no divis- ions. Opinions may vary , buttheresult is harmony. I know from personal observation that more difficultly and divisions have occurred in some little church in a single year than have taken place in Plymourh Church since its formation. I have seen Mr. Beechrr ureal ly enjoy a discussion upon some debated question in his church, and become almost hilarious, saying, " Well, that is the fruit of my teaching. I have ever enjoined you to be independent and think for yourselves, and not allow me or any one else to lead you against your own intel- ligent convictions." To have his church, therefore, act independently, is a source of pride and gratification to him, rather than one of irritability and dissatisfac- tion. But harmony and unanimity Of action have always characterized the great body of communicants. During the great trouble through which the church was called to pass a few years since, its great member- ship of more than two thousand persons, with the ex- ception of a comparatively very small number, were handed together with a oneness and sympathetic affec- tion that was probably never excelled if equalled. Such manifestations of loyal attachment to a pastor, evincing themselves in so many conceivable ways and in such trying circumstances, are certainly without UNOBTRUSIVE LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 241 a parallel in the history of churches, and have elicited eulogy and praise even from those who were most in- imical to Mr. Beecher and the church. Dreadful as was the ordeal through which Mr. Beecher was dragged, and fearful as his sufferings must have been at times, the sufferings of his people were little less than agony. Strong men with falter- ing voice and falling tears attested the sympathy and intense love of this people for their pastor and how completely they made his trouble their own. His support, serenity and cheerfulness, his ability to preach as he did every Sabbath during those dark, dark months, showing almost no appearance of wear or suffering, was, and is still, an unsolved wonder to those who did not see the position occupied by his church. Its members suffered almost more than the pastor. Their prayers and sympathies buoyed him up, rendering him almost unconscious of the malignant billows that were dashing against him. During those dreadful days no one ever intruded upon Mr. Beecher ; the love and sympathy of his people were not kept alive by personal intercourse with him, and not one in a hundred of his people had a moment's conversation with him then or since about these fear- ful troubles. There was a beautiful consideration, in this regard, shown to Mr. Beecher which neither he nor others can ever forget. Nothing I have ever experienced, seen, or read has afforded me such a view of devotion and affectionate attachment, of noble, unselfish love, and of the advantages derived from the instructions of a re- ligious teacher. No bondage like spiritual bondage. 242 HENRI WARD BEECHER. No suffering like thai of the soul Longing and seeking for light, and all the time Palling into deeper dark- ness, hearing the cry, "Lo here and lo there," until, weary of following, it lies down in despair. Mr. Beecher has been favored so to minister to vast multi- i iides, i h;it i hey have found rest and peace, and in the soil of their hearts strong and undying affection have sprung up, and so matured toward their spiritual teacher that they have yielded the beautiful and pre- cious fruits we have just detailed. BORDER RUFFIAN. Immediately after the morning service in the sum- mer of 1877, almost before the benediction was con- cluded, a tall, gaunt man started from the centre of the church in great haste for the platform. He was ap- parently seventy years old, dressed in coarse, shaggy garments, and was just ready to rush up to Mr. Beecher when I said, " My friend, wait a moment, Mr. Beecher will be down directly, and then you can sr^eak to him." He answered, "I am a Methodist preacher In >m Texas ; I was a border ruffian, and I'll bet a nickel if Mr. Beecher had been there he'd a been one too. I have shuck hands with Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Tom Benton, Dan Webster, John C. Calhoun, and now I want to shuck bands with Henry Ward Beecher." When Mr. Beecher came down, the Texan grasped his hand, shook it with greaJ heartiness, said he was a border ruffian from Texas, offered to bet a nickel Mr. Beecher would have been one too if he had lived A SENSIBLE WOMAN. 24:5 there, and repeated the names of the celebrities with whom he had shook hands ; all this in a voice so loud he could have been heard all over the house had the congregation been seated. As soon, however, as he had told his story he started off almost on a run, and this was the last seen of the old Texan tighter. A SENSIBLE WOMAN. Years since a most estimable Christian woman, a member of Plymouth Church, was a dreadful sufferer from inflammatory rheumatism, and for twelve years had been almost entirely helpless. In all her suffer- ings there had been the most quiet patience, fortitude, and self-possession. It was beautiful to see her hearty acceptance of all her trials as the ministration of unerring love. She was exceedingly quiet and re- tiring, but manifestly peaceful and happy. There was always an apparent restfulness. She never seemed tossed about, but waiting for permission to enter the house of many mansions. She had been helped greatly through her long years of suffering by the teachings of Mr. Beecher, and often spoke of his sermons as affording her unspeakable comfort. One day entering her room I found her with a volume of Plymouth Pulpit lying open on the table beside which she was sitting. I said, " Since you cannot enjoy the visit of the original, I am glad you have so good a substitute." " Do you know," she replied, " T think the substitute is worth more than the original; I don't think it would be easy for me to converse with him, but 1 ain't afraid of his sermons, and can enjoy them very 244 HENRI WARD BEECHER. much when 1 am ttere alone, as I am so much of the time." I spoke of this good woman al the weekly meeting, not mentioning her name, and told what she had said respecting the pastor, and her preference for his sermons to his visits. He interrupted me, saying quickly and emphatically, " Sensible woman, sensible woman." WOMEN SPEAKING IN" MEETING. Mr. Beecher has encouraged, or at least has never prevented females from speaking in the meetings in Plymouth Church. He may not have urged it upon them as a duty or privilege, but he lias repeatedly urged those who have gifts, that would render them ac- ceptable, to speak. It is generally understood that all persons who have anything to say, as Mr. Beecher phrases it, are free to say it, whether they belong to the congregation or not, In this respect the women are placed on an equal footing with the men. Theliberty of speech has not been h armful. andjnByex^aiinoying, exceplJnJJae^teyi 1 ^' instance. . Some years since a lady, a stranger to the church. who seemed to consider herself competent to edify others, began to speak frequently, at the weekly prayer-meetings, and her speech was so indistinct as to render it difficult for more than half the audience to hear her. Her efforts continued with much fre- quency through several months. Finally she con- cluded to devote herself to the lecture platform, and advertised herself as "the eloquent lady speaker at the prayer-meeting of Plymouth Church." Before she had entered upon her labors she arose one evening THE METHODIST SISTER. 245 in the lecture-room after the usual time to close the service and the pastor requested her to be brief. Her address was so characteristic and prolonged, that the people became restless, and when she closed Mr. Beecher said with well-understood accent and empha- sis. " Nevertheless I am in favor of women's speaking in meeting." The whereabouts of our long- time friend has been unknown to us since that evening. From time to time other women have spoken in our meetings, some of them returned missionaries and some Quakeresses, all of whom have generally inter- ested and edified the people. THE METHODIST SISTER. One day in conversation with Mr. Beecher about the change that had taken place in the views and feelings of close communionists, in regard to permitting others to sit with them at the Lord's table, I related the fol- lowing incident in the life of Washington, told me by my mother. The winter his army was encamped at Morristown, New Jersey, General Washington was a regular attend- ant on the Sabbath service of the Presbyterian Church, the only church then in the town ; during the week pre- ceding the communion Sabbath, General Washington called at the parsonage and inquired of the minister, "Doctor, do you permit Episcopalians to come to your communion table?" The good man replied, " General Washington, it is the Lord's table and all his children are welcome to it." Mr. Beecher remarked that the most rigid were far #46 1IKNIIY WARD BEECHER less so than formerly, and he did nor believe thai there were many tables so close now that General Washington or any other good man would be in dan- ger of being driven f ron i them. As illnst ration of his opinion lie told Hie following : In a town a very interesting revival occurred in the Baptist Church, while there was little or no interest in ili<- Methodist Church in the same place. In this church there was a very devour, warm-hearted old lady, who was attracted to the special services in the Baptist Church, where her son also attended, and be- came a convert, to the great joy of the old saint, who was accorded full liberty in expressing her enthusi- asm in the Baptist meetings. Communion season was approaching, and the old woman's boy felt he ought to be immersed and become a member of that church where he had found the Saviour. To this the old lady did not object, but when communion Sabbath came she was on hand with her son, and one of the deacons seeing her among the communicants, went to the min- ister and said to him, " That old Methodist is sitting down there and means to commune with us." " Does she i" he inquired with. great seriousness of manner. " What shall I do P' inquired the deacon. " There is my hickory stick down yonder, get it and kill her." The old woman was not killed, but partook of the sup- per with the Baptists unmolested. APPLICANTS FOE HELP. Mr. Beecher has acquired such notoriety for liber- alitv and sympathy, that lie lias been overrun for CURIOUS BEGGARS. M7 years with all sorts of requests for every kind of as- sistance. In his house, in the street, at the close of services in the church, he has been beset with those charity-seekers. When called to my present field of labor, one thing only did Mr. Beecher request, " that T should be as a kind of lightning-rod to relieve him from the care of those applicants." He knew he had often been imposed upon, and as I had had some experi- ence in the distribution of charity he desired to have all cases referred to me, as he could not say " No, 1 ' even to a " dead beat." At the close of a Sunday evening service, just after the war, I saw a man with an army coat on, buttoned up to the throat, waiting to speak to Mr. Beecher, who immediately referred him to me. I asked him what he desired of the pastor. ' ' I want a clean shirt. " " Why do you come to Mr. Beecher for a clean shirt V ~ ' I have read his articles and other things that have been written about him, and I thought he was a kind man and would grant me such a favor." " Where do you belong and what have you done for a support 2" *' I belong to Alexandria in the District of Columbia, and have been a fisherman on the Potomac." "Yes, I have a family and had misunderstandings ; I did not think I was treated properly and came away." " Well, my advice to you is, to go back quicker than you came away." " No, sir, I want to let them know that I can take care of myself. I saw they wanted men to work in the brickyard up at Flushing, and I thought if Mr. Beecher would give me a clean shirt, I would walk up there and go in the bay and take a bath, put on the clean shirt, and go to the brickyard and apply •Ms HENRI WARD BEECHER. foe work." Lodging, breakfast, and a clean shirt were provided for him, and be wenl on his way. Directly in front of the platform in one of the free seats od a pleasant spring morning sal an old gentle- man of perhaps sixty, whose tears fell frequently dur- ing the sermon, and an occasional "Amen" empha- sized the old man's approval of the sermon. The moment the benediction was pronounced he stepped to the platform and handed a book to the pastor, who, as he came down, handed it to me, wishing me to tell him what to do. Opening the book I found it con- tained contributions for the owner's benefit. I asked him what he was obtaining these subscriptions for. "For myself." " Where do yon belong?" "Fred- ericksburg, Virginia." " Why should yon be here begging in this way?" "Because 1 am needy." "You are not sick, why don" t yon go to work and earn a support for yourself, or if you are going to beg for a living, why do you not stay at home and ask help of them that know you, instead of coming here among strangers ?" To all of which I could obtain no other statement than that he had obtained from those who knew him all they were willing to give. His book had been in use a long time, and the aggregate contri- butions were very considerable, and though beginning at Fredericksburg, they had been added to at various places all the way from there to Brooklyn. I advised the pastor to give him fifty cents. " Oh, give him five dollars," was the answer. When the old man got his five dollars, he said, " Now I want to see Brother Beecher and have a good talk with him,'* but he was told that that was out of the question. OTHER APPLICANTS FOB HELP. 249 During the " Centennial," a woman from Boston, apparently thirty to thirty-five years of age, called upon me to inquire where Mr. Beecher resided, saying- she was an orphan from Boston, that she had been to Philadelphia and wanted to remain over Sunday to hear Mr. Beecher preach, and thought, as she was an orphan, she could be entertained at his house. Of course she was educated, but not very modern in her general appearance, especially in regard to her dress. Many come to entreat a collection in the church or lecture-room for their benefit. Prom Pennsylvania and Western States some urgent appeals have come by letter, and some women have journeyed more than a thousand miles to secure collections to save home- steads from being lost under foreclosure of mortgages. In a single week on one occasion, two mothers came, and were seemingly disappointed that their re- quests did not meet with a favorable answer. One, the daughter of a clergyman, was evidently educated and refined. Her husband had been unfortunate, and though once in very comfortable, if not affluent cir- cumstances, they were now in absolute want, and threatened to be turned from their rooms upon the street because they could not pay their rent. They had two daughters who had been delicately brought up and could not resort to ordinary service, for a sup- port. This was the story of this wife and mother, and in it all it was quite apparent that a foolish pride had kept them from economies and industries that would have kept them back from the extreme condition to which they were now reduced, but she had none, and the family had none of that decent pride which would 250 BENRY WARD BEECHER. prevent them going to entiiv strangers entreating a public collection. She seemed hurt and disappointed when I told her that the church would not take such collections, and thai it' such were attempted there would be no end of applications from persons as needy and deserving as herself. A widow with a little girl twelve years old called for help, saying by way of precedent that " Mi'. Beecher had taken a collection for the widow of a policeman who was murdered," and she too was in need of help. I told her that Mr. Beecher did not take a collection. but that he had given ;i lecture in the Academy of Music for a case which was very different from hers. The man was murdered while in the discharge of his duty as an officer, and his widow was left with several young children. As she was in good health, T advised her to go to work in souk- family with her child or else get a place for her child in some family that would take good care of her, and go to work herself, earn what she could, placing in bank what site could spare, and thus accumulate something againsl the day of sickness and want. The advice was not much relished. As I entered the pastor's library one morning, a man perhaps sixty passed out, while the pastor was hold- ing a pen in his mouth and was just putting his check-book in his safe. T said. " T wish I had the key of that safe." " What would you do if you had :" " I would keep you from drawing checks for those shysters thai are constantly sponging upon you." " Oh.*' he replied, " I only gave him twenty-five dol- lars. It's Captain B , he is an old English shipmas- STRIKING ADAPTATION. 251 fcer, has lost his ship, and is going to Charleston to get a new ship.'' 1 was amiably rebuked for being sus- picions of such a man. Possibly six months after this, I was told a gentleman was waiting to see me, and entering the room I at once recognized the wrecked English sea captain. He arose and intro- duced himself as Captain B , had been sick and was on his way to Philadelphia to his ship, out of funds, and wanted to get sufficient to pay his way to Philadelphia. " I called round to see my friend, Ward Beecher ; lie helped me once, but is not at home, and I was referred to you.' , I told him I knew that he had received help from Mr. Beecher, and that he ought not to have gone to him. I could not help him, but if he could show that it was important for him to get to Philadelphia, if he would go to Mr. George Kellogg, who was the superintendent of the out-door poor in New York, he would give him a pass to Philadelphia. Six years have gone since these applications, and Cap- tain B has not appeared to reproduce his need of means to obtain a "new ship," or a "pass" to any city. UNIVERSAL ADAPTATION. A striking feature of Mr. Beecher' s sermons, his lecture-room talks, and especially his prayers, is their adaptation to so many and such a variety of human ex- perience and want. This is not only true of his ser- vices as a whole, but in each particular service the needs and yearnings of every variety of temperament and of every condition in life find relief, comfort, light, 252 HENRY WARD BBECHBR. and strength. Nothing is more common in visitations among the people than to discover this peculiarity Ld the results of the teachings oi Plymouth pulpit. Though familiar with the influence of many pastors — good, true, and successful men of God — I have never known any ministry so eminent in this particular as I hat of Mr. Beecher. While scarcely any pastoral work is performed by him, yet his sermons manifest the most intimate personal knowledge of his people's spiritual condition ; very frequently persons have said to me, Mr. Beecher must have been informed of my circumstances, troubles and sorrows, doubts and fears. He could not, speak so exactly to my wants if someone had not been talking to him about me. The testi- mony of Mr. Beecher's intimate knowledge of the inner consciousness of his hearers, does not come alone or chiefly from his own people, bur from men and women of all Christian sects over the whole land, and also from other lands by those who have heard Mr. Beecher or read his utterances in the printed page. From the knowledge I have acquired by pastoral visits, by in- terviews at my own house, and by letters, I am conli dent that the teachings of Plymouth pulpit have been wonderfully used by God to comfort and bless a far greater number of persons and churches than any one has ever attempted to estimate 1 . Many years since I was permitted on one occasion to read a brief note directed to Mr. Beecher and dated at a European me- tropolis. I will attempt to recall its contents as nearly as possible : " Rev. Henry Ward Beecher — Dear Sir : You will be surprised to receive from me a letter dated from AN ENGLISH CLERGYMAN'S LETTER. 2o3 this distant city. My family had preceded me, having come to Europe for the benefit of my wife's health, who had been ilia long time. Among other reading matter a large number of your sermons was brought over by my family, and they have been the constant companions of Mrs. A. during the day as she lies upon her couch ; they lie upon her pillow while she sleeps, and the reading of them is renewed when she awakes. My wife charges me to express to you her thanks for the great comfort and help she has de- rived from reading them. The other members of the family unite in this expression. Permit me, as I know something about sermon-making, to express my won- derful admiration at the exuberance of your mind in preparing sermons. ' ' The writer of the letter, since deceased, was not of the same denomination as the pastor of Plymouth Church, but was one of the most conservative, best known, and widely popular ministers in the land ; Mr. Beecher's senior both in years and in the ministry, but never intimate with him, occupying until his death a most conspicuous and honorable position at the head of one of the chief seminaries of learning in our land, and previously pastor for many years of one of the lar- gest and most influential churches in the country. If it were consistent, I would gladly give his name, as the letter was most creditable to him and admirably illus- trated what I have endeavored to show of the wide helpfulness of Mr. Beechers instructions. So much is put into the sermons at Plymouth Church that any one sincerely and simply desiring to know the truth for the purpose of accepting and obeying it may 254 1IKNKY WARD BEECHER. find all thai is necessary to a clear and intelligent con- ception of \\ liat is required. But Mr. Beecher's prayers, even more than his ser- mons, have excited my wonder and admiration as well as the astonishment of others. The wonder is not at their great literary excellence, not at the remarkable illustrative genius always manifest, nor at the great eloquence and force with which the grandest themes are brought, in form so clear and simple, to the door of each individual soul, for it to appropriate and be made to feel " It is for me." The prayers are marvellous in their inclusiveness and individuality. This is the wonderful feature in Mr. Beecher's prayers. It would seem while Mr. Beecher is praying that each one in the church was taken in his arms and borne into the presence of that God " who is waiting to be gracious. ' ' A conscious nearness to the Saviour is very apparent and prevalent. Many have said that after the prayer they did not seem to need the sermon. Their weary, yearning, dissatisfied spirit had obtained rest, satisfaction, and peace. What, it may be asked, are the elements of Mr. Beecher's ministerial success ? I think we must go outside of his rare and wonderful endowments to learn what is the root and ground of his success as a Chris- tian minister. I believe God, in his wondrous plan and purposes, having seen that the work Mr. Beecher has been doing was greatly needed, that the heavenly Father raised him up, inspired and fitted him for it. " His suffi- ciency is of God." It has been given him of the Holy Spirit to find the hearts of men, weary and hungry A BEREAVED MOTHER. 257 iind sore, and then to lead them to the Great Phy- sician for refreshment, rest, and healing. No man un- taught of the Divine Spirit could preach to men and so commune with Grod as the preacher of Plymouth Church does. I cannot dispossess myself of the idea, after all I have seen of Mr. Beecher, that he has been taken into such wonderful intimacy and communion with Christ, as to learn things that are not lawful to be told, that he has been drawn into earthly walks to some Emmaus where his heart has burned within him, as the Christ of the disciples opened his eyes to behold wonderful things which should make him a workman of whom the Master would not be ashamed. THE WOMAN WHO LOST HER BABY. In the early part of my labors for Plymouth Church, 1 called upon a family, of which the wife and mother was a member of Mr. Beecher' s church. During the conversation, this mother frequently alluded to the great helpfulness of the pastor's sermons to her. To illustrate this fact, she told me how she was led to go to Plymouth Church. "Eight years ago," said she, " I lost my baby, and it was such a loss, I was utterly disconsolate, I could only think of my dead baby. It was a simple, unmitigated grief from which I found no relief or alleviation. I could not weep, not a tear could I shed, and though I sought counsel from those I thought good and wise, no one afforded me any com- fort. I was educated as a Friend, and I sought help from them, but I obtained no relief, and was in such despair that my friends feared I would become de- HKNIiV WARD BEECHEE. ranged. I did become rebellious mid reckless, and said one day to my mother : ' The Lord has killed ray baby, and I don't love him. 5 'Why,' said mother, "what does this mean '/ and I repeated. The Lord has killed my baby, and I do not love him.' It occurred to me one day that I might be helped by Henry Ward Beecher, and resolved at once to go and see him. Re- flecting upon it, I thought it will be of no use to make the attempt ; so many are running to him he will take no notice of me, so I gave up the thought of seeing him, and continued in my way of despair and sorrow, until it occurred to me I can write to him and tell him my story and ask him to help me out of my darkness. I was so encouraged with this plan that I immediately wrote the letter, sealed and directed it ; then the fear arose that it would be useless to send it. as he was re- ceiving hundreds of letters ; he would not pay any at- tention to mine further than to open it and throw it in the waste basket ; and with this feeling oppressing me I decided not to send the letter and sank down to my old despairing mood. After a time, it again occurred to me that I might derive help from Mr. Beecher, and I determined that I would go and hear him preach the next Sunday morning, and through the next week made all my arrangements with this view. When the Sabbath came I started at an early hour for the church, and on the way, putting my hand into the pocket of my dress, it came in contact with the letter which I had written to him, and of which I had not thought for some time. With the letter in my hand I entered the church, walked up to the pulpit, laid the letter on the book-ta- ble, went down and took a seat among the congregation. A MOTHER FINDS JOY AND PEACE. 259 When Mr. Beecher entered I was greatly excited. When lie took up my letter I was expecting he would simply glance at it, tear it up, and throw it upon the floor. But he read it deliberately, then placed it in one of the books, and laid the book open on the reading-desk. I was in a tremor of excitement through the opening services, and during the main prayer up to that part in which he was presenting the personal needs of the con- gregation, when he said, 'O God, we pray for the poor woman who has lost her baby,' and then offered a tender and pitiful petition that I might have divine help. I was deeply touched the moment he alluded to my case, and for the first time in the long months that had passed since my baby died, I was able to cry. In- deed I could not restrain my feelings ; tears ran down my face during the entire remaining service. I cannot describe the instant relief I experienced, I was lifted from the very depths of despondency not only to great peace, but alsolute ecstasy. Everything the Lord had done was right. I had no further controversy with him, and if he had told me I might have my baby, I should have told him to keep it. My mouth was filled with singing, and the change in my appearance was so great since the morning, my family felt that now I was surely deranged. My joy and peace continued through the day. In the evening I went to church again, tears of peace and gladness flowing continually. Mr. Beecher in his prayer said : ; O Lord, we must pray once more for that poor woman who has lost her baby,' and as I could not have done, he carried my case to the blessed Comforter, who had already so graciously comforted me. In the subsequent days I retained the same tran- 260 HENRY WARD BEECHER. quillity and the most cheerful acquiescence in the Providence that took my baby from my arms. And tli is is the way I came to unite with Plymouth Church. Oh, how I wish Mr. Beecher knew what he has done for me, and how much he has helped me. " I asked, " Did you never tell him the story you have told me V No, she had never mentioned it. " Well, I will see that he does know it." At the next prayer- meeting I related the incidents very much as I have written them here. Many eyes showed that hearts were touched. Mr. Beecher made no other response than was indicated by his face, but that showed in every lineament satisfaction, sympathy, and joy. CHAPTER XL PLYMOUTH CHURCH. Plymouth Church is Mr. Beecher's best monu- ment. Its life began thirty -five years ago (June, 1847), with twenty-one members. It now numbers (1882) two thousand four hundred and ninety-one. During these thirty-five years its gross membership has been nearly forty-six hundred, of whom therefore about twenty-one hundred have left it by death, dismission, or expulsion. Many of these are, however, still in affectionate, personal relations with the church of their first love. They have gone out from it carrying to other churches the breadth of view, the tolerance "of other people's opinions, the indifference to forms and externals, and the personal love for a personal Saviour which they have learned here. They have been active as founders of new churches, not only in New York, Brooklyn, and vicinity, but all over the land. Not a few such have taken the name, still more have im- bibed something of the spirit of the mother church. The graduates of Plymouth Church are all proud of their alma mater, all look back with loving remem- brance to their associations with her, and when they visit Brooklyn return to their mother church with love in their hearts and tears in their eyes, as children who return to their home after long separations. Such greetings in the morning services or at Friday evening 262 HENRY WARD BEECHER. prayer- meetings are common. During all these yens this community has never known a quarrel. Differ- ences of opinions have been developed, warm discus- sions have taken place, but no quarrel has ever broken that love which is "the bond of perfectness." The social unity which characterized the church in its earlier days it is impossible to maintain in one of twenty-four hundred members, scattered over two cities. But cliques and caste in an offensive sense are unknown, and party differences and divisions are ab- solutely unheard of. In all the excitements through which the church has passed, in all the battles in which Mr. Beecher has been engaged, his church has never faltered in its love and loyalty for him. Jealous of its independence, recognizing in its pastor no ecclesi- astical rights which do not inhere in the humblest member, not infrequently refusing to follow his lead, arid always subjecting his recommendations on all matters of church business to the freest possible criti- cism, it has yet stood about him personally with a sympathy which no slanders could chill, and with a fidelity which no assaults could weaken, loyal in its love for him through good report and evil report, in times of popularity and in times of abuse, undivided and unshaken. "Mr. Beecher' s life," well writes to me one of the older members of his church, " can never be fully given to posterity without some adequate understand- ing of Plymouth Church, as an illustration of his knowledge of human nature, and his peculiar and wonderful skill in swaying great bodies of men. It is something different from the power of the orator, who WHAT DRAWS THE CROWD. 263 influences for the occasion only. It is a wisdom of administration that for thirty-five years has held together a body of two thousand people of the most varying opinions, drawn from all the sects in Christen- dom, who have worked together in every form of benevolence, in the church and in the community, without dissension or disagreement, and as far as can be said of anything earthly, without variance or shadow of turning."' To the casual visitor, Plymouth Church is simply a great gathering-place on the Sabbath of three thousand people, drawn together by the magnetism of a great orator. Even as such it is a remarkable phenomenon. For thirty -five years the same orator, standing on the same platform and under the same roof, has drawn these audiences, and the throng is as great to-day as when his face was strange, and his voice new, and he possessed all the attractions with which the enthusi- asm of youth in a period of strong public excitement invests a new contributor to public discussions. " How shall I get to Plymouth Church?" asked a stranger in New York of a Plymouth Church mem- ber. " Cross Fulton Ferry and follow the crowd," was the reply. He who obeys this direction on any Sabbath morning between the first of October and the first of Jnly, will find himself at ten o'clock in the morning in an irregular, informal, but consider- able procession going up Hicks Street, and turning the corner of Orange Street he will reach the front of a plain brick edifice without tower, steeple, or ornament of any kind. Entering, he will find the " meeting-house" as plain within as without ; a nearly 204 HENRY WARD BEEOHER. square audience-room, with large galleries running round three sides, and a second gallery or loft at the rear ; plain white walls, plain white wood-work — in short, an audience-room as unchurchlike as can be imagined, for it neither resembles an ancient cathe- dral nor a modern theatre. At the farther end is a platform, on which there is always a bouquet of flowers, and on the platform three chairs and a small reading-desk. The only bit of conventionalism about the church is the huge pulpit Bible, which is still al- lowed to lie on this desk, why I do not know, as Mr. Beecher always reads from a small Bible which he holds in his hand, and always lays his notes loosely on the desk, never cunningly concealed, after the pro- fessional manner, in the pages of the big Bible. Di- rectly in the rear of the platform, a little above it, is a smaM. choir gallery and a big organ, which is too large for its space, and obtrudes itself somewhat osten- tatiously upon the congregation, as much as to say, " If you doubt whether you are in a church, look at me!" If our visitor is a church-goer his doubt whether he is in a church will be somewhat increased by the general atmosphere of the place ; this is not spiritual, but pre-eminently social. It is now ten min- utes past ten, and the congregation are beginning to as- semble. Instead of kneeling with bowed head upon the hassock, or sitting in meditative silence, they are chatting with each other, reaching across aisles and pews to shake hands, introducing new friends, or wel- coming old ones. There is no loud and boisterous talking, but people do not think it needful to speak in whispers ; there is no hilarious laughter, but genial THE CONGREGATION OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 2&> humor and a quiet laugh are not so rare as to attract any attention. Now and then a man without a com- panion to talk to takes a daily paper out of his pocket and reads the news. To some reverent-minded people, accustomed to come to the sanctuary to worship God, this seems irreverent and almost shocking. But when I see how many churches there are with pillared naves and dim religious light, half filled or hardly that, and how many groups of men and boys there are upon the streets of a Sabbath morning to whom dim religious light has no attractions, I am myself inclined to think that there are churches enough for those who want to worship God, and that there is room for some new churches for people of a less spiritual and more social turn of mind, who might be drawn to church by social attractions and inspired to worship after they got there. Such at all events is Plymouth Church. Its invitation and its welcome are social ; its food is intellectual and spiritual. As the minute hand draws near to half past ten the congregation gather more rapidly ; at twenty minutes past ten the seats not already occupied by the pew-holders are, by the terms of the renting, free, and the ushers begin to fill them up ; at twenty-five minutes past, the aisle seats, of which one is attached to every pew and by a curious contrivance folded up against it, are opened with a sharp clicking noise, all over the house, andoccupied ; at twenty-eight minutes past ten Mr. Beecher has entered through a little door in the rear of the pulpit, his notes in hand, and takes his seat ; and at half past ten, exactly, the organ begins its vol- untary, every seat in the church is filled, and he who arrives after that must stand, or sit on the pulpit stairs, 266 BENRI WARD BBECHER. if he is fortunate enough to get within the doors at all. It is no uncommon thing for hundreds to go away The choir is a large chorus, which has broken over the bounds of the choir gallery, into the end seats of the other galleries. It renders the opening anthem effectively, but ratherwith force and vdgor than with delicacy and refinement. Its chief function is to lead the congregational singing, and this it does perfectly. Hymn and tune books are scattered throughout the congregation ; and every one sings. It is worth while to go to Plymouth Church were it only to hear three thousand people join in singing, " How Firm a Foun- dation,'" to the Portuguese hymn, or ;w Love Divine, all Love Excelling " to the tune of Beecher. Such sing ing is to be heard nowhere else. In Dr. Allon's church in London the congregation sing with better musical taste and render music far more difficult ; but even in Dr. Allon's the abandon, the enthusiasm, the ' c making a joyful noise unto the Lord," does not equal that of Plymouth Church congregation. The one is an Eng- lish, the other is an American singing. Up to the close of the anthem the atmosphere has been social. The choir is too prominent, the me- chanics of the music too evident, the quality of per- formance too manifest to allow the opening piece to produce much atmospheric effect. Mr. Beecher rises, and by his two minutes of invocation changes the entire atmosphere. We are no longer in a lecture- room, we are in a church; no testimony to the power of simple character could be, I think, more striking than the change which is wrought by this opening prayer. For the prayer itself is perfectly simple. It MANNER OF WORSHIP. 267 is rather a meditation than a prayer. It is less a sup- plication than a simple opening of the heart to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The voice is low and ten- der ; it is at first heard with difficulty at the farther end of the church. But the bustling congregation is absolutely hushed and still. There are no late comers to disturb and convert the invocation into a cold for- mality ; no creaking boots down the aisle, for the aisles are full ; no seating of strangers, for the seats are all occupied ; no opening and closing of doors, for the line of latest comers fills the doorway. The bustle which so often obtrudes itself upon a congregation until almost the time for the sermon to begin, is over in Plymouth Church before the anthem is ended. And the opening prayer is a true prayer, a doorway opened through which, as it were, God enters last of all, to reach his people. The rest of the service is in form like that in most New England churches. The modi- fied liturgy which some of our non-liturgical churches have adopted Plymouth Church has never attempted. The hymns are announced, but rarely read ; when one is read the reading is all the more effective for the fact that it is rare. The Scripture reading is very seldom accompanied with any other comment than that of a peculiar emphasis, giving to the text a pecul- iar power, and sometimes an absolutely new meaning. If you come in the evening you will find another congregation as large as that which assembled in the morning, but almost wholly different. The pew-hold- ers are absent ; strangers have taken their places. The services and the sermon are modified accordingly The morning prayers are largely meditative, the evening 268 HENRY WARD BEECHER. prayers are supplicating; the morning prayers are in the spirit of the 17th of John, the evening prayers in the spirit of the Lord's prayer. There is the same difference between the sermons. The morning sermons are preached to the church, the evening sermons to the world ; the morning sermons are doctrinal and spirit- ual, the evening sermons are practical and persuasive : in the morning Mr. Beecher fulfils the second half of Christ's commission, instructing Christ's disciples to do all things whatsoever Christ has commanded them ; in the evening the first part of that commission, herald- ing to all classes the gospel. The purely theological sermons are always given in the morning ; the purely ethical and political sermons are generally given in the evening. The Plymouth Church lot extends from Orange Street through to Cranberry Street. In the rear of the church, fronting on Cranbeny Street, but entered from either end, is a two-story edifice which serves a triple purpose. The first floor is a large audience-room which will easily seat eight or nine hundred people ; this is the lecture-room. Along its side, on a floor elevated a little above it, and separated from the lecture-room by sliding doors, are the social parlors. In case of necessity — and in times of special religious interest this necessity often exists — these doors can be thrown open and the parlors made a part of the lecture-room, add- ing to it a further seating capacity of three or four hundred. Connected with the parlors is a kitchen; adjoining them a small room for meetings of commit- tees, trustees, and the like. In the second story is the Sunday-school room, which is equipped with both FRIDAY EVENING MEETINGS. 269 organ and piano, with special rooms that can be sep- arated from or connected with the main room by slid- ing doors or windows, which are used for infant and Bible classes. There is but one weekly meeting of the church. This is the Friday evening meeting. It is a meeting for instruction rather than for prayer, though always opened by several prayers from different mem- bers of the church, interspersed with singing. It is a meeting for instruction by the pastor rather than for conference, experience, or mutual exhortation although there is always an opportunity for others than the pas- tor, and it is often taken advantage of with a consider- able degree of freedom. A meeting in this lecture- room Mr. Parton has described in his " Famous Americans.' 1 Mr. Parton is not himself famous for his spirituality ; and the reader will be interested in his description, as showing how this meeting strikes an average man of the world, of intellectual quickness and acumen, but without spiritual warmth. " The room is large, very lofty, brilliantly lighted by reflectors affixed to the ceiling, and, except the scarlet cushions on the settees, void of upholstery. It was filled full with a cheerful company, not one of whom seemed to have on more or richer clothes than she had the moral strength to wear. Content and pleasant expectation sat on every countenance, as when people have come to a festival, and await the summons to the banquet. No pulpit, or anything like a pulpit, casts a shadow over the scene ; but in its stead there was rather a large platform, raised two steps, covered with dark green canvas, and having upon it a very small table and one chair. The red-cushioned settees were so arranged as to inclose the green platform all about, except on one side ; so that he who should sit upon it would appear to be 270 HENRI WARD BEECHER. in the midst of the people, raised above them that all mighl see him, yet still among them and one of them. At one side of the platform, but on the floor of the room, among the settees, there was a piano open. Mr. Beecher sat near by, reading what appealed to be a letter of three or four sheets. The whole scene was so little like what we commonly understand by the word 'meeting,' the people there were so little in a 'meeting' state of mind, and the subsequent proceedings were so informal, unstudied, and social, that in attempting to give this account of them, we almost feel as if we were reporting for print the con- versation of a private evening party. Anything more unlike an old-fashioned prayer- meeting it is not possible to conceive. " Mr. Beecher took his seat upon the platform, and, after a short pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words, ' Six twenty-two. ' " A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the meaning of this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been taken as announcing a discourse upon the prophetic num- bers. The piano confirmed the interpretation ; and then the company burst into one of those joyous and unanimous singings which are so enchanting a feature of the services of this church. Loud rose the beautiful harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in the song, even those most unused to sing. When it was ended, the pastor, in the same low tone, pronounced a name ; upon which one of the brethren rose to his feet, and the rest of the assembly slightly inclined their heads. It would not, as we have remarked, be becoming in us to say anything upon this portion of the proceedings, except to note that the prayers were all brief, perfectly quiet and simple, and free from the routine or regulation expressions. There were but two or three of them, alternating with singing ; and when that part of the exercises was concluded, Mr. Beecher had scarcely spoken. The meeting ran along, in the most spontaneous and pleasant manner ; and with all his heartiness and simplicity, there was a certain refined MR. PARTON ON PLYMOUTH PRAYER-MEETING. ^71 decorum pervading all that was done and said. There was a pause after the last hymn died away, and then Mr. Beecher, still seated, began, in the tone of conversation, to speak, somewhat after this manner. " ' When,' said he, ' I first began to walk as a Christian, in my youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but indiscreet. Among others, I remember, I resolved to pray, at least in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faith- fully to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I suffered the pangs of self-reproach until reflection satisfied me that the only possible wisdom with regard to such a resolve was to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak upon religion to every person with whom I conversed, on steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, I failed, as I ought ; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of such seed, as in other sowings, times and seasons and methods must be considered and selected, or a man may defeat his own object, and make relig- ion loathsome.' " In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality of another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pastor expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, in a talk of ten minutes' duration ; in the course of which he applauded, not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to shrink from doing it. He said that a man's personality was not a macadamized road for every vehicle to drive upon at will ; but rather a sacred inclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent of the owner, and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He maintained, however, that there were times and modes in which this might properly be done, and that every one had a duty to perform of this nature. " When he had finished his observations, he said the subject was open to the remarks of others. ' ' 872 BENRY WARD BEECHER. We will not follow Mr. Parton in his report of what followed. It would be valuable here only as illustrat- ing what is a characteristic feature of these meetings, the utter disregard of conventionalism and even of what many would regard the proprieties of a religious meet- ing. Mr. Beecher always keeps his seat. He not un- frequently interrupts others with a question, they sometimes interrupt him. A good-humored play of feeling or fancy is not uncommon ; and rippling In lighter is not regarded as any infringement of the decorum of the place. Sometimes this proves a seri- ous embarrassment to a stranger. T remember on one revival occasion a pious but rather solemn brother from Philadelphia was giving an account of the revival meetings in that city. He went, he told us, to an early morning prayer-meeting, a, noon business man's prayer-meeting, an afternoon union prayer-meeting at three o'clock, a lecture or prayer-meeting in the evening, and an inquiry-meeting after that. " You may ask," he said, " how I was able to attend so many meetings, and also to attend to my business. But it so happened, in the providence of God, that I hadn't any business to attend to." He said it with a solemn naivete which was irresistible ; a smile broke over Mr. Beecher 1 s face, and a genuine ripple of quiet laughter ran round the room. The poor man was hor- ror-struck at a prayer-meeting in laughter, and sat down as though he had been shot, while Mr. Beecher turned off his embarrassment with a pleasant w^ord and caught up the broken thread of the meeting with that peculiar tact which is not the least of his many and diverse gifts. MORNING PRATER-MEETINGS. 273 Mr. Parton has given one picture of these meetings ; it would take a large picture gallery to represent their varied aspects. For these walls have witnessed many scenes of most profound spiritual emotion, and if they could speak what they have seen and heard could tell the story of many a conversion wrought and many more recorded through the influence which Plymouth Church prayer-meetings have exerted. Probably the most sacred season in the history of this room was the season of 1857 and 1858. I well remember the stormy, snowy Monday morning in February when a few of us, twenty-eight in number, I think, met for a first morn- ing prayer-meeting. Religious interest had been deep- ening throughout the country, it had been deepening in Plymouth Church ; but to all requests to appoint a protracted meeting, Mr. Beecher had but one reply. He disavowed his belief in " got up " revivals, saying that if the spirit of revival was in the church the re- vival itself would follow. For two weeks this morn- ing meeting was continued, without Mr. Beecher' s presence ; to some he even seemed to discourage the work by refusing to participate in it, but his purpose was to put the responsibility upon his people, and he achieved his object. Reluctantly but gradually they took it, the meetings steadily increased in size and in- terest ; and at last, at the close of a Sabbath evening inquiry meeting, he announced his purpose to be pres- ent at the next morning prayer-meeting. This was March 11th, and from that day till July 3d those morning meetings were kept up, I believe without a break, and almost without a single absence of the pas- tor. They who attended these meetings will never j; I BENRY WARD BEECHER forget them ; their freedom of intercourse, their social warmth, their spiritual tenderness. Their commingling ofhumorand pathos, of the intellectual andtheemo- tional, of the practical and the spiritual, in a word their life, genuine', free, untrammeled, varied Life, gave tliem a character wholly indescribable. What- ever the spirit of the meeting had been, at the close Mr. Beecher invariably rose and invited any present who wished so to do to offer their requests for prayers, for others or t hemselves, and then, catching instantly and repeating to the meeting the request, often fal- tered out by wife or sister or mother, almost under breath, finally gathered them up and grouped them to- gether in a supplication which forgot not one ; and the whole meeting always caught the spirit of his spiritual tenderness and sympathy, and ended in a communion with G-od, the more delightful that it had been pre- ceded by an hour of communion with one another so entirely spontaneous and free.* The regular Friday evening meetings, it should be added, furnish Mr. Beecher his pastoral opportunity. Mr. Beecher never does any house to house visitation ; and now he rarely conducts even a funeral or calls on those in sorrow. But he nevertheless docs a consider- able amount of pastoral work. At the close of his Friday evening meeting he holds what I may call a re- ligious reception. For sometimes half an hour after the regular service is closed, he sits on the platform * A little memorial of the revival in Plymouth Church was published (Clark, Austin & Smith, L859), containing an account of these meetings, but there is no space here to quote incidents from it. The book is now out of print and rare. MR. BEECIIER'S INSIGHT. 275 to receive, hear, suggest, counsel, direct. He shakes hands with any one who offers him a hand. No name escapes him. A friend returned after a long absence is instantly recognized and greeted with the warm cordiality of a love that is without dissimulation. If one of his parishioners wants to see him privately he sits down with him in a pew, hears his experience, divines it before it is half told, enters into it with a heart full of sympathy, and meets it with a sentence which goes right to the heart of the matter, sometimes hurting at the time, but serving perhaps all the better for that very reason afterward. " What shall I do, Mr. Beecher?" asked a lady parishioner in domestic trou- ble. " Where can I go for help ?" " Is it possible," answered Mr. Beecher, "that I have been preaching to you all these years, and you do not know where to go for help?" "It hurt meat the time," said this lady, afterward speaking to me; " but I never forgot it ; and when his troubles came I knew where his help came from." Generosity of sympathy and quickness of insight are a part of Mr. Beecher' s genius ; his sympathy opens your heart to him, his insight quick- ly discerns its wants ; and thus he is often able to ac- complish in an hour an amount of pastoral work which a man less magnetic, less sympathetic, less quick in mental and spiritual action would require days to ac- complish. But if Mr. Beecher rarely performs what are known as pastoral services, Plymouth Church is not pastor- less. She has in the Rev. Samuel B. Halliday a Pas- toral Helper who is admirably qualified for the per- sonal work of the pastoral office ; his warm heart, his 276 BENRT WARD BEECHER. spiritual earnestness, his intensely practical common- sense, and his tender sympathies, make him a valued Eriend and a wise; counsellor. The whole work of pas- toral administration is Largely in his hands. He visits the sick, converses with inquirers, oversees the mission work in its various departments, keeps account of the church charities, attends the funerals, and even cele- brates the weddings. He is honored and loved by the entire church, and by none more than by Mr. Beecher himself, whose spirit he has caught and with whose views and methods he is not the less in perfect sympa- thy, that he is a man of singular and almost idiosyn- cratic independence. The division of labor between pastors and teachers dates from the apostolic age. Plymouth Church in having one man for its teacher and another for its pastor has ventured on an experi- ment which many have declared can never succeed. It seems, however, to have succeeded perfectly in this instance ; and it is at least a fair question whether churches might not well adopt the same principle in whole or in part, by relieving their teacher of the de- tail of pastoral labor, and by putting them upon an assistant or even upon office-bearers who in too many American churches bear nothing but the name of their offices. Up to about 1860 these services, those of the Sab- bath and of Friday evening, practically constituted Plymouth Church. There were social gatherings, and a sewing circle, and various like attempts nt organiza- tion ; and there was a Sabbath-school connected w it h the church, of course. But the Sabbath-school was in no way worthy of the church, and the missionary and PLYMOUTH CHURCH MISSION SCHOOLS. 277 social organizations were for the most part fitful and transient. In 1858 the church had not a single mission it could call its own. And still its young men were not idle. I was teaching a Bible class of young men that year in connection with the church. I wanted to change it from a morning to an afternoon session, but every member of my class was engaged in some sort of missionary work, though not in work organically con- nected with Plymouth Church. Under George A. Bell the Sunday-school was reorganized in 1862, and pro- vided with its present admirable accommodations. Five years later, under the same skilful organizer, the Bethel Mission, formerly a union missionary work, ex- • cellent in spirit but poor in equipment, feeble in re- sources and small in results, was adopted by Plym- outh Church and put in possession of an admirably equipped building. Four years after that the church adopted the Mayflower Mission, which had maintained a checkered existence under great discouragement and disadvantage for nearly thirty years before that time ; a church building was purchased and remodelled for its use ; and this, its present home, is one of the best adapted and most attractive missions in the city. The property of both missions is entirely free from debt. Plymouth Church is no longer a mere congregation ; it is a working body, well organized, with three Sunday- schools, two of them missions, each with its own inde- pendent social and religious life. Both the missions have well-equipped free reading-rooms, open in the evenings, well supplied with daily and weekly news- papers and the best magazines, and always well filled with readers. Both have libraries which are well fur- 278 HHNKY WARD BEECIIEK. nished, noi with the average Sunday-school books, but with the best English classics— Scott, Dickens, Thack- eray, Hawthorne, Cooper, Howells, being among the story writers represented in its shelves. The library of the Bethel numbers two thousand books. There are Bible classes for adults sufficient in size to constitute a very respectable congregation, with a teacher who is, in fact, though not in name, a lay preacher. There are social parlors where there are gatherings, some- times religious, sometimes social, sometimes an inter- mixture of the two. Sabbath evening services are held, at which there are either lay addresses or a more formal sermon by a minister. A monthly paper de- voted to the interest of Plymouth Church and its two missions, keeps the great body of the church ac- quainted with the progress and prospects of this gospel work. The warm feeling of personal loyalty which the workers in these missions feel for them is one of the strongest indications of the permanent quality both of their work and of the organizations which have grown up out of it. The organization of Plymouth Church is congrega- tional, and however it may be accused of having de- parted from the theology, it certainly has not departed from the ecclesiastical simplicity of the Puritans. All l .ashless is transacted in open meetings. All members of the church vote. Nothing is relegated to a stand- ing committee or board. Even the Examining Com- mittee hold their sessions at the close of the prayer- meeting, and all members of the church are at liberty to remain and listen to the examination if they will. The church is in theory and practice a little communi- PLYMOUTH CHURCH COVENANT. 279 ty of Christian believers, all of whom from the pastor to the poorest and humblest member stand upon an equality. No person has any greater authority than his personal influence gives to him. The church has a creed or articles of faith ; they were adopted in 1848. These are strictly evangelical and include an explicit statement of the doctrine of the fall and of everlasting- punishment. But since 1870 persons joining the church are not required to assent to these articles of faith. They simply assent to the following covenant and en- ter into covenant with the church : " Do you now avouch the Lord Jehovah to be your God, Jesus Christ to be your Saviour, the Holy Spirit to be your Sanctifier ? Renouncing the dominion of this world over you, do you conse- crate your whole soul and body to the service of God ? Do you receive his word as the rule of your life, and by his grace assisting you, will you persevere in this consecration unto the end ?" In the prayer-meetings in 1858, of which I have given some account above, Mr. Beecher said : " Some men say, ' I would become a Christian, if I only first un- derstood all the doctrines of Christianity. Tell me what is this doctrine of the Trinity, of the atonement, of justification, of adoption ? ' My reply to all such persons is, ' You need no such instruction as this ; you know already much on all these subjects and are no better for it. What you need is to put on the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour ; after that you can ex- amine all these doctrines as much as you please.' ' There is nothing extraordinary in this ; many a minis- ter has made substantially the same reply to inquirers. What is peculiar is that Plymouth Church believes this 280 BENRY WARD BEECHEB. doctrine and embodies it in its church life. Et pre- scribes no other condition of membership in its school of Chrisl ihan the lmmble, lowly, and docile spirit of a disciple. Such is Plymouth Church: a great audience gath- ered on the Sabbath for worship and instruction, but rather for instruction than lor worship ; a smaller con- gregation, but still a large one, gathered weekly on Fri- day evenings for worship, for Christian intercourse and for instruction, but rather for instruction than for in- tercourse, and rather for intercourse than for worship ; but it is also a vital working force of Christian disciples, bound to their church by many a sacred association in connection with it, and bound to their work by warm human sympathy, real philanthropic enthusiasm, and a loyalty of love for a personal Saviour. When the teacher dies Plymouth Church must undergo some great changes ; but it would be a great mistake to think that the church will die. The Sabbath audiences may and probably will fall off to the dimensions of an average Sabbath congregation ; the Friday evening meeting may suffer a still more serious diminution, and become an ordinary prayer and conference meeting ; but the working body which forms to-day the heart of Plymouth Church will not lose its head, nor abate its sympathies, nor slacken in its enthusiasm, nor prove unfaithful in the loyalty of its love to its Saviour. For whatever may have been true in the past, to-day the true, the inner, the working Plymouth Church is held together not merely by a personal love for Mr. Beecher, but yet more by a pardonable pride in the church, a common sympathy in Christian word and work, and CHRISTIAN ENTHUSIASM IMMORTAL. 281 above all by a genuine Christian enthusiasm in its- Christian work. Such an enthusiasm is immortal. It never dies in the death of the man by whom it has been inspired.* * For a statistical statement as to Plymouth Church and its work, seo. Appendix. Part II. WORDS FROM MANY WITNESSES. The letters which follow, from a number of emi- nent clergymen and laymen, ham been written by request, and furnish accounts, some of them of incidents in Mr. Beechef 's life, others of special aspects of his character as viewed by the respective writers. They are in all cases published in full and without alteration. They might ham been easily indefinitely multiplied but for wa?it of space. The reprints from periodicals, following the letters, are published with the consent of the authors, with one or two exceptions where com- munication with the writer was not practicable. HENRY WARD BEECHER, PART II. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINIS- CENCES BY CONTEMPORARIES. I. By THOMAS ARMITAGE, D.D., Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, New York. No one honors Henry Ward Beecher more, or can speak freely of him with less misgiving, than I. It seems desirable, after the frightful afflictions through which he has passed, and the obloquy to which he has risen superior, that in his lifetime he should have the pleasure of knowing that some of his brethren appreciate him at his real worth. All his attributes of greatness and goodness will, I am persuaded, be readily discovered when he is dead ; for justice must be done some time, and will be pro- claimed without restraint by many who do not even suspect their existence now. But those who have' already made that discovery need scarcely wait for his " sepulchre" as the fittest time for its avowal. They have not "stoned" him on his way thither; hence they may gracefully leave to those who have the rightful inheritance of "garnishing" his tomb when he is comfortably dead, and can draw no solace from posthumous devotion. Mr. Beecher became the pastor of Plymouth Church two months before my own pastorate began in New York, and as his life has 286 BENRT WARD BEECHER. been an open book, I have known biro Eor above three-and-thirty years, not in the most familiar intimacy, but better than one pas- tor commonly knows another, ami with an intelligent friendship winch has Qever flagged for a day. We have seen many public objects ami interests in a common light, and pursued them in ciosc sympathy ; while in others we have avowed those honest differences which hold true men firmly in each other's esteem. Who can forget his ardent and far-sighted patriotism in the en- mities, strifes, and hatreds of our civil war ■ For his country has passed through no trial without enlisting all his powers for its vindication, honor, and rescue. As the narrow bitterness of those times pass away, men begin to see that his life has been full of charity, of tenderness, justice, and truth. Spots and blem- ishes might be found, even in a life so true and inspiring, but these must be left as gleanings for the gratification of that pug- nacity which has dogged his acts and virtues relentlessly at every step, do what he would. His prominence and influence in politi- cal controversy pushed him to the front of the strife, and because his powers were mighty, his pen and tongue were sharp, incisive, and overwhelming, making his opponents wince, and at times galling them unpardonably. But to his immortal honor it must be said that a fascinating humor and the sunshine of good nature have softened his sharpest contentions, rendering it impossible for him to vulgarly hound down any man on a blind outcry. His name will be interwoven with the fortunes of his country, as one of its foremost men. His healthful patriotic positions will live in influence when he is dead, for his memory is no small gain to humanity, so that lie can afford to endure scorn and hate while he lives, if true Americans shall see in him the noble citizen ami real brother when party mists have cleared away forever. His marvellous humanity, his great-souled pleas for his country, and his universal charity can never be forgotten while there are Ameri- can tongues to speak and pens to write. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 287 Many hallowed memories are awakened within me as I re- member that out of about four hundred pastors who were in this city and Brooklyn when Mr. Beecher came here, there are not more than half a dozen who are still active in the same pastorates. And the great secular minds who then controlled the thought and action of the city and the nation have also given place to their successors. Through all these changes he has been spared ; and, excepting that he is more gigantic in his attainments, influence, and effectiveness, he is the same grand, genial, manly man that he ever has been, both in the pulpit and out, and is still bent upon accomplishing the great work of his life, knit by every delicate tie which binds him to his own devout people stronger than ever. The chief difficulty of saying what one wishes to say concerning Mr. Beecher within reasonable limits arises out of his many-sided character and powers, forming a most symmetrical unit both in heart and head. Last summer I entered the neat cottage of an intelligent mechanic in the heart of Yorkshire, and found him quite enthusiastic over one of Mr. Beecher's weekly sermcns. Seizing the opportunity to draw out a disinterested opinion in such a place, and from such a man, I asked him bruskly why he spent his precious time in reading " that fellow's sermons," instead of Liddon's and Stanley's and Spurgeon's, which were published in the same periodical ? He replied like a philosopher : " Ah, sir, I read those too ; but it seems to me that the great object of Mr. Beecher's life is the upbuilding of man, and I always read his the first, for I think him the greatest preacher living. " I felt that the honest and devout mechanic had gone to the very core of his ministry and life at a bound. As a representative leader in human progress the American divine gave up his whole being from the first to the aim of making man more pure, more beautiful, and more happy. No man can aim higher, and for this purpose God has wonderfully endowed him with all the requisite qualities found 288 HENRt WARD BEECHER. in a vigorous, keen, versatile intellect, and a glorious heart. By these he has honestly battled for the rights of man ; being ever ready to defend the weak, and to claim that freedom for others which he enjoyed himself, despite all the hitterness of fierce, cruel, and slanderous speech. Pre-eminently a man of progressive thought and action, he has resisted all temptation to turn aside or to tone down his demands, much less to silence ; bending his whole force toward the improvement of mankind, seeking that perfection by progress in the future whicli men have not found in the past. Life has had for him a deep seriousness, which he lias expressed in close contact with the great events and men of his times ; so that in turn he has inspired and been inspired by reformers, heroes, statesmen, scholars, artists, poets, sages, handicraftsmen, slaves and saints, in the general contribution to human advancement. Yet his name is not the echo of any man's voice, but is a great, distinct, and fruitful nature. But wide as his work has been in the spheres of patriotism and philanthropy, his distinguishing glory is seen in his greatness as a preacher. Power in the pulpit is felt so differently upon different minds, that no two would award the same position relatively to the same man. But taking all things into the account, I have no reluctance whatever in according to Mr. Beecher the first place among the preachers of the world to-day. What little I know of preaching and preachers compels this avowal in all honesty, as I am convinced that his ministry has sent forth a moulding voice and influence which have given new tones of health, ardor, and life to thousands in the pulpit. Having consecrated his high powers to the elucidation and enforcement of the grandesl themes of prac- tical and experimental import for a full generation, and done this in a way that was never properly attempted before, it is no won- der that humdrum prosiness, dignified tediousness, and profitless speculation should have given place among us to the spirited, forceful, and profitable pulpit address of to-day. It is said of the ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 291 late Dean of Westminster that be was the enthusiastic and brilliant scholar of his noble tutor Arnold, and that he established the school that his master created. But Mr. Beecher is his own orig- inal, he is a copy of no model in modern times. His sermons exhibit a larger reading of human nature, a broader use of philo- sophical inquiry, a fresher application of gospel truths, a clearer induction of common-sense, and a more independent rectitude, than has fallen to the lot of any modern preacher, enstamping his sermons with a vehement individuality which amounts to a new creation in that line. His subjects sweep the whole sphere of truth, being endless in their variety, and become, year by year, fuller, broader, and richer, as if the supply were inexhaustible. Equally at home on all subjects which he chooses, he is ever lucid in his treatment, and bracing to the tired and flagging sons of men. He leaves nothing of consequence to the perfection -of a discourse undone, but draws upon boundless stores of thought, language, and illustration, and utters them with the ardor of an old prophet, now in withering indignation at wrong, and then with an affectionate kindliness and beauty which always kindles- at the right. Never unprepared, he commands all the members of his subject at will, working up to his own standard as an accomplished master of his work, which gives freshness and vigor to all that he says. These abilities, with his fine voice, commanding presence, and burn- ing love of man, make his word powerful indeed. As years roll on, his sermons become more and more high-toned in spirit, fresher in tenderness, and more elevating in effect. They evince a broader culture, a deeper reverence for God, a simpler faith in Christ, a purer spirituality of feeling, and a softer earnestness than ever. As is natural, these elements overbear every approach to parade, either of learning or profundity, and to a large degree repress the critical faculty in favor of the appeal. That knowledge of anatomy, character, and color which a great painter like Da Vinci evinces in drawing the human face, Mr. 292 BENR1 WARD BEECHER Beech er applies after his order in depicting the inner life of man. Da Vinci'- high cultivation and triumphant reign in art have enriched its whole realm, aa few have enhanced its wealth. The richest gifts of Heaven were bestowed upon him. They made him the miracle of his age, forming the chemist, the musician, the thinker, the poet, and the painter, rendering him the founder of the Lombard school, and controlling the art world to the close of the sixteenth century. That school blended the opposites of minuteness in detail with the grandest sublimity. In the land- scapes of this master every leaf is taken from nature, and in his heads all is perfect. The hue of the skin, the throb of the arteries, the light of the eyes, and every accessory tint is there, as- well as the poise of the body and the grace of the limb. And, as- his great powers make his name the first among the painters of the fifteenth century, so, I think, will Mr. Beecher's rank him among the preachers of the nineteenth. His persecution has been one of the most wicked and infamous pieces of abuse since the crusade against Wesley and Whitefield ; as near as may be, a crucifixion. Its virulence has been terrible — truth seems at times to have fallen in the streets and reproach made her robes foul ; but worse than all, the attempt was made to justify the outrage in the pure and loving name of Christ. From the opening of his ministry, the sword was drawn upon him and the scabbard cast away, not need- lessly, for his foes discovered in him the metal which would de- mand their attention till he died. But his sufferings have quick- ened and inspired his intellect, his acute distress has vitalized his courage, and his very wounds have thrown him back upon his moral perceptions and hope. Great preachers, like other great men, are of but little service to their race until they have suffered much with and for their Lord. Many who never foully aspersed Mr. Beecher nor cast reproach upon his fame, have still felt sad misgivings concerning him on the grounds of alleged unsoundness in his views of theological ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 293 truth. On a number of points in theology I differ with Mr. Beecher widely. But as a theologian I cannot measure him by any a;iven scholastic standard, because he regards all such tests as the formulas of imperfect minds, and rightly too. As a rule these standards were largely the culmination and outcome of controver- sies which had been long rife, concerning which the newly- announced creed settled nothing. I should suppose that he claimed the right, with the authors of the various creeds them- selves, to draw much of his theology out of his own inner life, as he believes it to be nourished by his own religious thought and feeling. At any rate, no observing man can listen to his teach- ings, but especially to his prayers, without the persuasion that his heart offerings rise from a golden censer having much frankincense from God and myrrh from man. His theology is drawn largely out of the recesses of his own soul, but chiefly out of the facts of our Lord's life, as found in the sacred narratives ; so that he relies more on living sympathy for soul-solace than on any or all the formulated Christian dogmas. He seems to sum up his theology in the thought that Jesus Christ is man's friend in all his needs and under all circumstances, both in this world and that which is to come. This is world-truth and not class-truth, the soul of divinity without the body, rather than the body without the soul. His principal difference from most of us is found in that freedom which interprets Christ differently from us. And who of us is willing to be bound down hand and foot by the old, uninspired standards, in all things, great and small ? We yearn after a gen- erous gospel lovableness — a broad, fearless, and bright humanity, which touches and sanctifies all healthful social interests and call- ings, all aims and efforts of humanity ; enlightening its fears, exciting its hopes, and warming its love. Nothing which con- cerns the real welfare of man is foreign to the gospel ; therefore, everything that is beautiful, pure, and true belongs to Christ, and so Christ's life bears upon all human benediction, whether men 294 IIKNRY WARD BEECHER. have covered it by avowed dogma or not. Possibly Mr. Beecher does not wish to be accounted a theologian, as some men use that term. Baldwin Brown recently said: "The most inhuman of the sciences in all ages has been theologj : 3ome of the mosl inhuman men that have ever lived have been divines and rulers of the church." All that order of notoriety .Mr. Beecher would surely deprecate, but would covet theology as a divine science and life ; a living reality indeed, without its narrow words and defini- tions, as they bristle with technicalities which the Scriptures ami simple-hearted people know nothing about, and which make it -a mere mummy to enwrap ami entomb the truth, instead of a living temple where it may be enshrined. For this arrogant, intolerant, and unlovable theology, Mr. Beecher cherishes but contempt, and by no means stands alone. But for that which glows with love for God and light for man, his heart has always extended a warm welcome. In promoting that wisdom which is pure, peaceable, full of mercy and good fruits, his theology has been positive enough, while in the pedantic and cynical it has been decidedly negative. In other words, behind his theology lias always stood the firm, true, brave man ; cool, self-poised, and self-possessed, yet as sensitive as a child. At times the sanctimonious in the- ology has evoked in him a keen, quiet sarcasm, never bitter but always pungent, and as much the overflow of affection as his tears, while its real sanctity has intensified and mellowed his courage and life Both Mr. Beecher's preaching and general religious views have provoked much criticism, because of their highly emotional char- acter. This criticism would carry the greater weight if he evinced a relative forgetfulness of deep and abiding principle in his teaching. A fair mind must take in all sides of his ministry, in order to a right and comprehensive judgment here. Certainlv he perpetually insists upon honesty, justice, truth, integrity and equality, not as matters of feeling, but on principle. Most ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 295 earnestly he treats of God and man, of human weakness and divine energy, of God's law and man's obedience, all of which must lead to right thinking and action, promoting good will to men with love to God. He regards it possible to reach thorough Christian character only after long and patient toil ; transient and impas- sioned effort cannot attain thereto. He teaches that the perma nent and radical cure of man's moral nature is effected slowly and not suddenly, much as a confirmed invalid is restored. The only efficient remedy is seen in a steady abstinence from all wrong- doing, God-ward and man-ward, coupled with constant obedience to the law of God ; these are his proofs that a man is truly healed. Still, coexistent with this teaching, he refuses to be blind to the fact that God has endowed man with those potent emotions and passions which, in the nature of things, link themselves to all his other religious attributes. Not long since a New York daily, in reporting one of Mr. Beecher's sermons, on " The Love of God," remarked that: ,J He is nothing when he does not treat of love." Well, what would Jesus his Master be but for his love ? Doubtless it is true that where the will and moral faculties are weak and the animal nature controls them, great peril impends, for there, supposed seraphic feelings may lead their victim to iniquity, and the purest affection will become debauched. Hence we have cases where the refined, loving, and sincere fall into gross sin from a superabounding emotion in religion. Not only are proper guards against this tendency found in the exacting ethics of Mr. Beecher's preaching, but a second preventive centres in the whole tone and animus of his ministry, which draws upon the whole sphere of pure and healthful nature for its staple and life. He ever finds elevating companionships in flowers, fruits, birds, trees, music, poetry, and exalted mental sentiment. Music in nature floats through and refreshes his soul like breezes from the everlasting hills. An elevated lyric is as welcome to him as the pulsations of new life. And the poetry of a noble action lights 896 HENRI WARD BEECHER. ii[> in him a deep of Christian experience and truth. All these shape and feed his utterances in argument, picture, parable, and incentive, till his productions abound with the signs and influences of ;in intense life in himself, and that of a wholesome and natural order. And, of course, all who prize such life — the child, the youth, and the man of maturity — become impressed with his own nobility and take up his convictions and impulses into their own nature, to cheer and enliven them by making a Christian life a reality, to he roundly lived in real men and women. Religious emotion so excited cannot he unhealthy, but must be stable, open- hearted, quickening, and winsome. It may contain something- of a woman's softness, but it must be firm and intellectual, because it recognizes vitalizing life in everything and finds it everywhere. In a great and grand sense it may be said that Mr. Beecher "has served his generation by the will of God." lie has not merely " filled his place." There is all conceivable difference between a man filling bis place and " serving his generation." m To fill his place requires a body, but to serve his generation by the will of God demands a soul — a soul measured by the imperious mandates of time and the outreaching behests of influence. To a man who has no convictions, no fidelities, no fixed aims, the grave is but the cell of a condemned wrong-doer, but on the time- filling and influence-creating man its ashes will shed new beauty. Mr. Beecher will be better understood in coming generations than in this, for now, to a certain extent, the universality of his work hides his universal success. Many admire him to-day, but all will l>e poorer when he finishes his work. Often men make a pretence of admiration over one who dares to think for himself anil to say what he thinks, even if they cannot grapple with his conclusions or comprehend his methods of reaching them. But during his lifetime they never forgive him for his boldness and originality. He may be as free from rancor as Xathanael was free of guile ; the very soul of a noble life, without meanness, never having ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 297 injured any man. But all that does not shield him from blows which agonize a bleeding heart. If he blesses his race and pays the stipulated price for the privilege — if he is free, merciful, and catholic, hosts will rise up against him, as the great Brooklyn divine knows by all his bitterness of grief. Yet may he soothe his last years, as Garfield soothed his last days, with the thought which is ever sweet to man, that his name, his influence, and his work will pass into history and unborn generations will call him blessed. II. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D., Pastor of the City Temple, London, England. I feel some difficulty in speaking about a man who has laid so •deep a hold on ray affections, because terms which are mere com- monplaces in the atmosphere of my love must seem to be exagger- ations of the most daring kind to persons who suppose themselves to be unprejudiced simply because they are uninformed. The first object that strikes me, in my dining-room, is Mr. Beecher ; the first object that strikes me in my drawing-room is Mr. Beecher ; the man who occupies the largest space in my albums is Mr. Beecher ; the man whose letters we reread to ourselves and to our friends is Mr. Beecher ; it is just possible, therefore, that per- sons who know nothing at all about him may accuse me of approaching my work with more or less of partiality. I first met Mr. Beecher during his visit to Manchester at the time of the American Civil War. An immense meeting flooded the Free Trade Hall. The greatest expectation had long been raised, so great, indeed, as to become a practical injustice to any public man, and now it was at its supreme point, When Mr. HENRY WARD BEECHER Beecher appeared the scene baffled description ; the cheering, stamping, clapping, shouting, and partial groaning, made the hall shake again. Mr. Beecher rose to speak, but the audience must nee, 1> cheer; once more lie got to " Mr. Chairman," and once more the cheers rang out in wild and all hut unanimous harmony. Mi-. Beecher quickly caught the groans and hisses of a clique at the far end of the hall, and intuitively seizing the temper of his audience he laid aside his elaborate manuscript and went right at his work. For something like two hours he went on, makine his triumphant hut far from uninterrupted way through facts, statistics, policies, and arguments, without so much as referring to a memo- randum. As an effort of memory, as an effort of the voice, and as a miracle of wisdom and good-nature, 1 never heard the equal of that massive and overwhelming oration. From that moment we knew the greatness of the cause, and we felt that its advocacy was in the strongest possible hands. There was life in every tone, so much so indeed that the whole effort seemed to be part of the very battle which it described. Truly, it was no amateur elo- quence ; it was no attempt at scene-painting ; it was a light, a heroic onslaught, and, from my point of view, a victorious assault at arms. I afterward met Mr. Beecher at a public breakfast and heard his reply to a congratulatory resolution, which was much like seeing Niagara two miles below the Falls. The next time I heard Mr. Beecher was at the Fvangelical Alliance at New York. His subject was The Pulpit and the Age. Dr. Kidder and myself spoke on the same occasion, and on the same topic. Mr. Beecher had nothing before him but the briefest notes, yet for the greater part of an hour he poured forth a most copious stream of eloquence with an ease which could only be realized by life-long experience and use. The address summed up the lessons of a lifetime. I have often described Mr. Bcecher's face as being on that occasion the very type of an April day, for the smiles shone through the- tears, and a subtle humor edged the most solemn thinking as a ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 299 ring of light often engirdles the most sombre of clouds. The whole genius of Mr. Beecher's own preaching whs happily illus- trated by that many-phased address ; there was a line of deep clear thinking from end to end, again and again there was a figure which shone like a planet, in a moment there was a touch of humor not at all irreligious, and a broad human sympathy was expressed in tenderness which needed and secured the assistance of tears. The address was not something about preaching, it was itself preaching of the very highest order. Personally I have no doubt that Mr. Beecher's power is not a little enhanced by his almost unique gift of language. He could fill two octavo pages with the description of a cobweb, and yet there would be much more than mere words in the description. There is a subtle color in his words, so that they mass up into very striking impressiveness, however poor or contracted the sub- ject itself may be. Mr. Beecher would be as unquotable a speaker as Mr. Gladstone but for the innumerable figures which crowd to his help. Mr. Gladstone has no rhetorical imagination ; he expounds — unravels — and anatomizes his subjects with a precision and fulness truly amazing, and with an eloquence as pellucid as it is massive and forceful, but there are no flowers, no figures, no hints of an infinite background. Mr. Beecher is just as copious in mere language, but then how tropical is the luxuriance of his imagination ! When he concludes it is rather out of deference to custom or convenience than because the subject is exhausted. My sober impression is that Mr. Beecher could preach every Sunday in the year from the first verse in Genesis, Avithout giving any sign of intellectual exhaustion, or any failure of imaginative fire. It is in religious imagination — in the wonderful apocalypse of the heart — that he beats us all and leaves us panting in weakness and fear. Other men are great logicians (if it is possible for a logician to be o;reat), but they are eaged and bounded by wires, whereas Mr. Beecher is as a bird flying in the open firmament. Is he not,. 300 BENRT WARD BEECHEB therefore, logical .' The more so, unquestionably ; the more so because the greater includes the less, and parable is larger and truer than fact. Facts may have all the effect of lies. Mr. Heedier uses the fact as a starting-point, or as the ground on which he rests the ladder whose head reaches high as heaven. The text is as a handful of corn on the top of the mountains, the sermon is as the fruit thereof shaking like Lebanon. I have seen something like a hundred of Mr. Beecher's notes of sermons to be used by him in the pulpit, and I have sometimes wished that some of them could be lithographed and published along with the fully-reported sermon ; what a contrast would then be reveal- ed ! For a few lines the notes and sermon go together with toler- able evenness, but suddenly the sermon bounds away from the notes, and probably never returns ! In the notes you may meet an occasional etc. , and it is curious to turn to the sermon to see how much was wrapped up in that hieroglyphic ; a whole idyl, mayhap ; or a thunderstorm ; or a burial service broken up by the resurrection. In such instances we see what I may call the riotous power of Mr. Beecher's imagination, a power that revels in strength, and that grows in wealth by giving its wealth away. All this I say, as a mere reader of Mr. Beecher's sermons ; I never heard Mr. Beecher preach ; but having heard him on the plat- form, I can imagine in some degree what he must be in his in- spired moments in the pulpit, when he sees heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God ! Every now and then we hear that Mr. Beecher has changed his theological position, or that lie has modified his faith, or that he has Keen struck down on the road to Damascus and seen a new glory which must be typified in new words. Let no man be mis- led by such gossip. Mr. Beecher can never be other than ortho- dox. A heart like his does not know how to be heretical. Like all persons whom it is not in the power of time to make old, he is always seeing a new specimen of butterflies, a new instance in ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 301 botany, a new tone of color in the morning or evening sky ; he is always coming home with a new incident, a fresh idea, or a bold proposition ; but knowing that he sees everything through his imagination, or passes everything through the zone of his affections, and that in his nature there is neither suspicion nor resentment, we may be perfectly sure that at the last as at the first, Mr. Beecher will be found at the Cross, saying, as few others can say, that there is no name given under heaven among men, but Christ's own, whereby men can be saved. Mr. Beecher can never accept a four-cornered theology, and personally I thank God that he cannot. A four-cornered theology is the greatest hindrance I know of to the spread of the kingdom of heaven. There are people who know where theology begins, where it ends, through what lines it passes, what particulars it includes, and how neatly it gathers into itself themselves and their particular families. They think that to allow a simicolon in the Bible is to imperil the doc- trine of inspiration, and to see any good in another Christian communion is to hobnob with the enemy of souls and to enter upon a course of dangerous compromise. Mr. Beecher accepts no such detestable opinion, and his revolt from it is often expressed in terms which to literal minds must sound like blasphemy. To the same literal minds — Heaven pity them — Mr. Beecher sometimes figures as "an imprudent man." We often hear this in certain English circles. From my point of view there is nothing that is not of a vicious kind to be much more deplored than a narrow prudence. Imprudence is sometimes the highest wisdom, as it certainly is often the noblest unselfishness. Such is the supposed imprudence of Mr. Beecher. If he had been more selfish, he would have been more prudent ; being wholly un- selfish, he has been apparently imprudent. I know many six- inch-long souls who are living in comfortable obscurity because they calculate the possible effect of every action, and are afraid that if they did anything unusual they would disturb the universe. 302 BENRY WARD BEECHER. To such persons what a miracle of imprudence Mr. Beech er must appear! But to Buch persona we must nol appeal for just judg- ment. They do not know the larger truth, ami, therefore, they have nol entered into the larger freedom. Mr. Beecher must be judged by other minds, and especially must be judged by another generation ; in half a century after his death the children of his persecutors will build and deck Ins tomb. I feel how inadequate are these few sentences, yet in writing them rather than allowing the opportunity to lapse, I feel that I am accepting an honor at the hands of my friends the editor and publisher- of this memorial volume. As to Mr. Beecher's place in the estima- tion of British Christians I believe it is as high as ever. Bere and there, as I have said, are prudent persons to whom the earth owes nothing, who may be uncertain about him, but as they are uncertain about everything else; it really docs not matter what they think about Mr. Beecher. If Mr. Beecher will visit England he will have accorded to him a reception which will show that America has produced one of the greatest ureachers that ever adorned the Christian pulpit. III. By CHARLES E. ROBINSON, D.D., Of Rochester, New York. Here are some reminiscences of Mr. Beecher, "pro or con." The subject is so kaleidoscopic, so many-sided, that it is diffi- cult to make the reflections permanent. If you could fix him as the photographer arranges one for a picture, fasten his head in the tongs and keep him in one position, it would be easier. But when you secure one reflection, the expression is changed, and you are ready to throw away your first impression. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 303 No one person could write Dr. Lyman Beecher's biography ; •hence the unique book which his children have given us, where we catch different views of him, as artists complete their ideas of form and proportion. It will be harder still to obtain any satisfactory picture of his son. Henry Ward. The time to write his life has not yet come. A dispassionate judgment of him can be secured only in a succeeding generation. We are too near to get the proper proportions. We are now too much affected by our strong prejudices or preferences. So that your portfolio is perhaps the only way in which the present impressions can be noted. The kind of letter you wish from me leads one entirely into personal recollections. I suppose that that is just what you desire to know ; in what way Mr. Beecher has touched my life. His brother, George, was my pastor in my childhood, and I can just recall a " red-letter day " in the parish when Dr. Lyman Beecher, Dr. Charles Beecher, and Henry Ward all preached in the morning, afternoon, and evening. But the first distinct impression which Henry Ward made upon me was in the Fre- mont campaign, that inauguration of the great political move- ment which made anti-slavery principles popular, and rallied to its standard the generous enthusiasm of youth. There were feat- ures of that campaign which one loves to recall. My home was in a Western city. I wa's to decide the all-important question, to which candidate should I give my first presidential vote ? Mr. Beecher's speeches and extracts from his sermons which readied me I can hardly recall here ; but they exerted a controlling influ- ence over that decision, appealing to my intellect, heart, and conscience. I was particularly attracted by the generosity, manliness, and humanity of his political principles. About that time came the great revival which spread through the whole country. Two noble souls, bound to me by ties of kindred and strong affection, were then members of Plymouth Church, and the deepening of 304 HENRY WARD BBECHER. their religious life under the preaching of their pastor made ;i strong impression upon me. " Plymouth Collection " had just then appeared, the first, and among the best of its kind. The hymns we san<;' from that hook, the echoes from those daily morning prayer-meetings in the lect- ure-room, which reached me, through correspondence with these friends, the snatches of " Lecture-room talks," sent me, in the same way, long before they were regularly reported for the papers, .awakening and confirming my own Christian hopes, and giving a freshness to praise and prayer which were new to me, will explain the peculiar affection which grew up in my heart for Mr. Beecher, although at that time 1 had never met him. This affec- tion, with all my decided dissent, since then, from his philosophy and interpretation of the Scriptures, has never wavered, and gre^ the stronger for the fiery trial through which he was called to pass. Then, during my seminary life, when preachers and methods of preaching were the frequent theme of review or discussion, Mr. Beecher's sermons began to reach us in the Independent. At that time his — what shall I call it — Neo-Platonic philosophy '. if adopted by him, had not affected his doctrine, so that Presby- terian theologues were not so much struck with his divergence from the generally received teachings of the Evangelical school as with the lightning-like flashes of thought and the steady glow of warm feeling with which the old truths were illuminated. The richness of his vocabulary was, I remember, a ceaseless marvel to us boys. He has contributed to the wealth of our language, not only by showing its unlimited capacities for varied expression, but by the coining of new words. But those Independent sermons made other impressions upon us. There were not a few wdio felt that they were led by them into closer fellowship and friendship with Jesus. Our blessed Lord was a real presence to him, a Friend to confide in, and a Lover to adore. 1 own freely that he has added in this way greatly to the wealth of my personal ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 305 experience of the reality of things unseen. This is the secret or one of the secrets of his power over men, and the remarkable warmth and vitality of his preaching. I am glad to have this opportunity of paying a grateful tribute to him for the way he led me, in my early ministry, to a " closer walk with God ;" a better comprehension of the inspiring, sympathizing friendship, which it is the privilege of every Christian to cherish for his Master. In the disappointments and the successes of the minis- try, in the trials and the superabundant joys, this has been to me more than I can tell. The garrulity of personal reminiscence carries me on to my first pastorate in one of the most beautiful valleys of Litchfield county, Connecticut. Ruskin's " Modern Painters" was my vade- mecum just then. I remember hearing Mr. Beecher tell how much that book had disclosed nature to him. It was certainly a benefit which he transmitted ; for the exquisite rural beauty of that country parish was as much revealed to me by his summer letters from Lenox as by Mr. Ruskin. Those were the days when " Aurora Leigh," " Sonnets from the Portuguese," and Brown- ing's " Men and Women," were almost new. The walks under the grand old elms of Woodbury or the hours on the banks of the trout streams or the solitudes on Orenang rocks were all associated with friendly communings with these authors. And I remember with peculiar pleasure that those letters of Mr. Beecher' s from Lenox were woven in with the other influences which lifted me into a greater enjoyment and apprecia- tion of the country life about me. The drone of the bee, the buzz of the fly in the lazy summer air, the far-off thud of the threshing flail, the soughing of the wind in the pines of Orenang, Woodbury's Pineta, the emerald dome of the elms, the voiceful silences of nature, the glory of the morning, the fervors of noon, the splendors of sunset, and the silvery tenderness of the moonlight in that valley, are all in 306 • HENRI WARD BEECHER. some pleasant way, which 1 can hardly explain, associated with him. Not even the peculiar beauty of his presenl resilience at Peek- skill, with the fine view of the Hudson, and the suggestion of Switzerland on the farther hank of the river, and the exquisite varieties of trees on his own grounds, has drawn from him such letters as he used to write from Lenox. Is there not as much <>f nature in l'eekskill as in Berkshire .' Or is it October now instead of June : At that time the country was plunged into the excitement and turmoil of the civil war. The ring of the martial music, as the boys gathered from the hills and went off to the army, alternated with the deeper quiet of the long waiting in the dreamy valley for news from the front. The aggravating " quiet along the Potomac " reached up into New England, and we fretted against the barriers of the hills. The North was not sure of its friends. The dominant party of England stung us with their lack of sym- pathy. Never shall I forget the exhilaration with which we read there in the hill country of Connecticut, Mr. Beecher's famous addresses in England, and particularly his speech at Liverpool. This country owes more to him for the great aid which he rendered our cause in the Mother-country than the generation now coming on the stage of action realizes. When the war was over, many who remembered the power and passion of his advocacy of the nation's cause did not understand his generous words and friendly attitude toward the South, and accused him of changing his principles. But others saw that he was true to himself. With slavery gone ami its adherents beaten, it was a knight's chilvalrous feeling for a valiant foe which asserted itself and gave direction to his sympathies. Looking back upon it now after sixteen years, one must appreciate and honor it more than ever. Tt would be impossible to close this letter without a reference ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 307 to the time when scandal endeavored to blacken his good name. On returning from a six months' absence from the country in the fall of 1872, the air was thick with the slanderous charges which, to my unutterable indignation, that burns yet when I think of it, were made against Mr. Beecher. Other pens than mine can best describe the Christian spirit which he exemplified through all those days and years of trial that followed. In the summer of 1873 there began a series of vacation supplies with Plymouth Church, which made me more familiar with Mr. Beecher' s courage and his people's confidence in him than I could have been otherwise. Those who knew anything about it were greatly impressed with the way he controlled his people in their great anger and excite- ment, with his calm, forgiving spirit. But there was one night when the excitement could not be repressed ; Plymouth Church was packed with a loving and enthusiastic people to hear the report of the Investigating Committee. I sat with Mrs. Beecher where I could best see the great audience. The air was electric. Both smiles and tears could be easily summoned. I remember how we laughed when Mr. Halliday, wishing the sexton to turn on the gas, asked that we might "have a little more light from above," and how quickly the smiles were turned to hot, indignant tears at the thought of Mr. Beecher and his suffering family. It was a thing to see and never forget, when, at the close of the report, expressing an entire belief in the integrity of their pastor, the people rose at once, whitening the air with their waving handkerchiefs, while the noise of the weeping was almost equal to the sound of the rejoicing, though both tears and smiles expressed the same feeling. It was the instinctive outbreaking of years of affection for their pastor, it was a splendid testimony to the fidelity of the people through all that protracted trial of their faith and love. I could write on all night, but your portfolio will demand room 308 HK.MiV WARD BEECHER. for other and worthier articles than my letter. While frankly dissenting from some of Mr. Beecher's theological positions, I am glad to pay this slight tribute to him, and to express my grateful remembrance of what he has been to me, and my admiration of his gifts and his nature. IV. By HON. AMOS C. BARSTOW, Of Providence, E. I. Mr. Beecher's " Lectures to Young Men," written in his young life, while a pastor in Indiana, first introduced him to me. I have not read them since their first publication, and could not now give from memory even a synopsis of the topics discussed ; but I have a distinct remembrance of the strong impression which they made on my mind. Though born in neighboring States and at about the same time, and though we spent our youth in two principal Xew England cities not far apart, we had never met. lie went West, and entering the. ministry, had become the active and influential pastor of a large church. T, on my native heath, ■was engaged in manufactures and trade ; but at the same time had become the superintendent of a large Sabbath-school, and was so much interested m this work and in the young that I read with avidity everything which promised me any aid in it. This book put me in sympathy with a young, fresh, vigorous mind, whose thought was uplifting, whose style was pictorial and captivating, and whose spirit was morally and spiritually magnetic. So I watched his course, and looked for other and fresh utterances from his lips or pen. In 1847 he came to Brooklyn to become the pastor of Plymouth Church, where, on a larger theatre, his eloquence and faithfulness as a preacher, his ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 309 love of liberty, and his generous sympathy with suffering human- ity everywhere, soon attracted the attention and commanded the admiration of good men throughout the land. Being actively eno-afred in the Great Christian works and moral reforms, which he advocated with such eloquence and zeal, I soon made his personal acquaintance. I met him in our great religious convocations — in temperance and anti-slavery conventions ; and later on in those political gatherings during the Fremont campaign of 1856, which developed and crystallized in so large a degree the moral opposition of the people to the system of American slavery. All know how distinguished a part he bore in the great struggles for the deliverance of the land from drunkenness and slavery. When the proud and imperious spirit of slavery touched the lips of so many merchants and the tongues of so many Northern editors,, college professors, and Gospel ministers with a kind of moral' paralysis, Plymouth pulpit was never dumb, and the columns of the Independent, of which he was editor, or the Lyceum platform which he often filled and graced, were never silent, nor did either utter an uncertain sound. His heroic courage, when to my personal knowledge it cost something to be brave, and his manly sympathy for the poor, even of a despised race, no less than his eloquent utterances, commanded my homage, and are still remem- bered with affectionate gratitude. You ask me for facts and incidents of interest in Mr. Beecher's public life. The advice which he was said to have given to a mercantile firm, members of his congregation, who were threatened with the loss of their large Southern trade, because of their adherance to anti- slavery principles — "Tell them that your goods are for sale and not your principles" — marks the spirit of the man during those troublous times, when so many Northern merchants waited to know of their Southern masters what they should think or speak, and when and how ! 310 HKMiV WARD BEECHER. Sitting Dear him at a greal temperance banquet given to Jolm B. Gough, in New York, twenty-five or more years since, I saw a lady pass to him a large plate of jelly, which was quivering in all its length, with the query, " Mr. Beecher, will you have some jelly .'"' His ready response was, " I don't know about that. It looks as though it had delirium tremens !" To show the fertility of his resources, the celerity of his mental movements, and the peculiarity of his methods, let me give a few facts which have fallen under my own observation. Those who have heard him often and observed him closely, know how little he confines himself to his notes, even when they are full ; and that some of his most brilliant utterances are interjected into and sometimes supplant portions of his written discourse. On one occasion, when lecturing before a Lyceum, he was seen to turn over three or four leaves of his manuscript without read- ing. At the close of the lecture he was asked what was on those leaves. lie answered, " I don't know. This is a new lecture, and 1 have hardly got the hang of it. The next time I give it, perhaps 1 will read those leaves." ( )n another occasion, about twenty-five years since, when announced to preach before the Society of Missionary Inquiry in Brown University, on the evening before Commencement, a friend called at the hotel to accompany him to church, and found him in his room, with the table from which he had just risen covered with manuscript. Mr. Beecher explained. He had found no tune to write a sermon, and had proposed to extemporize, but reaching the city in the early morning, and feeling a little afraid to trust himself, had spent the entire day in writing, the result of which was the twenty sheets before him, the ink on the last not then entirely dry. I )n another occasion, when here to lecture, I sent my card to his room half an hour before the time, when he asked to be ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 311 excused for a few moments as he was reading his manuscript. When he came down he apologized for the delay, and added that he left his room before he had completed the reading. Knowing from him a week before that he had not then selected his theme, 1 remarked that as he had written the lecture so recently, 1 supposed he would remember it all. He surprised me by saving, " 1 did not write it !" 1 remarked, you do not wish me to understand that you will read another man's lecture. " No !" he said, " but I had not time to do the manual labor, so I took a short-hand writer into my room, and while 1 extemporized the lecture, he took it in short-hand, and has since written it out in a plain, clear hand. There it is, and I have not yet read it all." This lecture, with such a history, was regarded by those who heard it as a remarkably fine one. When speaking to a friend in Brooklyn, a few years since, of these peculiarities in Mr. Beecher's mental methods, this friend took from his table a brief of Mr. Beecher's last sermon, written on several pages of letter sheet, and handing it to me said, take it home with you. I said no ; Mr. Beecher would hardly excuse such an act. Yes, he would, said the friend, lie will never use it again. He always makes fresh preparation for his sermons. He left it here purposely. This reminds me of an incident which occurred about twenty-five years since. 1 was in the White Mountains for the second or third time with some of my family, and going up Mount Wash- ington from the Crawford House with a party of ten or fifteen on horseback — a ride of four hours — we met Mr. Beecher and his brother Thomas with other mutual friends on the summit, This was his first visit to the mountains. He had come up the carriage road from the Glen, but was to go down with our party to the Crawford. Learning that the ride down was a grand one — more than half of it being down the steep, bare side of Washington, and over the bare ridges of two other mountains — Mr. Beecher 312 n i:\ky ward BEECHER. desired to ride down alone, being willing, without guide, to trust the instincts of his horse to keep the trail. Selecting a fast-walking horse, and starting a little in advance of the large party, he was soon out of sight. While we were descending the steep slope from the hare summit of Mount Wash- ington in Indian file, by zigzag path, a single horseman was scon following far in the rear, who it was known did not belong to our party. The guide called a halt, and leaving his horse clambered by shorter path up the rough mountain side, until he could had the stranger, who answered the hail bj the query, " Is Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of your paity ?" Being told that he had gone ahead and was then out of sight, the stranger expressed Ins regret ; but having come up to our party, and concluded to go on, we made room for him to pass us in the narrow trad. On reaching the Crawford House at the close of the day, we found the stranger, who proved to be a deacon of one of the churches in Littleton— a village at the foot of the mountains, eighteen miles distant. Being introduced to Mr. Beecher, he .nvited and urged him to preach at Littleton the next Sabbath. Mr. Beecher courteously declined, saying that he was away from home, seek- ing rest, and without preparation to preach. The good deacon replied, " You preached at Lancaster last Sabbath !'* Mr. Beecher assented, saying that was his first Sabbath in this mountain region, and as he was visiting friends at Lancaster who desired him to preach, he could not well refuse ; but the preparation cost him an entire day, of the very few days allotted to this journey, and he could not afford to spare another. The good deacon still urged his suit, saying that the news of Mr. Beecher's preaching at Lancaster reached him Monday morning — that he mounted his horse at once ami rode to Lancaster, twenty-five miles — then to the Glen, an ■equal distance — then up the mountain, a four hours' ride— that lie had thus been two days in hot pursuit — being just too late at every point where he had sought him — and begged him not now ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 313 to disappoint his hopes. But Mr. Beecher still courteously de- clined. The next day when it was announced that he had changed his mind, and would preach in Littleton the next Sabbath, his brother Thomas said, " Henry talks a great deal about backbone, but he has no more of it than an eel." A few years after, when conversing with Mr. Beecher, I alluded to this event, and asked him to explain tome the reason for chang- ing his mind ; when, bursting into a hearty laugh, he asked how he could avoid it. Said he : " In the early dawn of that next, long summer day, I was aroused from my sleep by a loud knocking at my chamber door. Reaching from my bed I unfastened and opened the door, when there stood the good old deacon, his face still sad with the disappointment of the previous night. Said he, ' Excuse me, Mr. Beecher, for disturbing you at this early hour. I arose early to go home, and my horse is at the door, but I found myself unable to mount without making one more effort to induce you to go to Littleton. If you cannot go on Sunday, then name some other day. We will have a good congregation on any day of the week, with a few hours' notice. If you can't preach, then lecture, speak, or exhort ; or if you can't do either, then come and let us see you and shake hands with you. Our people know a good deal about you, and they want to see you anyhow, if they ■can't hear you. I like to please them, and have taken much pains to find you — say, can't you go ? ' " The deacon was agitated and his eyes were a little moist while he made this appeal. He seemed far more anxious than hopeful. To cheer him, and send him home happy, I said, ' Yes, I will go ! I will go anywhere, and at any time to please you ; so name your day.' " But I came near forgetting the object I had in view in giving this incident, which was to illustrate further Mr. Beecher's methods of mental preparation for his great efforts. Hon. E. I). Holton, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose guest Mr. Beecher 314 HENRI WARD BEECHER. was, on the Sabbath above named, al his ancestral home at Lan- caster, X. 11., told me at the time, that on that Saturday which .Mr. Beecher took t<> prepan .. sermon for the next day, he was in the road, the woods, the garden, or pacing the floor. He was anywhere hut in his study, and seemingly doing anything hut preparing a sermon. He was evidently filling the hopper. At daylight the next morning he commenced writing, and wrote on, without dinner, until the hour for afternoon service, and then gave a sermon one and a half hours in length — one of the most masterly exhibitions of truth to which he ever listened. V. By HENRY HIGHLAND GARNETT, D.D., Pastor of the Shiloh Colored Presbyterian Church, New York City. It is no small thing for a man to hold a place in the hearts of the people in any section of this country for a period of thirty- five or- forty years. To stand as a representative man, holding the most advanced ideas of humanity, religion, and the rights of man, in or near the great metropolis of this great repuhlic, is indeed extraordinary. The life-work of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher has gained for him such a reputation in the minds of the intelligent and thoughtful people of the present generation, entirely unequalled. I have watched his course as a public man and an advocate of the various interests of humanity, from his introduction into the chosen field of his labors, and have found that everywhere and at all times be ha- stood manfully for truth, liberty, and justice. In wielding his sword, he has always summoned the strength of a strong arm, causing its keen edge and shining blade to be felt and seen in the thickest of the battle. It is true, that sometimes ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 315 his weapon has failed to reach the intended mark, and some- times it has wounded a companion in arms, but never was his sword drawn in defence of wrong, or sheathed in dishonor in the hour of conflict. During the last forty years the question which has most interested the American people and caused the eyes of Christian- dom to be fixed upon our country, was the blight and curse of cbattel slavery. Henry Ward Beecher began early to take a part in the struggle, and remained in the field until the nefarious system perished. Nor has he ceased his labors in the great work which remains to be done in order to make emancipation and political enfranchisement complete. The freedom of the ballot, free schools for all the people of the South, and education and free- dom to worship God for every American citizen, are the themes which to-day arouse his burning eloquence. I know not which most to admire in the character of Mr. Beecher, his courage and broad philanthropy, or his varied intellect- ual gifts. He seems to be equal to every emergency and occa- sion. Both at home and abroad his wonderful resources have always been available. A short time after Mr. Beecher came to Brooklyn, and in the most trying period of the anti-slavery struggle, he appeared at a great meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle, at which the vener- able Samuel Hanson Cox was one of the speakers. It was not an infrequent thing for some of the strong men to hesitate and falter, even after they had chosen the right side. Dr. Cox had suffered great persecution at the hands of mobs, and from the severe criticisms and harsh judgments of professed friends, and his faith and courage sometimes failing him, he occasionally swayed from one side of the slavery controversy to the other. At the time to which I refer the Doctor stood firmly with the advocates of immediate and unconditional emancipation, and had delivered an address of great eloquence and power. Mr. 31G HENRY WARD BEECHER. B iher followed and prefaced Ins remarks by saying that there was no one in the assembly or in the whole country who understood the anti-slavery question better than I>r. Cox did, for be bad been on all sides of it. Of course, the remark was received with abundant applause and good humor. Near the beginning of the slaveholders' rebellion there were many people in the North who sympathized with those who were bent upon destroying the Union of the States, and mob law and riots and murder prevailed, and tilled the hearts of loyal citizens with intense alarm ; .Mr. Beecher went over to Elizabeth City, N. J., to speak in favor of the Union and Abraham Lincoln's admin- istration. The Copperheads of the city declared that he should not speak, and threatened to kill him if he made the attempt. The mayor of the city who was a liberal Democrat told the excited crowd who had gathered around the place of meeting, that Mr. Beecher should speak at all hazards. Surrounded by a number of law-abiding citizens, Mr. Beecher entered the hall, and from the platform, amid an indescribable uproar, he began his speech by saying, " Gentlemen, I have been informed that if I attempt to speak here to-night I am to be killed. Well, I am going to speak, and therefore I must die. But before you kill me, there is one request I have to make. All you who are going to stain your hands in my blood just come up here and shake hands with me before you commit the crime, for when I die I shall go to heaven, and therefore I shall never see any of you again." A burst of applause followed this sally, and for two hours Mr. Beecher swayed the minds of the audience as the winds move the seas. But the greatest triumph of Ins life was achieved in Liverpool, Lniiland, in 1863, after Commodore "Wilkes had overhauled the British vessel Trent on the high seas and taken otT the arch rebels Mason and Slidell, who were on their way to England. The act was without doubt a gross violation of international law, and ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 317 acknowledged to be so by Mr. Seward, then our Secretary of State, who bastened to deliver up tbe prisoners when demanded by tbe English Government, rendering a satisfactory apology. I was in Liverpool on the day on which the news of the transaction reached that city. Such excitement I never saw among any people. A whirlwind of public indignation and wrath swept over tbe land. The sword of every British soldier and tbe army and navy were ready to spring to tbe defence and honor of the nation. British pride bad been deeply wounded, and right of asylum bad been violated. On the Sunday morning following tbe reception of the news, soldiers in great numbers were seen hurrying through tbe streets of Liverpool, and the cry was " To arms ! to arms !" There were many of the English people who were in sympathy with the rebels of the South from the beginning of our civil war, and now they found a popular pretext for throwing the heavy sword of Eng- land in the balance against us. The friends of the American Union could say but little in our favor, as the act was a palpable violation of the law of nations, and as slavery had not yet been abolished by the Federal government, they did not see much that was calculated to enlist their sympathies with us, and they did not much care which way victory turned. The cotton fields were in the South — and " Cotton was king," and he fed the cotton mills of England, kept tbe spindles in motion, and they had a decided leaning tow- ard the South. It was at such a time as this, when public sentiment was bitterly averse to the interests of our Union, and unfriendly to our success in the great struggle to maintain its integrity, that Mr. Beecher appeared in defence of his country, in the most pro- slavery and pro-rebel town in Great Britain. The defence of his country, which he made amid a turbulent and an indescribable uproar that baffles description, was one of tbe boldest ever urged in words, tbe most eloquent and triumphant that ever fell from tbe lips of any man. That speech furnishes 318 HENRY WARD BEECHER. intensely interesting pages in the history of those times, which in the years to come will be eagerly read by the people of Loth countries, and will send Mr. Beecher's name down to future generations as one of the truest patriots of bis times. I was myself in England during the excitement, before Mr. Becchcr, and 1 attempted to speak in the Town Jlall in the cit\ of Birmingham. Lord Coltborp occupied the chair, and Joseph Sturge, the distinguished Quaker philanthropist, made an introduc- tory speech, and notwithstanding the readiness of the English people to hear a black man when he presents the claims of his oppressed race, such was the state of public feeling toward Americans that the vast audience refused to hear me. It was in vain that the noble chairman and the universally beloved friend of man besought the people to hear. After standing before the vast, hissing, and hooting audience for a long time, by effectually appealing to their world-wide reputation for their love of fair play, I got out all that was in me, for home, country, liberty, and faith in God, for a successful termination of our civil war. VI. By SAMUEL II. VIRGIN, D.D., Pastor of the Congregational Church, Harlem, Xew York. I cannot tell when Mr. Beechcr emerged from an indefinable influence and a name to a reality in my life. Breathing an atmos- phere charged with the teachings of those who were hostile to slavery, his name with others was familial' to my earliest child- hood. It was a name that stood for strength to resist and to attack. It soon stood for a personality brave and true to all that elevated humanity, and as I understood the work of Jesus Christ, it added the elements of loyalty to Him. Not till the time of ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 319 manhood was it my privilege to come into personal associations with him, and know hy actual contact the power and' greatness of his spirit. His thoughts had been familiar to me for many years, and yet when I read them I did not hear his voice uttering them, nor feel his unique personality back of them. His books I circu- lated among the young men under my care for instruction, but they did not contain that element that is incommunicable in Mr. Beecher's personality. It will be an inestimable loss when that is removed from us altogether (may the Lord long delay the day !), for in it resides an unspeakable power. It is not in the body of flesh and blood, though that has been built up with assiduous care, it is not in the peculiarity of the brain's action, it is not in the elocution, nor in the nervous force with which thought is sent to its impact, but it is in the wholeness of body and soul and spirit together. Some men can be easily described, their influence can be elimi- nated, then examined and measured, their contribution to thought and life can be gathered and weighed. Mr. Beecher's work and influence cannot yet be expressed with any degree of definiteness. Some men do their work upon the past, completing and bring- ing to the present the failures and incompleteness of others, and their work is valuable. Other n*en live solely in the present, moulding and shaping its thought, controlling its practicalities, and helping to the measure of their abilities in the struggles of their day. Other men live in the future. Their work stretches far on beyond the border of their lives. They are prophets. They touch the present but to prepare its surface and scatter seed ; they awaken expectation and stimulate toils that fruit hereafter. They are not visionary, but the most practical of useful men. Their touch is health. They help to broaden and enrich all with which they come in contact ; they carefully guard germs of life lest they be destroyed, and they plant and nourish that which is to give life to generations yet to come. There is nothing narrow in their 320 HENRY WARD BEECHER. thought ; they batter against tho barriers of the past and the pres- ent because they see springing life beyond the bounded space ; they are misunderstood because the time to judge them has not runic ; they rise above petty criticisms because they have a broad outlook and have faith in the future greatness of God's world and people ; they cannot be sectarian : they are not watchful of their own personal interests; they help men because they live largely and toward God ; they are not free from mistakes and faults and are liable to be ensnared by designing men. Such an one is Henry Ward Beecher in my thought. As true a < 'hristian as lives, as pure a soul as thinks, as simple and trustful a spirit as God has in the world. Learned in the things of spirit- ual life, impulsive with the breath of the Divine Spirit, bating shams and all that is false and oppressive, loving the brotherhood and blessing those that curse and praying for those who despite- fullv use him, such is the man as he shows himself to one who differs from him often theologically and often on questions of polity, but who has never lost confidence in the sweetness and beauty of his inner life, and whose witness of his tenderness and forbearance as shown through the years of trouble in the ministe- rial body of which he is a member, has often brought to mind the example of the aged John, saying, " Little children, love one an- other." All estimate of his life will be faulty that is made within a quar- ter of a century after lie is taken to the skies, for his sced- thougbt and influence will not mature speedily, for it affects principles and truths that are to be the life and joy of ages to come. His prayers are the transparent -lass through which the whole working of his spirit may be seen, and those who knelt with him at morning devotions in the Catskills, on a summer excursion, wiil ever recall with a thrill of emotion the marvellous glory that crowned that mercy-seat. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 321 VII. By EDWARD P. INGERSOLL, D.D., Of Brooklyn, New York. Thirty years ago, a college literary society, of which I was a member, debated the question : " Which is father of the most brains, old Mr. Burleigh or old Dr. Beecher?" Lyman Beecher carried the day, both as to the quantity and quality of offspring. The logic of events has proved our boyish wisdom. Historia. testis temporum. In the midst of this Eschol cluster is Henry Ward Beecher, tbe most prominent and in many regards the most gifted of them all. It sometimes seems to me as if Mr. Beecher had lived forever. In my early boyhood I used to read about him. In my early manhood I occasionally heard him preach and lecture, and was wont to look upon him as a mighty Jehu — a fast but a safe driver ; higher still, as a fiery John the Baptist, preaching repentance to a nation. And now, though I am in middle life, he is still one of the foremost men of tbe land ; strong, clear, aggress- ive, his sympathies untouched by age. " His eye is not dimmed nor his natural force abated." His nature is wonderful in its com- binations. Such a marvellous harmony of body, mind, and soul ! So full of warm blood ! So kindly and genial ! So observant of the little things of nature and the little things of life that are transpiring ! How can such a man be a student ? And yet upon a more intimate acquaintance you find his intellect is finely poised. Every wheel and every cog is ready for work. He is like one of those old-time New England schoolmasters, who had eyes in the back of his head. He is an Argus, and every picture caught upon the retina is transferred by the quick chemistry of his mind with unfading colors, and hung in the gallery of his memory.. What many wise men toil for he seizes without the tardy processes of syllogisms. There is, too, an " over-soul " in him which makes 322 HKNI.'Y WARD BEECHER. him kindred to everybody and to everything. A few years ago I was making my Monday trip to New Fork by the way of Fulton Ferry. It was a bleak winter day, ami as is my wont, when a storm is raging, I hurried through the cabins to the front, and there, standing well forward alone in the storm, was Mr. Beecher. I stood for a moment near him, hesitating to speak, hut presently seeing through the driving snow a sea-gull piercing its way against the wind, I touched him and said, pointing up- ward, " Sec that." " Yes," he said, solemnly, " he is mine." " Yours ?" I said, inquiringly. " Yes, I'm joint heir," and the color deepened upon his face and his eyes moistened as he fol- lowed the bird in its hrave flight. God often raises up a man for a specific work who is by no means perfect. Of Cyrus he said : " I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." Of others, such as Jacol> and Elijah and Peter, there are characteristics which we cannot commend, and yet which we would he slower to condemn if our souls were fired as were theirs. With all his wonderful power and poise of nature, Mr. Beecher seems to me sometimes like the hunter of the wild chamois, who follows so swiftly and so far that he cannot get back without bruises. He is apt to forget, while aglow with a great truth and expounding it for the blessing of men, that any- thing else is true. lie seems for the time to ignore its relation- ship to other truths, and even to disallow the same truth in other relations, thereby giving only half truths. His mind is analogical rather than logical. To him everything beautiful is a picture of divine realities, and he sweeps in too much of earthly resemblance-, as he burns with eagerness to persuade and comfort men. Hi- methods of startling speech, his iconoclastic way of breaking old forms which to him have no life, seem sometimes ruthless ; they are so, especially when he swings so lone" and strong a staff as to bruise the good men who stand about the time-honored institu- tions of the Church. Nor can I agree with some of his views of ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 325 divine truth ; but I have reason to believe that the printed rep- resentations of his belief have often been gross misrepresenta- tions, and this especially because his statements have been broken from their moorings ; have been severed from the connections with which they must stand to be fairly understood. After he is gone, he will be measured as a philanthropist, as an orator, as a friend, as a preacher, as a man, by the great void he makes, and then he will be acknowledged to have been one of the rarest, truest, and most princely of men. He lives now misunder- stood by cold, phlegmatic natures, justly criticised, I think, by those who sweep the whole horizon of revealed truth, but, on the whole, he lives a great beating heart from which suffering men and the Christian world receive fresh, strong throbs of life. We love him because we believe he loves the truth with an unfeigned love. We grasp his hand, believing him loyal to the Master, with a holy ardor, saying that and only that which for the time he believes to be true, everlastingly true ; and hating shams as only they can hate them who are filled with a sense of enduring realities. It may be said of him, for the most part, " He has touched nothing he did not adorn." Hail to this pioneer ! All honor to this patriot ! Love and reverence for this " great heart." Serus in ccelum redeat. VIII. By J. O. TECK, D.D., Pastor of Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal^ Clmrch, Brooklyn, New York. Men have differed in their estimate of the ability, excellence, and usefulness of Paul, Moses, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and most fiercely of all, in their opinions concerning Jesus Christ. Henry Ward Beecher could not, and probably would not desire to escape 326 HENRY WARD BEECHER this diversity of human judgment. Any man who shakes the world, and, like the apostles, turns it upside down, will be loved and hated, glorified and denounced. This is one of the sequences of wielding large power. In Afriea, the hunters sometimes chance upon a spot where the wild rice is all trampled down, the undergrowth is tangled and torn, and a huge trail looks as if the army of Hannibal had just marched past on a conquering cam- paign. They know by the signs that they are in the vicinity of a herd of elephants which have lately passed that way ! When I look at the life-work of Henry Ward Beecher for about forty years, preaching, lecturing, storming the American Bastile of Slavery, thrilling us at home, and cowering unfriendly audiences abroad, with his trumpet-blasts of patriotism for the preservation of the Union, the broken boughs and trampled wild rice and huge trail he has made in American history compel me to exclaim, "A giant has passed this way !" 1 realize how utterly impossible it is for me to pojtray Mr. Beecher. He is so many- sided in genius, so kaleidoscopic in the play of his great powers, that only another Beecher could make a just portraiture of a Beecher. Who can give a complete word picture of Niagara? It must be seen and felt ! It must take its awful leap before our eyes, thunder in our ears, and spring its rainbows above our heads ! It brings the drops of dew to my forehead to attempt to think around this magnificent man ! I shall only try to represent how he impresses me, not assuming to characterize him dogmati- cally. And first permit me to say that while I admire and love Henry Ward Beecher, I do not esteem him a perfect man, or a model theologian. lie often perplexes, and sometimes vexes me ! I don't believe all he says and teaches. But then other people don't believe all I say and teach ! I pity them in their obtuscness of course ! There is only one infallible theologian in the world, the Pope ! Yet Luther voiced a great fact when be declared that every man at the bottom is a little Pope. Every man is so sure ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 327 that he is right. " Orthodoxy is my doxy : heterodoxy is other people's doxy." This assumption of infallibility in theological dogma, with its accompanying uncharity, pains me. For no man knows that his or his denomination's interpretation of the Bible expresses absolutely the mind of God in the Word, so that his creed includes all truth and excludes all error. We are all heretics at the best ! While I heartily accept the creed and believe the doctrines of my own denomination as the best expression of the truths of Holy W 7 rit, I dare not say that I know that we are altogether right, and others wrong wherein they differ from us. I believe they are, but only God knows ! Now because I dare not assume infallibility, I dare not pronounce Mr. Beecher a heretic wherein he does not agree with my creed. At all events I will not stone him until I get to heaven, and no longer see through a glass darkly ! Theology, the science of God, must ever remain an incomplete science, since no finite mind will ever comprehend the Infinite. Mysteries will ever hang around our profoundest con- ceptions of God and His government, as clouds skirt the horizon. The oracle declared Socrates to be the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he did not know all things. Nescience is often wisdom. Therefore I shall not attempt to prove Mr. Beecher theologically unsound. My conviction is that he is more nearly orthodox in his theology than the impressions of his peculiar methods of putting things indicates. Merely recording that I do not agree with my understanding of some of his theolog- ical views, I leave out any discussion of them. T. Mr. Beecher as a man. 1. The foundation of all he is, and all he has done is his phys- ical system. Without that he never could have been what he is, or have done his work. The basis of many of the finest qualities of mind and heart is in the physical organization. The effective wielding of these higher forces is almost wholly in proportion to the effectiveness of the body. The calibre of the gun largely 328 1IKNKY WARD BEECIIER. determines the effectiveness of the ammunition. Hercules in a rotten boat would make a poor race ! Mr. Beecher has one of the besl animal organizations in this generation, lie has those quali- ties of fineness, elasticity, susceptibility, vigor, nerve, and endur- ance -1 beg pardon, but in one word — thoroughbred. This is partly inherited and partly cultivated in him. He has done immense service to this and coming generations by teaching them how to develop and maintain the highest physical conditions, and thus to be fitted for the best work. I conceive that his undiminished popularity and power and freshness are due as much, aye more, to his unimpaired physical forces than to anything else. lie is thus a perpetual admonition to the younger clergy, who read his Vale lectures and sermons, not to waste their physical resources, nor by neglecting the laws of hygiene to force prema- ture superannuation. The buoyancy and elasticity of his tempera- ment have their roots deep in his physical organization. In short, that is the rich soil out of which has grown and blossomed the thousand beautiful creations of his brain. 2. But this superb stalk is crowned with a more magnificent flower. His brain is not only massive but luminous — an intellect- ual kohinoor, ' ' a mountain of light. ' ' There may be a large brain- large and coarse as a sunflower. The massiveness of his brain, how- ever, is not more remarkable than the exquisite fineness of its quality. He has all the insight, imagination, and emotion of a poet. He is a prose-poet of great brilliance. But one quality of his mind has increasingly impressed me the longer 1 have known and read Mr. Beecher— his subtle metaphysics, lie is not a metaphysician so much by intention as by necessity. It is in the texture of bis mind. He is not forever parading his metaphysics to invite your admiration of the polished tools with which he builds his masterpieces. He is more anxious to have you enraptured with the finished temple of manhood, echoing with praise of God, than to have you captivated with the scaffolding. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 329 But his masterly sermons could never be erected without that metaphysical scaffolding. While the capacity of his intellect, from which he has poured for forty years one incessant stream of golden thought, fills one with amazement at the vastness of his resources in himself, while the fertility and diversity of his genius are a perpetual marvel, the undimmed brilliancy, the unfading beauty of his eloquence are no less a source of grateful wonder- ment. His sermons are richer and more chastely beautiful now than in any preceding decade. He has poured forth more strong and beautiful thought during his public life in all the range of his pulpit, platform, lecture-room utterances and published writings, than anv other man of the century, and yet the gems hang im- pearled on every utterance to-day as richly and beautifully as in any period of the past. Perhaps the one quality of his mind that makes him peerless and almost unapproachable is his power of illustration. In this he is unique. His strong individuality is not more marked in any quality of his mind than in the one just mentioned. Let one read promiscuously fifty illustrations from a half-score of the most brilliant preachers of to-day, on both continents, and a reader of Mr. Beecher will detect his as readily as a diamond connoisseur will discover " old mine" stones. Not that his illustrations are more beautiful and finished — they are often homely and rough as granite — but that their force and apt- ness, their clearness and strikingness bear the unmistakable stamp of his mint. We say not that his illustrations, many of them, are lacking in beauty. On the other hand, multitudes of them are unsurpassed in exquisite beauty. But their appositeness is even more marked than their elegance. The range and inexhaustible freshness of his illustrations are remarkable. Perhaps I should not be transcending propriety, nor challenging dissent, in saying that in illustration of truth he is more like Christ than any other preacher on either side of the Atlantic. 3. Socially Mr. Beecher is charming. He is the farthest 330 lll.NKY WARD BEECHER. remove from being aristocratic or self-assertive among his fel- low-clergy of all denominations. Who that lias mingled with him at ministerial clubs or associations, will not recall his gen- erous cordiality to all ? Perhaps popinjays, and peacocks, and patronizing bores have felt that he was not very sociable ! These he lets alone, unless they force from him a Parthian arrow ! Then they let him alone ! His sparkling wit and humor, com- bined with an overflowing good-nature, and chastened by a gen- uine kindness, make him king of the feast in social hours. There men love him as elsewhere they admire him. 4. As a Christian, he perplexes many who know him only by reputation. The current conviction in some quarters, that he is theologically oblique ; the overplay of wit and pleasantry in the pulpit occasionally ; the apparent lack of seriousness and reverence for the traditional solemnity of the preacher's function which shocks some people ; the applause and laughter which sometimes greet his bursts of eloquent indignation or appeal, have created somewhat of an impression that he is not a spiritual man. My personal association with him in the later years of his minis- try compel me to testify to the conviction of his deep spirituality. His ordinary prayers before sermon are the most extraordinary evidences of real intimate communion with God. He seems talk- ing with God face to face, not as a pleading mendicant, but as a conscious and acknowledged son. And I know (how, I need not say) that his public prayers are but the reflection of his sincere abiding communion with God in private life. Never will the members of the Brooklyn Clerical Union forget a " conversa- tion " he gave us, by request, in May, 1880, on the relation of private to public prayer in a minister's life. As he spoke of his personal experience and of how he cultivated and fed his spiritual lift;, we all felt that the speaker was one w T ho dwelt in the Holy of Holies in rich, blessed communion with God. When asked if those remarkable public prayers were prepared or studied before- ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 331 hand, he replied, " No ! 1 never know a word I shall utter. All true prayer is an inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I have a consciousness of great sympathy with men in their burdens, sorrows, and struggles. Then, I shall be likely to be led to pray i'n that direction. At other times, I am full of thoughts of the dear ones who have left us, and then I shall probably pray about heaven. That is the only hint I have of what my prayers may be. Real prayer, I repeat, is an inspiration." I may here sum up by saying that my conviction, as the result of personal intercourse and thoughtful study of his writings, is, that Mr. Beecher is a man of real deep spirituality. Perfect in life he is not ; for he lias his share of faults, and has made his share of mistakes, and has sinned his share of transgressions, but that he has sought to live sincerely to the glory of God and labor earnestly for the good of man, I fully believe. An honest Christian, but not fault- less, I believe he is, and has always striven to be. A man dear to God, and to whom God is inexpressibly and savingly precious, is my conviction of Henry Ward Beecher as a Christian man. II. As a Preacher, I hesitate not to say that, in my opinion, Henry Ward Beecher is the greatest preacher in the world to-day, and is one of the score of greatest preachers in all history. Other men have excelled him in single points of strength. As a theological preacher I should not rank him high. In the severely logical line of preaching he is not pre-eminent. He does not aim at that kind of sermonizing. In evangelistic preaching he is not to be compared with George Whitefield. However, White- field's printed sermons are not to be compared with Mr. Beecher's discourses. The former are not remarkable, while the latter are sparkling and fresh as a May morning, at the same time that they are vigorous as mountain breezes. Mr. Beecher is a great teacher, more than simply a great orator, in the pulpit. He is a natural orator, but oratory is subordinated to teaching. He aims to build up Christian manhood. Men must be educated by religious 332 HENRY WARD BEECHER, tmth, and this demands an inspiring teacher. His thought is not crude, hut refined. What he reads he assimilates, so that every- thing he utters seems as original as if no one else had ever discov- ered the same thought. He has borrowed little from books, and his sermons are evolved from his own fertile brain. He reads much, but digests all. His sermons are pre-eminently practical. His object being to build men up in a large, broad, many-sided manhood, all his sermons and lecture-room talks are for use in daily life. His sermons are meant for service, and not for exhibi- tion. Metaphysical in subtle unfolding of truth, lightning-like in vividness of portrayal, picturesque and grand in illustration, pathetic or thrilling in application, eloquent and swaying in the power of utterance, he is the greatest preacher that America has ever produced. His influence has been large, outside of Plymouth Church, on the ministry and educated minds of the generation. All will not appreciate that influence at the same value. It has stimulated intellect to think independently ; it has worked to produce a larger catholicity ; it has glorified the father- hood of God and exalted the brotherhood of man. For greatness, brilliancy, and resources of pulpit power he is unequalled. IH. As a Lecturer, discussing political, social, and educational questions before the large constituency of the platform, to be repeated by the press, he has wielded a vast and salutary influence in moulding the thought of his age. His popularity and power on the platform have been very great, but have never equalled, much less eclipsed, his popularity and power in the pulpit. He has been a moral force in our civilization. IV. As a Patriot, he has engraven himself for immortality in American history. He has plead for the poor, the oppressed, and the despised, with more eloquence than he would have plead for his own life at the stake. He began his ministry with espous- ing the cause of the slave, when to be an abolitionist was to be execrated. He continued that devotion through storm and obloquy till the last fetter was broken, and the last chattel was an enfran- ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 333 chised citizen of the Republic. In the galaxy of illustrious philanthropists his name shines conspicuously. The wrongs of the African, the Indian, and the Mongolian, injustice to woman and the laboring classes, national intelligence, equal rights for all men, and the great cause of temperance, have always evoked his eloquent voice and pen. The service of humanity and his country with him has been the service of God. The distin- guished ability and grand effectiveness with which he served the cause of the Union during the Rebellion, by his impassioned loyalty at home, and with which he even more gloriously defended the undivided Republic before scowling and howling disunion sympathizers in Great Britain, entitle him to the ever- lasting gratitude of America. Not till the last African face has disappeared from American society — not till the memory of our struggle for an undivided Repubic fades out of history — not till the ingratitude of an effete and decaying nation consigns the loyalty and heroism of her noblest patriots to oblivion — will the sturdy and chivalric patriotism of Mr. Beecher be forgotten ! As an inspiring force in the history of the Republic his fame is assured. When we review his great qualities of manhood, eloquent on the platform, peerless in the pulpit, Christ-like in philanthropy, Roman in his patriotism, we are forced to exclaim, " One of the few immortal names, that were not born to die." He is loved almost to idolatry, and eulogized almost to apotheosis by hosts of ardent friends. Of course he has not escaped the poisoned shafts of foes ; but, like the now revered and sainted Dr. Payson and Archbishop Fenelon, whom the hounds bayed at while living, but whose sweet fame by Divine providence is a sacred depositum of humanity and history, when his foes are forgotten, the name of Henry Ward Beecher will shine as the stars for ever and ever L "Nothing need cover his high fame but heaven ; No pyramids set off his memories ; But the eternal substance of his greatness, To WHICH I LEAVE HIM." 334 HENRY WARD BEECHER. IX. Br PETER MACLEOD, Of Glasgow, Scotland. It was, T think, in the Autumn of 1863 that Mr. Beecher called on me in Glasgow. lie had visited the Continent, spent some time in London, and wished to see a little of Scotland before his departure for home. lie had fixed his passage from Liver- pool, and only a few days were left for Scotland. But, as Burns says, "Tlit: best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley. " Little did Mr. Beecher know the ordeal through which he was to pass, or the results on the public mind which he was to leave behind him before he sailed from our shores. Be appeared to me much downcast, very moody, grieved, and home-sick. The Southern Confederates at that time were at the best, steadily advancing North toward Pennsylvania. The Northern generals appeared unequal to Lee and Jackson ; and on the whole the prospect looked dark and ominous. Mr. Beecher never for a moment lost faith in the ultimate issue ; but the sad news of the slaughter of his countrymen vexed him sore. He could not speak on the subject or look across the Atlantic without his eyes filling. This, coupled with the general apathy, indifference, or opposition which he had met on his travels from press and people in the cause nearest to his heart, tilled him with chagrin, if not disgust. He was very taciturn. He had just listened to B rough Pirn's scathing speech agaist the North, in Edinburgh. He arrived in Glasgow on Friday evening, and on Saturday he was urged to preach on Sunday, but refused on the ground that it was only to satisfy " the animal heat and pressure of curiosity," he had been asked. On being plied further, he said, " Rathe ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 335 than appear obstinate, he would address a prayer-meeting quietly," but on being told that the evening papers were all now published, and that no notice of the sermon could be given, so that there would only be the regular congregation, he at length somewhat reluctantly consented to preach in the morning. It was remarked that the time was short for preparation, but that likely he had brought some sermons with him ; whereupon he replied, " I never look after a bullet when once it is fired." The news had somehow got wing on Sunday morning, so much so that even the pulpit stairs were crowded to such an extent that it was with difficulty he could wend his way up to the pulpit. He preached for upward of an hour ; and the sermon was one of the noblest ever delivered in that church. Not long before Thomas Binney, of London, had preached three sermons in the same pulpit, but at the close of Beecher 1 s discourse a distinguished minister present whispered into my ear, "That's worth Binney 's three I" The •senior deacon of the church, who was a little chary about Beecher preaching in that pulpit, in consequence of the warlike qualities in which the papers had represented him, said at the close, " He is the Prince of Preachers." I may add that I have heard Beecher often preach, but never with such power before or since as that day. His text was from Philippians 2 : 4—1 1 , " Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who being in, etc., etc." A number of Christian people gathered round Mr. Beecher, and on Monday morning a public breakfast was got up to his honor by the Scottish Temperance League, in the large rooms of the Cobden Hotel. This too was crowded. After breakfast the chairman gave an address, referring to what his father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, had done for Temperance, what his sister, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, had done against slavery, and what he himself had done and was doing as the advocate of liberty and human rights. Mr. Beecher in a long speech replied nertat- 336 1IKXRY WARD BEECHER. Urn to each of the points ; but when he came to the question of slavery and the war and to the defence of the North, it was like the irruption of a long pent up volcano. Such an avalanche of burning oratory had seldom, if ever, been heard by any of the persons present. When several of the ministers in the company made speeches after him, one gentleman remarked, "That they all appeared like children beside him." Mr. Beecher invited questions to be asked for any further information they wished on the subject. After a good many questions were asked and satis- factorily answered, one decent, quiet-looking gentleman asked in a calm, confidential tone, " Now, Mr. Beecher, do you really think that tariffs had not a good deal to do with the disruption of the South ?" "If any man asked that question in the United States, he would be put in a strait- jacket right off," replied Beecher. Mr. Beecher's speech was telegraphed to London ; and next morning the Times was down upon him and his cause with a slashing editorial. This only seemed to rouse Beecher, and when he was urged by many friends of the North who had gathered around him to give somewhat similar addresses before he left to enlighten the British people on the whole question in dispute between the North and the South, he at 'last consented to give five lectures — one in Glasgow and one also in Liverpool, Manchester, and London, leaving a day for travelling between each of the cities. All he had intended to see of Scotland was now given up. Persons high in rank and in authority were telegraphed to that he would not be able to fulfil his promise to visit them. As he said himself, " Now for the work, and off with the coat, and may God help me." Meetings to be held in each of the cities were speed- ily arranged by the local friends of the North, and advertised for their respective days. The die was now cast and the campaign fairly opened. Liverpool and Glasgow were the worst places he had to encounter, because the Clyde and the Mersey furnished blockade- ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 337 Tunners, and other mercantile interests were also involved. On the day of his Glasgow lecture the city was emblazoned with large posters of what Beecher had said and what he had never said against Great Britain. A general excitement prevailed, and arrangements were made to secure the peace in case of a row. Beecher was spoken to in reference to the law that regulates public meetings. He listened quietly to what was said, and then giving an emphatic slap on his thigh, " If I can't keep them in order I am not fit for the place. ' ' Long before the hour the City Hall was crammed, and thousands could not gain admission. It was with great diffi- culty that Beecher himself made his way through the dense mass of people to the Hall. Baillie Govan, who was appoint- ed Chairman, amid a storm of interruptions attempted to open the meeting. The Rev. Dr. William Anderson, a great fa- vorite on the Glasgow platform, had been appointed to in- troduce Mr. Beecher ; but, after a few preliminary sentences, was obliged to sit down, so uproarious, was the audience. It was problematical at this stage whether the lecture would be allowed to go on. After a short lull in the tempest, Mr. Beecher sprang to the front of the platform, and with a good- natured, kindly countenance, depicted the sublime beauty of our Scottish scenery through which he had passed, the heroism of our Scottish warriors, the world-wide fame of our bards and poets with such glowing eloquence, that a spontaneous burst of applause followed. This looked well ; but it was only temporary, for as Mr. Beecher proceeded to the main question — viz., a vindication of the government and the North against the rebellion of the South — this was by no means so palatable. For the first twenty or thirty minutes, indeed, it brought forth repeated storms of disapprobation, so much so that once he said, " that he would sit down and rest until they got the hissing over." During the last hour, however, he had it all his own way. As a gentleman 338 HKNKY WARD BEECHER, remarked," be appeared like ;i driver having complete command of his four-in-hand team." The exceeding readiness with which he retorted upon the persons who hurled their questions at him, turn- ing the laugh in every instance against the questioner, was a mar- vel of dialectic skill, and astonished everybody. Some one cried out exultantly, " that the South was beating the North." " Yes," replied Mr. Beecher, " and when we bring tin in back to allegiance, we shall think more than ever of them for the pluck they are showing." The cry of the majority then arose, " You shall never bring them back.'" " But we shall bring them back, " reiterated Mr. Beecher. " Never! never /" was the almost unanimous cry. Beecher saw it was useless to continue this lung warfare, and he naively told them a story which this contest between him and his audience reminded him of, and which put them all into good humor and made them laugh. Beecher took his advantage and calmly but firmly said, " We shall bring them back," and went on with his lecture before they got time to reiterate their " never.'''' As Mr. Beecher was proceed- ing he said something that looked like a touch of boasting, when an angry gentleman cries out, " Oh, you are great boasters in America." " Yes," replied Mr. Beecher, " we can do a trifle at that too ; at least we do as much as to show what nation we sprung from." At this time cotton was scarce and the demand great ; so a gentleman cries out, " Tell us when the war shall be over. " "That depends, " replied Beecher, " partly on how long you continue to give your sympathy to the South ; but as for us," he continued with deepening emphasis, " the war shall not cease so long as there is a slave in America on whom the sun of heaven can shine." Then another cried, " You need not waste your time telling us about slavery, we hate slavery as much as you." " So everybody tells me whenever I meet them, that they hate slavery ; but for all your professions, strange to say, you are all caught in very suspicious company with your arms ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 339 round the slaveholders' necks." Another interposed with, " I have been in the South and seen with my own eyes that the slaves are well treated. They get plenty to eat, are well clothed, and are allowed to sing and dance at night as much as they please." To this Mr. Beecher quaintly replied, " I have a pig at home ; she gets as much as she can eat, and as much litter as she can use, and I allow her to grunt as much as she pleases ; but still she is my pig. " " Why not let the South go ? The country is large enough for you both," cries another. " All very well for you to speak, who live in an island that America could put in her skirt pocket ; but if you knew how our mountains go and how our rivers run, you would not talk so. Besides, if we were divided, Slavery on the one side and Liberty on the other, we would require a stand- ing army to watch each other. No, no ! we don't want the European system of standing armies to eat up a tenth of the produce of the land. Besides, standing armies are dangerous things ; when a boy gets a knife, he's aye whittling with it." " But what will you do with your army when the war is over ?" " When our work is done in the field, they will return to their counter, their college, and their plough from whence they came, just as snow melts away at the bidding of spring." Another cried, " We don't sympathize with slavery, but we go for the South because they are the weaker party." "Go then and sympathize with the devil, he was the weakest party also when he rebelled and was turned out of heaven. Yours is a good enough argument for school boys ten years of age. Hold a string between them and see who is the strongest ; but when the princi- ples of Liberty and Slavery are the questions, it is a shame for a man of your age to talk that way." Such were a few of the interruptions and questionings which the lecturer had to encounter during the first half hour ; the rest of the time, as I have said, he had it all his own way ; the ques- tioners were dumb. At last the voice ceased, and the people 340 HENRY WARD BEECHER dispersed — some convinced, others staggered or disarmed, most to take fresh stock of their convictions. Mr. Beecher left next morn- ing for Edinburgh to deliver his next lecture ; from thence he proceeded to Liverpool, Manchester, and London. In each.of the cities he defended the principles and policy of the American government against the secessionists with marvellous power and tact. The British people began to see the case more clearly ; the press became more subdued as it prepared to wheel round ; and the Alabamas and blockade-runners building on the Mersey and the Clyde were suddenly stopped by the government by orders from Whitehall. Mr. Beecher's days in Britain were now numbered ; but the time was well employed. Christian people of all denominations clustered closely around him ; nothing but public breakfasts and evening meetings in London, Manchester, and Liverpool, all the way down to the day of embarkation ; even the morning he sailed a public breakfast was given him, where only a few days before he had encountered such a harassing opposition. Punch had a ■well-defined cartoon of Beecher in his oratorical attitude adminis- tering syrup to soothe the British Lion. Had Beecher only come two years sooner, there would have been little sympathy in Britain for the slaveholdins; South. X. By REV. CHARLES HALL EVEREST, D.D., Of Chicago, III. No more notable event has transpired in the Christian world during the last fifty years than the advent of this peculiarly gifted and brilliant ambassador for Christ. Sprung from a stock strong in mind and facile in expression, the very best traits seem to have ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 341 (Culminated in this " favorite son," and as Abraham Lincoln once said of him, that " he possessed the most productive mind of ancient or modern times," so we may add that he possesses a genius for moral ideas that has not been surpassed. In vindication of this eulogy we have but to point to the mani- fest effects of his yet unfinished life. The American pulpit has been emancipated from the scholastic hampers that were compel- ling it to keep pace with mediaeval rather than modern thought and method, and while many may be reluctant to credit this liberty to the influence of any one living man, the fact is still patent, that the putting off " Saul's armor," and the going forth with the simple hut effective slings furnished by nature and common-sense, was not characteristic of the American ministry before his day. If, therefore, the presentation of the simple truth in the simple language of the day, and yet with the eloquent force that inheres in the vernacular, and if this pressing of the claims •of Christ in the tongue in which men were born has produced Pentecostal results, we affirm that under God, our gratitude should be to him who more than thirty years ago struck the key-note in Plymouth pulpit. Any innovation like this referred to — though in fact it was but copying the Master himself — introduced by a man less strong in brain and less devoted in heart, might have caused confusion and a consequent weakening of ministerial influence, but the experi- ment of playing upon all the strings of the human soul boldly, and summoning the whole man daily to its best activity for Christ's sake as the highest expression of godliness, was in his own hands so large and permanent a success, that it swept the land, and scores of young men who had been trained to fit and polish creeds forgot the lessons of the schools, and gave them- selves to the more glorious work of forming characters and inspir- ing lives. Mr. Beecher's popularity has been so remarkable, that many 342 BENRT WARD BEECHER. have assumed that much of his zeal was for the sake of the incense that was offered to his genius, and that the natural love of power impelled him to seek the greatest possible eminence. But a personal acquaintance of more than twentj years has given me a far different estimate of his motives and ambitions. In giving private counsel, such as he would naturally impart to me as a member of his church, as one who had been ordained to the ministry in that church, and under his own auspices, and also allied to him by blood, the impression always abiding with me was, that the Lord Jesus Christ was " the chiefest of ten thou- sand " to him; that he was more solicitous for his glory than any other, and that in an eminent degree the love of Christ constrained him in all his life work. This view of the depth of his devotion to the Master, and his conscious reliance upon him, was most forcibly conveyed to me soon after the memorable " trial " through which he passed. I was journeying to New York on the Hudson River Road, when at Peekskill Mr. Beecher entered the car, and taking a seat by me was my companion to the city. In the course of the conver- sation, that almost immediately drifted to the malignant trial referred to, I was expressing the deep satisfaction that all Chris- tian men felt, that the attempts to stain his name and impair his influence for good had been futile, when he turned suddenly and faced me, and with a most impressive manner said, " Everest, my deliverance is no mystery to me ; the whole case to my mind is summed up in those words of Jesus to Peter, ' Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee,' and the same Master prayed for me." The influence of such a fervid, richly endowed, and yet consecrated man cannot be measured in its relation to the country as well as the church. The services rendered to the cause of humanity in the great anti-slavery struggle, and to patriotism both in this land and across the sea, during the fiery days of war, ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 343 have their record in the hearts of the people, and need no enumer- ation here. No good word or work during the last half century has failed to receive his earnest and eloquent endorsement. No sketch, however brief, of Mr. Beecher, can afford to omit a reference to that wealth of good nature and sociability that render his words as fascinating in private circles as in the great assem- blage. On a day of surpassing interest to me some twenty years ago, it being my wedding-day, I met the noon train at Hartford, Connecticut, to welcome and escort Mr. Beecher to the bride's residence. As most young men under similar circumstances would have done, I went to the upper end of the depot, so as to appear collected and not too eager for his coming. But to my dismay the sturdy form for which I watched did not appear, and it was only after several hours that I learned that he had jumped from the train before it entered the station, and not finding me, and supposing that the law of the State would not permit him, a non-resident, to marry me — though the obnoxious law had been repealed — he had gone to his sister's, Mrs. Stowe. Thither I hastened, and finding the much-desired parson, he met me with the cool proposition to take one of Mrs. Stowe's daughters, and thus save time and a long ride down to the city. "But," he finally said, " if you really have a preference for the other girl, I will go down with you." I had a preference, and the short but beautiful service that made that winter evening forever memorable to me was declared by Mr Beecher to a friend to have been " the best piece of ecclesiastical work" he ever did, in which opinion, I may frankly say, T most heartily concur. Long may the life that has ministered beside the altars of joy and sorrow for many hearts be continued to illumine the earth that it has so signally blessed, and sad will be the day for the earth when that life shall be received " into the glory that shall be revealed." :;il HENRY WARD BEBCHER. XI. By REV. W. BURNET WEIGHT, Of Boston, Massachusetts. Let me say at once that I wholly honor and love Mr. Beecher, and have long counted his friendship among the best of my bless- ings. For sonic this fact will take away all value from anything 1 may say about him, since there are those who never trust the fidelity of a portrait unless it has been painted by an enemy of the man it pretends to represent, or at least by one who can view him with a stranger's eye. But I believe a man is never truly known except to his friends. Even if that were not so, the question would remain, "What made them his friends?" Until that is an- swered, the part of the man best worth our knowing must remain unknown. I will tell, therefore, as well as I can, what has made me love and honor Mr. Beecher. In the sermon which he preached at my installation over Berkeley Street Church, he remarked that he had rocked my cradle. I have also heard it said that when he was Studying at bane Seminary, he named my father's house the ■ l'n'ocher Tavern." But I do not remember ever seeing him until my middle year at Andover, and before that time 1 never heard or read a sermon or lecture from him. lie had just finished speaking in Tremont Temple, and was surrounded by a host of people offering their congratulations. T Btood outside the press holding a note of introduction, and hesitating whether to present it or wait for a better opportunity, w hen he stepped toward me, took the note from my hand, read my name, and exclaimed : " Are you a son of Nathaniel Wright ?" "Yes, sir." "Then you ought not to be bringing intro- ductions to me, but giving them to other people !" I think ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 345 ho had not seen my father for twenty years, and they had not corresponded during the interval ; yet he threw so much genuine regard into that single sentence that I instantly felt at home with the great man I had a moment before been afraid to approach. I had been thinking, " A cat may look at a king." He made me feel how much better than a cat is a boy to his father's friend. The next day we went together to his home in Brooklyn. In- stead of destroying his interest in the friends of his early years, his long absence from the West appeared to have increased his love for them. He seemed to remember more Cincinnati people than I had ever known. He asked about them ; he described them with a vividness and accuracy which made me feel as if he were living there and had been away only on a visit. The impression made upon me then of the intense personal interest he feels in people, of his never forgetting anybody he has once known, of his always dwelling upon their lovely traits and forgetting their un- lovely ones, of his immense capacity of liking even those whom no one else can like, has been steadily deepening during a friend- ship of more than twenty years. This faculty of seeing things to love in individuals and of taking them into his personal regard, seems to me the top root of his in- fluence. He sways the masses and wins their heart just because to him there are no masses. He never lumps men nor thinks of them in bulk. He cares nothing for " being in general," but every- thing for particular beings. His preaching reaches all men because it is never aimed at all men, but at some special John or James or William whom he knows and loves. When the thousand other Johns or Williams listen, each feels that he is personally addressed by one wrTo loves without having seen him. Thus the power of individualizing men and establishing a direct relation with each one of a multitude comes from his interest in individuals. The reflex of it appears in the way in which people generally in speaking of 346 BENRI WARD BEECHEK. him call him by bis Christian name, as if they felt he belonged to them as a member of their family. I can recall but three among the great spiritual teachers of this generation who have inspired this sentiment. Men speak of " Mr. Spurgeon," " Dean Stan- lev," " Dr. Parker." They say John Henry Newman to distin- guish him from another Newman, and " James Martineau" to show they do not mean his sister. But they say ( ieorge MacDonald, Phillips Brooks, Henry Ward Beecher, because they feel instinct- ively toward these men as I felt when the warm grasp held my hand in Tremont Temple. This vivid interest in persons is the source of Mr. Beecher's power of putting people at their best in his society. Some great men are in this respect like yard-sticks. Without in the least meaning to do so, they make you feel that you are indubitably but half an inch high. Other still greater men act upon yon as heat acts upon mercury. You do not measure yourself by them, nor once consider whether you are large or small, but you feel that you are growing larger for being with them. You think your best thoughts, say your brightest things, feel your noblest impulses in their presence. These men do not flatter your pride, for pride always puts one at his worst. But they see in you more than you thought was there, and presently it comes out and justifies their insight. So spring affects plants. This is the source of the lifting power of Mr. Beecher's minis- try. The Master could save the world, because he saw in the worst men more to love than others saw in the best. The eye which discerned affection in denying Peter and womanhood in the daughter of shame, raised Peter to repentance and Magdalen to purity. But the great world is only many millions of sinners essentially like these. What has often amazed me in Mr. Beecher is the immense ex- tent and accuracy of his information. How he has gained it I can- •»-»* say. He never studies as other men do. He reads slowly, ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 347 indeed I count him the slowest reader alive. Slow reading often makes deep thinkers, but rarely has it produced broad scholars. But Mr. Beecher's knowledge of books is prodigious. I remember watching his skilful play on the croquet ground one summer afternoon, when I had for some months been study- ing Herbert Spencer. When the game was done, in reply to a question I asked him, he gave me an account of Spencer and his writings with a wealth of biographical details and a knowledge of the man's entire system, which would have been remarkable in a carefully prepared and written lecture. I have often tested him in the same way on other themes, only to find him equally in- formed and ready. It has mattered little what subject was broached in conversation, he seems to have made it a specialty ; science, literature, art, politics, theology — in each he is equally at borne. In his private conversation his speech is as perfect in qual- ity of thought, in richness of illustration, and in precision of statement as are his public utterances. This is true of only one other man I have known, and that man, Mr. Phillips, is the least like him of all orators that can be named. One may spend a day in converse with either of these men, then listen to the lecture or sermon, and feel that the conversation was fully equal to the speech. I believe that Mr. Beecher's finest sayings have been spoken in private. The slightest tinge of personal vanity would render this impossible. I think it also comes from their interest in individuals. For to each of these men, accustomed to the ap- plause of multitudes, a solitary child appears an audience worthy of all his powers. A distinctive characteristic of Mr. Beecher's preaching is his fidelity in the use of Scripture. He has been often thought careless in this respect. It has been said of him — among others by Mr. Parton, I believe — that he takes verses to head his sermons through habit, and then proceeds to say whatever he likes without regard to text or context. ' No judgment could be more false. :>-IS HENRI WARD BEECHER. Of all preachers known to me Mr. Beecher sticks most closelj to his text — not to its letter, but to its truth. Others may hold higher theories of inspiration, hut a careful examination of his Bermons will convince a competent critic that no other preacher treats the Bible more reverently. His method is to get the truth contained in his text as accurately as he can, and then apply that and nothing else in whatever wa\ may he most effective for the guidance of men. In this respect Rohertson approaches him most nearly. The sermons of these two men come out of their texts, and rarely are read into them. Perhaps among the celebrated preachers of this generation .Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. Moody hold the highest theory of verbal in- spiration. Yet I believe any single year's preaching of either will furnish more examples of reckless dealing with Scripture, more instances of texts explored as clothes-lines on which to hang the disconnected things they happen to think, than can be gathered from all the pulpit work of Mr. Beech Vs life. I fear 1 have already passed the limits your courtesy has offered me, and will therefore close by recording one remark which illus- trates that quality in Mr. Beecher which I mentioned first, and which seems to me the noblest sentence I ever heard him utter. Some years ago when it was harder for me than it is now to make due allowance for the weaknesses of men, I was alone with him. A treacherous blow had been dealt him by one who had long enjoyed his intimate confidence and cordial friendship. He was then passing through perhaps the heaviest trial of his life. I was aflame with indignation at what seemed to me then and does now a most deliberate and malignant treachery, and asked as men ask when they mean to get new fuel for a fire already too fierce, " What do you think of that man now V He raised his eyes to mine. They were moist, but not a spark of anger was in his face, and his voice was softer and gentler than T had ever heard it, as he replied, " I have been forced to bury him." I have never ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 349 heard him allude in any Avay to that person since, and it would still be impossible for me to tell him my honest opinion of his " buried friend." XII. By REV. E. P. PUTNAM, D.D., Unitarian Pastor, Brooklyn, N. Y. Too much importance has been attached by many to Mr. O. B. Frothingham's utterances in relation to the radicalism of the day. Though his followers, have become very much excited in consequence of what he has said and done, and have pronounced him " old" or" sick" or " weak" or " aristocratic" or " treacher- ous," it does not yet appear that he has really gone back from his former position, however he may for the moment call to his friends, " Halt /" But even had he essentially changed his views, he is but one among many cultivated men of the land who are drifting about amid the currents of religious opinion and specula- tion, and the extent of whose influence is altogether a matter of uncertainty. The only significance of his new attitude is that, with a multitude of others, he seems to have come to a point be- yond which he cannot very well go in the direction of doubt and denial, let who will wander farther. What is of main interest to us is that hundreds and thousands are beginning with him to feel that they are going nowhere and that it is high time to stop, if not to retrace their steps. But one thing is sure, they will not in any event return to the old creeds and systems of a bygone cen- tury. These have been demolished and pulverized beyond the possibility of reconstruction. Many agencies have co-operated to bring about the desired and needed result, many famous preachers and many powerful books, popular education, the progress of 350 HENRY WARD BEECHER. science, increased means of travel, ami intercommunication, and what is commonly called the spirit of the age. Of all the men of our country wh<> have wrought to this cud, I doubt whether any one has done more effective service than Rev. Henry Ward B her. His influence has Keen all the more potent that he lias si 1 and accomplished his work within the lines of the orthodox church, never going quite so far as to separate himself from the communion and fellowship in which he was born and reared, and vet going quite far enough to gain ample vantage-ground for the most damaging assaults upon the old faith. Through his long and remarkable ministry of more than forty years, he has so broken, one by one, with the old evangelical doctrines, that his orthodoxy has come to be a radically different ^ thing from the orthodoxy of his celebrated father, Dr. Lyman Beecher. Not alone as a preacher to a vast congregation, but also as an editor of various widely-circulated weekly papers, a popular and industrious lecturer in many parts of the country, and a prodigious and untiring worker in the world of polities, philanthropy, education, and general liter- ature, he has constantly exerted his great influence in stimulating thought, in setting men's minds free from ancient errors, in in- culcating new and nobler ideas, in humanizing religion, and in making the churches more and more recognize love as the essential and eternal element of it, and in enthroning the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man as the great and paramount principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Dean Stanley, during his late visit to this country, acknowledged that Mr. Beecher, more than any other man, had taught him in all its fulness the truth of the Fatherhood of God. The orthodoxy of fifty years ago was hard and cold and dead. The orthodoxy of to-day, as modified and changed by Mr. Beecher, is warm and vital, and finds readier access to the hearts of the common people. Unita- rianism seemed incompetent for this work, not because it had not the truth as ft is in Jesus, but from other causes which are suffi- ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 351 ciently well understood. What the masses would not hear from trained and cultured heretics of Harvard or Boston, they were quite willing to hear and also to aceept from one of unsurpassed genius and eloquence, who belonged to the old communion, but who yet was instinct with sympathy for all, and who presented re- ligion in more engaging and attractive forms than she had worn for them before. Through all these years his word has gone out into all the world and found its way into myriads of churches and homes, liberalizing thought and creed, inspiring more of love to God and love to man, and diffusing everywhere a more genial light and life. Who can measure the extent to which, under such kindlier influences, the iron systems of the past have yielded and melted away ? No mere processes of logic could have done it. Mr. Beecher is not, in the strict sense of the word, a logician or a theologian. In his presentations of truth and doctrine, he has often, as it seems to us, been inconsistent with himself. One of his emotional nature, vivid imagination, playful fancy, and inex- haustible wit and humor, could hardly be otherwise, while living so active a life and called to such multifarious tasks. Nevertheless, his has been a persistent force, and it would not have been greater, but less, had his more nicely harmonized theological belief been purchased at the expense of the Shakespearian breadth and variety of his mental and moral endowments. The contributions which he has made to the religious thought and life of the world will pass into the church of the future, and will still grow to more and more when he himself has passed from earth. 352 HENRY WARD BEEC'HER. XIII. By REV. A. II. BRADFORD, Pastor of Congregational I'/mrr/,, Mnnidnir, \ be my companion to hear Mr. Beecher preach in the evening of the first Sunday in May, 1865, and to which 1 made only an indifferent reply. Seated in the church before the time of service, I could scarcely endure the whispered criticisms and the ebullitions of the rankest prejudice poured out against the crowd that was packing the building, the building itself, the organ, the style of pulpit, and its furniture, and even against the innocent flowers that adorned it. Even the incomparable singing did not seem to sub- due the evil spirit which held possession of the soul beside me. But the prayer touched upon those who carried bitterness in their hearts and were at enmity with men and with God, and plead for those who had been disappointed, and who had been hurt, and not profited by it, and the prayer, I could see, had quieted if it had not subdued. The sermon was not long commenced until the sneer had gone from the countenance. It was evident that a great struggle was taking place in the mistaken soul of my acquaintance, for tears several times moistened his eyes. After the service we walked to the ferry arm in arm and in entire silence. He was very serious and I waited for him to speak first. " I swear, I believe I have been most egregiously mistaken about that man," said he. "No proposition was ever clearer to me," was my reply. " It don't seem put on," said he ; " he seems to feel, and that deeply, everything he says." The next Sunday he desired an introduction to Mr. Beecher, declaring his intention to hear the greatest preacher in the two cities at every service and every prayer- meeting during his stay, and from that time to this, though nearly two thousand miles away, he will not brook that any one should say a word against Mr. Beecher. This case is only one of several of nearly the same interest that have come under my own obser- vation. . ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 385 XXL By REV. FATHER KEEGAN, VICAR-GENERAL, Pastor of the York Street Roman Catholic Church, Brooklyn, New York. There are many subjects upon which Mr. Beecher and myself could not be in accord with each other. Our education and habits of life are very different. We have studied theology and ethics in schools almost in direct opposition to one another, yet I am proud to say that there are many things in which we are in perfect sympathy. In matters purely secular and in true philan- thropy, I regard Mr. Beecher as second to no man in the land ; he seems instinctively to love liberty and to hate tyranny and oppression. He has a heart to feel for the poor, and a hand ever ready to extend his charity to the distressed ; no matter to him when or where the cry of distress reaches him. Whether it be the sorrow and poverty at our own door, or whether the wail comes across the ocean, his mind is too comprehensive and his charity too cosmopolitan to make any distinction. I wish Mr. Beecher many years of happiness in this life, and eternal peace hereafter. XXII. Bv JESSE SELIGMAN, Of New York City. I eagerly embrace this opportunity to lay my tribute upon the altar of Mr. Beecher's fame. As a mere friend, one of the many warm admirers of the man and his career, admirers as numerous as the hundreds of thousands that at one time or another have been witnesses of his strength, I should hardly feel called 386 HENRY WARD BEECHER. upon to join in the chorus of praise that so welcomes every occa- sion to do him honor. We have grown to look upon Mr. Beecher and honest, enthusiastic applause, almost as inseparable com- panions, and his place among the great public men of our day is unshakingly established. But it is not simply as a member of the same community, not simply as a fellow-American, that I seek to help bring home to him the admiration he everywhere commands. It is as the Jew, as one who speaks for that persecuted, long-suffering people, that at one time had almost forgotten to believe in aught but hard blows and misery. But, thank God, those old days of Ghetto and Inquisition are past ; ay, even the old days of Puritanism and tantalizing social oppression. Great, honest, sturdy, liberal- minded men have been at work, men with the spirit of God strong within them, to batter down the stubborn walls of bigotrv and fanaticism ; men that felt the existence of the common father- hood of God and the brotherhood of man ; men that paved the way for a Declaration of Independence with its freedom and equality for all ; men, at length, of the mind and heart and soul of a Henry Ward Beecher ! Even in these days of political enfranchisement, however, the Jew has known the galling yoke of social discrimination, and only yesterday the world had to protest against anti-Semitic agita- tions. Our people have had strong champions, stout defenders, but none more pronounced, more brave, more vigorous, none more emphatic in loyalty and friendship to this people than Mr. Beecher; and therefore the Jew, as the Jew, demands as his special privilege the right to indulge his gratitude by bearing witness, not alone to the oratory, the learning, and the grace, but to the large heart, liberal mind, and public spirit of this eminent preacher. I am one of that large body who will always deem it a signal honor to be counted among the friends of Mr. Beecher. ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 387 XXIII. By REV. T. J. CONANT, D.D. My acquaintance with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher com- menced in the year 1847. It was on the occasion of his first Sabbath service with the Plymouth Church, of which he became the pastor. I heard him but once, and was struck with the fresh- ness and originality of his thoughts, then as ever since characteris- tic of the man. In the following year we again met at Hamilton, where I then resided. There, in the social circles in which we daily met, I saw much of his inward life ; and I observed in him traits of character that won my confidence and esteem, ripening at length into a life-long friendship. For more than a quarter of a century he has been one of my most intimate and trusted friends, and no guest is more welcome in our family circle and at the fireside. Of the public labors and influence of a man so widely known, it is superfluous to speak. So far as I am aware, no other preacher in this country wields a personal influence over so many minds. Crowds throng the large assembly room, and crowds go away unable to obtain admission. His discourses are rich in practical instruction for old and young ; and his words of encour- agement, salutary warnings, and scathing rebukes of wrong, can- not fail of their effect. As I look round on that sea of upturned faces, I feel that the power he wields for good is not to be estimated. For though his speculative views are not all in accord with my own, yet in the main point, the scriptural doctrine of Christ as the central source of all spiritual life, the sinners' only hope of reconciliation with God and salvation from sin, is fully and earnestly set forth. Of his wide influence for good, beyond his own personal sphere, it is unnecessary for me to speak. His name will be held in long and grateful remembrance in our own and in other lands. 388 HENRY WARD BEECHER XXIV. By PROF. G. B. WILLCOX, D.D., Of the Congregational Theological Seminary, <'hicago, Illinois. I have long been an admirer of Mr. Beecher and shall bewail the day when he shall be summoned away from among us. 1 sa\ us, because he belongs to the whole country, not to Plymouth Church or Brooklyn alone. I suppose that is true of him, as a pulpit orator, which never has been true before of any preacher in this country, and, after his departure, never will be true again. It is this : if, in any company of intelligent persons, you should speak of the foremost preacher on this continent without mention- ing his name, nine persons in every ten would know whom you meant. We are not likely to see again a man who towers, in that way, like Saul, head and shoulders above his brethren. I suppose almost every one who has ever heard Mr. Beecher much has some one scene, or more, that is stamped indelibly on his memory. The one that I shall carry in memory to my grave was the speech in the old Tabernacle for the Edmonson sisters. You will remember that they were two of a party of seventy slaves who attempted to escape in the schooner Pearl from Alex- andria, Va. They were pursued, recaptured, brought back to the slave-pen, and these two young ladies (for they were ladies) were to be sold to New Orleans. They were attractive, and, as a thousand dollars apiece was demanded for them, while their labor would not be worth a third of that, everybody who heard of the case understood what fate awaited them. Bruin & Hill, the slave dealers, said they would as leave take an abolitionist's money as anybody's else. They gave the father of the young maidens a letter certifying their good character, especially as " Methodist Christians," and the old man, who was free, came North with his great burden of anguish, heavy as Pilgrim's load in the Slough of ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 389- Despond, begging for money to ransom his children from shame. He reached Mr. Beecher's house, which was the Mecca for all such pilgrims, and Mr. Beecher at once took him into his heart, and posters went out calling a meeting in the Tabernacle, with the Plymouth pastor as chief speaker. Of course the house was crammed. Mr. Beecher announced, early in his address, that he expected two thousand dollars from the audience before they left the house. He had the letter from Bruin (whose name ought to have been translated, he said) & Hill in his hand. He proceeded to read it, commenting as he went on. As he reached the phrase in which the writers commended the religious character of their chattels, " I can fancy," he said, " a scoffing demon standing behind to point over the shoulder of this trafficker in flesh and blood and the honor of womanhood, with long, skinny finger and a leer in his eye at this ' Christian slave ! ' And then he went on to set forth the fact that all those qualities, which, if in the North they belonged to a free citizen, would raise his position and influence in society, would, in the South, if they belonged to a slave, only raise his price in the market. " Here," he said, " is a splendid fellow — a noble specimen of God's image carved in ebony — brought on the auction-block for sale. And the auctioneer tells off his points. He begins with his physical qualities. ' A capital hand, gentlemen, six feet two in his stockings, well laced and braced with muscles, sound as a nut and stout as an ox — what do you bid?' 'Four hundred, '' five hundred,' bids coming slowly. And then he goes to the mental traits. ' A quick-witted nigger, gentlemen ! As good a fellow for a driver as you ever had on your place. How much ? ' ' Six fifty,' ' seven hundred.' Then come the moral qualities. ' As honest a fellow as the day is long, will take the proceeds of your cotton-crop to Charleston and in- vest, and bring back your bank certificates as well as you would do it yourselves — how much?' 'Seven fifty,' 'eight hundred.' ' And more than all that, gentlemen, they say he's one of these 390 HENRY WARD BEECHER. prayin' Methodist niggers, who bids? ' ' A thousand ! ' ' Fifteen hundred ! ' ' Two thousand ! ' ' Twenty-rive hundred ! ' " I have seen audiences thrilled, but I hardly ever saw one so perfectly frenzied with excitement as they were, while that picture was ilrawn. He spoke for three quarters of an hour ; and then, hav- ing a secretary ready with writing materials, called for subscrip- tions. These ran up to about fifteen hundred dollars and then flagged. Mr. Beecher tramped the platform with another speech of perhaps fifteen minutes, and the pledge went up, with a bound, to two thousand. The sisters were brought North, and I attended a second meeting, congratulatory, at which they were present. My time fails, and T can add only in regard to the great Plym- outh Pastor, in whom I see faults, but in whom I have never lost faith, God bless him to the end of his days, and may his days be long. XXV. By RABBI LILIENTHAL, D.D., Of Cincinnati, ohi,,. The ancient rabbis used to say that " a wise man grows wiser and greater with his age." The adage applies to Henry Ward Beecher. Every one of his lectures and sermons, brimful of orig- inal thought, shows a continuous advance in " light and truth," that breast-plate motto of the High Priest in Jerusalem. There is not a spark of prejudice or intolerance in Beecher. We always find him on the side of liberty and liberality, of right against might, a stern, stout advocate of all the oppressed and per- secuted. We Israelites hailed with thanksgiving his thundering protest against the anti-Semitic agitation in Germany. He does not bow to public opinion ; public opinion bows to him. Wher- ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 393 ever a prejudice, and let it be never so deeply rooted, lurks in the dark ; wherever misuse or abuse, the inheritance of obsolete custom and ages, resists the bright influence of the nineteenth century, Beecher fearlessly enters the lists, and challenges the enemy with a boldness that has won for him the admiration and applause of both continents. There is life in his words, and the life questions which he handles and elucidates in his unique and masterly manner, continue to secure to him the hearts of the people. He is both American and cosmopolitan, and therefore the enlightened of every creed, race, and color, love and applaud this great thinker, preacher, and orator. My prayer is that as many years of such usefulness as have been vouchsafed to him in the past may yet be spared to him. XXVI. By REV. GEORGE DOUGLASS, LL.D., Of the Wesleyan Theological University, Montreal, Canada. The colossal grandeur of Mr. Beecher' s endowment and char- acter is such that I feel utterly inadequate to pen anything worthy his peerless powers. Nearly thirty years have come and gone since I first heard him on a bright autumnal morning. That dis- course on " The Trial of Faith " was to me a new revelation and is as fresh in my memory, while I dictate this, as the hour I heard it. For more than twenty years I read his discourses in The In- dependent and elsewhere. I have been obliged to study the his- tory of the pulpit from the post-apostolic, patristic, and mediaeval ages downward, and I declare my solemn conviction, a conviction which I constantly affirm, that the ages have never produced a man so marvellously endowed as Mr. Beecher. I hold that he unveils the character of God, expounds the principles of his govern- 394 BENRI WARD BEECHER. incut in its material and ethical relations, propounds the philosophy of human life with an original power that I, at least, cannot find elsewhere in literature; while his perennial power of illustration, which springs from his mind fresh and clear as the crystal fountain, with the undertone of reverential regard and pervading unction, makes him a preacher without an equal in the pasl <>r a compeer in the present. The pregnant future holds many a surprise, but I greatly doubt if a man, take him all in all, will be found in the pulpit so regally endowed for a thousand years to come. XXVII. By GENERAL CLINTON B. FISK. T have loved Henry Ward Beecher for thirty-three years. "When I was a boy-merchant and visited New York from the West to purchase goods, I did not fail to hear him preach one or more times during my frequent sojourns there. His words in- spired mi' with ambition to be a good man. I was by his minis- trations brought nearer to my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I was inspired by him to hate slavery, to love my country, and do all I could to promote the cause of Liberty and Union. I have ever regarded him as the most remarkable man of these times, as the ablest and most eloquent preacher of the gospel in his day and generation. In some things I have not been in hearty sympathy with him, and I have wished that he had done some things differ- ent lv ; yet I have remembered that he was human, and that words and actions I might criticise were but his title deeds to a place in our common humanity. Of Ins absolute integrity of heart and purpose, of his unquestionable purity of life and thought, I have never had a shadow of doubt, and when the storms beat upon him I drew the closer to his side, and there remain and expect to stay ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 395 until we strike glad hands of fellowship where all hearts will be open to the scrutiny of the just, made perfect in the presence of Him who has blessed the world by giving to it so noble and true a man. May the Lord preserve him for many years to preach the Gospel, and inspire his fellow-men to lead manly, Christian, brave lives, is the prayer of one who would be glad to say more for one whom he loves as a father, teacher, and guide. XXVIII. By JOHN G. WHITTIER. Henry Ward Beecher is unmistakably one of the most re- markable men of his time. His fame as a pulpit orator has gone wherever the English language is spoken. On the platform he has few equals. As a life-long friend of freedom he has gained what Milton calls " a freehold of rejoicing to him and his heirs" in the emancipation of the slave. I scarcely know how to class him as a theologian, but it seems to me that his influence has been felt throughout Protestantism in softening intolerance, and promoting brotherly love and charity ; as a citizen and patriot he has never been found wanting in acts of private beneficence or the public advocacy of the great interests of his country. His noble vindi- cation of the cause of the Union during our civil war against the denunciations of the English press and the violence of English mobs endeared him to all loyal hearts. The slave, the prisoner, the poor, the sick and afflicted are his friends. I had never the pleasure of hearing him but once. He was in his Plymouth pulpit, and in the midst of his immense and sympa- thizing audience. His sermon was a most eloquent presentation of the gospel of love, warm, tender and irresistibly attractive. Listening to it I could well understand the secret of his general popularity and the intense admiration of his immediate friends. 396 III.XRY WAKD BEECHER. XXIX. By REV. EUGENE BERSIER, D.D., Pastor of the Reformed Church of Pari*, France. In response to your letter, in which you do me the honor to address me on the subject of " Henry Ward Beecher," I am eager to reply that, although few of his lectures and sermons have been translated into French, he is known to our people. I have often had occasion to speak about him in the journal published by my colleague, M. Pressense. I have cited several of his admirable protestations against slavery, and these citations have largely con- tributed to enlighten the thought in proving that the most energetic Christian faith is to be found in detestation of all oppression. This is the secret of his great force of thought. I remember, when quite young, in 1850, in the United States, I received a very vivid impression in hearing Henry Ward Beecher in the Plymouth Tabernacle. This sermon, so new, so vivid, so aggressive, revealed to me a new way of preaching, from which later on I tried to profit. T should feel very happy if this testimony can be placed in his biography. By REV. DAVID SWING, D.D., Of Chicago. [AN EXTRACT FROM A SERMON SENT BY THE AUTHOR FOR PUBLICATION IN THIS VOLUME.] Society is engaged chiefly in the effort to become established in the right path. It has always been pondering the way over which ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 397 it lias been making its long march. Politics is a pondering over the way of the State, agriculture a study of the fields, mechanics a study of forces and the application of these forces. Crossing into the moral world the author of these ancient proverbs advises all of us to ponder that peculiar path, and if possible find or make solid, enduring ways. The claim of Christianity that it is an inspired way and truth does not terminate this wonderment, for the in- quiry, What do the words of the sacred books mean ? rises and faithfully follows the mind of man. Man as a Christian or as a student of truth or as a religionist in the widest sense cannot per- haps ever reach a point in wisdom and virtue at which he can cease from his labors over the problem of religion. If he affirms that his Bible is inspired he will be perplexed with the question, What is that inspiration ? if he believes that his sin has been atoned for, he will not easily determine the question, What is that atonement ? if he becomes fully assured that there is a future life, he will be followed all through this world by many and varying surmises as to what may be the nature of the future lot of the righteous and the wicked. This debate, sometimes loud and some- times soft, will never close, for only the Infinite can know any- thing to perfection. Upon each part of man's landscape there falls something of shadow. Any one looking out at the present time must perceive that some new interpreters of Christianity have come and have come in quite a fulness of power, and have, as by the hands of giants, hurled upon our times new mountains of thought. We were all reminded a few days ago that one of these sons of a new thunder, and the greatest of all those who are speaking in our century, has been standing in one pulpit for thirty-three years. He is now baptizing little children whose fathers and mothers -he baptized when they were too young to speak or walk. Thirty-three years of religious eloquence rolling forth from an unrivalled mind and from a warm, tumultuous heart, what a spectacle even in our world 398 HENRY WARD BEECHER. of wonders ! Having descended by lineage and having ascended by his mind and soul from an old and quite iron-like shape of Christianity, Henry Ward Beecher stands in a significant sense for onr Christian period, and with more or less distinctness pro- claims the quality of the recent interpretations of the religion of the Man of Nazareth, lie possessed in the outset of his career a rare intellect, a mind like that of Goethe's, which is said to have looked out through a thousand eyes, and to such an all-sweeping sight he added a sympathetic heart which could see quickly and well the wants of the populace. In this one preacher intellectual greatness and emotional greatness met and fitted him for making a logical survey of the Christian theories and a benevolent study of man. Reason and kindness combined in this one priest at the altar. Imagination, fancy, wit, pathos, language, originality, great enthusiasm, great happiness and great physical power are some of the virtues and blessings which a kind Heaven bestowed npon this most favored child. He almost contradicts that fable of the nightingale which teaches us that nature never grants all good to any one individual. Coming into the work of the ministry over forty years ago, he has from the beginning of his active ser- vice been a new interpreter of the words and laws and dreams of the prevailing Christianity. He has been revivalist and philoso- pher and philanthropist and poet and politician and theologian quite judiciously mingled, and thus has moved along, not as a cannon-ball, which cuts a narrow path, but as a gulf stream which finds room only in an ocean and which sweeps from a Mexico to a Labrador. This man has not made all of the recent interpreta- tions of Christianity, but he has been a very potent agency in the direction of reformed thought. Through the firsl thirty years of this significant ministry the condition and rights and hopes of the American slaves entered into each sermon to attract an audience and to thrill them when attracted, and thus what new renderings of the cardinal doctrines came from this popular orator enjoyed ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 399 the advantage of being decorated by charity and of being heard by an audience and a country already fully aroused by sympathy for the oppressed Africans. Abolitionism or emancipation and full liberty and equality became the musical accompaniment of what was said by the same voice about the atonement or inspira- tion or hell or heaven. By the time the chains of the slave had fallen many theological chains had also fallen. While truth for the black man was being thought out there was in preparation at the same forge truth for the white man in the shop or field or church. The brain that was so busy with the effort to make the Gospels apply to the cabin of the negro was making religion apply to the cottage of the white man, and was making havoc in general of all abstruse and abstract theology. In seeking a religion for a few, Mr. Beecher uncovered a religion for all, and thus while de- vising a faith for a cotton-field he helped develop one for a conti- nent. In such a large and colossal form does Mr. Beecher seem to my own gaze stepping along through those thirty-three years he has just closed. It is difficult to make a survey of such a career without ceasing to be a calm critic and becoming a worshipper. In the presence of such mental resources and such a fame the heart feels enthu- siastic in admiration, and would ask all the language of praise to come to memory and help compose a eulogy, but I must resist such temptation far enough to confess that Mr. Beecher has not been a clear or formal exponent of a new Christianity, not always a wise adviser, nor has he always been in harmony with himself ; but when we all remember with what a power of logic and rhetoric he has asserted and maintained the truths of right and charity, the existence of a personal God, the divineness of Christ, the nearness of the mortal to the gates of immortality, all the now re- membered errors or discords weigh but little in even the most exact balances. I see before me forty years of valuable service. I stand by a stream of eloquence which all through these many 400 EENRY WARD BEECHER. summers lias never once none dry nor fallen low, but which lias run bank-full of waters sweel and bright. To tins greatest name upon one side of the ocean must be added Bome master minds upon that other margin of the sea whence came all our early good. Thomas Arnold of Rugby memory was a forerunner of the popular Christianity of to-day. He went out of the world's service just as Mr. Beecher was coming into it, and had done amid English graduates and learned men of the kingdom what our coming pulpiteer was about to begin among the people — make Christianity a life rather than a formula. Doctor Arnold had no use for a strict theological system ; but for a religion that would make a student truthful and kind, and that would make a thousand boys all one in rank and all brotherly feelings, he had daily need ; and so powerful was that Rugby Master that what he planned for an academy became a revelation to an empire. As Mr. Beecher passed from a slave pen to a continent, so Arnold of Rugby uttered in a schoolhouse thoughts which spread out and col- ored a century. By REV. ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD, B.D., President of Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, and Editor of the "Wesleyan Christian Advocate ' ' at Macon. [DESCRIPTION OF A VISIT TO PLYMOUTH CHURCH, FROM THE "WESLEYAN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE."] Ik the morning we heard Mr. Beecher. The polite usher pointed out a sort of waiting seat where we, with many others, could rest and watch, till the regular pew-holders were provided for, promising a better place later on. It turned out well — our temporary seat gave a fine view of the congregation as the people came in, first by ones, then by twos, and a little before preaching, ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 401 by scores. No one came in after the services began that we saw or heard. Mark this ! Such a crowd as that which meets in Plymouth Church, Brook- lyn, is enough to inspire any man with a soul in him. There was hardly ever a plainer front to a better audience-room. Mr. Beecher's auditorium has this high merit in a Protestant church — it was arranged for hearers and not for mere gazers. The Gothic, as it is called, belongs properly to the Roman Catholics ; it is- adapted to spectacular exhibitions and to " aesthetic" effects. But Gothic architecture is no friend to the hearing ear. In Plym- outh Church people can hear every word ; our place was in the gallery, but the lowest tones of the preacher were distinct. Even his distinct and perfectly natural articulation could not overcome some audience-rooms we have seen. Much has been said of the singing at Mr. Beecher's Church, but not too much. Louder congregational singing we have heard, as at the Tabernacle Sunday night, more exquisite music, as at Grace Church in the afternoon, but Plymouth Church has the best combination of organ music, choir-singing, and congregational singing, we have ever enjoyed. It was a delight to join in the songs. How stirring and evangelical they were ! Nothing was so perfectly satisfactory to us in the preacher's part of the service as the prayers. We could say amen, all the way through, and every time. Simple, direct, comprehensive, reverent, tender, they went right into people's hearts. They must surely be answered. The reading of the Scripture lessons was as if one were reading a good and loving letter from a saintly friend to his family. What mouthing some men do make in reading the Scriptures to the congregations ! Twice after that morning ser- vice we heard wretched reading. Would that we could forsjet some tones we heard that day. Mr. Beecher's text was Gal. 5 : 22, 23. His style is strong, clear, pointed, suited to his- thought, and, to the hearer's eye and ear, utterly without effort or 402 HENRY WARD BEECHER. pretence. There is no straining after effect either upon himself or his congregation. Ornaments there were plenty, if illustrations, fresh and dewy, ami perfectly adapted to their purpose, arc to be called ornaments. But there was do arranging of bouquets, that the flowers might be admired. His figures were as natural as were the lovely flowers on the rostrum — fresh that morning from some conservatory — before they were gathered. There was phil- osophic order in the sermon without a technicality ; joints where joints ought to be, but well concealed and as noiseless as were the hinges of the broad doors that opened to welcome the people. There was quick intuition without mystical vapors ; exegesis with- out the hint of it in terms, application without a reminder to the people that it was being made. Now and then a flash of genial, smile-evoking humor, without a taint of coarseness, and two or three times a glow of pathos without passion. As to his manner of speaking, we wish that all young preachers could hear him, not to imitate him, for that would be as ridiculous as vain — but to catch a hint of the most perfect naturalness we have ever seen in any orator. The man who can avoid mere gaucheries and awkwardness and then be just himself in posture, gesture, tone, and emphasis can learn this lesson. It is the old lesson of David putting off even the splendid armor of a king, be- cause it was not his own and he had not " proved it." Fairly considered, the sermon w r as spiritual and evangelical. If we were to take some sentences and paragraphs out of their con- nection, they would be considered almost heresies. So taken they would be heresies. Take the sermon as a whole, and what he did not say that, from our standpoint, was necessary to the statement of complete truth, was implied. This question occurred to us while we listened with charmed ear and deeply moved heart. Does this great congregation bring these grand half-truths to- gether ? It is to be hoped they did. Mr. Beecher and his congregation have, we cannot question, so ANALYSES OF HIS POWER, AND REMINISCENCES. 403 acted and reacted upon each other, that no just estimate of one can be formed if the other be left out. Nothing is more natural than that so vigorous, so creative a mind as Mr. Beecher's, acting under the stimulus of the mighty tides of life that rise and fall in this vast double city, like the tides in the sea, will be fresh in its weekly deliverances. But this fascinating power — as dangerous to the preacher as to his hearers — must pay this penalty ; there is a constant and almost resistless tendency to the utterance of half-truths. But there is a vast dif- ference : in some pulpits half-truths are due to meagreness, in others to exuberance. Mr. Beecher's half-truths are not at all due to meagreness — his mind is as full of growths as an Amazonian forest. But in such a forest there are some hurtful growths. With such a mind the tendency is to push statements so far that the truth loses its full-orbed symmetry by exaggeration. We must believe that some sentences in the sermon we heard, remem- bered alone and out of their connection, were harmful. It may be they were not so remembered, for the attention of the great congregation seemed to be perfect. If there was any difference the choir people were the best listeners— a most rare circumstance. What we have here said of Mr. Beecher and his preaching relates only to what we heard from him on this one occasion, and not to what we have been hearing of him for more than twenty years. More and more — we have learned it from experience — we hesitate to form opinions from what we hear about men. This is Tuesday night ; perhaps we should say Wednesday morning, and our feeling is this : We want to hear Mr. Beecher preach again. THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. By O. W. HOLMES. (From the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1864.) Mr. Henry Ward Beecher went to Great Britain already well known at home as the favorite preacher of a large parish, an advocate of certain leading reforms, one of the most popular lecturers of the country, a bold, outspoken, fertile, ready, crowd- compelling orator, whose reported sermons and speeches were fuller of catholic humanity than of theological subtilties, and whose sympathies were of that lively sort which are apt to leap the sectarian fold and find good Christians in every denomination. He was welcomed by friendly persons on the other side of the Atlantic, partly for these merits, partly also as " the son of the celebrated Dr. Beecher," and "the brother of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. " After a few months' absence he returns to America, having fin- ished a more remarkable embassy than any envoy who has repre- sented us in Europe since Franklin pleaded the cause of the young Republic at the Court of Versailles. He kissed no royal hand, he talked with no courtly diplomatists, he was the guest of no titled legislator, he had no official existence. But through the heart of the people he reached nobles, ministers, courtiers, the throne it- self. . . . Mr. Beecher' s European story is a short one in time, but a long one in events. He went out a lamb, a tired clergyman in need of THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 405 travel ; and as such he did not strive, nor cry, nor did any man hear his voice in the streets. But in the den of lions where his pathway led him, he remembered his own lion's nature, and uttered his voice to such effect that its echoes, in the great vaulted caverns of London and Liverpool, are still reaching us, as the sound of the woodman's axe is heard long after the stroke is seen, as the light of the star shines upon us many days after its departure from the source of radiance. Mr. Beecher made a single speech in Great Britain, but it was delivered piecemeal in different places. Its exordium was uttered on the ninth of October at Manchester, and its peroration was pro- nounced on the twentieth of the same month in Exeter Hall. He has himself furnished us an analysis of the train of repre- sentations and arguments of which this protracted and many- jointed oration was made up. At Manchester he attempted to give a history of that series of political movements, extending through half a century, the logical and inevitable end of which was open conflict between the two opposing forces of freedom and slavery. At Glasgow his discourse seems to have been almost un- premeditated. A meeting of one or two temperance advocates, who had come to greet him as a brother in their cause, took on " quite accidentally " a political character, and Mr. Beecher grati- fied the assembly with an address which really looked as if it had been in great measure called forth by the pressure of the moment. It seems more like a conversation than a set harangue. First, he very good-humoredly defines his position on the tem- perance question and then naturally slides into some self-revela- tions which we who know him accept as the simple expression of the man's character. This plain speaking made him at home among strangers more immediately, perhaps, than anything else he could have told them. "lam born without moral fear. I have expressed my views in any audience, and it never cost me a strug- gle. I never could help doing it." 406 BENRY WARD BEECHEU. Tlie way a man handles his egoisms is a test of his mastery over an audience or a class of readers. What we want to know about the person who is to counsel or lead us is just what he is, and nobody can tell us so well as himself. Every real master of speaking or writing uses his personality as he would any other serviceable material ; the very moment a speaker or writer begins to use it, not for his main purpose, but for vanity's sake, as all weak people are sure to do, hearers and readers feel the difference in a moment. Mr. Beecher is a strong, healthy man, in mind and body. His nerves have never been cor- rugated with alcohol ; his thinking marrow is not brown with tobacco-fumes like a meerschaum, as are the brains of so many unfortunate Americans ; he is the same lusty, warm-blooded, strong-fibred, brave-hearted, bright-souled, clear-eyed creature that he was when the college boys at Amherst acknowledged him as the chief est among their foot-ball kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound, in bodily, mental, and moral structure ; and his self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed imper- sonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own interests. Thus it is that wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always known him ; and there is not a man in the land who has such a multi- tude that look upon him as if he were their brother. Having magnetized his Glasgow audience, he continued the sub- ject already opened at Manchester by showing, in the midst of that great toiling population, the deadly influence exerted by slavery in bringing labor into contempt, and its ruinous conse- quences to the free workingman everywhere. In Edinburgh he explained how the nation grew up out of sepa- rate states, each jealous of its special sovereignty ; how the strug gle for the control of the united nation, after leaving it for a long THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 407 time in the hands of the South to be used in favor of slavery, at length gave it into those of the North, whose influence was to be for freedom ; and for this reason the South, when it could no longer rule the nation, rebelled against it. In Liverpool, the centre of vast commercial and manufacturing interests, he showed how those interests are injured by slavery ; " that this attempt to cover the fairest portion of the earth with a slave population, that buys nothing, and a degraded white population that buys next to nothing, should array against it the sympathy of every true politi- cal economist and every thoughtful and far-seeing manufacturer, as tending to strike at the vital want of commerce, not the want of cotton, but the want of customers." In his great closing effort at Exeter Hall in London, Mr. Beecher began by disclaiming the honor of having been a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, which he found in progress at his entry upon public life, when he " fell into the ranks, and fought as well as he knew how, in the ranks or in command." He un- folded before his audience the plan and connection of his previous addresses, showing how they were related to each other as parts of a consecutive series. He had endeavored, he told them, to enlist the judgment, the conscience, the interests of the British people against the attempt to spread slavery over the continent, and the rebellion it has kindled. He had shown that slavery was the only cause of the war, that sympathy with the South was only aiding the building up of a slave-empire, that the North was con- tending for its own existence and that of popular institutions. Mr. Beecher then asked his audience to look at the question with him from the American point of view. He showed how the conflict began as a moral question ; the sensitiveness of the South ; the tenderness for them on the part of many Northern apologizers, with whom he himself had never stood. He pointed out how the question gradually emerged, in politics ; the encroachments of the South, until they reached the judiciary itself ; he repeated to 408 HENRY WARD BEECHER. them the admissions of Mr. Stephens as to the preponderating in- fluence the South had all along held in the Government. An interruption obliged him to explain that adjustment of our State and National Governments which Englishmen seem to find so hard to understand. Nothing shows his peculiar powers to more ad- vantage than just such interruptions. Then he displays his felici- tous facility of illustration, his familiar way of hringing a great question to the test of some parallel fact that everyhody before him knows. An American state question looks as mysterious to an English audience as an ear of Indian corn wrapped in its sheath to an English wheat-grower. Mr. Beecher husks it for them as only an American born and bred can do. He wants a few sharp questions to rouse his quick spirit. Having cleared up this matter so that our cousins understood the relations of the dough and the apple in our national dump- ling, to borrow one of their royal reminiscences — having eulogized the fidelity of the North to the national compact, he referred to the action of " that most true, honest, just, and conscientious magistrate, Mr. Lincoln" — at the mention of whose name the audience cheered as long and loud as if they had descended from the ancient Ephesians. Mr. Beecher went on to show how the North could not help fighting when it was attacked, and to give the reasons that made it necessary to fight, reasons which none but a consistent Friend or avowed non-resistant can pretend to dispute. His ordinary style in speaking is pointed, staccatoed, as is that <>f most success- ful extemporaneous speakers ; he is " short-gaited ;" the move- ment of his thoughts is that of the chopping sea, rather than the long, rolling, rhythmical wave-procession of phrase-balancing rhetoricians. But when the lance has pricked him deep enough, when the red flag has flashed in his face often enough, when the fireworks have hissed and sputtered around him long enough, when the cheers have warmed him so that all his life THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 409 is roused, then his intellectual sparkle becomes a steady glow, and his nimble sentences change their form, and become long- drawn, stately periods. " Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men who poured their blood and lives for principle, I declare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for principle. If the love of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain, you will not understand us ; but if the love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy succes- sors of those renowned men that were our own ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit to make fruitful as so much seed-corn in a new and fertile land, then you will understand our firm, invincible determination — deep as the •sea, firm as the mountains, but calm as the heavens above us — to fight this war through at all hazards and at every cost." When have Englishmen listened to nobler words, fuller of the true soul of eloquence ? Never surely since their nation entered the abdominous period of its existence, recognized in all its ideal portraits, for which food and sleep are the prime conditions of well-being. Yet the old instinct which has made the name of Englishman glorious in the past was there in the audience before him, and there was " immense cheering," relieved by some slight colubrine demonstrations. He showed the monstrous absurdity of England's attacking us for fighting, and for fighting to uphold a principle. " On what shore has not the prow of your ships dashed ? What land is there with a name and a people where your banner has not led your soldiers ? And when the great resurrection reveille shall sound, it will muster British soldiers from every clime and people under the whole heaven. ... He explained that the people who sympathized with the South were those whose voices reached America, while the friends of the North were little heard. The 410 BENE! WARD BEECHER. firsl had b0W8 and arrows ; the second have shafts, but no boWB to launch them. " 1 1<>\\ about the Russians?" Everybody remembers bow neatly Mr. Beecher caught this envenomed dart, and, turning it end for end. drove it through his antagonist's shield of triple bull's-hide. " Now von know what we felt when you were flirt- ing with Mr. Mason at your Lord Mayor's banquet." A cleaner and straighter "counter" than that, if we may change the image to one his audience would appreciate better, is hardly to be found in the records of British pugilism. The orator concluded by a rather sanguine statement of his change of opinion as to British sentiment, of the assurance he should cany back of the enthusiasm for the cause of the North, and by an exhortation to unity of action with those who share their civilization and religion, for the furtherance of the gospel and the happiness of mankind. The audience cheered again, Professor Newman moved a vote of thanks, and the meeting dis- solved, wiser and better, we hope, for the truths which had been so boldly declared before them. What is the net result so far as we can see of Mr. Beecher' s voluntary embassy ? So far as he is concerned, it has been to lift him from the position of one of the most popular preachers and lecturers, to that of one of the most popular men in the country. Those who hate his philanthropy admire his courage. Those who disagree with him in theology recognize him as having a claim to the title of apostle quite as good as that of John Eliot, whom Christian England sent to heathen America two centuries ago, and who in spite of the singularly stupid questionings of the natives, and the violent opposition of the sachems and powwows, or priests, succeeded in reclaiming large numbers of the copper- colored aborigines. We are living in a period not of events only, but of epochs. We are in the transition stage from the miocene to the pliocene MR. BEECHER COMPARED WITH OTHERS. 411 period of human existence. A new heaven is forming over our head behind the curtain of clouds which rises from our smoking battle- fields. A new earth is shaping itself under our feet amid the tremors and convulsions that agitate the soil upon which we tread. But there is no such thing as a surprise in the order of nature. The kingdom of God even, cometh not with observation. The fruit of Mr. Beecher's visit will ripen in due time, not only in direct results, but in opening the way to future moral embassies, o-oing forth unheralded, unsanctioned by state documents, in the simple strength of Christian manhood on their errands of truth and peace. By H. R. HAWEIS. (From the Contemporary Review, Vol. XIX., 1872.) It would be no compliment to call Henry Ward Beecher the American Spurgeon. He may be that, but he is more. If we can imagine Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. John Bright with a cautious touch of Mr. Maurice and a strong tincture of the late F. W. Rob- ertson — if, I say, it is possible to imagine such a compound being brought up in New England, and at last securely fixed in a New York pulpit, we shall get a product not unlike Henry Ward Beecher. Mr. Beecher is quite as remarkable for what he lacks as for what he possesses. With the exception of a strong and energetic personality which is highly original, he is almost without origi- nality. He has no mental monomania, no idiosyncrasy, no new " doctrine," no new " tongue," no new " revelation ;" and it is altogether remarkable that the two most prominent preachers in England and America respectively should be alike in this, that they have added nothing to the fertile field of theological dogma- tism. Perhaps we ought to be thankful for the omission — it may be a hopeful sign of the theological times — a new era may be 412 HENRI WARD BEECHER. dawning upon a world " weary of the heat and dust of contro- versy." .... The days of stilted preaching are over. If a man has got any- thing to say people are, and always will be, glad to hear him ; but if he has nothing to say let him hold his peace. Never was there a greater impatience with mere rhetoric than in these latter days. People may say that whole speeches of Mr. Gladstone are mere rhetoric, but what seems only rhetoric to persons out of sympathy with the Premier (1 871) is not rhetoric to him or to those who un- derstand him, it is merely the expression of a power to will and to do. "When a man's words are understood to mean this he will be listened to in the Senate or in the pulpit, and he will have the priv- ilege of conveying his meaning in any way he pleases. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher fully avails himself of this privilege. Nothing comes amiss to him. As for the dignity of the pulpit, he knows of no dig- nity save the dignity of doing good, of winning men by all means, of talking common-sense in the most forcible manner possible. Like almost every great preacher, Mr. Beecher is a real humor- ist ; his satire burns, but it does not harden ; he will laugh men out of their sins if he cannot otherwise persuade them, and he will show how very ridiculous an action may be, when he feels that no other kind of denunciation is likely to affect his hearers. There is one very amiable and singular trait about his teaching. It is the justice usually done to his opponents. He will show what he thinks good in them ; he will state their case for them, perhaps better than they could state it for themselves, and when the point of an- tagonism is reached, instead of scolding them with polemical invec- tive, he will hold not them but their erroneous opinions up to the mildest, most good-natured, but most irresistible ridicule. . . . But it is now time to turn from general characteristics to the subject-matter itself of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher's preaching which we venture to say will bear a little close attention. His fertility and freshness are alike remarkable. SOLID COMMON-SENSE. 4i;> " I asked," says a casual attendant at Mr. Beecher's church,. ' ' I asked a gentleman who sat behind me whether he was a regu- lar attendant, and if so whether he remarked any difference in the quality of the sermons or any repetition. He said, ' I have sat here five years and I never heard any man repeat himself so little. I have heard other celebrated preachers, and have heard no one- equal to him ; as for the sermon to-day it was not better or worse than his discourses in general. It was an average sermon.' And this is quite the impression left on the reader who chooses to study — we will not say wade through, for it is more light reading than wading — the six volumes before us. A man who undertakes to treat the whole of human life from the moral stand-point has set himself no easy task. He who would do justice to all the various theological tendencies of his own age has entered upon a field of difficult and perilous action, from which he can scarcely expect to issue perfectly unscathed. And yet it is astonishing how on the whole, Mr. Beecher manages to justify his own description of himself as reasonably orthodox. The late Mr. F. W. Robertson 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 shibboleths 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 Gospel 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 quite mystical religious fervor, perhaps they only can quite estimate who, to use a slang expres- sion, " sit under him." Ill BENRY WARD BEECHER. By REV. W. M. TAYLOR, D.D.* | /■)■<, in the Scottish Review, October, 1859.) In Boston the human race is divided into " the Good, the Bad, and the Beechers," and very quaintly does this division indicate that the Beecher family is distinguished from every other by cer- tain characteristic traits which yet defy all attempts at ordinary classification. ' Their greatest enemies cannot pronounce them to be positively bad, and their most enthusiastic admirers cannot declare that they are perfectly good ; therefore, by common consent, they have been put into a category by themselves. Now, that this should be the case, argues the possession of great mental ability as well as singularity, by the members of this famous family. They have made themselves felt and known as something different from the common run of mortals ; they have grafted a new branch on to the tree of intellect, so that in New England it is sufficient to insure for a man a reputation for mental vigor, if he only be " a Beecher." And yet this family reputation is not of an entirely unmixed character, for the proverb to which we have referred places them between the good and the bad, as having certain peculiarities which would connect them with both. Not, indeed, 1 hat there is anything morally questionable about them, or that there is any want of decision in themselves, for the reverse of this is notoriously the case, but rather that their great excellencies cast, perhaps from their very greatness, certain deep and dark shadows, which, in the estimation of multitudes, are very grave defects. In a word, the Beechers arc reputed a " peculiar peo- ple," whose excellencies by some are accounted defects, whose de- * The parts omitted from this article, indicated by the asterisks, are those which have been quoted in the body of the book. BEECHER STANDS UNRIVALLED. 415 fects by others are accounted excellencies, but who, as it respects both of these, are by all acknowledged to be different from others. Now, if we were required to define the position, as a preacher, occupied by him whose name stands at the head of this article, we could not do it better than by dividing pulpit orators into " the Good, the Bad, and Beecher." He stands decidedly by himself ; he cannot be classified ; he is in fact a class by himself ; he is Beecher, and that is the most expressive description that can be given of him. But admitting that he stands alone, the sole rep- resentative of his school, the question presents itself, What is the character of that school 1 To this question, alike in his native country and our own, very different answers have been given. Some have said he is trashy, flashy, and ridiculous ; and others have maintained that he is marked by silly affectation and high- sounding pretentiousness ; but since the publication of these twin series of " Life Thoughts," we greatly mistake if the general im- pression do not now become that he is one of the most earnest, sim- ple-minded, natural, impassioned, and many-gifted men this age has seen. He has things about him, which, like dead flies, may seem to mar the precious ointment, but it is precious for all that ; and though his occasional sallies of wit, or his strong, coarse, unrelenting denunciation of all oppressions and shams, or his un- disguised and not over-nicely expressed contempt for cant, may appear to identify him with the low and vulgar, yet his genuine sympathy with the down-trodden and neglected, his love of the beautiful in nature and art, his " poet's eye in a fine frenzy roll- ing," his child-like simplicity and guilelessness, his moral courage in the vindication of right against might, and his attachment to the simple gospel of the blessed God, ally him to the good and true of every age, and place him in the fore-front of his own. Indeed, this is already beginning to be admitted in America, as a thing conclusively established. When first he appeared in Brook- lyn, and crowds thronged around him, men shook their heads and 410 HENRY WARD BEECHER. said, " It's only novelty, it will soon cease ;" but now for nearly twelve years* it has continued, nay increased, and people feel there- must be something in it. When the annual sale of pews has reached $25,000 ; when, Sabbath after Sabbath, boat-loads of people cross from New York to enjoy his ministrations ; when merchants from the Far West have it entered in their note-books when they come to the metropolis, " Mem. to hear Beecher ;" when even individuals from the Southern States, with all their deep-rooted prejudices against the anti-slavery advocate, have been so won over by his preaching as to seek an introduction to him- self ; there must, we repeat, be something in it ; and when we look into these "Life Thoughts," fragmentary though they be, we are at no loss to discover what that something is. The man from whose pulpit such precious jewels so constantly fall cannot be other than a man of genius, and if their setting be at all in keeping with their own intrinsic beauty, he has a right to the highest degree of popularity. It were easy to substan- tiate this by endless quotations from the books referred to, but as they must be already in the hands of all our readers, we prefer to gather up from them and other sources the various characteristics by which Henry Ward Beecher is distinguished, and thus bring into a clearer light the true position and mission of this remarkable man. It may serve, however, to gratify a laudable curiosity, as well as to illustrate the proverbial allusion with Avhich we commenced, if, before going farther, we briefly enumerate a few biographical de- tails. Mr. Beecher was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of June, 1813 ; his father, the well-known Dr. Lyman Beecher, who occupies a high place among the theologians of America, was at that time a minister of the gospel there, but was afterward appointed to a tutorship in the Lane Seminary, Cincin- * Now about thirty-five years. HIS TEMPERANCE PRINCIPLES. 417 nati, at which, after graduating at Amherst College, his son. Henry studied. The family were originally, on the father's side, from Kent, and on the mother's side from Wales, so that, as an American critic says, " the blood of the Beechers received a happy mixture of Welsh blood, with its poetry and music, and its insatia- ble love of genealogy." Mr. Beecher is one of thirteen children, the great majority of whom are now living. His mother, who is described as a woman of rare endowments, fine taste, acute intellect, and delicate appre- ciation of the beautiful alike in art and nature, died when he was little more than a babe. Her calm, poetical, Madame Guion-like character impressed every one who came under her influence, and though our author was too young fully to comprehend its nature, he was yet old enough to be considerably moulded by its power. Frequently does he refer to her in his discourses, and if, in the strength of his intellect, one may read a likeness to his father, from his mother he inherits those finer affinities with the beautiful and imaginative by which he is distinguished. The other mem- bers of the family are all more or less eminent in literature or theology. We may only mention Miss Catherine E. Beecher, Dr. Edward Beecher, author of the " Conflict of Ages," and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the gifted authoress of ' l Uncle Tom's Cabin." Thus, in the case of the Beechers, as in that of the Gregories, the Abercrombies, the Browns, and others among our- selves, intellect and authorship seem to run in the blood, and are looked for as things of course. This appears to be true also of Mr. Beecher' s temperance principles. Every one has heard of those six sermons on intemperance, to which our old friend James Stirling owed so much ; but it may not be so generally known that the person from whom he takes his name, Henry Ward, his mother's father, honorably distinguished himself, when an officer in the French and Indian war, at the capture of Louisburg, by refusing to receive the usual rum rations. He obtained money 418 HENRY WARD BEECHBR. instead and had it made into spoons, which were marked " Louis- burg," and arc still preserved in the family. Mr. Beecher commenced his labors in the ministry in 1837, as the pastor of a Presbyterian church at Lawrenceburgh, Dearborn County, Indiana. lie remained here two years, and then removed I.. Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he continued until be accepted the invitation of the new Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York, over which he was installed in October, 1 s4 7. lie is now in his 44th year; but is described as much \ ounger in his appearance, and possessed of great physical strength and liveliness. His face at first sight is not very attractive ; but it is exceedingly susceptible of impression from within, and you may mark thought after thought passing over it almost as dis- tinctly as you perceive the shadow and the sunshine chasing each other across the field. The chief feature of his countenance is his large, full, blue eye, which, while at rest, has a dreamy look, but when he is excited flashes out with that true lightning that ever accompanies the thunder roll of eloquence. The first look at him will be sure to disappoint ; but if we will only have patience and wait until the impassioned inspiration comes, all possible descrip- tion will be far exceeded. As he enters the pulpit, or rather as he mounts the platform, for he has no pulpit, he might almost be mistaken for a butcher in his Sunday clothes ; but let him get into his subject, and anon, as some bcautjful and feeling utterance comes welling up from the fountain of his soul, his face begins to shine as if it were an angel's ; or as he pours out the vials of his indignation on sonic flagrant wrong, the darkness of the storm gathers on Ins brow and the sternness of passion sits upon his lips. His forehead is high rather than broad ; his cheeks bare ; his mouth compressed and firm, with humor lurking and almost laughing in the corners ; his collar turned over a la Byron, more perhaps for the comfort of his ears (as he is exceed- ingly short-necked) than for any love for that peculiar fashion. FEATURES OF HIS MINISTRY. 419 His voice is full of music, in which, by the way, he is a great proficient. His body is well developed, and his great maxim is to keep it in first-rate working order, for he considers health to be a Chris- tian duty, and rightly deems it impossible for any man to do jus- tice to his mental faculties without at the same time attending to his physical. His motions are quick and elastic, and his manners frank, cordial, and kind, such as to attract rather than to repel the advances of others. With children he is an especial favorite ; they love to run up to him and offer him little bundles of flowers, of which they know him to be passionately fond, and they deem themselves more than rewarded by the hearty "Thank you," and the tender look of loving interest that accompanies his accept- ance of their gift. Add to this that his benevolence is limited only by his means, and our readers will have a pretty good idea of his general character and personal appearance. ******* But another great feature of his public ministry is to be found in the importance and value which he uniformly attaches to man. He sees nothing in the world that can at all be compared in value to the human soul ; and he places man above all God's works. He believes, indeed, in the doctrine of depravity, but, as himself once expressed it, " he would not make his nest on it ;" that is to say, it is not with him the most important and central truth. It is not the key-note of his preaching ; the love of God in Christ, and not the sin of man strikes that, and he sings a major, not a minor tune. He lets others tell of the depths into which man lias fallen, his theme is ever one of hope and restoration. He believes that man, depraved though he be, has a value that is not possessed by other created beings, angels alone excepted. He weighs him in the bal- ance of the Cross, and reckons that the ransom which was paid on it alone can tell the worth of that which was redeemed. He looks 420 HENBX WARD BEECHEli. thus at the great fact of the atonement from the human side of it, as showing that men are " unspeakably precious, and valuable be- yond all computation." To man, therefore, everything else on earth must be subordinated, and whatsoever tends to injure, or oppress, or demoralize him, he holds to be not only injustice to him, but also, and far worse, a wounding of God where his heart is most tender and his sympathies are most acute ; it is, in fact, an undervaluing of that which God accounted worth the blood of His incarnate Son. Hence his deep-rooted abhorrence of slavery springs not more from his love to man than from his reverence for God, and to this source also must be traced that intense public spirit which he manifests, and which leads him to take part in all the important movements of his country and of his times. There must, indeed, to one of his temperament, be much that is alluring in the mere excitement which is connected with such struggles for justice, and truth, and righteousness as those in which he has engaged, but he has entered into them mainly because he felt that to refuse to do so would be to stand by and see dishonored that human nature which God's Son assumed, and which he came at once to dignify and redeem. His benevolence thus has sprung like the fabled flower of old from blood, and its root is at the Cross, for he reasons thus — if man was worth the blood of Christ, then he is immensely more valuable than any earthly thing, and every custom, law, or institution that degrades him thrusts an- other spear into the side of Jesus. These two principles, to wit, the power and life of religion, and the importance of man, run through all his discourses, and give a form and color to everything he does. They mark Ids ministry as a whole, and distinguish it from other men's, but in his assertion and treatment of them, many peculiarities appear which demand a passing notice. Foremost among these we place his originality. He has left almost entirely the beaten track of preachers, and pursues a pathway of his own. In the study of the word of God BEECHER'S ORIGINALITY. 421 he discards, somewhat unceremoniously, the help of critics and commentators ; he has, in fact, no sympathy with exegesis, and very probably no great ability to engage in it. We do not think he troubles himself much about the original, or seeks often to amend the authorized version of King James. He complains, as we think somewhat unjustly, that commentators have " be- trashed " the Bible, and that " coming to it through comment- aries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs." Such an assertion, it must be confessed, is. too sweeping and indiscriminate, yet the feeling from which it has sprung has contributed freshness and originality to his discourses. He never reads commentaries, and when one comes unexpectedly across his path, he says to it as Diogenes to Alexander, " Stand out of my light ;" hence if he says anything at all upon a passage it is sure to be his own. This may be very safe for him, with his exuberant abundance of material gathered from observation and experience, but we may warn all young preachers from attempting to imitate it, for, in ordinary circumstaoces, such a course would result in poverty rather than originality. It is not every man who can bend the bow of Ulysses ; and for common individuals to neglect the labors of our sacred critics would be great presumption and certain de- struction. We welcome Mr. Beecher's freshness in this respect, even though we disapprove of that which in a good degree has contributed to produce it ; but we have no patience with those who sneer at criticism and the study of commentaries, while yet they have nothing of their own to give instead. Mr. Beecher's own individuality is his richest commentary ; and the coin which issues from his mint is stamped with his own image and superscrip- tion. The truth comes to his hearers through himself, that is, through the medium of his voice, but shaded and stamped by his own heart-history and experience ; and if we have not rigid expo- sition, we have what perhaps is better, the self -revelation of a L22 BENRY WARD BEECHER. gifted and remarkable man. The same peculiarity marks his treatmenl of men which distinguishes his study of the Scriptures, and he addresses himself to the idiosyncrasies of his hearers. Be believes thai every man's soul is open at one door to the truth, and be makes it. his business to find that out, and enter in thereby. What is usually called " gospel- hardened " he believes to be practically, in most cases, only word-hardened, and as a conse- quence he sets himself to devise modes of expression, and to pre- sent phases of the truth to which men have not become accus- tomed. He excels, too, in the delineation of character. His life-pictures are most remarkable ; to use a somewhat hackneyed but expressive quotation, ''lie holds the mirror up to nature," and lets Ins hearers sec themselves. His sermons thus are not mere firings into the air, like the " feu de joie " of a gala-day ; he is too good a marksman to be content with " drawing a bow at a venture," but he always contrives to have an aim, and takes rare to bit in the white. 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 productions 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. ******* This almost unrivalled power of illustration is greatly aided by his ardent love of nature, which amounts with him almost to a passion. We know few men whose communings with the exter- nal world approach so nearly to those described by Wordsworth, when he speaks of one desiring to be absorbed into the scene, and MR. BEECHER'S LOVE OF NATURE. ±23 to become " a presence or a motion." Every tree, and flower, and rock, and stream has a language and a greeting for him, and he looks upon them all as friends. The notes of birds, the sounds of ocean, the sighing of the forest, and the roar of the waterfall, are all familiar to him, and each has in his ear a spiritual meaning of its own. Hence, no " clerical furlough " can be better enjoyed than his annual holiday, and none better improved. This appears in his " Star Papers," and also to a large extent in these " Life Thoughts." He is indeed a perfect child of nature's own, and when he withdraws from the city to the seclusion of the country, his delight is unbounded. It is thus he has succeeded so well in preserving the freshness and juvenility of his mind, for the expe- riences and feelings of his boyhood come again as he pursues his boyhood's sports. At such times his soul is at spring tide, and all remaining traces of a lower level are swept up with it. In this way, he has secured what Coleridge calls " the moral accompani- ment and actuating power of genius," namely, " the carrying of the freshness and feelings of childhood into the powers of man- hood." But we must pass on to speak of Mr. Beecher's humor, without some mention of which any sketch of him would be signally incom- plete. This power is possessed by him in large measure, and like everything else about him, it is perfectly 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 ridicule is not always a right test of truth, and we are disposed to admit that, in ordinary circumstances, the pulpit is not the place for the display of humor ; yet there are some arguments which can only be met by a reductio ad absurdwn, and it does strike us as somewhat strange that the preachers who, like Rowland Hill, Berridge, Spurgeon, and many others have given loose rein to their wit, have been among the most eminently successful in their ministry. Whether 424 HENRY WARD BEECHER. this may be in consequence of their wit or in spite of it we are not prepared to say — we simply indicate the fact ; but we fear- lessly express our conviction, 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 expressive, but it sometimes borders on the coarse, and in this, perhaps, more than in anything else, one feels disposed to question 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 humor- ous expressions have occurred in connection with the public inti- mations 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 the topics which come thus incidentally before him, in a strain of bold and caustic criticism, which must often try severely the gravity of his audience. The great redeeming feature of his wit is the sturdy common-sense that constantly pervades it ; yet it must be con- fessed that the very sharpness of his " hits " tends, however para- doxical it may seem, to blunt the effect which they produce, and may not unfrequently 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. The articles on Church Music, Organ-playing, and others of a similar strain, in the " Summer of the Soul," are exceedingly amusing, and most telling because most true ; but it is in personal controversy that the full force of this faculty comes out. It is Mr. Beecher's sting, and it is always ready in self-defence. Woe to the individual who becomes its victim ; it is bad enough to be MANLY INDEPENDENCE. 437 annihilated, but to have it done so that men laugh as they look on is most insufferable. Mr. Beecher plays with his adversary, as he has often done while angling, with a trout, but he has him hooked all the while, and by and by he despatches him amid the laughing applause of the spectators. But we cannot conclude without specifying his outspoken, manly independence. He glories in free speech, and he makes full use of his liberty. It might be said of him as of our own stern reformer, that he fears not the face of man, but speaks with boldness what he believes to be the truth, be the consequences what they may. Again and again has he come before the Ameri- can public as the unflinching advocate of justice and liberty, and always in a style worthy of the occasion and of himself. Never, perhaps, did he appear to better advantage than on the occasion of his withering assault on the American Tract Society, on the 12th of May last. His speech on that day will take its place with some of the noblest orations of modern times, and has in it the ring of genuine eloquence. On the day preceding its delivery, a Mr. Daniel Lord had made a casuistical, we might almost say a Jesuitical, defence of the Society for sinfully refusing to circulate tracts on the subject of slavery, and Mr. Beecher in a speech which occupies eight or nine columns of the New York Inde- pendent, and which is reprinted in the " Summer of the Soul," tears his argument to shreds, and rises with the inspiration of his theme into a strain of the most indignant and impassioned denun- ciation. It will be long before Mr. Lord enters the lists again with such an adversary. The ability displayed in the address is remarkable, and yet all through one feels as if the orator were not putting forth his full strength, but had still a great force in reserve, which he might have brought into action if occasion had required. But there is no reserve of truth, and the speaker "plays the man." It is something to know that in America there are earnest and powerful voices uplifted in this noble cause, 1 ' s HENRY WARD BEECHER. and that while so many of her ministers are " dumb dogs," that cannot or will not bark, there are not a few honest and unfearinjr men, who, with Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. Checker at their bead, refuse to keep silence. "Tis such as they who are yet to wipe away this national reproach, and take the stripes out of America's banner. Let us strengthen their hands in this good and glorious work, and let us cry shame on the men who can issue pious winnings on the evil of dancing and "bombard" men for smoking tobacco while yet they are unmoved by the slave, toiling in sorrow beneath his galling yoke, or crouching in fear beneath the cruel scourge. V\ illingly would we linger longer on a theme so interesting, but we must forbear. From the works of Mr. Beecher we have de- rived the purest pleasure and the highest profit, and while we can- not unqualifiedly approve of all he says or does, and do not wish that every minister should be a facsimile of him, yet we cannot doubt that his influence upon the pulpits and the pews both of his own country and ours will tell powerfully for good. The rich blessing which has rested on his labors seems to stamp with the Divine approval the course which he has followed ; and instead of standing by to rail and condemn, as so many have done, we would stretch a brother's hand to him across the wide Atlantic, and bid him heartily " God speed." By PROFESSOR NOAH PORTER, D.D. {From Hearth and Home.) To hear Mr. Beecher with the highest enjoyment, and to appre- ciate him with full effect, one should hear him from the Plymouth pulpit and in the Plymouth Church. If he is heard for the first time, it is better to start from New York and make one of the CHARACTER OF PLYMOUTH CONGREGATION. 429 strangers from all parts of the country who stream up the hill from the Brooklyn Ferry, all eager and animated with the same desire to see and hear Mr. Beecher — to hear and see whom was, per- haps, one of the attractions which brought them to the great metropolis. The visitor is happy who, after not a little jostling at the door and a brief conference with the somewhat consequential but always complaisant usher, finds himself provided with a-seat, and is so comfortably settled as to look around upon the congre- gation while he awaits the preacher. The audience is composed of people from all ranks in society, of all degrees of culture, and, as it would seem, of an endless variety of religious beliefs. The millionnaire is there seeking excitement and counsel, and so is the poor widow, lonely and abject, longing for a word of comfort and sympathy. The man or woman with whom life has always gone hardly, with downcast eye and dis- heartened aspect, has come to be assured of another life which for either may go more smoothly. The sceptic, blase with doubt and contemptuous in philosophic pride, has come for a new sensation of excitement, a fresh psychological observation on the credulous enthusiasm of preacher and people, or, perhaps, for a brief respite from his arid unbelief in the oasis of an hour of imagined faith. The young are there, buoyant with improved hopes ; the aged, cheerful with tried serenity. There are also scores of trashy and flippant believers, who would scarcely condescend to believe in Christ unless Mr. Beecher were to be his forerunner ; and other scores of rampaging reformers, who are attracted by the freedom of his assaults upon everything venerable and old, upon the old creeds and the old ways, upon tedious prayers and long-winded sermons. These make up the drift-wood of the congregation, somewhat obtrusively conspicuous, but not very valuable. But all have come with a will, and they seat themselves with an air of bustling expectation that looks for something worth hearing, and is ready to meet the preacher with quick and responsive sympa- 430 HENRY WARD BEECHER. thy. After a few minutes, less sombre and grave in its impressions than is customary in most churches, the organ breaks in with the opening voluntary, and the long-expected preacher emerges into or upon the pulpit from an opening beneath the gallery, some- what like a troglodyte from his cave. His face is grave with thought and excited by feeling, for he comes directly and freshly from the meditation of his theme. His drooping eyelids, his heavy features, his sensitive mouth, his strong and massive jaw indicate talent, energy, and fire, but they by no means betoken all the imaginative power, the affluent and often felicitous diction, the subtle and ready humor, and the kindling sensibility that shall soon leap from his tongue, light up his face, and wake up the whole man. He begins with a brief invocation in a low and not very devo- tional tone, which is followed by a spirited hymn, in singing which all the worshippers join with a life and a heartiness not often surpassed. Then follows a prayer, simple, unique and not over long ; for Mr. Beecher is very hard upon the old-time " long prayer." In his case, the prayer, even if it be long, is not dull. If he occasionally preaches in his prayer, he is always spirited. If he is slightly too colloquial in his tones, he is not irreverent in his words and feelings. Another hymn follows, and then the ser- mon. What the sermon is in its matter may be learned from the volume before us. What it is in the manner can only be felt by the hearing, as the preacher proceeds from the colloquial and the sententious to the imaginative and glowing passages, as he steps aside for this or that homely but apt illustration, darts here and there a home-thrust for the conscience, lingers on a pleasant de- scription, allows a sally of quiet but telling humor, a good-natured personality, and all the while is impressing his theme more closely upon the heart, till he closes with an energetic appeal. But whether we hear or read Mr. Beecher' s sermons, whether we like or dislike them, we cannot but acknowledge their power. MR. BEECHER'S SYMPATHY. 431 Whatever may be their defects, they are distinguished by the fol- lowing excellencies : they overflow with human sympathy. They come from a man who has a royal and generous nature in the capacity to feel with other men, who is not too niggardly to rejoice with those who rejoice, and is not too exclusive or distant to weep with those who weep. He sympathizes with all sorts of men, with the poor as well as with the rich — we should rather say, with the poor and neglected more than with any other. He sympathizes with nature as truly as with man, and most intensely. His taste for farming and gardening is well known. It breaks out in almost every sermon, in brief snatches of felicitous description, as well as in never-ending allusions to fruits and flowers, and to the processes of growth and culture. Scarcely a discourse is delivered in which a lawn, a shrub, a flower is not so well painted that you almost see the drooping branches and hear the rustling breeze and feel its refreshing breath. Mr. Beecher is eminently imaginative. His power of drawing ideal pictures for 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 when estimated by the stream of sermons, speeches, and lectures, when seen 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 diction which this creative power has ever at command. He is individual. . His thoughts are his own, and he delights to express them in a way of his own. He does not follow the con- ventionalities of the pulpit ; sometimes he disregards what are called its proprieties—so freely does he utter the sentiments which he holds, and use the language and illustrations which best express and enforce his opinions, as a man speaks familiarly and frankly to his neighbor or friend. He never lacks variety. No one ser- mon is like another. 432 HENRY WARD BEECHEK. Every one is fresh and living 1 » v special detail of application. He is also eminently practical. For truth in the abstract he cares l»ut little, whether the truth he theological, scientific, political or moral, hut for truth when it is applied and acted out, lie is in- tensely earnest. His mind dwells in the region of action and feel- ing, and he abounds in advice and illustrations which concern the uses of truth in the actual life in which he and his hearers are living. For this reason he is bold, sometimes audacious, and occasionally personal ; now and then needlessly and offensively particular and coarse ; at least, he would he so were he not always elevated ahove the mean by the dignity of an earnest purpose ami a sunny temper. His denunciation of corruption in politics and in trade, his fear- lessness of talk concerning men and things in Wall Street, at Albany, and in Washington, have made him a name and power in high places. He is conspicuously broad and liberal in his Chris- tian sympathies. He shows not the scantiest remnant of sectarian or denominational predilection. The facts. and truths of the Gos- pel in which all Christians agree seem so completely to absorb his energies of thought and feeling as to leave no place for any interest in questions of minor and questionable importance. The duties of the Christian spirit and life, which all Christians so unanimously acknowledge, and so universally fail satisfactorily to perform, are so surpassingly important as to arouse all his zeal for their enforce- ment. But what he loses in the sympathy of the narrow-minded of his own denomination is more than balanced by the greater readiness with which he is listened to by those who are disgusted with the jangle of sectarian strifes and the exclusiveness of secta- rian pretension. But he is not for this reason the less, but, per- haps, the more earnestly and positively Christian. If to be a Chris- tian is to honor Christ with a fervent faith, a devoted reverence, to delight and to magnify his meek and forgiving spirit, to exalt him OCCASIONAL DEFECTS. 433 as the only and the perfect exemplar of the Christian life, to bow before him as the one unfathomable Being among all who have as- sumed the form of man, and as the revealer and fulness of the un- seen Godhead, and to extol him as the all in all for man's forgive- ness and eternal life, then is Mr. Beecher eminently a Christian and a Christian preacher ; even though we cannot accept all the dogmas which he seeks to expound, and are not always edified by his phrenological theology. These excellencies are marred by occasional defects. Were he always wise or always just, he were more than human. A nature which is so sympathetic, earnest, individual and aggressive as his must seem at times intensely egotistic, whether it be so or not. A nature so fervent and glowing must seem, perhaps must be, extravagant in thought and language. But these and other defects do not greatly weaken his power ; nor ought they to detract from his influence and honor. His sermons are not only heard but they are read with enthusiasm in every part of the land. Multitudes read these who would read no other sermons. Many a lonely in- valid weeps for joy over the consolations which he utters, made fresh and warm as they are by the gushing sympathy with which he speaks them. Many a solitary dweller in the forest, or upon the prai- rie, brightens his lonely Sunday by the perusal of one of Beecher's sermons. Here and there a few scattered worshippers, without either church or clergyman, listen to one as read in a school-house or kitchen, and are marvellously strengthened and cheered thereby for the trials and labors of their remote and lonely life. These sermons carry with them wherever they go the blessings of cheer- ful hope, of patient trust, of active love, and Christ-like sympa- thy, and they return to their author the thanks and blessings of multitudes whom his comforting and inspiring words have helped in their life pilgrimage. A NEW YEAR'S EVE AT BEECHER'S. By EDWARD EGGLESTON. (From Hearth and Home.) This Leisurely Saunterer went to hear Mr. Beecher. It was not the first time. The first time one enters thai- homely, commodious harn and listens to the most famous of pulpit orators, is not easily forgotten. But that is long gone by with me. I have long since ceased to laugh at the joke of the street- car men, who are so accustomed to lose two thirds of their cargo on Sundays at Orange Street, that instead of calling the street they sing out, " Henry Ward Beecher." The last one I rode with varied the pleasantry by crying in a dry, matter-of-course way, " Beecher Station." All the sensation of novelty has gone, but the sensation of freshness will never wear out while Beecher con- tinues to be Beecher. I hope nobody who reads this letter will expect me to criticise Mr. Beecher. I should almost as soon attempt to criticise Shake- speare. The subject is so hackneyed, it is so vast, the man has so many sides, and a Leisurely Saunterer is so little inclined to grapple with such a theme. I shall not do it if I can help it. It is better to gossip about a man than to analyze him seriously. And then we wondered, as we often had wondered before, how one man could for near a quarter century hold such a throng of hearers. Mr. Beecher has delivered nearlv two thousand sermons A NEW YEAR'S EVE AT BEECHER'S. 435 in this place, and whether it rains, hails, or shines, the same crowd of eager, expectant faces look at him from the pews in front, from the galleries above, from the little loft of a gallery in the very ceiling. There is no architecture about the church, no ornament, no flummery. A church with such a preacher needs nothing more. As the years go by, his popularity becomes deeper and stronger. The country merchants never fail to hear him when they are in New York. The Southerner listens to him as eagerly as the Maine lumberman. His sermons are printed and read everywhere. No modern preacher without being the head of a sect ever had such a hold upon human beings. And so we were wondering as we had often wondered at the intellectual wonder before, when the still, strong face appeared at the side-door, and Henry Ward Beecher glided into the pulpit and sat down in a chair. And then we ceased to wonder, as we always cease to wonder when that face appears. The nose is a Doric column full of strength, simplicity, majesty. The mouth is sensuous and firm, and carries in repose the set which one sees in the portraits of Washington. The forehead has no " bumps," it is full, round, and flowing. All the lines of Beecher' s face flow into one an- other ; there are no breaks. All the traits of the man seem to flow into one another. Every faculty and feeling is driven of the masterful will, a will powerful enough to rule any state or direct any army. Pshaw ! there, I am criticising and analyzing ! I did not mean to do that, for it is a most unsatisfactory work. But Beecher's face set me off. And I want to add that this majestic counte- nance is, in speaking, and particularly in conversation, one of the most sensitive and mobile faces in the world. No woman's face vibrates more keenly with the strong play of feeling beneath. And Mr. Beecher's great, strong physiognomy shows, all over it, the lines of suffering. These leaders of humanity must be pre- 436 lll.NKY WARD BEECHER. pared for their work by suffering. Some of the world's battles have been fought out in this man's SOttl. Mr. Beecher sits there, with a graceful vase of flowers on one side and a rustic basket of flowers on the other, in an attitude that indicates his attention to Zundel's sweet, spiritual fingering of that great organ, and we, mentally sauntering, recall a sentence which we met in a French magazine the other day, in substance that an orator must not be judged by his discourses, but by the memory of his effects. There are few great preachers who could bear so well to be judged by their discourses as Mr. Beecher, and yet it will be a great injustice if posterity shall try to estimate him by these. Let it be remembered that he h;is in many regards changed the current of religious thought ; that he has changed the manner of the young ministers of his day, that he has affected public ques- tions, and that he has had a greater influence on the religious life of America than any other man. I do not belong to his sect, and do not agree with him entirely, but this much must be said of his oratory, that it has had a more deep and intellectual and perma- nent effect than of any other living man. Spurgeon and Bishop Simpson, princely orators as they are, have not contributed any fresh thoughts to the general stock of human intelligence. They have played powerfully on the emotional nature, they have moulded individual character, but they have not changed the cur- rent of opinion. It is only in the last half-dozen years that the general public have found out that Beecher is really one of the most conservative of men. He has happened to be. by conviction, in an attitude that made him appear a radical. Tn truth, the conservative element predominates. If he were president to-day. radicals would disown him in a month. But while I have drifted into this critical vein again, he is read- ing a hymn. There is nothing worthy of remark about. Mr. Beecher's reading, except that it is not worthy of remark. A NEW YEAR'S EVE AT BEECHER'S. 4:>T It is monotonous, commonplace, and like a Congregational min- ister. So while he is reading I may just as well say that some of his best things never get into print. I remember hearing him tell once, in an illustration, how a ragged street-boy could enjoy a garden looking through a fence, and in his impulsive description, he planted his hands upon his knees, mimicked the manner of the ragamuffin, and exclaimed, " Golly ! how nice it is !" The pict- ure was perfect, but it was not in the printed discourse. And it was well, for the printed discourse could not make it clear that the preacher had never for a moment sacrificed his dignity, and had in the application of this very illustration touched the depths of every heart and turned the smiles to glistening tears. And now we float out on the tide of this ocean of congregational singing. Zundel and his organ, the choir, the chorus, the congregation, the preacher, all are making a joyful noise unto the Lord, and we can- not resist the influence of the hymn or of the tender, touching, spiritual prayer that follows. After another hymn Mr. Beecher reads for his text, " But this people that knoweth not the law are cursed," and then with a quiet dignity proceeds to explain that the high priest was very angry when he said this, and that the translators did not give it the full force of the original, which is a burst of passion equiva- lent to, " This damned vulgar rabble." And so he introduced a sermon upon vulgarity, in which with great deliberateness, and with his vehemence rather in word than in gesture, he tore open the little vulgarities and " sweet insincerities" of life and conver- sation and literature, of money-getting and of money-spending. And we could not but wonder as we listened that the professors at Harvard should discountenance oratory, like the bob-tailed fox that wanted all tails cut off to match his own ! But, as we looked down the aisle and saw, as one can see in any congregation sitting bolt upright under these brave and cutting denunciations of every sort of treason to conscience, men who do sell their principles in- L38 HENRY WARD BEECHER. stead of their goods, we asked the lady with us whether oratory could be worth anything. And she said, " What would these men have been if they had not heard these sermons! " J Jut how incomplete is this letter ! Who can describe the majestic deliberateness, quick wit, the sharp thrusts, and the elo- quent bursts that seem to come along in the right time, all of their own accord, and who describe the solemn, touching perora- tion in which he referred to the close of the year ? In an announcement before the sermon, he extended a hroad in- vitation to everybody who chose to shake hands with him on New Year's day, to call at his house. And sauntering along Columbia Heights the next day, we could not resist the impulse to saunter in and shake his democratic and brotherly hand. A young man in threadbare coat was getting a most cordial greeting as we came in, and others of the rougher classes were on the sidewalk as we came out. The Leisurely Saunterer. By PROFESSOR JAMES M. HOPPIN, YALE COLLEGE. {From the New Englander, Vol. XXIX., 1870.) Other ministers of Christ may be more singly devoted to the work of saving souls ; other ministers may be a hundredfold more profound theologians, but few preachers living, or who have ever lived, have greater power with the people to do them good than Henry Ward Beecher. While he is pre-eminently a popular preacher he is not, in the common sense of the term, a sensational preacher, whose false popularity has been so graphically described by Dr. Chalmers in these words: "There is a high and far- sounding popularity, which is indeed a most worthless article > felt by all who have it most to be greatly more oppressive than gratifying ; a popularity of stare and pressure and animal heat MR. BEECHER CANNOT BE IMITATED. 439 and a whole tribe of other annoyances which it brings around the person of its unfortunate victim ; a popularity which rifles home of its society, and, by elevating a man above his fellows, places him in a region of desolation, where the intimacies of human fel- lowship are unfelt, and where he stands a conspicuous mark for the shafts of malice, envy, and detraction ; a popularity, which, with its head among thorns, and its feet in the treacherous quick- sands, has nothing to hold the agonies of its tottering existence but the hosannas of a drivelling generation !" Not such a popu- larity is Mr. Beecher's. It rests on solider grounds. He remains rational, earnest, natural, scriptural, while mightily attractive to the popular mind and heart. Mr. Beecher is a man of genius and cannot be imitated. The imitations are conclusive failures, like the fox that tries to copy the lion in his roar and ramp, or the blackbird that essays to sing like the thrush. Some one has said of Mr. Beecher that he is indeed a preacher for the common people, but he is not a preacher for the educated and refined class. This is the highest praise to say that a man is a preacher to the common people. ******* No one who has studied Mr. Beecher's sermons and more elabo- rate addresses can affirm that he is wanting also in the logical fac- ulty. Whether it was logic, or whatever it was, it was something of power and tenacious grip and weight, that wrestled with, fought, and overthrew that big, turbulent English populace that roared out in defiance against the American orator in those stormy Liverpool meetings, so memorable in the history of the late war. The first half of Mr. Beecher's sermons is commonly taken up in a kind of ratiocination, or in a logical development of the pure philosophy of the text — showing its harmony with the constitution of the mind and with the facts of being. He builds up this philosophical argument with considerable care. His metaphysics, it is true, belong neither to the Scotch nor to the German school, 44:0 HENRI WARD BEECHER that we can perceive, and it has hcen whispered that he has elabo- rated for himself a system of mental philosophy founded mainly on the " science'' of phrenology ; but however that may be, he recognizes the need of metaphysics, and of philosophical reasoning and analysis in his instruction of the people in divine truth. In one department of reasoning, on the moral side of man's nature, that which has relation to his conscience, moral tempera- ment, affections, sensibilities, will — in all that goes to make char- acter — he is powerful and penetrating. His reasoning to the depths of human nature, sinking shafts as it were in the original soil of humanity, gives him a solid foundation to build on. The practical issues of the sermon thus have weight and authority, as if vitally connected with and springing from fundamental truth. After this philosophical or theoretical development of the text, exhibiting the harmony of its main idea with the moral constitu- tion of man and the plan of his life under the government of God — striking the leading thought of the text and viewing it in its fundamental relations to moral truth — then comes the free illustra- tion and application ; and here the sermon takes a broad range through the wide relations of human life, society, and business. His great aim is to bring out and build up a genuine Christian manhood, one made perfect in Christ. He says of man : " He is born further from his nature than any other nature on earth — that some creatures are horn right up to their nature. They have their whole nature at birth ; but man is ever striving to regain his true nature, and sorrow is the true conflict in men's way to them- selves." II is conception of religion — and here, doubtless, is the place where he most lays himself open to the charge, so frequently made against him, of the lack of the evangelical element — does not fasten itself upon the doctrinal idea, the dogma in form, but upon its underlying truth or substance. The interior spiritual sub- stance of religion is transcendantly of more importance than its formulas, than the idea forms, government-forms, worship-forms CHRIST VERILY GOD. 441 of the Church. He aims at that within the man that moulds his life — the soul's interior and essential good. No man can express himself more strongly upon the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and upon the utter need of God to cleanse the heart and convert the soul. In the orthodox " plan of salvation," however, in the employment of the words, " atonement," the " cross," the " blood of Christ," he does not come up to the requirements of the accepted theology of the Church, and he would be indiscrimi- nating, we judge, when pressed to close distinctions, and even to clear, practical counsels to some minds seeking the way of forgive- ness and eternal life, but he preaches what he claims to be the essence of the Gospel, God saving men in Christ. His theology may be summed up in the word — Christ. Christ is verily God, made personal to yon and me — Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith — this is the sum and substance of his belief. He says to men, " You all have sinned, and are sinning. You don't know the way to get back to God. Christ presents himself to you in the Gospel and declares, I, your loving Lord, I, your Saviour, 1, your Teacher and Friend, am the way. Love me, and let me walk with you all the time, and I will see that you have a perpetual consciousness of such a divine power as will give victory to the spiritual side of your nature over the sensual and lower side. Trust not your own strength. Love me, and let me love you, and I will save you." And he says with feeling, " Tell me, have I failed to preach a living Christ ? Tell me, have I failed to preach a Christ burning with sympathy for sinful men ? Tell me, have I failed to show men, dying in their sins, that there was a love of God that could put its arms about them, and cleanse them, and lift them up into its own felicity, if they were willing ? Have I been faithless in this ? Then God forgive me ! for all my min- istry has been empty. But to me the heaven has been one mag- nificent procession of divinities. To me Christ has been all in all, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, ever-present, and ever- 442 HENRY WARD BEECHER. living. I have, in be suit, not preached a si/stem of revelations. I hare not used the abstract term plan of salvation. I have not talked about the atonement. I have not undertaken to sound ab- stract doctrines in your ears. I have done better than that ; and I call God to witness thai it is better. I have preached a living Jesus, as a Brother, a Friend, a Saviour, an everlasting God." The sermon entitled "Sin against the Holy Ghost" is one of the most powerful and instructive doctrinal discourses upon that solemn and mysterious theme that we have read ; and few sermons that have ever been written have less of the husk of dogma and more of the sweet, fruit of spiritual doctrine in them, than his dis- course on " The Comforting God." But it is not as a doctrinal, it is as a moral preacher that lie excels. As a moral pathologist lie is wonderfully subtle in his perception of purpose and motive, understanding the bad tenden- cies as well as the nobler instincts of the human heart, following out a moral truth that another preacher would give in some dry, formalistic husk of statement into its living issues, of character, enlarging, developing, showing how it works in real life, in the family, the street, the church, tracking meanness to its hiding- places, unearthing concealed selfishness, rousing the indolent and sensual, encouraging the meek heart, helping the doubtful, seeing good where others would see only evil, and striving to build up a true manhood in the erring, imperfect, and lost. He thinks that Christianity has established a new social standard, and that men are not to be judged by their rank, wealth, or accidental circum- stances, but by their moral worth, lie lias practical faith in human brotherhood. It is time that we should say a word upon the rhetorical charac- teristics of Mr. Bcecher's discourses. While Mr. Beecher's thoughts are not always marked by originality, and there are evi- dent signs that he seizes upon the living thoughts of the age, the best ideas in current literature, the fresh fruits of the advanced OLD TRUTHS IN NEW FORMS. 443 science and thinking of the best minds — that he is the expression rather than the original source of thought — yet his forms of thought and expression are only and inimitably his own. We can recall at this moment but a single quotation from a foreign source, and that from Lord Bacon, in any of his discourses. With such an exhaustless fecundity of invention he has indeed no need to quote from others. Especially in his illustrations, in which lies one great element of his popularity, he employs every- thing that his hand can lay itself upon, from the last truth of sci- ence to the most insignificant fact or object in nature. One can almost seem to trace the natural genesis of his illustrations in any given sermon. Old truths are brought out in new and vivid lights. Abstract* truth grows picturesque and concrete. It beats with the life- blood of the present. There is found to be instruction in every- thing, good in everything. The elements of common-sense, of reason, of nature, of a large humanity, 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 this them- selves before Mr. Beecher thought it, notwithstanding 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 given to his words by the combined unconscious consent of many minds who, as it were, listen approvingly as if to their own ideas. He has indeed found the great secret of popular power such as John the Baptist 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. Old men read his sermons when they can read noth- ing else out of the Bible. In the log-house of the pioneer the 4 11 BENRI WARD BEECHER. "' Plymouth pulpit " ia preaching. Young men in the universities go to his discourses as to fresh springs, and many a young man who has lost interest in the old doctrines has been brought back to the life and substance of truth by perhaps reading in the news- papers the reports of Mr. Beecher's sermons, lie is encouraging to those in doubt. lie is a hope-bringer. lie believes in man. lie helps man. He is sympathetic to every kind of mind. He docs not croak or scold. He is not solemn and stately, though he is in earnest, and sometimes terribly so. How impressive the conclusion of the discourse on " Preparation for Death" ! Few preachers have pursued this awful theme with a tread of more prophetic majesty and power, and yet with more of the sweetness and light of Christian truth. But no one can trifle with such preaching as that. The most careless and profligate youth would be arrested by it as by the strong hand of an elder brother who knows the world and the human heart, who speaks not with a weak sentimentality, but with the authority of love, of righteous- ness, and of communion with God. The influence of Mr. Beechcr as a preacher to young men who swarm to the metropolis by myriads, and who crowd the galleries of his church Sunday after Sundav with eager and attentive throngs, is of incalculable good. They cannot hear his shrewd and plain-spoken counsel, sent home to the heart by all that rouses and attracts manhood, and go away and plunge into vice. It is impossible. The impression must wear off, the moral sense must grow dull, the nerve of manly self- denial must, be relaxed, before the youth can turn again to low pleasures with any zest. Mr. Beecher, doubtless, himself might select a fresher illustration, but we would liken him to a moral lighthouse standing on a dangerous reef, dashed by the waves that roar around it, and sending its warning and encouraging beams far over the wild waters ; and who knows how many a hark, half- wrecked and driving on to destruction, has been saved by its light ? Such preaching is better than the most dignified disquisitions on THE PRACTICAL ELEMENT. 445 scientific theology, arranged according to the approved models and methods of systematic discourse, cold, intellectual, shining like stars in the wintry night, millions of miles distant in the firma- ment of heaven. Not that doctrinal preaching does not have its valuable office and place ; there must be the stars in heaven as well as the fires on earth for our guidance and light. And Mr. Beecher does not, it seems to us, sufficiently prize the need of a clearly-defined theological philosophy — a consistent system of truth — which prevents incongruous and rash statements, and which appeals to the reason. The practical element, which is so noble a one, is indescribably aided by being grounded upon the speculative element, and he who preaches from a well-wrought philosophy of faith will bring to bear more of solid weight upon any one point than the preacher can who is no theologian ; and, above all, he will not be obliged to construct a new philosophy every time he preaches. Such preaching has in it the prime qualities of instruc- tion, authority, strength, and is really conservative of the evangel- ical element, which must have a dogmatic form as a covering to preserve the tender life-seed of divine truth. The preacher who neglects or despises the study of theology is like the scientist at the present day who should attempt to investigate and teach the phenomena of the natural world by the instrumentality of his own crude, brief, and incomplete theory, knowing nothing of the theories upon which science has progressively advanced step by step toward the broader and clearer, and, at the same time, more intimate knowledge of physical truth. And men should have given them by the preacher of the New Testament, in clear state- ments, the vital truths of the Gospel — not the formal plan of salva- tion it may be — but, at least, in what that salvation consists, and how it is attained. They should know Christ's real work, his true efficiency in men's spiritual redemption. They should be made to understand the way of eternal life, the mediation of the Son of God, and this should be definitely communicated, and not be lost sight of in generalities, however noble and eloquent. L46 HENRY WARD BEECHER. Mr. Beecher La an epoch-making man. We h<>M him t<> l>c the best exponent of that new style of preaching, providentially adapted to meet the wants and the new spirit of this age, and to reach the great masses of the people, fast falling away from the old formal and unsympathetic methods of teaching. He will have exerted more of the moulding influence upon the style of preaching and modes of popular religious thought in his age than any other man. Far less scholarly and philosophically profound than Robertson, though with much of his spiritual earnestness and contempt of mere orthodox cant without the truth's reality, less solid in argument than Binney, less original in thought than Bushnell, less learned as a theologian and exegete than hundreds of preach- ers in England and America, less brilliant than the great French preachers, dead and living, none of them may compare with him in popular power, in his sway over the minds and hearts of living men. This is not only because of his powerful genius, but because of his true comprehension of the age and of the American mind, because of his large-souled human sympathy, because he preaches out of himself and his own intensely-felt and heart-wrought doc- trine instead of out of a-mere doctrinal system, and, above all, be- cause he is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Gospel of Christ, and speaks, as it were, from the radiant centre of its divine heart of love and power. What Unitarian preacher or what radical reformer, even the greatest, can aspire to a tithe of his power in this country, or ever will ? The people are with him. They always hear him gladly. They throng after him in great multitudes that would fain be fed — might we dare to reverently hint the shadow of the shade of such a resemblance — fed in the wilderness of this barren world of selfish living with the bread of life ! It is because they believe that he dispenses the true Word of Christ, the nourishing, multiplying, divine word of life. MR. BEECHER A SOCIAL FORCE. 447 By REV. A. McELROY WYLIE, NEWTOWN, PA. (From Scribner's Monthly, October, 1872.) MR. BEECHER AS A SOCIAL FORCE. The forces which operate in the development and direction of human society are generally found to be abstract and aggregated powers, but occasionally a single man becomes a distinct social force acting upon an entire nation, or even upon the world itself. Such a force is Mr. Beecher. Men of all parties, and of the most divergent creeds, freely recognize him as an element of power in the nineteenth century. There are few residents of New York, or visitors to the great Metropolis, who are not more or less familiar with that wide, spacious, and intensely plain church structure which stands in Orange Street, Brooklyn, about eight minutes' walk from the Fulton Ferry. The building itself is admirably suited to the character of the occupant of its pulpit. It is capacious, light, thoroughly well ventilated, cheerful — having no sympathy with a " dim religious light," and while it has very little, indeed, to amuse the eye, or to challenge sensuous admiration, there is an air about it which addresses itself to the higher nature of man. If you are about to hear Mr. Beecher for the first time, it is more than probable that you go with some degree of prejudice, and with a disposition to apologize to yourself or to some one else for this indulgence, so doubtful in its propriety. And perhaps, too, these feelings will not be overcome after having once pressed your way through that crowd, but there will always be left the conviction that you ought to hear him again, and do him the justice of letting him speak for himself against your prejudices and those of the world. But when you have heard Mr. Beecher several times you will begin to recognize the fact that the occupant of Plymouth Pulpit 1 IS IIKNUV WARD BEECHER. La a distinct social force, or, \vc should say, an embodied combi- nation of social forces. Y ou will conclude that lie possesses an organization wonderful for its complexity, and yet still more for its harmony of parts, and you will be led to ask : What are his peculiarities? What are the secrets of his power and influence? One who has enjoyed his acquaintance and often felt his power, would probably begin by speaking of the great breadth and ful- ness of the man. Mr. Beecher, to-day, is probably one of the roundest men living. He presents some side to every human being he approaches. More than this, he draws men toward him by the magnetism which seem to pervade all his powers. Every faculty seems to evolve an influence, and the mighty current composed of these concurring influences makes the man a magnet, the force of which is such as to draw great masses of his fellow- beings toward his way of viewing the great problems of life and human destiny. His sympathies are as broad as his perceptions, and to use his own words, addressed to the writer in conversation, " All the roads in creation meet at my door, and I am like a cow owned and milked by a half-dozen families." In this particular he is a " debtor to all men," and, accord- ingly, all feel that they can come and put in a claim for the receipt of some benefit. All denominations can claim him, for he is broad enough in his sympathies and comprehensive enough in his sweep of the truth to afford a support for all. The Baptist may claim him, because, in his view, " the Congregational ist is a dry Baptist, and the Baptist is a wet Congregationalist. " The Methodist may claim him because of the ardor and freedom of his speech ; his love of revivals ; his respect for the responsible agency of man. The Presbyterian may claim him, because of his education and his early church connection ; and because after a rigid examination by " good old Father Hughes of Ohio," he was pronounced so thoroughly ortho- dox that he " leaned a little t'other way." The Quaker, too, EMBRACING ALL SECTS. 449 may claim him, because of his high regard for the intuitions of the moral sense, and his standing declaration of independence from all bondage to outward ordinances, and slavish submission to the man- imposed bandages and badges of ecclesiasticism. The Low Church Episcopalian can claim him because of his intense love of the beautiful, and his admiration of order and symmetry. And even the High Church and the Catholic can find something in him for his touch of antiquarianism, and his open and avowed confession that between the world on the one side, and the Church in its comprehensive sense, embracing all forms and sects, on the other, there is enough of truth, enough of Christ in every denomination to save a man ; and one need not abjure his own sect in order to be saved, if he will but make the most of the Light and Truth which are conveyed to him in the channels nearest to his own hand. The best proof of the comprehensiveness of the man is found in the character of that vast congregation which twice every Sunday faces him as he stands on the Plymouth platform. Behind the neat little desk, made of olive-wood from Jerusa- lem, which bears the name of that ancient city carved in Hebrew characters, there is a focal centre in which are collected all the sympathies of human nature ; and from which radiate lines of communication that bear messages of peace and good- will to every name, age, class, and condition known to humanity. In connection with the mind-breadth and heart-breadth of Mr. Beecher, he is most happy in possessing that combination which the great Roman poet pronounced the necessary conditions of a perfect organization — the " mens sana in corpore sano." A bad digestion does not contribute to great clearness of thought, nor does the bile of a jaundiced constitution bring out the affectionate qualities of a man. Now Mr. Beecher stands before the world as a living demonstration of the advantage of a conscientious respect paid to the laws of the body, and the condi- tions which secure great strength and the continuance of good 450 BENRY WARD BEECHER. health. That square, massive, compact form is thrilled in every member with the clear, rushing currents of Nature's best arterial blood, and is electrified by Nature'- strongest nervous fluids. Not only is such a body no hindrance to the exercises of the soul, bu1 it is the most competent instrument for the expression of all the thoughts and emotions of the higher nature. Mr. Beecher's intuitive faculty is another important element of his power. Other men have rapid and accurate intuitions, but they are either limited and partial, or they are not rendered effective upon other minds, because they are not supported and illustrated by the operations of reason and imagination. But Mr. Beecher, with his remarkable intuitions in respect to men, as well as in regard to truth, duty, and all that is necessary and becoming to times and places, can invariably summon his reason and powers of illustration (more especially the latter) to set forth his intuitions and to elaborate his conclusions* Many men of genius fail as teachers because their splendid intuitions are not coupled with those powers which are necessary to make them plain to the average minds around them. One of the most gifted mathematicians of this country endeavored, for a few years, to till a professorship in a univer- sity, but did not prove a successful teacher ; and the mortifica- tion experienced by his sensitive mind was unendurable. His genius strode along with the gait of a giant, while the capacities of the pupils toiled and sweated by his side, like infant toddlers agonizing to keep pace with a champion pedestrian. He found it impossible to shorten his steps to the tread of average minds, ami what was comprehended by him at a glance, he took for granted could be grasped by the powers of the ordinary pupil. There- fore it is not surprising that he failed as a teacher. But it is not so with Mr. Beecher; he possesses that unusual and happy combination of faculties which enable him to compre- hend quickly, anticipate accurately, and fix his conclusions upon HIS DRAMATIC STYLE. 451 the minds of the masses of men. Having risen to a mental eminence, and surveyed the expanded horizon commanded hy this height, he is able and willing to go back, and use his feet over a toilsome way in the effort to conduct the struggling multitude, who cannot soar like him to the same elevation. These gifts make Mr. Beecher a great instructor. Other great speakers carry men by means of their emotions and sentiments ; Mr. Beecher never does this. He draws men onward by operations upon their conscience an.d heart, upon their judgments, and their sense of the beautiful, the true, and the good, and never by appeals to their fear. His rapid and accurate intuition serves him in the place of prudence ; but that Mr. Beecher makes no mistakes cannot be asserted. He does, however, enjoy a quick moving sense of what is fitting for the hour, the place, the occasion, the men, and the appropriate means and instrumentalities. The dramatic sense enters very largely into his constitution as an operative force. His analytical power seldom takes the direc- tion of abstraction, but of impersonation of qualities. Where he puts a truth or a quality before his hearers, his mind instinctively sees it and sets it forth as a living, moving thing. He naturally adapts everything to scenic representation. " I never hear," said he recently to the writer, " of the experi- ence of others who are troubled, or straggling, or groping their way, that their condition does not instantly present itself as a drama before my eyes, and I do not think of it, but I see it." If his feeling be such, Mr. Beecher must be dramatic in his style and manner. He is not theatrical ; but that he could have made an eminent actor no one can doubt. His voice, his action, his look, his whole person act his meaning, and his entire organization becomes a kaleidoscope to represent his ever-varying mental methods and emotions. 1:52 IIK.NKY WARD BEECHER. But no one who has a clear conception of the difference between the theatrical and dramatic, and who is fairly acquainted with Mr. Heeeher's nature and style, can maintain that the occu- pant of Plymouth pulpit indulges in mere theatrical effects. Illustrations and comparisons, metaphors and impersonations are perfectly natural to him, and characterize his manner even in private conversation. Mr. Beecher's language and voice should not he passed over, as much of his pulpit power is based on them. Other influential speakers use their voices as instruments, but, like instruments, they are not part of themselves. But no listener can fail to be impressed with the fact that Mr. Beecher's voice is eminently peculiar in this respect, that, as an organ, it is a part of himself ; its varying quality and pitch, its entire range, fits his meaning and shows it as perfectly as the thin, close dress of an athlete hides and yet reveals the muscles and movements of the body. The changes of his voice in pitch, quality and inflection are often so "sudden and yet so entirely unforced and natural, that the hearer expects for the moment to see another personage in the drama .stepping on the stage, and essaying to take up another part ; and yet it is no trick of the ventriloquist, nor is it the effect of a theatrical training. What is offensive in even the most skilled imitator of Mr. Beecher is most beautiful and impressive in him. The transitions of his voice are so accurate, even in its most rapid and in its nicest distinctions, that no hearer can mistake the speaker's real meaning. He may pass from a quiet demonstra- tion, or hot denunciation, to sincere approval or latent irony, and the inflections and qualities of his voice will show forth the mean- ing of his thoughts with entire clearness and precision in detail. The hearer carries away the conviction that the intensest sincer- ity must be hehind what he sees, for it would be both a moral and physical impossibility for any mortal to act a borrowed part HIS MAGNETISM. 453 and sustain it over such length of time and variety of specifica- tion. The words of the English tongue are to him as the forces of a mighty army. At one time, at Lis hidding, they fall into line, dressed in glittering uniforms for a holiday parade. Again, at the voice of his command they thunder, and roar, and storm like the opening of batteries upon a besieged fortress. And then they flash along the line in the glitter of a brilliant bayonet-charge ; while again they leap forward in the whirl and roar and clatter of a cavalry onset. One no longer wonders that there is a divine philosophy in ordaining the living voice as the vehicle for convey- ing the saving truths of the Gospel to the world, as distinguished from the less stirring impressions transmitted by the printed page. Mr. Beecher likewise possesses, in a high degree, that inde- scribable power which men choose to call magnetic. A company feels the atmosphere of his presence as soon as he enters the room. We have stood and watched the brightening counte- nances of guests or spectators when it was whispered from one to another that Mr. Beecher had come in. We have seen a lagging meeting electrified by his arrival, after its proceedings were half over, when the universal sentiment was, " Now, for the remainder of the evening we shall enjoy what we anticipated." It is a general conviction among managers, that if they can only induce Mr. Beecher to preside they will have a successful meet- ing, whatever its object may be. Intimately interwoven with this magnetic force, there is in Mr. Beecher an endless thread of golden good-humor and flashing wit. With this combination of powers he is sure not only to command the attention of his audience, but to carry away their admiration, even if he fails to compel assent. Probably he never stood before an audience which he did not master, and he has, perhaps, been as thoroughly tested in this regard as any man living. Other men may always preserve their self-possession, but 454 llKNUY WARD BEECHER Mr. Beecher never loses his good-humor and his ready wit. lie is more than self-poised under tlie most trying circumstances. No better illustration of the power of this good-humor, self- command, and ready wit, not only in eontrolling, but actually in winning over a hostile audience, was ever more clearly displayed in modern times than when, in ( )ctober, 1863, Mr. Beecher found himself upon the platform of Exeter Hall, in London. There he stood in the midst of a storm of popular indignation, but as fast as the thunderbolts were hurled against him they were conducted away by his imperturbable good-nature, while, backed by conscious power, he calmly abided his time, shooting forth, when the storm for an instant lulled, an occasional shaft of wit, and again, with irresistible kindliness, giving the conscience of the audience a jog, and ever appealing to the Britisher's national love of fair play. An intimate friend of Mr. Beecher, who sat by his side on that occasion and was thrilled by the grandeur of the contest, declared to the writer that it was the most sublime and touching scene he ever witnessed. He could see the mighty multitude slowly but surely abate their fury and yield to the magic of the charmer ; until, as one mass, they sat thrilled with admira- tion at the feet of America's greatest orator. The change of sentiment in that hall is well illustrated by the old lady who began by shaking her umbrella in the speaker's face, and ended by crowding toward him, hoping to at least touch the hem of his garment with the end of the same useful article. Taste, too, enters as a very delicate but potent ingredient into the constitution of Mr. Beecher's power. He is a most sensitive critic m all the departments of the fine arts, and perhaps Nature has no more loving nor appreciative admirer than Mr. Beecher. lie is skilled in gardening, and a friend informs the writer that the display of taste in gardening that one notices when passing through the streets of the beautiful capitol of Indiana owes its inspiration and origin very largely to the enthusiasm of Mr. HIS STYLE AND PURPOSE. 455 Beecher when a resident of that city. He is extremely suscepti- ble to the influence of music, and the skilled organist, as he deftly passes his hand over the key-board of his instrument, plays at the same time upon the sympathies of Mr. Beecher's soul. He is melted to tears or aroused to enthusiasm in response to the vary- ing strains of harmony, and he recently declared in public that he loved everything in music from a jews-harp to David's harp. This full circle of sympathy with the wide world of art makes Mr. Beecher a near brother to a vast multitude of highly organized souls, and through them he exerts a mighty influence upon man- kind. Here, too, then, is illustrated his potency as a social force. Mr. Beecher's style can be indicated by a few salient points. His style is himself. It is a perennial stream, drawing its supplies from the inexhaustible fund of Nature's own providing. It is unconstrained, free, full, flowing, exuberant, and spontaneous. There is no straining after effect or unnecessary use of figures, but the varied play of his powers bears toward some great central point which he designs to enforce. With all his ideality he never ceases to teach common-sense ; and however many golden threads he may weave into his discourse, one always feels that there is solid wear in it, suitable for every-day use. If he has a fault of style it is in the overbalancing of logic by his rhetoric, and if he errs in action it is on the side of over- char- ity. In his nature the affectionate element predominates, and his style often takes its complexion more from his heart than his head. Whatever cold critics may say, the world, as a vast court of humanity, has already passed its judgment upon this great preacher's style and purpose. , Mr. Beecher's capacity for work often surprises even those who know him best. His pulpit duties and the ministerial cares of a great congregation would prove too much for most men of supe- rior strength ; but these, onerous as they are, have been for many years but part of his great work. The Press, the Pulpit, 45o HENRY WARD BEECHEli. and the Platform, to say nothing of pastoral work, are all mighty levers in his hands, each of which he works with as much will and energy .is if it alone engrossed his attention and absorbed his en- tin ' force. His weekly task could never be accomplished if he did not rigidly observe three imperative conditions. lie regards the laws of health, he works systematically, and approaches his tasks with promptitude. The full, ruddy cheeks, standing out in boyish plumpness, speak of a full supply of thoroughly oxygenized blood, and tell of exuberant vitality well maintained. He takes great interest in horses, and believes that " the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse. " Like the late Dr. Cutler, he knows that the horse does more to keep him than he does to keep the horse. There are certain hours when he will see strangers and entertain his friends, and his regulations are firmly adhered to. In his system due time is allotted to the recreation of his powers, and this he religiously observes. " Come ye apart and rest awhile," is as much a part of his creed as, " and to every man his work." He believes that fishermen who never stop to mend their nets will soon cease entirely to catch any fish. His promptitude in facing his tasks is one of his noblest quali- ties. The willingness to spring from his chair and go forward to open the door to the last duty which has knocked, is not the least important element in the character of the man whom we believe to be at this hour a most decided social force. SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. By R. S. STORRS, D.D. Mr. Beecher introduced the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims, in the following terms : Mr. Beecher said : " Twenty-five years ago, and more, among the first, and almost the only minister that I met or visited here was my beloved brother and neighbor, the Rev. Dr. Storrs, who is present with us to-night. During these twenty-five years I have never received from him one word that was not spoken in kindness, and I have never heard of one speech or syllable from him that has not been generous, beyond my deserts. And though we have labored in parallel fields and mingled comparatively but little, one of the treasures that I have laid up, and that I cherish with profound satisfaction, is the memory of an unbroken friend- ship with him, which has run through a period of a quarter of a century. He has been kind enough to come here this evening and will speak a few words." ADDRESS OF DR. STORRS. " My Dear Friends of Plymouth Church: To speak frankly, I feel somewhat embarrassed this evening by finding myself involved, for the first time in my life, in what seems to be a serious difference of opinion between you, the people, and your pastor. I see that he has stated, as it is reported in the public newspapers, that he wishes nothing to be said, in any of these 458 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. meetings, with regard to himself. Well, turning over that thought, it seemed to me that perhaps a few remarks on Recent Explorations in Central Africa might be deemed suitable to the occasion ; but I was afraid that these might bring up the subject of slavery ! So, after lounging into the delightful rooms of the Historical Society, and trying to ascertain from our friend, Mr. Hannah, what were the latest works on that subject, I found that I must take something more remote, and thought that perhaps a brief discourse on the probable geography of the planet Saturn would do ; but then, that is connected with ' Rings,' you observe ! And how on earth to get any subject that would not, somehow or other, lead up to and terminate in Beecher, to-night, was a puzzle to me. Then I looked over the letter of the Committee, and found that, according to my recollection, they particularly desired me to speak of Mr. Beecher as a Preacher. And the only way that I saw out of it was this : As I understand it, he is not present here to-night ! I do not see him anywhere, and T do not hear him ! And it is the first time in the last twenty-five years of my experience that I have been in any public assembly where he has been present, and where he has been invisible and inaudible ! " At any rate, constructively he is absent ! You remember, perhaps, the story of the Rev. Thomas Williams, a very excellent but somewhat eccentric minister from Rhode Island, who was applied to by Dr. Emmons to write, and after his death to preach, his funeral sermon— which he did. Dr. Emmons lived a long time, and when he was ninety years of age, or thereabouts, he thought it might be judicious and safe to know what Brother Williams had written about him. Accordingly he asked him to read the sermon to him. Mr. Williams readily consented to do it. He had not proceeded far, however, with the reading, before Dr. Emmons began to interrupt with criticisms and com- ments. ' Stop, stop, sir ! ' said Mr. Williams ; ' remember that SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 461 for all the purposes of this sermon you are no longer a living man ! ' " Now, Mr. Beecher is a very living man, if he happens to be present here — a man as much alive as any one could be expected to be on the fourth day of such a celebration as this ; but, at the same time, for all the purposes of my remarks, he is not present, and will not know anything about them, unless you tell him — which, of course, you won't ! " I must say that it strikes me as a capital idea to get a man to talk about Mr. Beecher's preaching who has never had many chances to hear him. I have always had a profound respect for the shrewdness of Plymouth Church ; but there is a sagacity in this which absolutely approximates genius ! I was four thousand miles away when my twenty-fifth anniversary came around, last year — off among the Bohemians, not the newspaper gentlemen, who are sometimes so called, and whom Mr. Beecher may have seen a few times this week, but in what the Germans call the ' Kettle-land ' of Europe, of which Prague, on the Moldau, is the superb and charming historic capital ; so that my people had no ehance to make any stir over that occasion — though I have no doubt they thought of it, as I am sure I did, with my heart full of tenderness and of tears. But if ever they should take it into their heads to celebrate any other anniversary of mine, I shall remember this neat little arrangement, and see that they have somebody to talk about my preaching who has not heard much of it. Then it will be sure to be an impartial and an unbiased opin- ion that is given. " But it is rather hard upon me to ask me to perform such a service ! It is very much like asking a man to describe Niagara Falls who has never seen them except as he was being switched by, over the Suspension Bridge, on a train of cars ; or like asking one to describe the magnificent sweep of glaciers around the Gorner Grat at Zermat — the grandest sight in all Europe — when ■ 1:62 hk.\i:y \v.\i:|) BEECHER. he has never soon it, except through the five-minute chinks of sunsliit n a cloudy day. " Bowever, I am qoI quite bo badly oflE as that ; and you may not be quite so Bafe as you thought you were : t"<>r I have heard Mr. Beecher a few times — enough to know, at any rale, that the difference between hearing bis sermons preached and reading those sermons, as printed in the newspapers or in volumes, is very much like the difference between seeing fireworks go off by night, and looking in the morning at the blackened frames on which those fireworks were suspended. " I remember a sermon which I heard him preach in the pulpit of the old church that stood here aforetime. It was not exactly a sermon either ; it was an Address which he had prepared elabo- rately for some college (my impression is that it was Hamilton College), on ' Sympathy.' I was in the pulpit with him. It was admirable— lucid, elegant, powerful, and full of just thought, very justly and beautifully stated : but it was being read. " You know the old lady out West — wise in her philosophy, if not learned in her orthography — said that reading was not preaching : ' R-e-d never spelled preach. 1 " Well, as he read on, the audience were getting rather dull and listless, and attention began to wander pretty widely. He saw it ; and, being quick at taking a hint of that sort, if it ever is given him, he began to read a little more rapidly, and now and then to interject some bright remark. But that did not help the matter. Suddenly he paused, and looked about for half a minute, and then there came from his lips an utterance that was as if a wind-cloud had burst in the house. It was perfectly over- whelming to me and to the congregation ; but it waked every- body up. There were no more dull faces that night in the congregation, I assure you. Everybody looked in surprise, and wonder, and startled expectation ; and then, after about a minute, his voice eased off into a pleasant tone, he told a story, SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 463 jumped some twenty-five pages of his manuscript, caught the thread again, and the audience listened with rapt attention, while he went on magnificently to the end. " I remember to have heard him once at Saugerties, where he and I had gone to inaugurate a Congregational church movement among some Dutch farmers who wanted to be independent, and who had asked him to preach for them. It was a delightful afternoon in June, and the slope on which was situated the little Methodist meeting-house where we met was white with apple- blossoms, aud the air was laden with the perfume of them. The congregation was not large, for the persons who were interested in the movement were comparatively few ; and the old gentlemen (they were old gentlemen, most of them) scattered themselves about in the corners of the pews, and spread their red bandanna handkerchiefs over their heads (I can see them now, spotted with their orange stars and diamonds), to listen to a discourse from this new Dominie, of whom they had heard, but whom they had never seen — evidently supposing that as he came from the city what he might say would be wholly orthodox, and would require no special attention on their part. The text from which lie preached on that occasion was, ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' He spoke of the sticks with magnificent names, which were bought in the nurseries, and which they set out with the expectation that they would produce an abundance of fruit, charming to the eye and delicious to the taste — but from which came small gnarly fruit, and only a little of that ; and then of other trees with no names at all, and a meagre promise, which yielded loads of luscious fruit. It struck me then, as it has since, that if there was any one department of theology in which he was pre-eminent, it was the department of Pomology. I believe that lie knows as much about apples as any living minister. He knew more about them than all those farmers put together. The names of the different varieties, which were utterly unfamiliar to me, Jtil HENRI WARD BEECHER. were as familiar to his lips as the names of his children ; ami what he didn't know about them, it was palpable wasn't worth knowing. One old farmer looked up at the new minister, and then another ; and then they looked at each other, as something irresistibly fanny came out, to see if, in a Methodist meeting house, on a Wednesday afternoon, it might not be allowable, to *mile a little bit. After a while they did smile, whether it was allowable or not ; and gradually tbe smile rippled and ran into laughter, and into peals of it ; and a jollier congregation of independent Dutchmen was never seen, I venture to say, in all that region. There was a power, too, in the practical application of the truth, winch took bold of them in a way to which they had never been accustomed. " I remember hearing him preach at the installation of one of the boys of this church, over a church up the river. I watched him carefully, because I knew that about one third of his sermon was written, and that the other two thirds were unwritten, and I wanted to see how he would make the transition. I never could manage that thing at all myself. He read on, very smoothly and delightfully, through the first part of his discourse ; and it seemed to me that when he came to the end of his manuscript, he must make a plunge, like a man walking off from the pier and starting on the water. But instead of that, he slid into the extemporaneous part of his discourse as easily as a ship glides down the ways and is launched upon the water, that is its natural element. I was delighted with the smoothness and grace of the transition. I admired the facility with which the carefully prepared introduction and the extemporaneous portion were blended together, each gaining by comparison with the other. " I remember to have heard him in this church many years ago — it may have been in '58 ; or perhaps it was as early as '54 — on an occasion when he delivered a preparatory lecture, which literally glowed with love to Christ. I never shall forget it. It SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 465 made an impression on my mind and heart which has remained there ever since. I do not know that T should call him an especially handsome man — though I know that I should make two thousand personal enemies here in a minute if I intimated any- thing to the contrary ; but that night his face shone like the face of an angel ; his words glowed with pathos and power ; every heart was filled with their impression ; and a spirit of love and joy and Christian hope reigned supreme here ! " So you see I have heard him enough to know something about his preaching. " The sources of that power in him, in which, during the last twenty-five years, you have been all the while rejoicing, are very deep and manifold. It used to amuse and provoke me, years ago, when men would speak as if his strength lay in some one thing ; in his voice, perhaps, or in his gesture, or his power of illustration, or something else. Some single element, it was now and then thought, was the hair of this Samson, in which his strength resided ; and if he were shorn of that he would become like other men. Nonsense ! You know, as well as I do, that his power comes from many sources. It is like a rushing, royat river, which has its birth-place in a thousand springs. It is like a magnificent oak, which has its grand uplift of trunk and stem. and its vast sweep of branches, by reason of the multitudinous roots which strike down deep, and spread through the soil in every direction. These supply the mighty timbers for the battle-ship and the building ! " Now, if I were to go, as I shall not, into a thorough analysis of his power as a preacher, I should occupy your time for a great while ; but there are certain elements of that power which are familiar to you, and which redound, not to his praise or yours, but to the praise of Him who made him what he is, and sent him thither. " First among these elements, I should put a thoroughly vitalized Itif, EENRY WARD BEECHER. mind : a mind so vitalized that its every process becomes as vital as itself ; so that there is no reproduction of past processes ; no memorizing of what has previously been in the mind. His crea- tive faculties are in play all the time. His thoughts, when they are uttered, are always fresh and spontaneous, as if they had occurred then for the first time : and so are his illustration-. He repeats his illustrations, of course. I have heard him repeat some myself, from the mechanic arts, from household life, from growth in nature. And I remember a lady's saying to him, some years ago, that she ' hoped his ship would come in before long.' She had heard him perhaps three times in the course of a year ; and it so happened that each time a ship, either as leaving port, or as sailing on the sea, or as entering port, had got into the sermon, and -he wanted that ship to ' come in ! ' But every time it was as fresh to his vitalized mind as though it had never occur- red to it before. He tells a story, perhaps, the second time ; but it is just as appropriate, just as forcible, just as full of vitality, the second time as it was the first ; and I have no doubt that it would be to the end, if he were to tell it two hundred times, and probably it would have grown considerably better by that •time than it was at first ! " I think I should put second, immense common-sense ; a wonderfully self-rectifying judgment, which gives sobriety and soundness to all his main processes of thought. I don't know but 1 have been more impressed by that in Mr. Beecher than by any other one element of strength in him. I have seen him go to the edge of a proposition which seemed to me dangerous, and almost absurd, again and again ; but he never went over. He always caught himself on the edge, not by any special volition, but by an instinctive impulse ; by the law of a nature that rectifies mistakes almost before they are made. If he has taken an extravagant view which seems about to diverge from the solid ground, it never fairly and finally does so. He reminds me of sensations which i SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 467 have had a hundred times in crossing the ocean. For instance, coming hack from Europe in the Russia, during a heavy blow, we were taking the waves ' quartering.' Down would go the star- board-side, and up would go the larboard ; down would go the stern, and up would go the bows ; then the 'great ship would ride for an instant balanced upon the top of the wave ; then, as she reeled over, the bows would go down and the stern would go up ; the larboard- side would go down and the starboard up ; but the grand old ship would always swing herself to a level in the valleys between those ridges of water. She was perpetually diving or climbing, but balancing herself between, and always swinging to her level again. And, whatever she did, she was forever going on toward the distant harbor. As one sea-sick fellow-passenger of mine said, ' Confound it, making that gigantic figure 8 all the time! ' But that gigantic figure 8 was what was driving us on, through storm or shine, toward Sandy Hook. ' ' A man who has not this common-sense, this sound self-rectify- ing judgment, on which the machinery of his mind is to work, flashes out very soon. We have had any number of examples of that sort in the American pulpit. But the man who has this common-sense, and this instinctive judgment, has two of the cardi- nal elements which go to make a successful minister. There is an inherence of satisfying power in him ; and all the brilliancies which he then has, of fancy or of eloquence, have a chance to reveal themselves, and never weary us ; any more than do the red banners of the cardinal flower by the mossy brook-side, or the gorgeous flame of the golden-rod amid ferns and brake. " I should put next to this, I think, his quick and deep sympathy with men ; his wonderful intuitive perception of moods of mind, which makes these stand out before him like a proces- sion passing in the street. You say, ' This is (/cuius.' Of course it is ; but it is the genius you observe, not of the dramatist nor of the poet ; it is the genius of the great Preacher, who catches his 408 HENRY WARD BEECHER suggestions, his inspiration even, from the eyes or the faces, shin- ing or tearful, of the people before him. In a lower sense, in a sense how infinitely lower, and yet in 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. " Then, still further, comes that mental sensibility, that emotional responsiveness, which 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 hist 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, whenever the occasion has been presented. " Some men's minds are like a dry and sterile upland. You must sink a shaft, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty feet, before you strike water ; and then you get only a contemptible trickle, and must pump and pull for half an hour to get a bucket full. But his mind has been like a springy hill-side, where you cannot strike a spade without starting water. Go down five feet, and you find a rivulet ; ten feet, and you find a flood, that keeps the meadows green and rich ! Such a man's mind is never dry. This intimate and immediate responsiveness to, and sympathy with, subjects and occasions, is an immense gift — charming not only, but always fertilizing, and always refreshing. " Then put beyond that (for certainly it properly goes beyond and farther off) his wonderful animal vigor, his fulness of bodily power ; his voice, which can thunder and whisper alike ; his sympathy with Nature, which is so intimate and confidential that SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 469 she tells him all her secrets, and supplies him with continual images ; and, above all, put as the crown upon the whole that enthusiasm for Christ to which he has himself referred this even- ing, and which has certainly been the animating power in his ministry — the impression upon his soul that he, having seen the glory of the Son of God, has been set here to reflect that glory upon others ; to inspire their minds with it ; to touch their hearts with it ; to kindle their souls with it, and so to prepare them for the heavenly realm — put all these together, and you have some of the elements of power in this great Preacher — not all of them, but some, snatched hurriedly from the great treasure- house. There you have a few, at any rate, of the traits and forces of him whose power has chained you, and quickened and blessed vou, during all these years. " I do not doubt that Mr. Beecher (and I have more than once told him so) has demoralized more young men who have gone into the pulpit than any other man who ever entered it in America ; because the boobies have supposed that his power lay in some one thing — in his voice, or his gesture, or his manner in the pulpit — and that all that any man had to do to be a ready-made and improved Beecher was to stand in the pulpit, with nothing in his brains, with no supreme feeling or thought to utter, and yell like fury, and storm about the platform, then subsiding suddenly into a sweet and gentle whisper ! You and I know, my friends, that he has had inexhaustible powers back of everything of that kind : and that his power has been so constant and so vast, only because the sources of it have been so manifold and so deep. " Such are some of the elements that have combined in him, and combined to make him the foremost preacher in the American pulpit. That is a great thing to say, because there have been a great many brilliant men in the American pulpit. There have been many brilliant men in these Brooklyn pulpits since he and T were settled here. When he came to Brooklyn, Dr. Stone was 470 EENRT WARD BEECIIEU. preaching in Christ Church — a man rich in thought, powerful in argument, impressive and fervent in application. 1 >r. Vinton, who was lately carried to New York for liis burial, was in Emmanuel Church, with a stately and resonant eloquence, often very commanding, swaying and stirring his bearers nobly. I>r. Cox was in the First Presbyterian Church, with a mind like an auroral heaven, reminding one, as Gough said, of nothing so much as the meteors on a November night ; but reminding me, I think, rather of the ocean, in its mobile grace, extent, and power, capping its fiercest waves with foam, and covered with phospho- rescence. Dr. Spencer was in the Second Presbyterian Church — a man who held his congregation with a grasp which almost no other man has equalled, which none surpasses, lie was strong in argument, vigorous in expression, with a certain profound poetic element in him which was not recognized always, but which gave to some of his discourses a majesty, a sublimity, a weird solem- nity which I have never seen surpassed. Dr. D wight was in the First Dutch Church — kindly and courteous in manner beyond most men whom I have known ; careful in thought, chaste, temperate, and strong in expression ; learned in theology, largely read in the best literature. He was a man of fine natural abilities, refined sensibilities, and great dignity and sweetness in the pulpit. Dr. Bethune came afterward — that man of infinite wit, vivacity, and variety of mind, in whom pathos and humor were intimately blended, the charm of the social circle, who had a marvellous power of eloquence, as you well know, on both pulpit and plat- form ; whom I lamented when he left, and wept for when he died, as I had loved, admired, confided in him while he was here. Dr. Welsh was at the same time in the Baptist Church ; Dr. Kenneday, Dr. Nadal, and Dr. Sewall in Ihe Methodist. T cannot name them all. You remember them. A brilliant circle of ministers they were, of whom any city might be proud ; in whose presence we all rejoiced. But there has been no one SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 471 who has been a preacher for the city, a preacher for the country, a preacher for the world, as has been that preacher who has stood on this platform. "I do not mean to say that I think he has been a perfect preacher. He has not been. I think that if he had taken my advice, on :i number of points, it would have been a great deal better for him. I have no doubt that in the mere matter of voice he has spent enough superfluous force, during these twenty-five years, to make two perfectly respectable thunder-storms ! And for myself, I would rather have my illustrations come in bouquets sometimes than to have them always come by bushels ! But he has been a great preacher, as you have felt, and as you bear wit- ness. He has been, in the true sense, and in the largest meaning, a preacher for the World. " Then, when you unite with these other things of which I have spoken, as elements of his power, a somewhat vehement and combative nature, that always gets quickened and fired by oppo- sition, as you have found, and that never is so self-possessed, so serene, and so victorious, as when the clamor is loudest around him and the right is fiercest — and if you add very fixed and posi- tive ideas on all the great ethical, social, and public questions of the time — there you have the champion Reform-fighter of the last twenty -five years. I never saw a man that it was more dangerous, on the whole, to arouse by opposing him — a thing which, there- fore, I never do. " I remember once hearing him speak at an anti-slavery meet- ing at the Tabernacle in 1850 (many of you were not old enough to be there then, and I am afraid that a good many of you who were old enough were not there ; but he was there, and I was). In his address he had been describing some atrocity at the South. and at the end he said, ' Is there anybody worse than that in Sing Sing I ' when, from away up in the highest gallery, came a shrill, piping voice, saying, ' Yes ! ' ' T give it up ; you know ! you've 472 HENRY WARD BEEOHEH been there ! ' flashed out instantly from Mr. Beecher. It took tin audience about half a minute to find out that it wasn't a prear- ranged colloquy ; but when they did understand that this was his instant, spontaneous reply. 1 tell you they nearly took the roof off from the pillars of the building ! " When men have anywhere undertaken to put him down bj violence, they have found that they had more than their match. " You, perhaps, remember the story of the Englishman, at Naples, saying to a Yankee, in a slightly arrogant way, as English- men can sometimes, pointing to the red flames that were stream- ing up from Vesuvius into the heavens, ' Have you anything like that over in your country ? ' and how the Yankee replied, ' Y\ ell, no ! Not exactly like that ; but we've got a waterfall over in our country that would put that thing out in five minutes ! ' " Well, when Mr. Beecher was in England, they made volcanoes around him, on no small scale, at Liverpool, at Manchester, and the other places. But that fluent thought with- in, and that fluent eloquence on the lips, put out the volcanoes ; or, if they did not put them out, they made the fire shoot the other way, till the ground became too hot for the English Govern- ment to stand on, if it would permit its evident sympathy for the Southern Confederacy to be formulated into law. " I have also seen Mr. Beecher m other relations, where you have not. I have seen him in councils and deliberative assem- blies, where, when the business became intricate, and entangled, and things were greatly mixed, there came in his clear, incisive sagacity, his persuasive eloquence, and his resolute will, and pulled things straight with marvellous suddenness. He has some- times differed from me, I am sorry to say, at such times, and ii doesn't, of course, become me to say who has been in the right in such case. I can only say that, in my mature judgment, when- ever he and I have been on opposite sides, he has been always in the wrong ! SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. 473 " So he has stood before you, and so he has stood before this "whole community, for all these years. " It does not seem possible, as I look back, that it is twenty- five years since I, who had then been here but a single year, was commissioned by the Council to give him the Right Hand of Fellowship. I wish to say a word about that Council, concerning which statements have been made which are either exaggerated or in nowise founded in fact. There were old men in that Council who were accustomed to a theological terminology which Mr. Beecher could not use, or declined to use. They tried, no doubt, and without success, to get him to employ the same terms which they preferred. But after the examination in theology was over, and the examination in religious experience was entered upon, there was not the least shadow of a doubt on the minds of the Council, nor, I think, of any one of its members, that he was sound in the substance of the faith, and that he knew, by personal communion, the presence and glory of the Son of God. And by a most hearty and absolutely unanimous vote, they placed him in the pulpit to which you had called him. There was entire unanimity, and there was entire cordiality, in that vote which delegated to me the privilege and the honor of giving him here, on behalf of the churches, the Right Hand of Fellowship. " Every pastor in the city who was here when I came has passed away. Not one remains. Many have gone into the heavens. All have gone from their pulpits here ; and many of those pulpits have three or four times changed occupants since. Of those who were pastors when he and I stood together in that evening's service, only one remains — the Rev. Mr. Sarles, who last week celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary. " I remember that it used to be said to me when I was first here, and when Congregationalism was a wholly new thing in the city, that it ' wasn't a safe system for ministers ! ' They needed, for self-protection, to be in an Episcopal pulpit, or to have a i; I 11KNKY WARD BEECHEB session or a consistory behind them. It's rather an odd com- mentary "ii that notion that we who have been here longest, over most harmonious churches, are alt Congregationalists — for the Baptists, you know, are excellent Congregationalists, only, as | >r. Bethuae used to say, ' a little shrunk in the wetting.' I suppose there have been different reasons for it. " Mr. Beecher has said, in those wonderfully vital and vivify- ing lectures of his at New Haven, that short pastorates are largely to be attributed to the grace of God ! I shall not dispute with him, because he does not bear disputation very well in public ; and, though he is constructively absent, I should fear that he might prove to be personally and somewhat pugnaciously present if I contradicted him. But I must say, that I think the duration of our long pastorates has been largely attributable to the grace of God ; to that grace in him, in his patience with you ; to that grace in my people, in their patience with me ! " At any rate, we have stood side by side in all these year- : and they have been wonderful and eventful years. " ' Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, When He loosed the fateful lightnings of His terrible swift sword . And His truth went marching on ! ' " We have differed many times, but two men so unlike never stood side by side with each other, for so long a time, in more per- fect harmony ; without a jealousy or a jar ! Though we have differed in opinion, we have never differed in feeling. We have walked to the graves of friends in company. We have sat at the table of the Lord in company. He knows, as he has said, that when other voices were loud and fierce in hostility to him, mine never joined them. When other pens wrote his name, dropping gall and venom as they wrote it, my pen never touched the paper except in honor and admiration of him. And /know that when- ever I have wanted counsel or courage given me from others, he SILVER WEDDING ADDRESS. -±75 has always been ready, from the overflowing surplus of his surcharged mind, to give them to me. " So we have stood side by side— blessed be God— in no spirit but of fraternal love, for that long space of twenty-five years, which began with the Right Hand of Fellowship then, and closes before you here to-night. " I am not here, my friends, to repeat the service which then I performed. It would be superfluous. When I think of the great assemblies that have surged and thronged around this plat- form ; when I think of the influences that have gone out from this pulpit into all the earth— I feel that less than almost any other man on earth does he need the assurance of fellowship from any but the Son of God ! But I am here to-night for another and' a different service ! On behalf of you who tarry, and of those who have ascended from this congregation ; on behalf o e Christians of every name throughout our city, who have had such joy and pride in him, and the name of whose town has, by him, been made famous in the earth ; on behalf of all our churches now growing to be an army ; on behalf of those in every part of our land who have never seen his face or heard his voice, but who have read and loved his sermons, and been quickened and blessed by them ; on behalf of the great multitudes who have gone up from every land which his sermons have reached — never having touched his hand on earth, but waiting to greet him by-and-by ; I am here to-night (taking Mr. Beecher by the hand) to give him the Right Hand of Congratulation, on the closing of this twenty-fifth year of his ministry, and to say : God be praised for all the work that you have done here ! God be praised for the generous gifts which He has showered upon you, and the generous use which you have made of them, here and elsewhere, and everywhere in the land ! God give you many happy and glorious years of work and joy still to come in your ministry on earth ! May your soul, as the years go on, be whitened more and more, in the radiance of God's 476 HENRY WARD BEECHER. light, and in the sunshine of His love ! x\nd, when the end comes — as it will — may the gates of pearl swing inward for your entrance, before the hands of those who have gone up before you, and who now wait to welcome you thither ! and then may there open to you that vast and bright Eternity — all vivid with God's love — in which an instant vision shall be perfect joy, and an immortal labor shall be to you immortal rest !" " This magnificent concluding passage," said the Brooklyn Union of the next day, " was uttered with an eloquence that defies description. At its conclusion, Mr. Beecher, with tears, and trembling from head to foot, arose, and placing his hand on Dr. Storis' shoulder, kissed him upon the cheek. The congrega- tion sat for a moment breathless and enraptured with this simple and beautiful action. Then there broke from them such a burst of applause as never before was heard in an ecclesiastical edifice. There was not a dry eye in the house." Mr. Beecher, his voice tremulous with emotion, attempted to introduce the Rev. Dr. Budington, but could only remark ■ " I meant to have said something about Dr. Budington, but I cannot talk ; I can only say that he will speak." Dr. Budington, at all times a welcome speaker, with quick sympathy felt that the climax of the evening had been reached, and with rare good taste responded : " You will excuse- me from speaking to-night, I am sure ; I am satisfied that this service is concluded as only God's Spirit could conclude it, and as your hearts, beating with mine, would have it concluded." Mr. Beecher : " We will sing then, ' Jesus, Lover of my Soul,' the sweetest hymn that ever was written in the English language, the deepest, the most imploring, and the most comfort- ing." Part III. CHARACTERISTIC UTTERANCES OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. THEOLOGICAL, - Statement of Belief. SPIRITUAL, .... How to Become a Christian. POLITICAL, (Speech at London. ' | Farewell Speech DESCRIPTIVE, .-.....- The Alps. PHILOSOPHICAL - Evolution and Revolution. AGRICULTURAL, - - - - i Poli tical Economy of ( the Apple. HUMOROUS - (Modern Conveniences and ] First-class Houses. HENRY WARD BEECHER. PART III THEOLOGICAL. STATEMENT OF BELIEF. The theological statement reported below was given by Mr. Beecher at the regular Fall meeting of the New York and Brooklyn Association of ministers and churches. The following description of the scene is from the pen of an eye-witness, whose account we quote from the columns of the Christian Union. The New York and Brooklyn Association of ministers and churches held its regular meeting in the Park Church, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 11th, and opened with the usual attendance of about fifty ministers and delegates, with a small sprinkling of auditors, who had been led to expect a morning of dry business, followed by a still dryer exegesis on the Greek text of a portion of the Gospel of Matthew. It was understood that Henry Ward Beecher would read a paper on " Spiritual Barbarism " in the afternoon, and that the real interest of the day would he m the public addresses of the evening. But a whisper ran around among the small audience that Mr. Beecher had asked leave to come first on the list, and that he intended to make a statement of his theo- logical views. So, when Mr. Beecher took a chair and seated himself on the platform, every eye was fixed upon him with vivid interest, while the ministers, especially, listened with critical ears, carefully weighing every word of his rapid utterances. Seldom has such a little gathering enjoyed such a flood of unpremeditated eloquence. Beginning in a conversational tone, and never raising his voice very high, the speaker soon passed over the negative side of his subject and began to set forth his affirmative beliefs. As these gradually led him to recall his own personal and inward experiences, he seemed to lose consciousness of his audience ; his voice, although clear and distinct, became low and gentle ; he was carried away by one of those very inspira- tions which he was describing ; and when he spoke of the revela- tion of Christ to himself, as one who loved men because they needed love, his face underwent a marvellous change ; it seemed 480 HKNRY WARD BEECHEH. transparent with a radiant light, like a sunset "low on the Alps, while rapid and instantaneous changes of expression passed over it, such as can only be compared to heat-lightning silently play- ing over the golden clouds of a summer evening. The one re- porter became exhausted before the subject of the Atonement was reached ; and so many questions were put by members of the Association that it was impossible to record them all. Whole sentences and many words were therefore lost from the report ; and it is unintelligible. For this reason the speaker has rewritten this part of his address ; and, as he himself said, he never can reproduce his own language. In substance, it is the same as his spoken declarations in reply to questions. In every other respect the report which follows is a photograph of what Mr. Beecher actually said to the Association. T propose this morning, brethren, to meet the loose, general representations and misrepresentations in respect to what I believe and teach, and I propose to do it preliminary to withdrawing from the membership of this association. Let me say, in regard to the subject assigned me viz., "Spiritual Barbarism," I was appointed to open the discussion without my knowledge. It is not a subject of my choosing. I cannot exactly trace out how the appointment came. I have no predilection for any such subject. I do not know that I ever used that phrase. Very likely I have, but I never keep an inventory of the phrases I use. I did not even know what it meant. I wrote, however, to the member who knows everything, the clerk, Mr. Thwing, who also professed ignorance, but supposed that it was designed to include my views ■of original sin. WHAT IS SPIRITUAL BARBARISM ? I propose first to say a few words on this subject assigned to "me. There are a good many views held that might be described properly by the phrase " spiritual barbarism." By this I mean the best views that men in an early age and imperfect state of understanding can give of spiritual phenomena. I do not use the phrase " barbaric" as a term of reproach, but simply to designate actions, beliefs, or customs which had their •origin in an undeveloped race. They are infantine conceptions, the best that men could frame, exceedingly imperfect, though having a root of truth in them. 1. The first element of spiritual barbarism which I shall men- THEOLOGICAL. 481 tion is derived from the Greeks. It may be called the doctrine of divine impassivity or the notion that a perfect being cannot suffer ! It seems impossible that any one who reads the Bible should have misconceived its teaching. But the Greek idea of perfection was born of the artist. President Woolsey is reported to have said that the Greek race were destitute of true conscience ; that there was not enough moral sense to hold together any government for any length of time. It is not strange that those whose conception Of a hero was one perfectly beautiful, always young, wise, strong, perfectly serene and happy, superior to all the troubles and vexa- tions which befall mortals, should have deemed it necessarv to a lofty view of Deity that He should be insusceptible to pain. But the whole Bible is like a magnificent chant of the Divine emotion, running through every possible modification of feeling. He sor- rows, pities, loves, longs, strives, joys, abhors, relents. God's nature is full and deep as the ocean, and pulses on every shore around the world and through all time, every inflection of feeling which springs from purity, rectitude, and benevolence. That God suffers from weakness as men do, from mistakes, from wrong, or blind animal suffering, no one imagines. It is the suffering of sympathy with his creatures, for their and not his sins. It is a father's and a mother's emotion in behalf of those loved. This is the very life and root of Christ's atoning love. One who created the world, peopled it with weak and imperfect beings, unfolding them through ages, beholding all the strife, error, mistake, sorrow, which befell everything human born into this life, and yet was so serenely happy in himself that he calmly beheld the whole long and universal tragedy with quiet indifference, may do for a Greek pagan god, but cannot for a moment be that idea of God which throbs with mighty heart through every page of the Bible. 2. Right over against this unworthy conception is the nature of a being clothed with passion the most tempestuous — anger, hatred, jealousy, rage, blood-loving, proud and revengeful. It is a con- ception borrowed from the animal passions of rude warrior heroes. In the poetry of sacred Scripture figures and pictures are used which are drawn from human passions for the sake of pierc- ing the rude moral sense of rude men with a sense of the intensity of Divine indignation against all unrighteousness. In like manner God is a sun, a tower, a shield and buckler, a lion, an eagle, a 482 BENET WARD BEECIIEll. heaven full of storms and thunder, a warrior, a rock, etc. No one ever held that these were literal. :'.. A third instance of spiritual barbarism is metaphysical, and may be called the barbaric representation of God, as spiritually self-contemplative and self-conceited. It cannot be tolerated that (rod should make that a sovereign virtue in Himself which is denounced as the essence of sin in His creatures. The worship of one' s self is not made amiable because one is a king. The nobler the being the less does he revolve around his own centre. Humil- ity is demanded in men not on account of their imperfections, but because a benevolent being is centrifugal and not centripetal. God lives for His universe and not for Himself. His thought and purposes go forth and travel outward evermore. It is only in the -elf-renunciation of supreme love that God can be said to glorify Himself. His glory is a mother's glory in her children. It has been thought that God admires Himself, does everything that He does for His own glory, and that he lives and rules for the purpose of glorifying Himself. That He is the most perfect and the most beautiful and the most glorious of beings is true ; but it is because He does not live for Himself, because He intro- verts Himself in the form of every conceivable power for the benefit of others. And any conception that makes it right for God to do things simply because He is self-conscious of being so beautiful and so perfect I regard as one of the worst forms of spiritual barbarism. 4. The chapters of the AVestminster Confession of Faith, con- cerning decrees, election, reprobation, as connected with the fall in Adam, I regard as extraordinary specimens of spiritual barbar- ism . The views therein given of the divine character and procedure are wholly irreconcilable with the manifestation of God in Christ Jesus. They stand over against the conception of God as shining from the face of Christ as the Gorgon head against an Apollo, in the Grecian mythology. I hold it to be a monster, and not a master of love that is there portrayed. I reject it with an inten- sity of feeling that touches the very soul of honor and fidelity to God. Much of the violence sometimes manifested in my preach- ing springs from indignation that I feel when the loveliness, the beauty, the glory of God in Christ is trampled under foot by such THEOLOGICAL. 483 spiritual barbarism. It stands in the way of thousands. It has turned more feet into the barren ways of infidelity than any other single cause. 5. A fifth spiritual barbarism is the widely held and taught dogma that man has no power, either natural or moral, to obey the commands of God. Could despotism the most stupid and tyrannic invent anything worse to defile the justice and honor of God than to create an endless procession of myriad subjects who cannot understand spiritual truth, and yet were to be punished for it ; who had neither natural ability nor moral to fulfil commands laid upon them, and yet were to be eternally damned for not doing it ? Made with no eyes, yet guilty of not seeing ; with no feet, yet guilty of not walking ; with no will, yet damned for not choosing ! Such a scandalous caricature of a God of justice and love can be adequately described as an atrocious spiritual barbarism. 6. And so also must be the teaching that Adam stood for the whole human family, in such a sense that the race was revolution- ized on account of his guilt, and that God has continued creating uncountable millions of beings, through thousands of years, whose inevitable destiny was eternal damnation ! This is spiritual bar- barism run mad ! It is the more extraordinary that men should have believed it, that the whole Old Testament is silent upon it. No venerable lawgiver like Moses, no judge like Samuel, no sweet singer like David, no flaming prophet like Isaiah has uttered a word of this blasphemy. He that brought life and immortality to light utters not a syllable of it. The whole theor) T stands upon the fifth chap- ter of Romans, and is again a falsifier of that chapter. No an- swer has ever been made to Dr. Edward Beecher's arguments, in the " Conflict of Ages," demonstrating that the doctrine of the fall of man in Adam had no foothold in Paul's writings. 7. Finally, the mediaeval representation of hell and the punish- ment of the wicked is a spiritual barbarism worthy of having been invented in just such a place, and by just such demons as have been invented for it. That there will be pain and penalty in another world for those who have perverted their natures in this world I fully believe. But those gross representations of the Roman mind, especially those exquisite and infernal descriptions 484 HKNRY WARD BEECHER. of the material and sensuous torments of the lost, rolling in waves of tire, writhing in the folds of serpents, gnawed hy demons, pierced by fiery forks, clawed, dragged, tossed, roasted by an infinity of disgusting devils in an eternity of torments, increasing with every age, the capacity to suffer increasing likewise, till the whole infinite round of imaginable space is tilled with the Bmoke and shrieks of their torments. Such a dogma is an insult to rea- son, to the moral sense of mankind, and if it shall be ascribed to God, it is a blasphemy that would justify the annihilation of its propagators. Yet this has been represented in art, as in Michael Angelo's " Last Judgment," and yet more abominably and inex- cusably by Cornelius in our own day, whose "Judgment" is coarser, cruder, and wickeder, because he lived in an age of light and better knowledge of God. These hideous and remorseless barbarisms are not dead. I have two books in my possession, of recent composition, authorized by Catholic prelates, in which these sensuous and sensual ideas of future punishment are drawn out with an inconceivable and infernal detail, which cannot but amaze a sober and rational man by the filthy fertility of a rabid imagination. Compared to the solemn simplicity of Christ's warnings of future doom they are as a thousand-fold midnight compared with the rising of the all-revealing sun. I have thus fulfilled as far as I think necessary the request of the association to speak on spiritual barbarism. WHAT HE DOES RELIEVE. I now turn to other matters. The subject assigned me gave me opportunity to state my views negatively. In view of the step which I am about to take. I desire to give affirmatively what I do believe and teach ; and what I have taught all through my ministry — lasting now more than forty-five years. I am working on the same lines and in the same direction, with only such difference as comes from larger experience and more knowledge. That my teaching has been widely misunderstood, that many who do not attend my ministrations are honestly perplexed, and that there has been blown about a world of misrepresentation, some saying that! believed in nothing, was an infidel, a Unitarian, a Materialist, a man without logic, inconsistent, sometimes teaching one thing and at others its opposite, you all know as well as T do. THEOLOGICAL. 485 A word may be permitted as to the sources of this misrepre- sentation. I have nothing to hide. T never set myself up as a systematic theologian. I have for a long time believed that a time would come when theology would stand high among the sciences, but that as yet the knowledge did not exist which is necessary to build it upon ; that much light was to be revealed from science as to the divine method of creation ; that, above all, that terra in- cognita, the human mind, must be explored, not alone for its own relations to theology, but for the far more important reason, that only through the knowledge of mind as it is revealed to us among men, can we find the elements necessary for a right conception of- divine attributes and dispositions. HIS MODE OF PREACHING. But even if I had that equipment which it has been widely denied that I have, if I had the scholarship and that logic which is so much praised and so little employed by better men than I am, I should still not have set myself up as the architect of abstract ideas, the builder of philosophic systems. My aim has been to inspire men to a higher and nobler Christian life. I have been a fisher of men. For this end I have employed much that belongs to reigning theology ; I have also rejected much. I never set up as a representative of orthodoxy ; I never set up as a representa- tive of Congregationalism. I am not an authority anywhere — never wanted to be, never dreamed of being. But I have had working lines, based on my own belief, and 1 have never hidden them ; and though I have never formulated them so as to make out a " Beecher system" of theology, yet I think it meet and right, for my sake and yours, that I should state them now and subject myself to any questions that any of my brethren choose to propound to me in regard to them. And let me say, first, that this wide cloudiness and misconception is partly my fault and partly not. I am what I am by the grace of God, through my father and mother. I have my own peculiar temperament ; I have my own method of preaching, and my method and temperament necessitate errors. I am not worthy to be related in the hundred thousandth degree to those more happy men who never make a mistake in the pulpit. I make a great many. I am impetuous. I am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me. I feel as 486 HENRY WARD BEECHER. though all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power be- hind my words, nor all the thunders that were in the heavens, and it is of necessity that such a nature as that should give such intensity at times to parts of doctrine as t<> exaggerate them when you come to bring them into connection with a more rounded out and balanced view. I know it — I know it as well as you do. I would not do it if 1 could help it ; but there are times when it is not I that is talking, when I am caught up and carrried away so that I know not whether I am in the body or out of the body, when I think things in the pulpit that I never could think in the study, and when I have feelings that are so far different from any that belong to the lower or normal condition that I neither can regulate them nor understand them. 1 see things and I hear sounds, and seem, if not in the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that leads me to understand what Paul said— that lit; heard things which it was not possible for a man to utter. T am acting under such a temperament as that. I have got to use it, or not preach at all. J know very well I do not give crystalline views nor thor- oughly guarded views — there is often an error on this side and an error on that ; and I cannot stop to correct them. A man might run around like a kitten after its tail, all his life, if he were going around explaining all his expressions and all the things he had written. Let them go. They will correct themselves. The average and general influence of a man's teaching will be more mighty than any single misconception, or misapprehension through misconception. THE REPORTERS. Then, too, you must bear in mind that great as is the useful- ness — and I bear willing testimony to the great usefulness of the ubiquitous body of reporters — they are not all apostolic in theol- ogy, they are not Platos in philosophy, they are not all the most eminent disciples of the school of metaphysics, and they are set to do that which not one man of genius even in ten thousand can do — the rarest thing in the world — to put a discourse of one whole hour into a reading space of rive minutes. To do that is one of the supremest works of intellectual genius. But they are sent to the churches as well as to other meetings, and they are expected to make a report that folks will read, and they catch here and they THEOLOGICAL. 487 catch there shining passages, grotesque ones, or some that raise a little laughter. They go over to the office and the night editor says : " I want a quarter of a column of Beecher. " " Well, but I have got a whole column." " Cut it out, cut it out !" and they cut it here and they cut it there, and keep in things that they think will attract attention, and that is the report of my sermon. Well, I do not blame them ; but I tell you what I do blame. I blame the want of honor in ministers and editors who live within an hour's walk or an hour's postage of my house, and who could write to me and say : "I see in the papers this morning such and such things are reported as having been said by you. I wish to know whether that is a correct representation of your views." Not they ! They sit down and write a long critique and send it to the Congregationalist or the Advance or somewhere else, based on my views. If it is worth my while, and I turn around and say, " I was misrepresented ; I didn't say so," they will say, " Oh, he is backing down as usual." So then, for more than twenty- five years, there is not a man on the globe that has been reported so much as I have been in my private meetings, in my street con- versations, on the platforms of public meetings, and so steadily in the pulpit, a great many times admirably, many times less admi- rably, and sometimes abominably. This has been going on week after week and year after year. Do you suppose I could follow up all such things and rectify them ? I never revise my own ser- mons. I prepare them as best I may. I preach them, and you might just as well look for the sparks that were in your fire yester- day as to look to me for the contents of my last sermon when once it has gone forth. If I were to attempt to revise it the only thing it would do would be to set me going on a new one. I never could correct them. They go without correction in the public press, and have been for twenty-five years laid before the public in fragments in a hundred papers — all my thoughts and my feelings. And yet, at this day, men say I am holding back the truth and do not let folks know what I mean. If there ever was any man who has been especially frank to state everything he was prepared to say, it is I. But a man who runs to speech before his thoughts and beliefs are settled is a fool. Every man has be- liefs rising as nebulous stars rise ; and not until they have ascend- ed far above the vapors of the earth and are high advanced, and •±88 HENRY WAKD BEEC1JEK. he has had an opportunity to study them, should he represent them to others. 1 have held a greal many things in abeyance until they were rightly settled in my mind. Then I preached them ; and people say : " Oh ! he has got a great deal behind : he has another idea yet ; and he doesn't preach it." Thank God, no ; I'm not quite such a fool. ins PHILOSOPHY. Then I have an underlying, mental philosophy which differs from that generally held by my brethren and which was held by those that framed what might be called modern aspects of theol- ogy ; and I think I am preaching consistently along the lines of my mental and scientific philosophy. I hear men say, " Why. the man says one thing at one time and another thing at another time ; there's no sort of logical connection about him." T am not ambitious to wear a crown of thorns of logic ; but one thing I say, that a man may be inconsistent when judged by a philoso- phy that he does not hold and you do, and perfectly consistent with himself when judged by his own system of philosophy. This leads me to say that early in my college life, under the influence of Dr. Spurzheim, I embraced the system of phrenology. It was nascent, and it has been nascent ever since. Biology, physiology are throwing greater and greater light on the subject of the human mind every year. T never undertook to preach by any system of philosophy based on phrenology, but the whole nomenclature of mental phenomena was so vague it had no individuality in it, no power of individualizing ; it generalizes all the way through ; while phrenology brought into view as distinct qualities, com- bativeness, self-esteem, pride, the love of approbation, the love of praise, conscience, hope, reason, that is, casual and analogical rea- son. It gave definite names, so that one could read a man ; just as you can by taking type spell out a word, so by taking the different faculties you get to know the man. This working appa ratus of phrenology I embraced. I analyzed essays by it. I could say to myself what sprang from that organ, here conscience is at work, here self-esteem, and so on. I do not undertake to say it was the most accurate, but I do say it gave definiteness, it gave a man an insight into his fellow-man. It told him just where to strike and just what to strike with, and it was altogether a more THEOLOGICAL. ' 489 practical, personal, and useable system than any of the metaphysi- cal systems that have been in vogue. Then, beside that, I early studied science with enthusiasm. I was a pupil of Professor Hitchcock at Amherst College. I was the first two years a dull scholar because I was studying literature, history, and belles lettres, but when I came to my junior and senior years I bent myself to mental philosophy and scientific studies, and I have kept along the line of the front of scientific investigation ever since, and these two elements have underlaid and been very potent to form my theological statements. When, therefore, I am judged I ask to be judged by my philosophy, and not by a very different one which my critic may hold. The result has been unfavorable in many cases. That is to say, unfavorable to my reputation in the com- munity. It set good men a great many times apart by misunder- standing. It has caused grief to some men that were closely con- nected with me. I know I have their confidence as to my personal piety and as to my general conduct, but they fear lam straying so far from the good old sound way that it is a matter of mourning. I do not think so, I think I am coming nearer and nearer to the good old sound way. I think my views conform to Scripture a great deal more than those in which I was originally educated. In regard to scientific investigation, I see the day coming when one of the most powerful arguments for the inspiration of the Bible will be that it laid itself right along on the assumption of truths that were unknown at the time they were written and by the person by whom they were written. It is a remedial book. It lays itself along the line of human development and human want in a manner that no man can account for except by superintending Providence. My scientific and philosophical views lead me to a deeper and a deeper faith in the word of God ; but I shall speak of that in detail. HIS PERSONAL' EXPERIENCE. Now, it may be permitted to me, in view of withdrawing from the association — as I shall — to make a statement of my views some- what in extenso. I do it as a brother to brethren. In the first place, let me say that my early religious experience has colored all my life. I was sympathetic by nature, I was loving, I was mercurial, I was versatile, I was imaginative. I was not a poet 490 HENRY WARD BEECHER. executively, but sympathetically I was in union with the whole universal life and beauty of God's world and with all human life. My earliest religious training was at home. My father's public teaching may be called alleviated Calvinism. Even under that the iron entered my soul. There were days and weeks in which the pall of death over the universe could not have made it darker to my eyes than those in which I thought, " If you are elected you will be saved, and if you arc not elected you will be damned, and there is no hope for you." I wanted to be a Christian. I went about longing for God as a lamb bleating longs for its mother's udder, and I stood imprisoned behind those iron bars : " It is all decreed. It is all fixed. If you are elected you will be saved anyhow — if you are not elected you will perish." While in that state and growing constantly and warmly in sympathy with my father, in taking sides with orthodoxy that was in battle in Boston with Unitarianism, I learned of him all the theology that was cur- rent at that time. In the quarrels also between Andover and East Windsor and New Haven and Princeton — I was at home in all these distinctions. I got the doctrines just like a row of pins on a paper of pins. I knew them as a soldier knew his weapons. I could get them in battle array. I went from my college life im- mediately to the West and there I fell into another fuliginous Christian atmosphere when the old school and the new school Presbyterians were wrangling, and the church was split, and split on the rock of slavery, and my father was tried for believing that a man could obey the commandments of God, and Dr. Wilson was contending against him in church courts, that men had no ability, either moral or physical, to obey God, and the line of divis- ion ran all through the State, and there was that tremendous whirl of old school theology, old Calvinism and new Calvinism, and by the time I got away from the theological seminary I was so sick — no tongue can tell how sick I was of the whole medley. How I despised and hated this abyss of whirling controversies that seemed to me to be filled with all manner of evil things, with everything indeed but Christ. And then on one memorable day, whose almost every cloud I remember, whose high sun and glowing firmament and waving trees are vivid yet, there rose before me as if an angel had descended, a revelation of Christ as being God, be- cause He knew how to love a sinner ; not that He would love me THEOLOGICAL. 491 when I was true and perfect, but because I was so wicked that 1 should die if He did not give Himself to me, and so inconstant that I never should be steadfast, as if He were saying to me : " Because you are sinful I am yours." Before that thought of a God who sat in the centre and seat of power, that He might bring glory and restoration to everything that needed Him, I bowed down in my soul, and from that hour to this it has been my very life to love and to serve the all helping and pitiful God. HIS EARLY PREACHING. Well, that determined me to preach, for I had before about made up my mind I should go into some other profession. And when I began to preach it was said of me, ' ' Why go to hear him ? He's a smart young man, but he plays that one chord all the time. All he has got to say is about Christ." That was pretty much all I had when I went into the ministry. I went away from the city. I had the misfortune to be my father's son, and, therefore, every body was comparing me with Lyman Beecher. My first preach- ing was in a hall over the river in Kentucky, and there I preached several weeks. Then came a woman from Lawrenceberg, saying there was a Presbyterian Church there with nineteen members, women, and one man. She called me to the pastorate of that church. She was its trustee and deacon and treasurer. I have good reason to believe in woman's rights. There I had a ministry of two years. I preached some theology, I had just come out of the seminary, and retained some portions of systematic theology, which I used when I had nothing else, and as a man chops straw and mixes it with Indian meal in order to distend the stomach of the ox that eats it, so I chopped a little of the regular orthodox theology, that I might sprinkle it with the meal of the Lord Jesus Christ. But my horizon grew larger and larger in that one idea of Christ. It seems to me that first I saw Christ as the Star of Bethlehem, but afterward He seemed to expand and I saw about a quarter of the horizon filled with His light, and through years it came around so that I saw about one-half in that light ; and it was not until after I had gone through two or three revivals of religion that, when I looked around, He was all and in all. And my whole ministry sprang out of that. I went in with this general guiding purpose in my mind : Whatever else I do not know, this 492 HENRY WARD BEECH I SR. I do know, that men are sinful ; whatever else I do not know, I know that men need to be born again ; whatever I do not know, I do believe that it is in the power of God to change the hearts of men ; and I gradually formed a theology by practice — by trying it on, and the things that really did God's work in the hearts of men I set down as good theology, and the things that did not, whether they were true or not, they were not true to me. In that way, from the practical standpoint, after I had thrown off in dis- gust all the old systems of theology, I felt my way back, until at last I came to a point in which 1 said to myself : " Why, all these theologies really agree in certain great aims and great facts, men agree as to the reality of sin, and yet differ as to its philosophy ; in the reality of conversion but not in the philosophy of it. Good men differ not so much in respect to the great fundamental facts and doctrines— the great drift and end of things— as to the theory of them and their systematic value. So I came to have a catholic side toward other theologies, which has been misinterpreted into supposing that I hold one thing to be about as good as another, or that I had no system, and floated about here, there and every- where. r FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES. Now, in order to make this a little more plain, to throw a little light on the operation of my mind, I came to think finally that there are three fundamental ideas of doctrine. That is to say, doctrine may be regarded as fundamental from three standpoints. First, from the standpoint of theology. Many things are funda- mental to a system of theology, necessary to complete the whole chain of thinking from the beginning clear around to the end. The most complete, interlinked, compact, and self-consistent the- ology in the world is the Calvinistic— the higher you go the bet- ter it is as a purely metaphysical and logical concatenation. Many doctrines are fundamental to this system which are by no means necessary to Christian life and character. A man may be a good Christian who accepts or who rejects many of the doctrines of Calvinism. Then, secondly, you may look at fundamental doc- trines from the standpoint of ecclesiastical organization. There are a great many things that are indispensable to the existence of a church that are not necessary to the piety of the individual THEOLOGICAL. 493 •member of that church. You take the Roman system. Funda- mentalism there means not so much systematic theology as it does the truth necessary to the maintenance and influence of the church as God's abode on earth ; and you might take or reject a great many theological points in that system provided you stuck to the church and held to it firmly. Now comes a question which I have always regarded as of spe- cial importance, viz. : What doctrines are fundamental to the for- mation of Christian character and to its complete development ? There are many things that are necessary to a system of theology that are not necessary to the conviction or conversion of men. I have called those things fundamental which were necessary for the conviction of sin, for conversion from sin, for development of faith, for dominant love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the build- ing up of a Christlike character. That dispenses with a great ^many doctrines that are necessary for a theological system or for an ecclesiastical system. Now, let me go into details. A PERSONAL GOD. And, first, I believe in God, and never for a moment have faltered in believing, in a personal God, as distinguished from a Pantheistic God, whether it is the coarser Pantheism of material- ism, believing that the material universe is God, or from the more subtle view of Matthew Arnold, who holds that God is nothing but a tendency in the universe — a something that is not me that tends toward righteousness. Well, he can love such a God, but I cannot. I would rather chew thistledown all summer long than to work with any such idea as that. I mean personal, not as if He were like us, but personal in such a sense as that those that know personality in men cannot make any mistake in attempting to grasp and conceive of God. He is more than man in the operation of the intellect, larger in all the moral relations, infinitely deeper and sweeter in the affections. In all those elements, notwithstanding He is so much larger than man that no man by searching can find Him out to perfection, yet the humblest person can conceive that there is such a Being. They know in a general way what the Be- ing is, and that He is a personal Being, and accessible as other persons are accessible, to the thoughts, the feelings, the wants, the cares of men. So I have believed and so I do believe. Then 494 IIEXi:V WARD BEECBER. as to the controversy as to the knowable and unknowable ; I be- lieve on both sides. It is not usual that I am on both sides of any question at the same time ; but I am here. 1 believe that there are elements that are distinctly knowable in quality but not in quantity, in nature but not in scope. I believe that when you say that God can do so and so, or cannot do so and so, you are all at sea. What God can do and what God cannot do in the im- mensity of His being lies beyond the grasp of human thought. The attributes are but alphabetic letters. We spell a few simple sentences. But the greatness, the majesty, the scope, the variety that is in Him we cannot compute. It will break upon us when we shall see Him as lie is, and not through the imperfection of human analogies and experiences. I thank God that there is so much that is unknowable. When Columbus discovered America he did know that he had discovered a continent, but he did not know its contents, what the mountain ranges were, nor what or where the rivers were, nor the lakes, nor the inhabitants. Yet he did know he had made the discovery of the continent. And I know God so that I walk with Him as with a companion ; I whis- per to Him, I believe that He imparts thoughts to me and feelings, and vet when you ask me : "Can you describe Him ? Can you make an inventory of His attributes ?" I cannot. I thank God He so transcends anything we know of Him that God is unknow- able. People say, " Some may believe this, but can you prove it ?" Suppose I were to have said in my youthful days to the woman of my choice, my honored wife, " I love you," and she handed me a slate and pencil and said, ' k Be kind enough to demonstrate that, will you ?" She would not have been my wife if she had. Are nut tbe finest feelings that you know those that are unsusceptible of demonstration? Certainly by analysis, description, language? Are not those things that make you not only different from the animal, but from the men around about you, that lift you into a higher atmosphere, do they not transcend any evidence that the sense can give ? And is not that the instruction that runs through ali "1 Paul's writings ? So I hold and so I have taught of God. Not seeable, not known by the senses, the full circuit of His being not discerned except by moral intuition, by the range of susceptibility, when the down shining of the Holy Ghost comes to me I know by an evi- . THEOLOGICAL. 495 dence within myself that is unspeakably more convincing to mc than eve or hand or ear can be, that there is a God and that He is my God ! THE TRINITT. I accept without analysis the tri-personality of God. I accept the Trinity ; perhaps because I was educated in it. No matter why, I accept it. Are there any difficulties in it ? I should like to know if there are any great questions of the structure of the uni- verse, of the nature of mind, that do not run you into difficulties when vou go a little way in them. But I hold that while I can- not analyze and localize into distinct elements, as it were, the three Persons of the Trinity, I hold them — ths Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The theories, such as, for instance, in part are hinted in the Nicene Creed and outspuu with amazing ignorance of knowl- edge in the Athanasian Creed, I do not believe. The Athanasian Creed is gigantic spider web weaving. I leave it to those who want to get stuck on it, but the simple declaration that God exists in unity and yet in the tri-fold personality, I accept. A man says, " Do you believe there can be three in one ?" Yes I do. It is not contrary either to reason or to the analogies in Nature. The first forms of life, the lowest, are found to be absolutely simple and unitary. Every step of development in the succession of animal life is toward complexity— complexity of functions, of organs, of powers and faculties— and when we reach the higher animals the complexity of mental traits is discovered — animal passions, then social instincts, affections, moral sentiments — until in civilized man we find a being composed not only of multitudes of parts, but of groups, so that unity is made up by whole families of facul- ties. I can conceive that in a higher range of being unity may be comprised of persons, as in the lower it is made up of groups of faculties. It is not proof of trinity in unity, but it dissipates the notion that three may not be one. I do not say it is so, but it runs right along and in the line of analogies of nature, and predis- poses one to accept the implication of the New Testament as to the mode of Divine existence. As to any attempt to divide the functions— the Father to His function, the Son to another depart- ment, and the Holy Ghost to yet another function, I leave it to those who are better informed than I am. L96 HENRY WARD BEECHER. FAITH IN CHRIST. But let me say first, that while there are of course no doubts as to the existence of God the Father, in any Christian sect, there have been grave doubts as to the divinity of Christ, but not in my mind. I believe fully, enthusiastically, without break, pause, or aberration, in the divinity of Christ. I believe that Christ is God manifest in the flesh. Is the whole of God in Christ ? Well, that is asking me, Can infinity be inclosed in the finite ? What I understand by His laying aside Hi* glory is that Christ, when He came under the limitations of time and space and flesh was limited by them. I am limited. You are limited. If you go down into the Five Points to talk with men, you lay aside at home two thirds of that which is best in you. You cannot bring it before such persons. You are limited by the condition of their minds. In other words, it is quite possible that even God, though I know not how, should manifest Himself under limitations at times, and that the whole power and knowledge and glory of God should not appear during His earth life. During His life He made Himself a man, not being ashamed to be called a brother. He went through the identical experiences that men go through. He was born. He was a baby, with no more knowledge than a baby has ; a youth, with no more knowledge than a youth has. He grew in stature. He grew in knowledge. I believe that Christ Himself, at times, had the consciousness of His full" being. There were days when it seemed as though the heavens opened and He saw the whole of Himself and felt His whole power. But the sub- stance of His being was divine, and He was God manifest in the flesh. That is my faith, and I never swerved from it. And I can go farther and say, I cannot pray to the Father except through Christ ; I pray to Christ. I must. The way the Spirit of God works with me makes it necessary that I should have something that I can clasp, and to me the Father is vague. I believe in a Father, but the definition of Him in my vision is not to me what the portraiture of Christ is. Though I say Father, I am thinking of Christ all the time. That is my feeling, that is my life, and so I have preached, so I have taught those that came from Unitarian instruction — never asking them to a technical argument or proof, but simply saying, " You say you can pray to the Father, but THEOLOGICAL. 497 cannot to Christ. You are praying to Christ ; you don't know it„ That which you call Father is that which is interpreted in Christ. Since, the Godhead has three doors of approach to our apprehen- sion, it makes no difference through which our souls enter." THE HOLY SPIRIT. Then I believe next in the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit, as one of the persons of the Godhead. And in regard to that I believe that the influence, the Divine influence, the quickening, stimulat- ing influence of the mind of God proceeds from the Holy Ghost, and that it is universal, constant, imminent. The body of man receives all the stimulus it needs from the organized physical world — feeds itself, maintains itself ; the social affections receive all the stimulus and impulse they need from society, but whatever in man that reaches toward holiness — aspiration, love of truth, justice,, purity — feeds upon the spiritual nature and is developed by the down-shining of the Holy Ghost. And as the sunlight is the father of every flower that blossoms — though no flower would blossom if it had not separate organized existence in the plant on which it shines — so " work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you," describes the work- ing of the Divine Spirit in producing right affections and good works in man. PROVIDENCE. I hold and I teach that there is a general and a special provi- dence of God which overrules human life by and through natural laws, but, also, I believe that there is an overruling and special providence of God in things pertaining to human life as well as to the life of the world by the direct action of His own will ; by such a use of laws in the first place upon us, such a use as may not be known to us, but is perfectly known to God, by such a use of natural laws as is wisely adapted to effect needed results. A great thinker can employ natural laws to create conditions of life that did not exist before, to change public sentiment, to repress indolence, to stimulate activity. Every man that is acting in the world is employing natural laws with cunning, with wisdom, with skill, by which he is enabled to change the whole course and cur- rent of things. God stands behind the whole system of natural 498 UKNin WARD BEECHER. laws and can produce special results in men whenever lie pleases. Such a doctrine of the special influence of the Spirit of God makes prayer of benefit to man. 1 believe millions of prayers are not answered and that millions are — some directly, some indirectly. Man has the feeling and should have the feeling : " I have a right to carry myself and all that concerns me to God ; it is not in vain that I pray to Him." I believe in the efficacy of prayer, partly by its moral reaction upon us, to be sure, but a great d«al more by direct answer from God. I believe, then, in Divine Provi- dence ; I believe in prayer, and out of the same view of God I believe in MIRACLES. I believe miracles are possible now ; they not only were possible but were real in the times gone by — especially the two great mira- cles that began and ended the Christian dispensation- -the miracu- lous conception of Christ arid His resurrection from the dead. When I "five those up the two columns on which the house stands will have to fall to the ground. Being of scientific tastes, believ- ing in evolution, believing in the whole scheme of natural laws, I say they are reconcilable with the true theory of miracles. I wrote in a book when I came to Brooklyn : " I foresee there is to be a period of great unbelief ; now I am determined so to preach as to lay a foundation, when the flood comes, on which men can build," and I have thus, as it were, been laboring for the Gentiles, not for the Jews, in the general drift of my ministry. REGENERATION. Man is a being created in imperfection and seeking a full de- velopment. Second, 1 believe him to be sinful — universally man is sinful, but 1 do not believe he is totally depraved. I believe that to be a misleading phrase. But no man ever lived, and no man ever will live, that was only a man, that was not a sinner ; and he is a sinner, not simply by infirmity, though much of that which is called sin is but infirmity, but he is a sinner to such an extent that he needs to be transferred out of his natural state into a higher and spiritual state. ITe needs to.be born again. H any man believes in the doctrine of the sinfulness of man I do, and I have evidence of it every day, and if ever a man believed in being THEOLOGICAL. 499 born again, I believe in that. The degree of sinfulness in men, I have always taught, is dependent on a variety of circumstances. Some persons are far less sinful than others. It is far easier for some to rise into the spiritual kingdom than for others. Heredity has a powerful influence. The circumstances that surround men by their influence lift some very high and leave others compara- tively low. God judges men according to their personal and their actual condition. [Here a member of the association asked if a man needed to be re- generated for anything beside his personal sin.] He needs to be regenerated to become a man. I hold that man is first an animal, and that then he is a social animal. He is not a full man and a religious being until he is lifted into that higher realm in which he walks with God. And every man needs to be lifted into that high estate, partly by parental instruction ; by the secondary or reflected light of Christianity upon the morals, cus- toms, and spirit of the age in which he lives ; some men are lifted nearer the threshold. There is not a man born that does not need to be born again, and it is a work which is as impossible to men as for a person to come suddenly to education, to knowledge, sim- ply by a volition. No man can ever lift himself up so. It is not within human power, but it is within the power of a man to put himself under instructors and grow up into education, and I hold man has not the power to regenerate himself. He is under the stimulating influence of the present and immanent Spirit of God which is striving with every man ; when he will open his mind to receive Divine influence, every man is helped, and the act of sur- render to God and entrance into the spiritual kingdom are the joint act of the man willing and wishing and the co-operative influence of the spirit of God enabling him. INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. As to the inspiration of the Bible, let me say that with a few exceptions I can accept the chapter in the Confession of Faith on that subject, which I think to be a very admirable compend. I will read it : " Although the light of nature and the works of creation and Providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power 500 HENRY WARD BEECHER of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation ; therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times and in divers manners, to reveal Himself and to declare that His will unto His church ; and afterward, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing ; which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary ; those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now ceased." That is my theory. The Bible is the record of the steps of God in revealing Himself and His will to man. The inspiration was originally upon the generation, upon the race ; and then what was gained step by step was gathered up, as this says, and put into writing, for the better preservation of it. " It pleased the Lord, at sundry times and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto the church ; and afterward; for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing." I do not want any bet- ter definition of my view of inspiration — that is, inspiration of men, not inspiration of a book — and that the book is the record of that inspiration that has been taking place from gen- eration to generation. [Reading.] " The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof ; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the word of God. " I have no objections to make to that. [Reading.] " We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverend esteem for the Holy Scripture ; and the heaven- liness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellences, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God ; yet, notwith- THEOLOGICAL. 501 standing our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word, in our hearts." External arguments are good, that says, but the witness of God in your own soul is the best evidence, I believe that. No man can wrest the Bible from me. I know from the testimony of God in my moral sense. [Reading.] " The whole counsel of God con- cerning all things necessary for His own glory. " I do not believe that. Who knows what is necessary for God's glory ? " Man's salvation" — I believe that. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for man's salvation, faith and life, " is either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary conse- quence may be deduced from Scripture ; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men." Yes, I might believe that. I believe it with an addendum. " Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the world." That settles that little question". It is the moral consciousness. It is the man as he is instructed by knowledge, and then inflamed or rendered sensitive by the spirit of God that sits in judgment upon the word of God. Talk about our not being allowed to come to the Bible with our reason. That is the only way we can go. Is a man to come with his ignorance, through a council or somebody else's thinking ? Must we not use our reason to know what the word of God is ? When a man says, " You must not dilute the word of God by any thinking of your own ; you must not trans- late the Bible or construct the doctrines of the Bible except by the Bible itself." Then I will tarn and catechize that man say- ing, " Will you be kind enough to tell me from the Bible alone what a lion is ?" You cannot. " Will you be kind enough to define from the Bible what a mountain is ?" You cannot. " Will you, out of the Bible, define a river, an eagle, a sparrow, a flower, a king, a mother, a child ?" You cannot do it. What do you do ? You go right to the thing itself outside of the Bible. When you see a flower, you know what the Bible means when it says a flower. In all things that are cognizable by man's senses, he finds what is the thing spoken of in the Bible by going to the thing itself, outside of the Bible. It is absurd to say that the 502 BENRI W ARD BEECHER. Bible must be its own sole expounder. Now, that which is true in respect to miracles — in respect to the whole economy of human life — is it not also true in respect 1" the man himself and his own individual experience \ A man says : " You must not undertake to dictate to the word of God what conversion is." 1 should like to know how I am going to find it out except by seeing it ? I go to the thing itself. Then I understand what is meant by it. And so far from not going outside of the Bible to interpret it, no man can interpret it without a knowledge of what lies outside of it. That is the very medium through which any man comes to under- stand it. Dr. H. M. Storrs— You used the sentence just now, "We are not to substitute our reason for the Word of God?" Mr. Beecher — Yes, and in using it, I say you are not confined to the mere comparison. of texts. You have a right to go out to things that lie within the reach of human knowledge, and study outward things spoken of, and then come back to the Bible with a better understanding of what the Bible teaches. Well, I shall not have time to say much more ; but, in the main, with such modi- fications as will be clearly understood now by what I have said, I accept the first chapter in the Confession of Faith of the Presby- terian Church as being a very wise and very full and very admir- able definition of my views of the Bible. ATONEMENT. [Mr. Beecher had spoken an hour and a half before reaching this topic. It became impracticable for the reporter to reduce it to writing both because he had become weary with the long session, and because the speaker was interrupted by a multitude of questions from all parts of the house. Mr. Beecher has been obliged to write out his views for publication without regard to the reporter's copy.] The New Testament, instead of discussing the atonement — the word is but once used in the New Testament — confines itself to the setting forth of Christ, his nature, power, relations and com- mands. We hear nothing of a " plan," of an " arrangement," of a " scheme of salvation," of an " atonement," but everything of Christ's work. I am accustomed to say that Christ is in Him- self the Atonement, that He is set forth in His life, teaching, suffering, death, resurrection and heavenly glory, as empowered THEOLOGICAL. 503 to forgive sin and to transform men into a new and nobler life who know sin and accept him in full and loving trust. He is set forth as one prepared and empowered to save men, to remit the penalty of past sins, and to save them from the dominion of sin. It is not necessary to salvation that men should know how Christ was prepared to be a Saviour. It is He Himself that is to be ac- cepted, and not the philosophy of His nature or work. I employ the term Christ for that which systematic writers call the Atone- ment. But Christ is not merely a historic name. It is a group of attributes, a group of qualities, a character, a divine nature, in full life and activity among men. When we accept Christ, we yield love and allegiance to that character, to those qualities, deeds and dispositions which make his name "to be above every name." The idea of faith is such an acceptance of Christ's heav- enly dispositions as shall reorganize our character and draw us into a likeness to Him. When it is said that there is none other name given under heaven whereby men can be saved, I understand it to be a declaration that man's exit from sinful life and entrance into a spiritual life, can only be through a new inspiration — a new birth — into these divine elements. What Christ was, man must become ; the way and the life He was. It is by the way of those qualities that every man must rise into a regenerated state. Christ is to the soul a living person full of grace, mercy and truth ; of love that surpasses all human experiences or ideals (it passes un- derstanding) a love that is patient, forgiving, self-sacrificing, sor- rowing and suffering not for its own but for others' sins and sin- ful tendencies. Christ is a living actor moving among men in purity, truth, justice and love, not for His own sake, not seeking His own glory, but seeking to open, both by His person, presence, actions, words and fidelity, the spiritual kingdom of God to men's understandings — in short, it is the moral nature of God manifest in the flesh — to "follow'' Him, to "learn of" Him, to become His " disciple " or pupil, to " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," to be " hid in Him," to have not our own natural rectitude, but " that rectitude or righteousness which is by faith in Him," to assume His " yoke and burden" — all these and a multitude of other terms clearly interpret the meaning of faith in Christ, or receiving Christ. I do not teach that this heart of Christ presented to men 504 IIKNRY WARD BEECHEE. " gives them power to become the sons of God ;" that the ordinary human understanding could of itself develope the energy which is needed for the revolution of human character and life. I teach that there is a power behind it — the stimulating, enlightening, in- spiring spirit of God — the Holy Ghost — and that this view of Christ, when set home upon men l>y the Iloly Spirit, this develop- ment of the Divine nature in Christ, " is the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation." It is asked whether I limit the effect of Christ's life and death to its relation to man, and whether it had no relation to the unseen world, to the law of God in heavenly places, to the administration of justice through the ages. In reply I would say, that I cannot conceive of the emer- gence from heaven of such a being as Christ, upon such a mission, without its having relations to the procedures of the unseen world. There are some passages of Scripture that bear strongly to that view. But whatever necessity there was for Christ's sacrifice apart from its influence on man, and whatever effect it may have had on Divine government, that part of the truth is left unex- plained in the Word of God. If alluded to, as I am inclined to think, it is left without expansion or solution. The Scriptures declare that the suffering of Christ secured the remission of sins. They do not say how it secures it. The fact is stated, but not the reason or philosophy of it. The Apostles continually point to Christ's sufferings — they inspire hope because Christ has suffered ; they include in their commission that their joyful errand is to announce remission of sins by reason of Christ's work. But no- where do I see any attempt to reach those questions of modern theology. Why was it necessary ? How did His suffering open a way for sinners ? I regard the statement in Romans 3 : 20-26 as covering the ground which I hold, and as including all that is known : " Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight : for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets ; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus ( Jirist unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference : for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus : whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins THEOLOGICAL. 505 that are past, through the forbearance of God ; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness : that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." That part of Christ's mission, or that part of the Atonement, if one choose that phrase, which flames through all the New Testa- ment, and which can be understood, is, that moral power which it exerts and those effects which, through the Holy Spirit, are pro- duced by it [At this point the report is resumed.] FUTURE PUNISHMENT. I will say a few words on the subject of eschatology. I believe in the teaching of the Scripture that conduct and character in this life produce respectively beneficial or detrimental effects both in the life that now is and in the life that is to come ; and that a man dying is not in the same condition on the other side whether he be bad or whether he be good ; but that consequences follow and go over the border ; and that the nature of the consequences of transgression — that is, such transgression as alienates the man from God and from the life that is in God — such consequences are so large, so dreadful, that every man ought to be deterred from venturing upon them. They are so terrible as to constitute the foundation of urgent motives and appeal on the side of fear, hold- ing men back from sin, or inspiring them with the desire of right- eousness. That far I hold that the Scriptures teach explicitly. Beyond that I do not go, on the authority of the Scriptures. I have my own philosophical theories about the future life ; but what is revealed to my mind is simply this : The results of a man's conduct reach over into the other world on those that are persistently and inexcusably wicked, and man's punishment in the life to come is of such a nature and of such dimensions as ought to alarm any man and put him off from the dangerous ground and turn him toward safety. I do not think we are authorized by the Scriptures to say that it is endless in the sense in which we ordi- narily employ that term. So much for that, and that is the extent of my authoritative teaching on that subject. 506 l!i:.\i;v WARD BEECHER. FAREWELL ! Now, Christian brethren, allow me to say that these views which 1 have opened to you, and which, of course, in preaching in the pulpit take on a thousand various forms, under differing illustra- tions, and for the different purposes for which 1 am preaching — allow me to say these views have not been taken up suddenly. I might as well say my hair was suddenly got up for the occasion, or that my bones I got manufactured because I wanted to go somewhere. Why, they are part of my life and growth. I have not varied in the general line or direction from the beginning to this day — like a tree that grows and diversifies its branches, but is the same tree, the same nature. So I teach now with more ful- Desa and with more illustrations and in a clearer light what I taught forty years ago. It is not from love of novelty that I vary in anything. I do not love novelty as such, but I do love truth. I am inclined to sympathize with the things that have been : rever- ence for the past lies deep in my nature. It has not been from any desire to separate myself from the teachings of my brethren in the Christian ministry. I should rather a thousand times go with them than go against them, though if I am called to go against them I have the courage to do it, no matter what the con- sequences may be. I have endeavored, through stormy times, through all forms of excitement, to make known what was the nature of God and what lie expected human life to be, and to bring to bear upon that one point every power and influence in me. I have nothing that I kept back — neither reason, nor wit, nor humor, nor experience, nor moral sensibility, nor social affection. I poured my whole being into the ministry with this one object : to glorify God by lifting man up out of the natural state into the pure spiritual life. In doing this I have doubtless alienated a great many. The door has been shut, and sympathy has been withheld. I have reason to believe that a great many of the brethren of the Congregational faith would speak more than disapproval, and that many even in the association to which I be- long feel as though they could not bear the burden of responsi- bility of being supposed to tolerate the views I have held and taught, and it is on this account that I as a man of honor and a Christian gentleman cannot afford to lay on anybody the responsi- THEOLOGICAL. 507 bilit} 7 of my views. I cannot afford especially to put them in such a position that they are obliged to defend me. I cannot make them responsible in any way, and therefore I now here, and in the greatest love and sympathy, lay down my membership of this association and go forth — not to be separated from you. I shall be nearer to you than if I should be in ecclesiastical relation. I will work for you, I will lecture for you, I will personally do everything I can for you. I will even attend these meetings as a spectator, with you. T will devote my whole life to the Congre- gational churches and their interests, as well as to all other churches of Christ Jesus. I am not going out into the cold. I am not going out into another sect. I am not going away from you in any spirit of disgust. I never was in warmer personal sympa- thy with every one of you than I am now ; but I lay down the responsibility that you have borne for me — I take it off from you and put it on myself. And now you can say, " He is a member of the Congregational Church, but he has relieved his brethren of all responsibility whatever for his teachings." That you are per- fectly free to do. With thanks for your great kindness, and with thanks to God for the life which we have had here together, I am now no longer a member of the Congregational Association of New York and Brooklyn, but with you a member of the Body of Christ Jesus, in full fellowship with you in the matter of faith and love and hope. At the close of Mr. Beeclier's address, after some informal -debate, a committee of three, consisting of Messrs. H. M. Storrs, W. C. Stiles, and A. Whittemore, was appointed to draft a resolution expressive of the sentiments of the Association, which, as finally amended, was earned without a dissenting voice. It was as follows : Resolved, That the members of the New York and Brooklyn Association receive the Rev. Henry Ward Beeclier's resignation of his membership in this body with very deep pain and regret. We cannot fail to recognize the generous magnanimity which has led him to volunteer this action, lest he should seem even indirectly to make his brethren responsible before the public for the support of philosophical and theological doctrines wherein he is popularly supposed to differ essentially with those who hold the established and current evangelical faith. His full and proffered exposition of doc- trinal views that he has made at this meeting indicates the propriety of his continued membership in this or any other Congregational Association. We hereby declare our desire that he may see his way clear to reconsider and withdraw it. We desire to place on record as the result of a long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Beeeher and a familiar observation of the results of his life, as well as his preaching and pastoral work, that we cherish for him an ever-growing personal attachment as a brother beloved and a deepening sense of his worth as a Christian minister. We cannot now contemplate the possibility of his future 'absence from our meetings without a de- pressing sense of the loss we are to suffer, and unitedly pledge the hearts of the Association to him, and express the hope th;it the clay for his return may soon come. SPIRITUAL. HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN.* There cannot be too much effort made to bring before the minds of men the truths of Christ. But, when men are made attentive to them, it seems to me that they should be made to feel the obligation to obey Christ, without so much urging, con- versation, and persuasive labor. Among uneducated heathen, it would be different ; but in a Christian country where you have literally known almost nothing else than the truths of the Gospel, presented not alone in the didactic and logical form, but presented evermore in that most blessed form in which the true Gospel is preached, namely, in the example of a praying father, a praying mother, a praying brother or sister, a consistent friend, wife or child, nothing more ought to be required. How men that have been taught in the household and in the church, by example as well as by precept, should fall into the mistake of supposing that whenever they begin to be inquirers they need then to go through another and special course of training, I cannot understand. I do not think that there is an intelligent man in this congregation that is not abundantly qualified to-day, before the sun goes down, to become a true Christian in the spiritual and experimental sense of the term. More than that. Unless there has been some kind of an official touch, a man's conversion is scarcely thought to be complete ; unless some appointed class- leader, some elder, some deacon, above all, some minister, some eminent minister, has talked with him, explained it to him, upheld him in this hour, encouraged his hope and brought him clear out, he does not feel as though he were right. Whatever may be the hope he enjoys, there is still the * An Address delivered at a religious meeting in Burton's Old Theatre. Views — at the Peekskill Farm. SPIRITUAL. 511 impression that the work of grace requires the interposition of some official instruction. I wish you to be rid of this. A man who knows enough to take care of his business, to live obediently to the laws of the land, to live in the affections of the family, knows enough to begin a Chris- tian life. Religion and religious doctrines are very different things. We do not ask you to accept a theory of religious doctrine ; nor any system of philosophy. We ask you simply to begin a relig- ious life and to begin it now. Are you willing to be a Christian ? Are you willing from this hour to hold your disposition, your life-powers, and all your busi- ness, under the control of Christ ? Will you go to school to Christ and become a scholar, for the sake of learning how to live aright ? For, if you will, then you are a disciple of Christ. Disciple means scholar. A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school to Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better. It is not needful that you should have a great deal of feeling. Willingness to obey the will of Christ as fast as it is made known to you is better than feeling. It is not necessary for you to go through such a period of conviction of sin, as some men have. If you see the evil of your sinful life enough to wish to forsake it, that is repentance enough to begin with. Repentance is good for' nothing except to turn away a man from evil, and you need not wait for any more than will suffice for that. The less feeling there is required to effect a moral revolution the better. I would not have you wait for ministers, or for Christians. You can be a Christian without help from either. They will gladly help you. But you ought not to lean on them. Go to your own work at once. It is a question between your soul and God. Will you acknowledge God as your Father ? Will you, from this hour, make it your business to conduct your whole life in accordance with God's will revealed in the Gospel of Christ 1 You may become a Christian now, and go home to your house- hold, and be enabled to ask a blessing at your table to-day ; you may stretch forth your hands, to the amazement of your wife and children, and, like a Christian man, ask a blessing upon your dinner, though it may be the first time in your life ; you may go home to night and begin family prayers where the sound of your ,MJ HENRI WARD BEECHER. voice in prayer has never been heard. 1 urge you to take thai course, and to take it at once. The word of God requires us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourself. Will you deliberately undertake to begin your life over again, from this hour, under this law I Will you undertake to regard things as right or wrong, as they agree or disagree with that rule ( Will you acknowledge yourself bound, henceforth, to act under that charter ? " Can I, then, do this by mere volition ?" Can you any more go down to the. Battery by volition ? and yet you know that voli- tion will produce that result. For a proper volition always implies, not alone a choice of a thing, but also all the steps needed to accomplish this end. To determine that you will be warm, implies kindling a fire, or putting on clothing, or better yet, active exercise. You cannot be rich by wishing, but by choosing you can ; for choosing a thing always implies that you choose the appropriate means of obtaining it. And so every man may come into that state of love and benevolence required by Christ, if he will employ the word of God, prayer as the inspiration and daily practice in ordinary conduct, as the means. " But can I suddenly, in a moment, reconstruct my character, change my conduct, alter my relations to things that are wrong, and be a thorough Christian in a moment ?" No ; you cannot be a perfect Christian in a moment, but you can begin to be an imperfect Christian in a moment. A man cannot make a journey in an instant, but he can begin instantly. A man cannot cleanse his hands in a moment, but he can begin to wash. A man cannot reclaim a piece of land in an hour, but he can begin the work, with the determination to perform the whole. The prodigal son could not go back to his father at one step, but he could deter- mine to perforin the whole journey, and take the first step, and the next, and the next, perseveringly, and in right good earnest. Thus, to be a Christian is to enter upon a life which has its imper- fect beginning, its rude development, its imperfections and mis- takes, its successive states of growth, its gradual attainments, and its full final perfection only in another world. " But, is it right to call myself a Christian, when I do not do SPIRITUAL. 513 everything that Christ commands?" If yon mean to obey in everything, if yon are pained when you fail, if yon resist evil, and seek deliverance from it, Christ will prove to you the most lenient and gracious teacher that scholar every had. A child is not ex- pelled from school for one poor lesson, nor for much dulness, nor for heedlessness, nor for disobedience, if the teacher knows that, on the whole, the child means to be a good scholar, if he confesses his faults and strives to amend. God brings up those who become his children with a great deal more patience, a great deal more forbearance, and tenderness of love, than any mother exer- cises toward a difficult and fractious child. No faults lead her to give him up, so long as there is hope that at length he will do better, and do well. And God is greater in love than any mother. And, if you will now accept this law of love, hold yourself bound by it, undertake to carry it out every day, not be dis- couraged by failures, persevere in spite of imperfections, you shall find in Christ such graciousness, such a forbearing and forgivino- nature, as you will never find in any man. The moment that you realize this goodness of Christ, his help- fulness to you, his lenient, forgiving, sympathizing spirit, then you know what faith in Christ means. If such a Saviour attracts you and you strive all the more ardently, from love toward him, and trust in him, then you are a Christian : not a religious man merely, but a Christian. A man may worship through awe, or through a sense of dutv r and I think there are hundreds of men in the churches who are only religious men, and not Christians. A man who feels toward God only awe or fear ; who obeys merely from a sense of duty ; who is under the dominion of conscience rather than of love, mav be religious, but he is not a Christian. Such men live by con- science, they live by a bond, bound by fear. Their life is liter- ally one of service ; they are fatally servants of God, not in the sense in which the words are largely used in the Scriptures, mean- ing simply disciples of Christ, but they are most literally God's hired men, or worse — God's bondmen. Men must learn no longer merely to fear God, no longer to tremble as before the tyrannical master of a despotic government ; but to come unto him through Jesus Christ, and say, " Lord, I love thee, I trust thee, and I will serve thee because I love thee." 514 SENR1 WARD BEECHER. Any man who knows enough to love hi9 children, bis father, mother, brother or sister, has theological knowledge enough to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the question is this : Do you choose to do it '. U we were to put this question to any of you : Do you really choose to love the Lord Jesus Christ : I suppose every man of you would say, " I do." But stop, there is a great distinction between desiring a thing and choosing a thing ; a man may desire withoul choosing. Do you suppose there is a man in the Tombs who does not desire to be an honest man '. But lie does not choose to be; there are other things which lie desires more than that ; he desires money more than he does honesty ; he desires the means of debauchery and revelry more than he does honest v. Probably there is not a man given to his cups, in the city of New York, who, if you should ask him, " Do you not desire to become a reformed and temperate man ?" would not say, Yes. He desires it, but he does not choose it; there are other things that he desires more, and he chooses the things •which he desires most. Ask a poor ragged vagabond, " Do you not desire riches?" Of course, he says he does. But he does not choose it, and you cannot make him choose it ; he does desire to be rich, but he desires to be lazy much more than that— therefore he is a vaga- bond. A man desires to be a scholar, but he does not choose it, because he likes his leisure much better than application. You desire an article of merchandise which you see along the street ; but when you inquire the price, you will not take it because you desire the money more. Almost every man desires something which he does not choose. We are full of desires, but we only choose those things for the possession of which we are willing to deny the solicitation of all antagonistic desires. That man who is willing to forego everything that stands in the way of the object which he desires, that man only can be said to have chosen it. Now 1 put the question to you, Do you desire the love of Christ ? Do you desire it more than you do your pleasures, more than ambition, more than selfish indulgences ? Are you willing to say before God, I desire it more than all things in the world ? If you do, I know not why you should not at once begin to be a Christian. You are competent to choose your business ; you do SPIRITUAL. 515 not need to ask any lawyers, doctors or ministers in order to do that. You are competent to choose your own course of life ; you are competent to choose your own pleasures, and you never think of asking of others how to secure them. Why do you not stand upon your own power — or rather upon God's power, which works within yours — and become a Christian by your own voli- tion, just as you become a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, a traveller, a scholar ? Why do you not take three minutes of this sovereign power of choice, to become a Christian ? A man perhaps will say, " I desire to make that choice to-day." What he ought to say is this : " I make the choice. I make it now, and forever. I do in the presence of Almighty God, with all my soul determine that I will, through the love of Christ, make his wish the supreme law of my life within and without. Not only in my relation directly to God, but in all my conduct toward my fellow- men, I will be governed by the revealed wish and law of God. Trusting to his mercy for pardon in all things wherein I come short, and depending on him for strength, I will make my work his work, and try like Jesus to find my meat and drink in doing God's holy will." Who of you can solemnly promise this before God ? Look at it all around and decide. Who can say, not that he will not be imperfect in carrying it out, but who can say, " That is to be my idea of life, that is to be my model, after which I am this hour and henceforth forever to strive " ? Is there a man who can take that step ? But, you say, " a man may take that step, and may become by mere choice a Christian in that way ; but there is no love springs up — there is no grace in his heart or soul ; and how is he to have that peace, that joy, that rest, that we hear Christians talking about ? In other words, how is a man to have in his soul the sweet sense that his power is not in himself, but of Christ?" I answer, the Lord will send that — but in his own way and time. Leave it to him. If feeling comes first, let it come. ^ But do not wait for it. Move on. Follow your decision upon the path of duty, and you will by and by have all the feeling you need. Jesus Christ sits on the throne of the universe for the very purpose of giving sym- pathy and effectual help to every man who says, " Lord, I am needy ; Lord, I am bestormed and out of mv course, and I come 516 1IKNKY WARD BKKCHKli. to thee for sympathy and assistance." Upon that ground Ave are to look to Christ ; we have the power to choose him, and, if we do, we shall feel that mighty love, that conscious sympathy and presence, that power of God upon the heart of every man, which shall give him peace and joy. If you douht, come unto Christ and you shall know whether it does not make you blessed. This willingness on your part, this faith in Christ, is the element that shall bring you in the right direction, to a consciousness of peace in Jesus ( Jhrist. But the great trouble is, I think, that you do not wish to be Christians so much as you wish other things. One of the most memorable things that took place last winter was the opening of a place as an eating-house, free to the hungry, in one of the streets of this city. The kind actor in this charity thought that he had no better way to use his money than to feed the hungry and the poor ; so he opened a room and made this dec- laration : " If any are hungry, here is food for thein ; let them come and eat." Now, in the case of certain grades of men, there was no trouble about it. The man who was in the ditch, and so low that he knew that he was a miserable, degraded creat- ure, would scramble up quickly when he heard of this place ; run to it and betake himself to the food with almost indecent haste. And the man who had been dodging around from one expedient to another, till now he was nearly famished and did not know where to go to keep from starvation, hears that here there were great, bountiful rounds of beef and glorious loaves of bread, any quantity, indeed, of provision, and away he runs to see if it was really so ; he would not talk much, or preach much, but he would practise a great deal ; for, let me tell you that your hungry men care very little for the theory of eating or digestion. It is the practice which they dote upon. But here comes a man who has been more respectable ; he has lived in genteel society and given dinner parties in his prosperous days ; the times have been rather hard upon him, but he expects that the spring will set him up all right again ; he has been home with everybody who asked him to eat, has been to everybody's house but his own, for there was nothing to eat there ; he has borrowed all the money he could, but now no one asks him to dine, and he can borrow no more. He has gone to bed hungry at night, and oh ! what dreams he has had out of that SPIRITUAL. 517 gnawing stomach ; he wakes up in the morning and says to him- self, " I wonder where I can get any breakfast ?" He thinks to be sure of that dining-saloon just opened, where there is plenty of food to be had for nothing ; but he says, " I cannot go down there, I cannot humble myself so much ; I, who have been able, and in the habit of giving charity, to go down there and get my food, and become a beggar ? I can't do that !" So, he wanders about till noon, and though the hunger gnaws at his stomach, and he is faint and weary, he will not go in yet, so he wanders on till about sundown. But at sundown he says to himself — and hunger is an excellent logician — " After all, am I not acting foolishly ? I am so weak I can hardly stand, and it does seem to me that I cannot sleep to- night for the gnawings of hunger. Oh, how I want this food ; I think I will just go down the street." So away he goes, like a great many men who have come in here to-day, saying that they just came in to see what was going on, but who know that down deep in their ovvu hearts there is something else beside curiosity which they cannot resist. Well, away he goes down the street, and looks in to see who is there ; then he watches to see if any- body is looking at him, or if anybody knows him ; he goes away and walks up the square, but he is reminded from within that he had better come back again. This time he walks right by the door, and looks in askance to see if anybody is in there ; he hears the cheerful noise of the knives and forks, smells the wholesome food, hears the laughter of joyful men, hungry men doing work meet for hunger. Now, suppose that, as he stands there, he should see, among those going down, the butcher and baker loaded with great piles of meat and bread, and should stop them to say : "I am almost dead with hunger, I have been invited here to take something to eat, but before I go down I should like to know the precise process by which flour is made into bread !" — just as men come to me, wishing me to explain to them the doctrines of justification, sovereignty, atonement, and other things, when they are dying for want of Christ's loving help ! So this man stops the baker to ask him how bread is made, but the butcher and the baker step in with their load. He listens again to the cheerful music of the rattling dishes — and there is no such music to a hungry man's ear, and says, " T 518 Hi.NUY WARD BEECIIER. canM go in yet ; I am not satisfied as to the way these things are made.'* So he \\ alks a\v;i\ , but hunger gives him another turn, and back he goes and looks in again, and says, " If it wasn't for if it, wasn't for — " then he looks up the street to see if any- body is looking at him, and says, " 1 will just go down one step." He steps down, and the attraction is so great that he goes in ; nobody seems to know him, nobody seems surprised ; he reaches out his hand and takes hold of a dry crust, and the tears come into his eyes as he puts it into his mouth. Oh, how sweet it is ! With that he sits right down and makes a feast, and as he rises up again, he says to himself, " Oh, what a fool I was, that I did not come long before and often." Are there not just such fools in this congregation ? You go up and down, to and fro, before Christ's table, when there is bread that will cause that hunger to cease forever, and water drawn from the river that comes from God's throne ; and yet you have gone hack, thinking what your wife would say, what your father would say, what your partner would say, what your gay companions would say. But you feel the gnawings of hunger, and, as you look at the spread table, you say, " Oh, how we need this food, but we dare not come and take it." Oh, it is shame, pride, or fear, that keeps you thus back. Oh, if there was only hunger enough to bring you to the right point, then, having once tasted, you would rise up from that feast, with the blessed assurance that yet once again you should, sit down at a still nobler table, at the marriage supper' of the Lamb ! Now, if there are any in this congregation that have seen the bounty spread forth in the love of Christ, which they can have. " without money and without price," as promised by Jesus Christ, do not let them wait for somebody to explain it any more. Try it yourselves to-day '. I am ashamed of myself, often, to he an object of more faith than my Saviour ; yet I have persons coming to me every day of my life, with their wants and troubles, instead of going to Christ. lb.\s eagerly they believe every statement T make ; how they hang upon my sympathy, and hope I will let them come again to- morrow. I say to myself, if you would only come to Christ with half the faith that brings you to me, you might be rejoicing in half an hour. Suppose now, that instead of a man sinful and erring SPIRITUAL. 519 like yourselves, you should put in my place the august form of the Lord Jesus Christ, full of benignity, glorious with goodness, and with a sweetness that is more than any mother ever knew for her darling child, waiting patiently, bending over you and saying, " Come unto me and take my yoke upon you ;" " learn of me and ye shall find rest to your souls," " for he that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." Suppose you should hear Jesus Christ saying, " I have been out to seek and search for lost men, and I have found you, and I am persuading you to come to me ; believe me that I love you, that I love you now." If there is a man that has one thought toward God, it is because the love of God is drawing him sympathetically to himself. It is a blessed thought that Jesus Christ is longing for you, and I would that you might turn still more earnestly to Jesus Christ and say, " Lord, I believe thee, I believe thou lovest me ; I believe thou desirest to make me thine, and from this hour it shall be the object of my life to please thee, and the one firm object of my live to serve thee." Will you try the effect of that vow, some of you, to- day ? Try it at once, even now, while I am speaking. I always feel most for those who are furthest from grace, perhaps, because I see in them some likeness to myself. But my Master also had a special regard for such. One of the most touching things in the life of Christ, is the way in which the wretched looked at him. The literary, the philosophical, the rich, the great political men of that day did not think much of Christ ; but he had such a sweet way of carrying himself in all Jerusalem, that whenever he went into a house to sit down and rest, all the vagabonds and wretches came round about him, as though he was their patron. They felt " somebody cares for me ; somebody, instead of thumping me with a truncheon, instead of putting my hands in manacles, loves and cares for me." They did not know what to make of the quiet, gentle effect of the character of Christ ; and wherever he went all manner of wicked men poured round about him. Such was his sweetness that all the wretched and miserable came to see him ; such was the impression he made upon the lowest class in Jerusalem. Why should we not all be like him ? Whenever I know of a man that nobody else prays for, it seems as if my heart would break for him. If I hear of a man 520 II EN II Y WARD BEECHER. that has broken away from all instruction, instead of saying, " lie is a devil, I would much rather say he is my brother, and I must heartily pray for him." When I walk up Broadway, 'tis a pain to me to look up and down the street and see so many, with apparently nobody to care for their souls. Now, if there is in this house to-day any man who is wicked and degraded ; if there is any man who sells rum — and that makes about as bad a man as can be in this world — I don't say this to hurt your feel- ings, but because, as a servant of Christ, I must talk plainly to every man — if there is a man in this congregation that has gotten his living by stealing, from the most vulgar form of steal- ing up to the most respectable, genteel way in which so-called honest men steal, and call it financiering ; if there are any who live in any way discreditably in the eye of the world or in the eye of God ; any who make catering to lust or passion their means of livelihood ; if there are any who have stood upon these boards, not to instruct, but simply to amuse or degrade their fellow- men ; actors, managers, or any others — give me your hand, you are my brethren ! It is the blood of Christ that makes you and me related, which is more precious than the blood of your father or my father. My soul goes out for you ; and I long that you should know how Christ feels for you. Oh ! wandering sheep, be not ye lost ! < !hrist calls to you by my voice. He sends me here to say to some man who is on the point of decision, but who thinks it is of no use to try to be good any longer — drink, per- haps, may be taking you down ; or your passions are dragging you down, and do not know how to resist the insidious pleasures which surround you ; or your companions are taking you down, and nobody, as you think, cares for you — nobody prays for you or gives you instruction. Yes, there is one man who does — I care for you ; not out of my own nature, but because the spirit of my Master makes me thus care for your soul. He sent me to tell you that lie — glorious as lie is — that He cares for you ten thou- sand times more than I do. He loves you — He longs for you ; and there shall not be one man who makes one faint motion toward a better life whom He will not stand ready to receive. He shall send forth the angels, saying unto them, " Take care of that man, and bear him up lest at any time he dash his foot against a stone." SPIRITUAL. 521 But, let me tell you, in this matter you must be in earnest ; you must be thoroughly resolved. Prayers have this morning been asked in your hearing for a Christian woman who, at the peril of life, has tied from slavery. Now, I want to know if there is a man in this congregation who desires to get rid of his sins as much as this poor woman did to get rid of her slavery ? She was willing to put her life in her hand, and, for days, without food, without drink, to seek for liberty as for her very life. Is there a slave in this congregation ? A slave to Satan or to his own passions ? Is there any who wants to escape as much as this poor woman did ? Who strikes for liberty in Jesus Christ ? Who desires to say to-day, not about one habit, but of all bad habits, " I desire to reform — I will reform "? It is easier to reform all at once than it is to reform one thing at a time. If a man wishes to wash a spot, big as a penny, clean on a dirty hand, he will find it much easier to wash the Avhole hand than that one spot. This gradual repentance is like a man who wants to be taken out from a burning building, but who says to those about him, " Now, don't take me out too suddenly ; take me down first to a room where it is not quite so hot as it is here ; and then to another room, wbere there is still less heat, and so take me out gradually." Why, the man would be a cinder before you got him out ! A man who wants to reform should reform perpendicularly ! If you mean to quit drinking, quit it at once, and become a Christian ! If you want to be an honest man, go to God ! Begin there. It is easier to reform any vice by becom- ing a Christian at once, than to attempt it from a lower motive. Take upon you the highest bond of truth ! A man who tries to reform without the help of God, is like the man who tries to breathe without air. Now, is there any man here who seeks for reform ? — there is hope for you ; there is prayer for you ; and better than that, there is God for you — there is Christ for you ! I hope and desire that in consequence of these remarks, some man who has been bound in sin may be converted. Who shall it be ? Shall it be you ? Some of you whose friends have been laboring for yOU, SHALL IT NOT BE YOU ? POLITICAL. SPEECH IN LONDON. Of the circumstances attending the speech in London, given below, the last of Mr. Beecher's historic orations in England, a full account has been given in the preceding chapters, both by Mr. Beecher himself and by others who were present. It is enough here to say that the meeting was held in Exeter Hall under the auspices of the Emancipation Society, that it was crowded to its utmost capacity, and that it was presided over by the Chamberlain of London, while on the platform were a number of distinguished Englishmen, both clergymen and laymen. There is room here only for a part of this speech, which is printed here both to indi- cate the character of Mr. Beecher's English speeches, and also the general characteristics of his political addresses. As this is my last public address upon the American question in England, I may be permitted to glance briefly at my course here. (Bear, hear.) At Manchester I attempted to give a history of the external political movement for fifty years past, so far as it was necessary to illustrate the fact that the present American war was only an overt and warlike form of a contest between liberty and slavery that had been going on politically for half a century. (Hear, hear.) At Glasgow I undertook to show the condition of work or labor necessitated by any profitable system of slavery, demonstrating that it brought into contempt, affixing to it the badge of degradation, and that a struggle to extend servile labor across the American continent interests every free working-man on the globe. (Cheers.) For my sincere belief is that the Southern cause is the natural enemy of free labor and the laborer all the world over. (Loud cheers.) In Edinburgh 1 endeavored to POLITICAL. 523 sketch how, out of separate colonies and states intensely jealous of their individual sovereignty, there grew up and was finally established a nation, and how in that Nation of United States, two distinct and antagonistic systems were developed and strove for the guidance of the national policy, which struggle at length passed and the North gained the control. Thereupon the South abandoned the Union simply and solely because the Government was in future to be administered by men who would give their whole influence to freedom. (Loud cheers.) In Liverpool F labored, under difficulties — (laughter and cheers) — to show that slavery in the long run was as hostile to commerce and to manu- facturers all the world over, as it was to free interests in human society — (cheers) — that a slave nation must be a poor customer, buying the fewest and poorest goods, and the least profitable to the producers — (hear, hear) — that it- was the interest of every manufacturing country to promote freedom, intelligence, and wealth among all nations — (cheers) — that this attempt to cover the fairest portion of the earth with a slave population that buys next to nothing should array against it every true political econo- mist and every thoughtful and far-seeing manufacturer, as tending to strike at the vital want of commerce — which is not cotton, but rich customers. (Cheers.) I have endeavored to enlist against this flagitious wickedness, and the great civil war which it has kindled, the judgment, conscience, and interests of the British people. (Cheers.) I am aware that a popular address before an excited audience more or less affected by party sympathies is not the most favorable method of doing justice to these momen- tous topics ; and there have been some other circumstances which made it yet more difficult to present a careful or evenly balanced statement ; but I shall do the best I can to leave no vestige of doubt that slavery was the cause — the only cause — the whole cause — of this gigantic and cruel war. (Cheers.) I have tried to show that sympathy for the South, however covered by excuses or softened by sophistry, is simply sympathy with an audacious attempt to build up a slave empire pure and simple. (Hear, hear.) I have tried to show that in this contest the North were contend- ing for the preservation of their Government and their own terri- tory, and those popular institutions on which the well-being of the nation depended. (Hear, hear.) So far, I have spoken to .V.'l HI'.NUY WARD BEECHER. the English Erom an English point of view. To-night I ask you to look at this Btruggle from au American point of view, and in its moral aspects. (Hear, hear.) That is, I wish you to take our stand-point for a little while — -(cheers) — and to look at our actions and motives, not from what the enemy say, hut from what we say. (Cheers.) When two men have disagreed, you seldom promote peace, between them by attempting to prove that either of them is all right or either of them is all wrong. (Hear, hear. I Now there has been some disagreement of feeling between Ameri- ca and Great Britain. I don't want to argue the question to- nighl which is right and which is wrong, but if some kind neigh- bor will persuade two people that are at disagreement to consider each other's position and circumstances, it may not lead either to adopting the other's judgment, but it may lead them to say of each other, " I think he is honest and means well, even if he he mistaken." (Loud cheers.) You may not thus get a settlement of the difficulty, hut you will get a settlement of the quarrel. ( Hear, hear.) I merely ask you to put yourselves in our track for one hour, and look at the objects as we look at them — (cheers) — after that, form your judgment as you please. (Cheers.) The first and earliest form in which the conflict took place between North and South was purely moral. It was a conflict simply of opinion and of truths by argument ; and by appeal to the moral sense it was sought to persuade the slaveholder to adopt some plan of emancipation. (Hear, hear.) When this seemed to the South- ern sensitiveness unjust and insulting, it led many in the North to silence, especially as the South seemed to apologize for slavery lather than defend it against argument. It was said, " The evil is upon us ; we cannot help it. We are sullied, hut it is a misfortune rather than a fault. (Cheers.) It is not right for the North to meddle with that which is made worse by heing meddled with, even by argument or appeal." That was the earlier portion of the conflict. A great many men were deceived by it. I never myself yielded to the fallacy. As a minister of the gospel preach- ing to sinful men, I thought it my duty not to give in to this doctrine ; their sins were on them, and I thought it my duty not to soothe them, but rather to expose them. (Cheers.) The next stage of the conflict was purely political. The South was attempt- ing to extend their slave system into the Territories, and to POLITICAL. 525 prevent free States from covering the continent, by bringing into the Union a slave state for every free state. It was also the design and endeavor of the South not simply to hold and employ the enormous power and influence of the Central Executive, but also to engraft into the whole Federal Government a slave state policy. They meant to fill all offices at home and abroad with men loyal to slavery — to shut up the road to political preferment against men who had aspirations for freedom, and to corrupt the young and ambitious by obliging them to swear fealty to slavery as the condition of success. I am saying what I know. I have seen the progressive corruption of men naturally noble, educated in the doctrine of liberty, who, being bribed by political offices, at last bowed the knee to Moloch. The South pursued a uniform system of bribing and corrupting ambitious men of Northern consciences. A far more dangerous part of its policy was to change the Constitution, not overtly, not by external aggression' — worse, to fill the courts with Southern judges — (shame) — until, first by laws of Congress passed through Southern influence, secondly, by the construction and adjudication of the courts, the Constitution having become more and more tied up to Southern principles, the North would have to submit to slavery, or else to oppose it by violating the law and Constitution as construed by servile judges. (Hear, hear.) They were, in short, little by little, injecting the laws, Constitution, and policy of the country with the poison and blood of slavery. (Cheers.) [After quoting from a speech of Alexander II. Stephens in corroboration of his position, Mr. Beecher proceeded as follows.] Now, take notice first, that the North, hating slavery, having rid itself of it at its own cost, and longing for its extinction throughout America, was unable until this war to touch slavery directly. The North could only contend against slave policy — not directly against slavery. Why ? Because slavery was not the creature of national law, and therefore not subject to national jurisprudence, but of State law, and subject only to State jurisdic- tion. A direct act on the part of the North to abolish slavery would have been revolutionary. (A voice : " We do not under- stand you.") You will understand me before I have done with you to-night. (Cheers.) Such an attack would have been a vio- lation of the fundamental principle of State independence. This- 526 HENRI w AKD BEECHEK peculiar structure of our Government is nol bo unintelligible to Englishmen as you may think. It is only taking an English idea on a larger Bcale. We bave borrowed it from you. A great many do nol understand bow it is tbal there should be State independence under a National Government. Now I am not closely acquainted with your affairs, bu1 the Chamberlain can tell you if I am wrong, when T say, that there belong to the old city of London certain private rights that Parliament cannot meddle with. Vet there are elements in which Parliament — that is, the will i<( the nation— is as supreme over London as over any town <»r city of the realm. Now, if there are some things which London lias kept for her own judgment and will, and yet others which she has given up to the national will, you have herein the principle of the American Government — (cheers) — by which local matters belong exclusively to the local jurisdiction, and certain general matters to the National Government. 1 will give you another illustration that will bring it home to you. There is not a street in London, but, as soon as a man is inside his house be may say, his house is his castle. There is no law in the realm which can lay down to that man how many members shall compose his family — how he shall dress his children — when they shall get up and when they shall go to bed — how many meals he shall have a day, and of what those meals shall be constituted. The interior economy of the house belongs to the members of the house, yet there are many respects in which every householder is held in check by common rights. They have; their own interior and domestic economy, yet they share in other things which are national and governmental. It may be very wrong to give chil- dren opium, but all the doctors in London cannot say to a man that he shall not drug his child. It is his business, and if it is wrong it cannot be interfered with. I will give you another illus- tration. Five men form a partnership of business. Now, that partnership represents the National Government of the L'nited States ; but it has relation only to certain great commercial interests common to them all. But each of these five men has another sphere — his family — and in that sphere the man may be a drunkard, a gambler, a lecherous and indecent man, but the firm cannot meddle with his morals. I cannot touch anything but business interests that belong to the firm. Now, our States came POLITICAL. 527 together on this doctrine — that each State, in respect to those rights and institutions that were local and peculiar to it, was to have undivided sovereignty over its own affairs ; but that all those powers, such as taxes, wars, treaties of peace, which belong to one State and are common to all States went into the General Government. The General Government never had the power — the power was never delegated to it — to meddle with the interior and domestic economy of the States, and it never could be done. You will ask what are we doing it for now ? I will tell you in due time. Have I made that point plain ? (Cheers. ) It was only that part of slavery which escaped from the State jurisdiction and which entered into the national sphere which formed the subject of controversy. We could not justly touch the Constitution of the States, but only the policy of the National Government that came out beyond the State and appeared in Congress and in the Territories. (Cheers.) We are bound to abide by our fundamen- tal law. Honor, fidelity, integrity, as well as patriotism, required us to abide by that law. The great conflict between the South and North, until this war began, was, which should control the Federal or Central Government and what we call the Territories ; that is, lands which are the property of the Union, and have not yet received State rights. (Cheers.) That was the conflict. It was not " Emancipation " or " No Emancipation ;" Government had no business with that question. Before the war, the only thing on which politically the free people of the North and South took their respective sides was, " Shall the National policy be free or slave ?" And I call you to witness that forbearance, though not a showy virtue — fidelity, though not a shining qual- ity — are fundamental to manJy integrity. (Cheers.) During a period of eighty years, the North, whose wrongs I have just read out to you, not from her own lips, but from the lips of her enemy, has stood faithfully to her word. With scrupulous honor she has respected legal rights, even when they were merely civil and not moral rights. The fidelity of the North to the great doctrine of State rights, which was born of her — her forbearance under wrong, insult, and provocation — her conscientious and honorable refusal to meddle with the evil which she hated, and which she saw to be aiming at the life of Government, and at her own life — her determination to hold fast pact and constitution, 528 HENRI WARD BEECHER and to gain her victories by giving the people a new National policy — will yet be deemed worthy of something better than a contemptuous sneer, or the allegation of an " enormous national vanity." (Cheers.) The Northern forbearance is one of those themes of which we may be justly proud — (" Oh,'* and cheers) — a product of virtue, a fruit of liberty, an inspiration of that Chris- tian faith, which is the mother at once of truth and of liberty. (Cheers.) I am proud to think that there is such a record of national fidelity as that which the North has written for herself by the pen of one of her worst enemies. Now that is the reason win the North did not at first go to war to enforce emancipation. She wcnl to war to save the; National institutions — (cheers) — to save the Territories ; to sustain those laws which would first circum- scribe, then suffocate, and finally destroy slavery. (Cheers.) That is the reason why that most, true, honest, just, and conscien- tious magi st rate, Mr. Lincoln — (the announcement of Mr. Lincoln's name was received with loud and continued cheering. The whole audience rose and cheered for some time, and it was a few minutes before Mr. Beccher could proceed.) From having spoken much at tumultuous assemblies I had at times a fear that when I came here this evening my voice would fail from too much speaking. But that fear is now changed to one that your voices will fail from too much cheering. (Laughter.) How then did the North pass from a conflict with the South and a slave policy, to a direct attack upon the institutions of slavery itself ? Because, according to the foreshadowing of that wisest man of the South, Mr. Stephens, they beleaguered the National Govern- ment and the national life with the institution of slavery — obliged a sworn President, who was put under oath not to invade that institution, to take his choice between the safety and life of the Government itself, or the slavery by which it was beleaguered. (Cheers.) If any man lays an obstruction on the street, and blocks up the street, it is not the fault of the people if they walk over it. As the fundamental right of individual self-defence cannot be withdrawn without immorality ; so the first "dement of national life is to defend life. As no man attacked on the highway violates law, but obeys the law of self-defenci — a law inside of the laws — by knocking down his assailant ; so, when a nation is assaulted it is a right and duty, in the exercise of self-defence, to POLITICAL. 529 destroy the enemy, by which otherwise it will be destroyed. (Hear.) As long as the South allowed it to be a moral and political conflict of policy, we were content to meet the issue as one of policy. But when they threw down the gauntlet of war, and said that by it slavery was to be adjudicated, we could do nothing else than take up the challenge. (Loud cheers.) The police have no right to enter your house as long as you keep within the law, but when you defy the laws and endanger the peace and safety of the neighborhood they have a right to enter. So in constitutional governments ; it has no power to touch slavery while slavery remains a State institution. But when it lifts itself up out of its State humility and becomes banded to attack the nation, it becomes a national enemy, and has no longer exemp- tion. (Cheers.) But it is said, " The President issued his proclamation after all for political effect, not for humanity." (Cries of " Hear, hear.") Of course the right of issuing a proclamation of emancipation was political, but the disposition to do it was personal. (Loud cheers.) Mr. Lincoln is an officer of the State, and in the Presidential chair has no more right than your judge on the bench to follow his private feelings. (Applause.) He is bound to ask, " What is the law ?"— not, " What is my sympathy?" (Hear, hear.) And when a judge sees that a rigid execution or interpretation of the law goes along with primitive justice, with humanity, and with pity, he is all the more glad because his private feelings go with his public office. (Cheers.) Perhaps in the next house to a kind and benevolent surgeon is a boy who fills the night with groans, because he has a cancerous and diseased leg. The surgeon would fain go in and amputate that limb and save that life ; but he is not called in and therefore he has no business to go in, though he ever so much wish it. (Hear, hear.) But at last the father says to him, " In the name of God, come in and save my child ;" and he goes in profession- ally and cuts off his leg and saves his life, to the infinite disgust of a neighbor over the way, that says " Oh, he would not go in from neighborly feeling and cut his leg off." (Loud applause.) I should like to know how any man has a right to cut your leg or mine off except professionally — (laughter and cheers) — and so a man must often wait for official leave to perform the noblest offices of justice and humanity. Here then is the great stone of 530 IIKNKY WARD BEECHER. stumbling. At first the President could not touch slavery, because in time of peace it was .1 legal institution, llow then can he do it now ? Because in time of Avar it has stepped beyond its former sphere, and is no longer a local institution, but a national and public enemy. (Applause.) Now I promised to make that clear ; have I done it ? (" Hear, hear," and applause.) It is said, " Why not let the South go ?" (" Hear, hear," and cheers.) " Since they won't be at peace with you, why do you not let them separate from yon V s Because they would be still less peaceable when separated. (Hear, hear.) Oh, if the Southerners only would go ! (Laughter.) They are determined to stay — that is the trouble. (Hear, hear.) We would furnish free passage to all of them if they would go. (Laughter.) But we say the land is ours. (Cheers.) Let them go, and leave to the nation its land, and they will have our unanimous consent. (Renewed cheers.) But 1 wish to discuss this more carefully. It is the very marrow of the matter. 1 ask you to stand in our place for a little time, and see this question as we see it, afterward make up your judgment. (Hear, hear.) And first this war began by the act of the South firing at the old flag that had covered both sections with glory and protection. (Applause.) The attack made upon ns was under circumstances winch inflicted immediate severe humiliation and threatened us with final subjuga- tion. The Southerners held all the keys of the country. They had robbed our arsenals. They bad made our treasury bankrupt. They bad possession of the most important offices in the army and navy. They bad the vantage of having long anticipated and prepared for the conflict. (Hear, hear.) We knew not whom to trust. One man failed and another man failed. Men, pensioned by the Government, lived on the salary of the Govern- ment only to have better opportunity to stab and betray it. There was not merely one Judas, there were a thousand in our country. (" Hear, hear," and hisses.) And for the North to have lain down like a spaniel — to have given up the land that every child jn America is taught, as every child in Britain is taught, to regard as his sacred right and his trust— to have given up the mouths of our own rivers and our mountain citadel without a blow, would have marked the North in all future history as craven and mean. (Loud cheers and some hisses.) Secondly, the honor and safety POLITICAL. 531 of that grand experiment, self-government by free institutions, demanded that so flagitious a violation of the first principles of legality should not carry off impunity and reward, thereafter ena- bling the minority in every party conflict to turn and say to the majority, " If you don't give lis our way we will make war." Oh, Englishmen, would you let a minority dictate in such a way to you ? (Loud cries of " Xo, no, never !" and cheers.) Three thousand miles off don't make any difference, then? ("No, no.") The principle thus introduced would literally have no end — would carry the nation back to its original elements of isolated States. If every treaty may be overthrown by which States have been settled into a Nation, what form of political union may not on like grounds be severed ? There is the same force in the doctrine of Secession in the application to counties as in the appli- cation to States, and if it be right for a State or a county to secede, it is equally right for a town or a city. (Cheers.) This doctrine of Secession is a huge revolving millstone that grinds the national life to powder. (Cheers.) It is anarchy in velvet, and national destruction clothed in soft phrases and periphrastic expressions. (Cheers.) But we have fought with that devil "Slavery," and understand him better than you do. (Loud cheers.) No people with patriotism and honor will give up terri- tory without a struggle for it. (Cheers.) Would you give it up? (Loud cries of "No.") It is said that the States are owners of their territory ! It is theirs to use, not theirs to run away with. We have equal right with them to enter it. Let me inform you when those States first sat in convention to form a Union, a resolution was introduced by the delegates from South Carolina and Virginia, " That we now proceed to form a National Government." The delegate from Connecticut objected. The New Englanders were State-right men, and the South, in the first instance, seemed altogether for a National Government. Connecticut objected, and a debate took place whether it should be a Constitution for a mere Confederacy of States, or for a nation formed out of those States. (A voice : " When was that ?") It was in the Convention of 1787. He wants to help me. (Laughter.) I like such interruptions. I am here a friend among friends. (Cheers.) Nothing will please me better than any question asked in courtesy and in earnest to 532 HENRI w \i;i> BEECHER. elucidate this subject. I am not afraid of being interrupted by questions which are to the point. (Cheers.) At this convention the resolution of the New England delegates thai they should form a Confederacy instead of a Nation was voted down, and never came up again. (Cheers.) The first draft of the preamble contained these words : " We, the people of the United States, for the purpose of forming a Nation ;" but as there was a good deal of feeling anion-' the North and Smith on the subject, when the draft came to the committee for revision, and they had simply to put in the proper phraseology, they put it " for the purpose of forming a Union." But when the question whether the States were to hold their autocracy came up in South Carolina — which was called the Carolina heresy— it was put down and never lifted its head up again until this secession, when it was galvanized to justify that which has no other pretence to justice. (Cheers.) 1 would like to ask those English gentlemen who hold that it is right for a State to secede when it pleases, how they would like it if the county of Kent would try the experiment. (Hear, hear.) The men who cry out for secession of the Southern States in America would say, "Kent seceding? Ah, circumstances alter cases." (Cheers and laughter.) The Mississippi, which is our Southern door and hall to come in and go out, runs right through the territory which they tried to rend from us. The South mag- nanimously offered to let us use it : but what would you say, if, on going home, you found a squad of gypsies seated in your hall, who refused to be ejected, saying, " But look here, we will let you go in and out on equitable and easy terms." (Cheers and laugh- ter.) But there was another question involved — the question of national honor. If you take up and look at the man that delineates the mountainous features of that continent, you will find the peculiar structure of the Alleghany ridge, beginning in New Hampshire, running across the New England States, through Pennsylvania and West Virginia, stopping in the northern part of Georgia. (Hear, hear.) Now, all the world over, men that live in mountainous regions have been men for liberty — (cheers) — and from the first hour to this hour the majority of the popu- lation of Western Virginia, which is in this mountainous region, the majority of the population of Eastern Tennessee, of AVestern Carolina, and of North Georgia, have been true to the Union, and POLITICAL. 533 were urgent not to go out. They called to the National Govern- ment, " We claim that, in fulfilment of the compact of the Consti- tution, you defend our rights, and retain us in the Union." (Cheers.) We would not suffer a line of fire to be established one thousand five hundred miles along our Southern border out of which, in a coming hour, there might shoot out wars and disturb- ances, with such a people as the South, that never kept faith in the Union, and would never keep faith out of it. They have disturbed the land as old Ahab of accursed memory did — (cheers and hisses) — and when Elijah found this Ahab in the way, Ahab said, " It is Elijah that has disturbed Israel." (A laugh.) Now we know the nature of this people. We know that if we entered into a truce with them they would renew their plots and vio- lences, and take possession of the continent in the name of the Devil and slavery. (Cheers.) One more reason why we will not let this people go is because we do not want to become a mili- tary people. A great many say America is becoming too strong ; she is dangerous to the peace of the world. But if you permit or favor this division, the South becomes a military nation, and the North is compelled to become a military nation. Along a line of 1500 miles she must have forts, and men to garrison them. These 250,000 soldiers will constitute the national standing army of the North. Now any nation that has a large standing army is in great danger of losing its liberties. (" No, no.") Before this war the legal size of the national army was 25,000. That was all ; the actual number was 18,000, and those were all the soldiers we wanted. The Tribune and other papers repeatedly said that these men were useless in our nation. But if the country were divided, then we should have two great military nations taking its place, and instead of a paltry 18,000 soldiers, there would be 250,000 on one side and 100,000 or 200,000 on the other. And if America, by this ill-advised disruption, is forced to have a standing army, like a boy with a knife she will always want to whittle with it. (Laughter and cheers.) It is the interest then of the world that the nation should be united, and that it should be under the control of that part of America that has always been for peace — (cheers, and cries of " No, no ") — that it should be wrested from the control and policy of that part of the nation that lias always been for more territory, for filibustering, for insult- 534 BENRY WARD BEECHER. ing foreign nations. (Cheers.) But that is not all. The relig- ious-minded among our people feel that in the territory committed to us there is ;i high and solemn trust — a national trust. We are taught that in some sense the world itself is a rieid, and every Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral condition of the globe. But how mueh nearer docs it come when it is one's own country ! And the Church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country, not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the Church of Christ. (Cheers.) Therefore we undertook to rid the territory of slavery. Since slavery di- vested itself of its municipal protection, and has become a declared public enemy, it is our duty to strike down the slavery which would blight this far Western territory. When I stand and look out upon that immense territory as a man. as a citizen, as a Christian minister, 1 feel myself asked. " Will you permit that vast country to be overclouded by this curse \ Will you permit the cries of bondmen to issue from that fair territory, and do nothing for their liberty '." What are we doing? Sending our ships round the globe, carrying missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, to the islands of the Pacific, to Asia, to all Africa. And yet, when this work of redeeming our continent from the heathendom of slavery lies before us, there are men who counsel us to give it up to the devil, and not try to do anything with it. Ah ! independent of pounds and pence, independent of national honor, independent of all merely material considerations, there is pressing on every conscientious Northerner's mind this highest of all considerations — our duty to God to save that continent from the blast and blight of slavery. (Cheers.) Yet how many are there who up, down, and over all England are saying, " Let slavery go — let slavery go " ? It is recorded. 1 think, in the biography of one of tin- most noble of your own countrymen, Sir T. Fowell Buxton — (cheers) — that on one occasion a huge favorite dog was seized with hydrophobia. With wonderful courage he seized the creature 1>\ the neck and collar, and against the animal's mightiest efforts, dashing hither and thither against wall and fence, held him until help could be got. If there had been Englishmen there of the stripe of the Times, they would have said to Fowell Buxton, Let him go ;" but is there one here who does not feel the moral POLITICAL. 535 nobleness of that man, who rather than let the animal go down the street biting children and women and men, risked his life and prevented the dog from doing evil ? Shall we allow that hell- hound of slavery, mad, mad as it is, to go biting millions in the future ? (Cheers.) We will peril life and limb and all we have first. These truths are not exaggerated — they are diminished rather than magnified in my statement ; and you cannot tell how powerfully they are influencing us unless you were standing in our midst in America ; you cannot understand how firm that national feeling is which God has bred in the North on this subject. It is deeper than the sea ; it is firmer than the hills ; it is as serene as the sky over our heads where God dwells. (Cheers.) But it is said, " What a ruthless business this war of extermination is !" I have heard it stated that a fellow from America, purporting to be a minister of the gospel of peace, had come over to England, and that that fellow had said he was in favor of a war of exter- mination. Well, if he said so he will stick to it — (cheers) — but not in a way in which enemies put these words. Listen to the way in which I put them, for if I am to bear the responsibility, it is only fair that I should state them in my own way. We believe that the war is a test of our institutions ; that it is a life- and-death struggle between the two principles of liberty and slavery — (cheers) — that it is the cause of the common people all the world over. (Renewed cheers.) We believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will' be stronger if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery, and that every oppressed people in the world will be weaker if we fail. (Cheers.) The sober American regards the war as part of that awful yet glorious struggle which has been going on for hundreds of years in every nation between right and wrong, between virtue and vice, between liberty and despotism, between freedom and bondage. It carries with it the whole future of our vast continent — its laws, its policy, its fate. And standing in view of these tremendous realities we have consecrated all that we have — our children, our wealth, our national strength— and we lay them all on the altar and say, "It is better that they should all perish than that the North should falter and betray this trust of God, this hope of the oppressed, this Western civilization." (Cheers.) If we sav this of ourselves, shall we say less of the slaveholders ? If we are 530 HENRI w A.RD BEECHER. willing to 'I- these things, shall we Bay, " Stop the war for their sakes" .' If wo say this of ourselves, shall wo have more pity for the rebellious, for slavery seeking to blacken a continent with its awful evil, desecrating the social phrase, " National Indepen- dence" hj seeking only an independence that shall enable them to treat four millions as chattels? (Cheers.) Shall we he tenderer ovi r them than over ourselves ? Standing by my cradle, standing i,\ my hearth, standing by the altar of the Church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men that poured out their blood and lives for principle, I declare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for principle. (Cheers.) If the love of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain you will not understand us ; but if the love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men that were our ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit as so much seed-corn in a new and fertile land — then you will understand our lirm, invincible de- termination to fight this war through at all hazards and at every cost. (Immense cheering, accompanied with a few hisses.) I am obliged for this diversion ; it rests me. Against this state- ment of facts and principles no public man and no party could stand up for one moment in England if it were permitted to rest upon its own merits. It is therefore sought to darken the light of these truths and to falsify facts. I will not mention names, but I will say this, that there have been important organs in Great Britain that have deliberately and knowingly spoken what is not the truth. (Applause, and loud cries of the Times. " Three groans for the Times!") It is declared that the North has no sincerity. It declares that the North treats the blacks worse than the South does. (Hear, hear.) A monstrous lie from beginning to end. It is declared that emancipation is a mere political trick — not a moral sentiment. It is declared that this is the cruel, unphilanthropic squabble of men gone mad with national vanity. (Cheers and hisses.) Oh, what a pity that a man should "fall nine times the space that measures day and night" to make an apostasy which dishonors his closing days, and to Avipe out the testimony for liberty that he gave in his youth ! Rut even if all this monstrous lie about the North— this needless slander— were true, still it would not alter the fact that Northern success will POLITICAL. 537 carry liberty — Southern success, slavery. (Cheers.) For when society dashes against society, the results are not what the individ- ual motives of the members of society would make them — the results are what the institutions of society make them. When your army stood at Waterloo, they did not know what were the vast moral consequences that depended on that battle. It was not what the individual soldier meant nor thought, but what the British empire — the national life behind, and the genius of that renowned kingdom which sent that army to victory — meant and thought. (Hear, hear.) And even if the President were false — if every Northern man were a juggling hypocrite — that does not change the Constitution ; and it does not change the fact that if the North prevails, she carries Northern ideas and Northern insti- tutions with her. (Cheers.) But I hear a loud protest against war. (Hear, hear.) Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman — there is a small band in our country and in yours — I wish their number were quadrupled — who have borne a solemn and painful testimony against all wars, under all circumstances ; and although I differ with them on the subject of defensive warfare, yet when men that rebuked their own land, and all lands, now rebuke us, though I cannot accept their judgment, I bow with profound respect to their consistency. (" Hear, hear," and cheers.) But excepting them, I regard this British horror of the American war as something wonderful. (Renewed cheers and laughter.) Why, it is a phenomenon in itself ! On what shores has not the prow of your ships dashed ! (Hear, hear.) What land is there with a name and a people, where your banner has not Jed your soldiers ? (Hear, hear.) And when the great resurrection reveille shall sound, it will muster British soldiers from every clime and people under the whole heaven. (Cheers.) Ah ! but it is said this is a war against your own blood. (Hear, hear.) How long is it since you poured soldiers into Canada, and let all your yards work night and day to avenge the taking of two men out of the Trent ? (Loud applause.) Old England shocked at a war of principle ! She gained her glories in such wars. (Cheers.) Old England ashamed of a war of principle ! Her national ensign symbolizes her history, the cross in a field of blood. (Cheers.) And will you tell us, who inherit your blood, your ideas, and your high spirits— (cheers)— that we must not fight ? (Cheers.) The child 538 HENRY WARD BEECHEB. must heed the parents, until the parents gel old and toll the child not to do the thing that in early life the)) whipped him for not doing. Ami thru the child Bays, " Father ami mother are getting too old ; they had better he taken away from their present home and come to live with us." (Cheers and hisses.) Perhaps you think that the old island will do a little longer. (Hisses.) Perhaps you think there is coal enough. Perhaps vou think the stock is not quite run out yet ; hut whenever England comes to that state that she does not go to war for principle, she had hotter emigrate, and we will give her room. (Laughter.) I have heen very much perplexed what to think about the attitude of Great Britain in respect to the South. I must, I suppose, look to the opinion of the majority of the English people. I don't believe in the Times. (Groans for the Times; groans for the Telegraph.) You cut my poor sentence in two, and all the blood runs out of it. (Laugh- ter.) I was just going- to say that, like most of you, I don't believe in the Times, hut f always read it. (Laughter.) Every Englishman tells me that the Times is no exponent of English opinion, and yet I have taken notice that when they talk of men, somehow or other their last argumenl is the last thing that was in the Times. (Laughter.) I think it was the Times or Post that said that America was sore, because she hail not the moral sympathy of Great Britain, and that the moral sympathy of Great Britain had gone for the South. (" No, no.") Well, let me tell you, that those who are represented in the newspapers as favorable to the South are like men who have arrows and hows strong enough to send the shafts 3000 miles ; ami those who feel sympathy for the North are like men who have shafts, but have no bows that could shoot them far enough. (Hear.) The English sentiment that has made itself felt on our shores is the part that slandered the North and took part with the South ; and if you think we are sensitive, you must take into account that the part of English sentiment carried over is the part that gives its aid to slavery and against liberty. Hear, hear. I shall have a different story to tell when I get back. (The assembly rose, and for a few moments hats and handkerchief- were waved enthusias- tically amid loud cheering. A voice : " What about the Russians ?" Hear, hear.) A gentleman asks me to say a word about the Russians in New York harbor. As this is a little POLITICAL. 539 private, confidential meeting — (laughter) — I will tell you the fact about them. (Laughter.) The fact is this — it is a little piece of coquetry. (Laughter.) Don't you know that when a woman thinks her suitor is not quite attentive enough, she takes another beau, and flirts with him in the face of the old one ? (Laugh- ter.) New York is flirting with Russia, but she has got her eye on England. (Cheers.) Well, I hear men say this is a piece of national folly that is not becoming on the part of people reputed wise, and in such solemn and important circumstances. It is said that when Russia is now engaged in suppressing the liberty of Poland it is an indecent thing for America to flirt with her. I think so too. (Loud cheers.) Now you know r what we felt when you were flirting with Mr. Mason at your Lord Mayor's banquet. (Cheers.) Ladies and gentlemen, it did not do us any hurt to have you Englishmen tell us our faults. I hope it don't do you Britishers any hurt to have us tell you some of } T ours. (A laugh.) Let me tell you my honest sentiments. England, because she is a Christian nation, because she has the guardianship of the dearest principles of civil and religious liberty, ought to be friendly with every nation and with every tongue. But when England looks out for an ally she ought to seek for her own blood, her own language, her own children. (Cheers.) And I stand here to declare that America is the proper and natural ally of Great Britain. I declare that all sorts of alliances with Continental nations as against America are monstrous, and that all flirtations of America with pandered and whiskered foreigners are monstrous, and that in the great conflicts of the future, when civilization is to be extended, when commerce is to be free round the globe, and to carry with it religion and civilization, then two flags should be flying from every man-of-war and every ship, and they should be the flag with the cross of St. George, and the flag with the stars of promise and of hope. (Cheers.) Now, ladies and gentlemen, when anybody tells you that Mr. Beecher is in favor of war, you may ask, " In what way is he in favor of war?" And if any man says he seeks to sow discord between father and son and mother and daughter, you will be able to say, " Show us how he is sowing discord ?" If I had anything grievous to say of England I would sooner say it before her face than behind her back. I would denounce Englishmen, if they were maintainors ■''■I" . BENRY WARD BEECHER. <>f the monstrous policy of the South. However, since I Lave conic over to this country you have told me the truth, and 1 shall bo able, to bear back an assurance to our people of the enthusiasm you feel for the cause of the North. And then there is the very significant act of your Government — the seizure of the rams in Liverpool. (Loud cheers.) Then there are the weighty words spoken by Lord Russell at Glasgow, and the words spoken by the Attorney-General. (Cheers.) These acts and declarations of policy, coupled with all that I have seen, and the feeling of enthusiasm of this English people, will warm the hearts of the Americans in the North. It' we are one in civilization, one in religion, one substantially in faith, let us be one in national policy, one in every enterprise for the furtherance of the gospel and for the happiness of mankind. (Cheers.) T thank you for your long patience with me. (" Go on !") Ah I when I was a boy they used to tell me never to eat enough, but always to set up being a little hungry. I would rather let you go away wishing I had spoken longer than go away saying, " What a tedious fellow he was !" (A laugh.) And therefore if you will not permit me to close and go, I beg you to recollect that this is the fifth speech of more than two hours' length that I have spoken, on some occa- sions under difficulties, within seven or eight days, and I am so exhausted that I ask you to permit me to stop. (Great cheer- ing-) Professor Newman then rose and moved the following resolu- tions : " Resolved, That this meeting presents its most cordial thanks to the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher for the admirable address which he has delivered this evening, and expresses its hearty sympathy with his reprobation of the slaveholders' rebel- lion, his vindication of the rights of a free Government, and his aspirations for peace and friendship between the English people and their American brethren ; and as this meeting recognized in Mr. Beecher one of the early pioneers of negro emancipation, as well as one of the most eloquent and successful of the champions of that great cause, it rejoices in this opportunity of congratulating him on the triumphs with which the labors of himself and his associates have been crowned in the anti-slavery policy of Presi- dent Lincoln and his Cabinet." (Cheers.) This motion was spoken to by Professor Newman, Rev. POLITICAL. 541 Newman Hall, and G. Thompson, Esq., and was unanimously carried. The following account of the scene outside the Hall is taken from a volume containing a report of the English speeches, pub- lished at the time in Great Britain, but now out of print. OUTSIDE THE HALL. The scene outside Exeter Hall last evening was one of a most extraordinary description. The lecture of the Rev. Mr. Beecher had been advertised to commence at seven o'clock, and it was announced that the hall doors would be opened at half-past six. The crowd, however, began to assemble as early as five o'clock, and before six o'clock it became so dense and numerous as com- pletely to block up, not only the footway, but the carriage-way of the Strand ; and the committee of management wisely determined at once to throw open the doors. The rush that took place was of the most tremendous character, and the hall, in every available part, became filled to overflowing in a few minutes. No percep- tible diminution, however, was made in the crowd, and at half-past six there were literally thousands of well-dressed persons strug- gling to gain admission, despite of the placards exhibited announc- ing the hall to be " quite full." The policemen and hall-keepers were powerless to contend against this immense crowd, who ultimately filled the spacious corridors and staircases leading to the hall, still leaving an immense crowd both in the Strand and Burleigh Street. At ten minutes before seven o'clock Mr. B. Scott, the City Chamberlain, and the chairman of the meeting, accompanied by a large body of the Committee of the Emancipa- tion Society, arrived, but were unable to make their way through the crowd, and a messenger was despatched to the Bow Street Police-station for an extra body of police. About thirty of the reserve men were immediately sent, and those aided by the men already on duty at last succeeded in forcing a passage for the chairman and his friends. Mr. Beecher at this time arrived, but was himself unable to gain admittance to the hall until a quarter of an hour after the time appointed for the commencement of his address. The reverend gentleman bore his detention in the crowd with great good-humor, and was rewarded with a perfect ovation, 542 HENRI WARD BEECHER. the crowd pressing Forward in all directions to shake hands with him. He was at last fairly carried into the hall on the shoulders of the policemen, and the doors of the hall were at once closed, and guarded by a body of police, who distinctly announced that no more persons would be admitted whether holding tickets or not. This had the effect of thinning to some extent the crowd outside ; but some two thousand or more people still remained eager to seize on any chance of admission that might arise. At a quarter past seven a tremendous burst of cheers from within the building announced that Mr. Bcccher had made his appearance on the platform. The cheering was taken up by the outsiders, and re-echoed again and again. The bulk of the crowd had now congregated in Burleigh Street, which was completely idled, and loud cries were raised for some member of the Emancipation Committee to address them. The call was not, however, responded to. Several impromptu speakers, however, mounted upon the shoulders of some workingmen, addressed the people in favor of the policy of the North, and their remarks were received with loud cheering from the large majority of those present. One or two speakers raised their voices in sympathy with the South, but these were speedily dislodged from their positions by the crowd, whose Northern sympathies were thus unmistakably exhib- ited. Every burst of cheers that resounded from within the hall was taken up and as heartily responded to by those outside. Indeed, they could not have been more enthusiastic had they been listening to the eloquent lecturer himself. This scene continued without intermission until the close of the meeting. When Mr. Beecher and his friends issued from the building they were again received with loud cheers. A call for a cheer for Abraham Lincoln was responded to in a manner that only an English crowd ran exhibit. A strong body of police were stationed in the Strand and Burleigh Street, but no breach of the peace occurred calling for their interference. During the evening a large number of placards denouncing in strong language the President, the North, and its advocates were posted in the neighborhood of the hall. POLITIC! A L. 543 FAREWELL TO HENRY WARD BEECHER ON LEAV- ING ENGLAND FOR AMERICA. On the :?0th of October, 1863, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was entertained by the members of the Liverpool Emancipation Society, at a public breakfast in the St. James' Hall, Lime Street, prior to his return to America the following day. A party of about 200 ladies and gentlemen sat down at ten o'clock to the repast. The chair was taken by Mr. C. Wilson, President of the Liverpool Emancipation Society, who delivered a warm and elo- quent address, at the conclusion of which Mr. C. E. Rawlins pre- sented to Mr. Beecher the following address : TO THE REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER, OF NEW YORK, U.S. After a brief sojourn in Europe — a short respite from ceaseless labors of philanthropy — you are returning to your country to resume those labors with renewed health and strength, and we trust a yet firmer faith in their ultimate success. Standing, as it were, on the very shores of the " old country," and in a town which is the last — and, perhaps, through its com- merce, the strongest — link in that chain which individually unites the interests of England and the United States, let us regard you as the representative of your Countrymen, and take counsel to- gether ere we bid you farewell. There is no feeling more common on both sides of the Atlantic than pride in our common descent. Hardly a century has elapsed since you had no separate history from our own. Until then we were fellow-countrymen — united under the same crown, and claim- ing protection from the same Constitution. The same page recorded for us both all the glorious associations of the past — the same battles for national independence, and the same national struggles for civil and religious liberty. To this day we are shar- ing the inheritance of political freedom purchased by the blood of our ancestors. Better than all, we worship at the same altar, and reverence the same heroes of art, literature and science. With such recollections crowding upon us, let us this day pledge 544 BENRY WARD BEECHER. each other not only by the memories of the past, but our still more glorious hopes of the future, that, so far as in us lies, there shall be perpetual peace between England and the L"nit<'ul>!ic opinion, hut everywhere and on all occasions in a constitutional manner, they resisted the claim. The} foughl the battle of free- dom against slavery in Missouri, in Texas, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, and at length they succeeded in plac- ing in the Presidential chair a man who was equally pledged to the constitutional obligation not to interfere with slavery within the- POLITICAL. 545 States themselves, and to his personal obligation to prevent its further extension. We clearly recognize the fact that the Secession of the Southern slaveholding States was declared by themselves to be because they had lost this power of extension ; that it, was to maintain this un- constitutional Secession that the national flag was violated at Fort Sumter ; that the war which has resulted has been carried on by the Federal Government for the suppression of a rebellion and the maintenance of the national interests. But while deeply regret- ting the miseries thus occasioned, we rejoice with you that treason placed within the power of that Government what peace and order had denied to it ; and it is with reverential acknowledgment of that great Providence which still educes good from evil that we sympathize with you in those acts of the Legislature upon which is founded the glorious proclamation of freedom to slaves of rebel- lious States. We trust you may not fail in the self-sacrifice which may yet be needful ere that proclamation is realized. There is yet one other point on which we could speak with a candor which no one can appreciate better than yourself. If the friendly relations of the two countries are to be main- tained unbroken in the future, it must be on the basis of mutual interests. A free interchange of commodities between them will soon annihilate the prejudices which still unworthily linger on both sides of the Atlantic. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) As in the past we have noticed that the gradual relaxation of your protective tariff was breaking down the barriers between the two nations, so we attribute no small portion of the bitterness of our Southern sympathizers to those disturbances in our commerce which have resulted from your return to vicious principles of taxation. That this is a violation of the rights of the consumer, and opposed to the established laws of political economy, you have yourself ac- knowledged. Freedom of commerce with other nations is but an extension of freedom of production and interchange within our own. To pro- hibit it by high duties for the sake of protecting particular manu- factures by high prices is a robbery of the consumer. England has set a noble example of universal free-trade. She offers no exclusive privileges ; she asks no previous conditions. You have but to follow in her footsteps. You have not shrunk from the 546 HENRY WARD BEECIIER. mighty task of organizing the industry of 4,000,000 colored la- borers and 5,000,000 of whites. With equal courage, attempt the far easier task of reorganizing your system of taxation on the same basis of freedom. (Hear, hear.) Your immediate and primary duty is the suppression of a foul rebellion and the emancipation of the slave ; but we are convinced that no single act could be more effective in securing and maintaining friendly relations be- t ween our two nations than a thorough revision of your fiscal policy. Hundreds of thousands of our surplus population are every year emigrating to the United States. In future they will feel that every State, from Maine to Texas, and every rood of soil between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, may be a home for the free. When the electric chain shall again, as once it did, unite us, the first message that shall flash with lightning speed along its wires will be " Glory to God in the highest, peace and freedom to man on earth, without distinction of creed, or class, or color, to the end of time." MR. BEECHER'S FAREWELL ADDRESS. LIVERPOOL, OCTOBER 30, 1863. The Rev. H. W. Beecher, on rising to respond to the addresses, was received with enthusiastic cheers, which continued for some minutes. He said : Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, although this is a festive scene, it is rather with feelings of sad- ness and solemnity that I stand in your midst ; for the hours are numbered that I am to be with you, and the ship is now waiting that I trust will bear me safely to my native land. If already I have to the full those sentiments of reverence and even romantic attachment, to the memories, to the names, to the truths, and to the very legends of Old England which have been so beautifully alluded to by the Chairman on this occasion — if I bad already that preparation, how much, working on that predisposition, do you suppose has been the kindness, the good cheer, the helpfulness which I have received from more noble English hands and hearts POLITICAL. 547 than 1 can name or even now remember. I have to thank them for almost everything, and I have almost nothing to regret in my personal intercourse with the English people ; for I am too old a navigator to think it a misfortune to have steered my bark in a floe or even a storm, and what few waves have dashed over the bows and wetted the deck did not send me below whining and crying. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) It was a matter of course. I accepted it with good-nature at the time. I look back on it, on the whole, with pleasure now ; for storms, when they are past, give us on their back the rainbow, and now even in those discord- ant notes I find some music. (Applause.) I had a thousand times rather that England should be so sensitive as to quarrel with me than that she should have been so torpid and dead as not to have responded at a stroke. (Cheers.) I go back to my native land ; but, be sure, sir, and be sure, ladies and gentlemen, that have kindly presented to me this address, that though I needed no such spur I shall accept the incitement of it to labor there for a better understanding and an abiding peace between these two great nations. (Hear, and cheers.) I know not what is before me — - what criticisms may be made upon my course. I think it likely that many papers that never have been ardent admirers of mine will find great fault with my statements, will controvert my facts, will traverse my reasonings. I do not know but that men will say that I have conceded too much ; and that, melting under the in- fluence of England, I have not been as sturdy here in my blows as I was in my own land. (Laughter.) One thing is very certain, that, while before I came here I always attempted to speak the words of truth, even if they were not of soberness — (laughter) — so here I have endeavored to know only that which made for truth first — love and peace next. (Cheers.) Of course I have not said everything that I knew. So to do would have been to jabber in season and out of season, and fail to promote the sublimest ends that a Christian man or a patriot can contemplate — the welfare of two great allied nations. (Cheers.) I should have been foolish if I had left the things which made for peace and dug up the things that would have made offence. (Renewed cheers.) Yet that course was not inconsistent with frankness, with fidelity, and with a due statement of that blame which we have felt attached to the course of England in this conflict. (Hear, hear.) I shall go 548 HENRY WARD BEECHER. back to represent to my own countrymen on fitting occasions what I have discovered of the reasons for the recent antagonism of Eng- land to America, And I shall have to say primarily that the mouth and the tongue of England have been to a very great extent as were the mouth and the tongue of old of those poor wretches that were possessed of the devil, not in their own control. ( Laughter and applause.) The institutions of England — for Eng- land is pre-eminently a nation of institutions — the institutions of England have been very largely controlled by a limited class of men ; and, as a general thing, the organs of expression have gone with the dominant institutions of the land. Now, it takes time for a great unorganized, and to a certain extent unvoting public opinion, underneath institutions, to create that grand swell that lifts the whole ark up — (hear, hear, and cheers) ; and so it will be my province to interpret to them that there may have been abun- dant, and various, and wide-spread utterances antagonistic to us, and yet that they might not have been the voices that represented, after all, the great heart of England. (Hear, hear, and applause.) But there is more than that. Rising higher than party feeling, endeavoring to stand upon some ground where men may be both Christians and philosophers, and looking upon the two nations from this higher point of view, one may see that it must needs have been as it has been, for it so happens that England herself, or Great Britain, I should say — I mean (ireat Britain when 1 say England always (cheers) — Great Britain is herself undergoing a process of gradual internal change. (Hear, hear.) All living nations are undergoing such changes. No nation abides fixed in policy and fixed in institutions until it abides in death (hear, hear) ; for death only is immovable in this life, and life is a per- petual process of supply. Assimilation, excretion, change, ami sensitiveness to the causes of change, are the marks of life. (Ap- plause.) And England is undergoing a change, and must do so so long as she is vital ; and when you shall have put that round about England which prevents further change, you will have put her shroud around her. (Hear, hear, and cheering.) Now, changes cannot be brought to pass among a free, thinking people, as you can bring about changes in agriculture or in mechanics, or upon dead matter by the operation of natural laws. Changes that are wrought by the will of consenting men imply hesitation, doubt, POLITICAL. 541) difference, debate, antagonisms ; and change is the final stage be- fore which always lias been tbe great conflict, which conflict itself, with all its mischiefs, is also a great benefit, since it is a quickener ami a life-giver ; for there is nothing so hateful in life as death ; and among a people nothing so terrible as dead men that walk about and do not know they are dead. (Laughter and cheers.) It therefore comes to pass that in the normal process of a change such as is taking place in England, there will be parties, there will he divided circles, and cliques, and all those aspects and phe- nomena which belong to healthy and national progress and change for progress. Now, it so came to pass that America too was un- dergoing a change more pronounced ; and since, contrary to our hope and expectation, it was a change that went on under the form of revolution, and war in its latter period, it at first ad- dressed England only by her senses ; for when the rebellion broke out and the tidings rolled across the ocean, everybody has said " England was for you" at first. (Hear, hear.) I believe so : because before men had time to weigh in the balances the causes that were at work on our side ; before the patrician had had time to study, " What might be the influence of this upon my class ?" — and the churchman, " What will be the influence of these prin- ciples on my position ?" — and the various parties in Great Britain, " What will be the influence of American ideas, if they are in the ascendency, on my side and on my position ?" — before men had time to analyze and to ponder ; they were for the North and against the South ; because, although your anti-slavery feeling is hereditary and legendary, there was enough vitality in it, however feeble, to bring you on to the side of the North in the first in- stance. Much more would it have done, had it been a really liv- ing and quickening principle. It is said that up to the time of the trouble of the Trent, England was with us, but from that time she went rapidly over the other way. Now that was merely the occasion, but not the cause. I understand it to have been this — that there were a great many men and classes of men in England that feared the reactionary influences of American ideas upon the internal conflicts of England herself (hear, hear) ; and a great deal of the offence has arisen, not so much from any direct antagonism between Englishmen and Americans, as from the feeling of Eng- lishmen that the way to defend themselves at home was to fight 550 IIKNI.'Y WARD BEECHBR. their battle in America (hear, bear) —and that therefore there has been this strange, this anomalous and ordinarily unexplained cause of the offence and of the difficulties. Let us look a little at it. L will not omit to state, in passing, that there has been a great deal of ignorance and a great deal of misconception. (Hear, hear.) Bui that was to he expected. We are not to suppose — it would be supreme egotism for an American to suppose — that the great mass of the English | pie should study American institutions and American policy and American history as they do their own ; and when to that natural unknowingness by one nation of the affairs of another are added the uhscrupulousness and wonderfully active exertions of Southern emissaries here, who found men ready to be inoculated, and who compassed sea and land to make proselytes and then made them tenfold more the children of the devil than themselves (applause) — when these men began to propagate one- sided facts, suppressing — and suppression has been as vast a lie in England as falsification (hear, hear) — perpetually presenting every rumor, every telegram, and every despatch from the wrong point of view, and forgetting to correct it when the rest nunc (hear, hear) — finding, I say, these emissaries and these easy converts, the South has propagated an immense amount of false information throughout England, we are to take this into account. But next consider the antagonisms which there are supposed to be between the commercial interests of North America and of England. We are two great rivals. Rivalry, gentlemen, is simply in the nature of a pair of scissors or shears ; you cannot cut with one blade, but if you are going to cut well you must have one rubbing against the other. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) One book-store cannot do as much business in a town as two, because the rivalry creates demand. (Hear, hear.) Everywhere, the great want of men is people to buy, and the end of all commerce should be to raise up people enough to take the supplies of commerce. (Hear, hear. | Now, where in any street you collect one, five, ten, twenty book- sellers or dry-goods dealers, you attract customers to that point, and so far from being adverse to each other's welfare, men cluster- ing together in rivalry, in the long run and comprehensively con- sidered they are beneficial to each other. There are many men who always reason from their lower faculties, and refuse to see any questions except selfishly, enviously, jealously. POLITICAL. 551 It is so on both sides the sea. (Hear, hear.) Such men will attempt always to foster rivalry and make it rancorous. They need to be rebuked by the honorable men of the commercial world on both sides of the ocean, and put in their right place — under- foot. (Applause.) Against all mean jealousies, I say, there is to be a commerce yet on this globe, compared with which all we have ever had will be but as the size of the hand compared with the cloud that belts the hemisphere. (Applause.) There is to be a resurrection of nations ; there is to be a civilization that shall bring up even that vast populous continent of Asia into new forms of life, with new demands. There is to be a time when liberty shall bless the nations of the earth and expand their minds in their homes ; when men shall want more and shall buy more. There is to be a supply required that may tax every loom and every spindle and every ship that England has or shall have when they are multiplied fourfold. (Applause.) Instead therefore of wast- ing energy, peace, and manhood, in miserable petty jealousies, trans-Atlantic or cis-Atlantic, the business of England, as of America, should be to strike those key-notes of liberty, to sound those deep chords of human rights, that shall raise the nations of the earth and make them better customers because they are broader men. (Great cheering.) It has also been supposed that American ideas reacting will have a powerful tendency to dissatisfy men with their form of government in Great Britain. This is the sincere conviction of many. Ladies and gentlemen, England is not perfect. England has not yet the best political instruments any more than we have ; but of one thing you may be certain, that in a nation which is so conservative, which does not trust itself to the natural conservatism of self-governing men, but even fortifies itself with conservatism by the most potent institutions, and gives those institutions mainly into the hands of a conserva- tive class, ordained to hold back the impetuosity of the people — do you think that any change can ever take place in England until it has gone through such a controversy, such a living fight, as that it shall have proved itself worthy to be received ? And will any man tell me, that when a principle or a truth has been proved worthy, England will refuse to receive it, to give it house-room, and to make any changes that may be required for it? (Hear, hear.) If voting viva voce is best, fifty years hence you will be BENR1 WARD BEECHER. found voting in that manner. If voting by the ballol ia best, fifty years hence you will have here what we have in America, the silent fall of those flakes of paper which come as snow cornea, soundless, bul which gather, as snow gathers on the tops of the mountains, to roll with the thunder of the avalanche, and crush all beneath it. (Loud applause.) But it is supposed that it may ex- tend still farther. It is supposed that the spectacle of a great nation that governs itself so cheaply will react in favor of those men in Europe who demand that monarchical government shall be conducted cheaply. (Hear, hear.) For men say, look at the civil list — look at the millions of pounds sterling required to con- duct our government, and see 30,000,000 of men governed on that vast continent at not one tenth part of the expense. (Hear, hear.) Well, I must say, that if this report comes across the sea, and is true, and these facts do excite such thoughts, I do not see how it can be helped. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I do not say that our American example will react to the essential reconstruction of any principles in your edifice. I have not in my own mind the belief that it will do more than re-adapt your economy to a greater facility and to more beneficence in its application ; but that it will ever take the crown from the king's head, or change the organiza- tion of your aristocracy, I have not a thought. (Cheers.) It is no matter what my own private opinion on the subject is. Did I live or had I been born and bred in England, I have no question that I should feel, just as you feel, for this I will say, that in no other land that I know of under the sun are a monarchy and an aristocracy holding power under it, standing around as the bulwark of the throni — in not another land are there so many popular benefits accruing under the government ; and if you must have an aristocracy, where in any other land can you point to so many men noble politically, but more noble by disposition, by culture, by manliness, and true Christian piety ? (Loud and reiterated cheer- ing.) I say this neither as the advocate nor as the adversary of this particular form of government, but I say it simply because there is a latent feeling that American ideas are in natural antag- onism with aristocracy. They are not. American ideas are merely these — that the end of government is the benefit of the governed. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) If that idea is inconsistent with your form of government, how can that, form expect to stand ? POLITICAL. 553 And if it only requires some slight readjustment from generation to generation, and if that idea is consistent with monarchy and aristocracy, why should you fear any change ? (Cheers.) I be- lieve that monarchy and aristocracy, as they are practically devel- oped in England, are abundantly consistent with the great doc- trine, that government is for the benefit of the governed. (Hear, hear.) There has also been a feeling that the free Church of America, while it might perhaps do in a rough-and-tumble enter- prise in the wilderness, is not the proper form of church for Great Britain. Well, you are the judges, gentlemen, about that, not we ; and if it is not the proper form for Great Britain, you need not fear that Great Britain will take it. If it is, then it is only a question of time ; you will have to take it. (Cheers.) For I hold, sturdy as you are, strong as your will is, persistent as you may be for whatever seems to you to be truth, you will have, first or last, to submit to God's truth. (Applause.) When I look into the interior of English thoughts, and feelings, and society, and see how in the first stage of our conflict with your old anti- slavery sympathies you went for the North ; how there came a second stage, when you began to fear lest this American struggle should react upon your own parties, I think I see my way to the third stage, in which you will say, " This American struggle will not affect our interior interests and economy more than we choose to allow ; and our duty is to follow our own real original opinions and manly sentiments. (Cheers.) I know of but one or two things that are necessary to expedite this final judgment of Eng- land, and that is, one or two conclusive Federal victories. (Ap- plause.) If I am not greatly mistaken, the convictions and opin- ions of England are like iron wedges ; but success is the sledge- hammer which drives in the wedge and splits the log. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Nowhere in the world are people so apt to succeed in what they put their hand to as in England, and there- fore nowhere in the world more than iu England is success hon- ored ; and the crowning thing for the North, in order to complete that returning sympathy and cordial good-will, is to obtain a thor- ough victory over the South. (Cheers.) There is nothing in the way of that but the thing itself. (Laughter and cheers.) Allow me to say, therefore, just at this point and in that regard, that, while looking at it commercially, and while looking at it senti- 554 HENRY WARD BEECH!. I!. mentally, the prolongation of this war seems mischievous, it is more in seeming than in reality, for the North was itself being educated by this war. This North was like men sent to sea on a ship that was but half built as yet ; just enough built t<> keep the water out of the hull ; but they had both to sail on their voyage and to buildup their ship as the\ went. We were precipitated at .1 civil crisis in which there were all manner of complications at all stages of progress in the right direction of this war, and the proc- ess of education has had to go on in battle-fields, in the drill camps, and at home among the people, while they were discuss- ing, and taxing their energies for the maintenance of the war. And there never was so good a schoolmaster as war has been in America. Terrible was the light of his eye, fearful the stroke of his hand ; hut lie is turning out as good a set of pupils as ever came from any school in this world. Now, every single month from this time forward that this struggle is delayed, unites the North — brings the North on to that ground which so many have struggled to avoid : " Union and peace require the utter de- struction of slavery." (Loud cheering.) There is an old proverb, "There's luck in leisure." Let me transmute the proverb, and say, "There is emancipation in delay." (Loud cheers.) And every human heart, yea, every commercial man that takes any comprehensive and long-sighted instead of a narrow view of the question, will say, " Let the war thus linger, until it has burned slavery to the very root." (Renewed cheers. ) While it is, how- ever, a great evil and a terrible one — I will not disguise it — for war is dreadful to every Christian heart, yet, blessed be God, we are not called to an unmixed evil. There are many collateral ad- vantages. While war is as great or even a greater evil than many of you have been taught to think, it is wrong to suppose that it is evil only, and that God cannot, even by such servants as war. work out a great moral result. The spirit of patriotism diffused throughout the North has been almost like the resurrection of manhood. (Cheers.) You never can understand what emascula- tion has been caused by the indirect influence of slavery. Bear, hear.) I have mourned all my mature life to see men growing up who were obliged to suppress all true conviction and sentiment, because it was necessary to compromise between the great antag- onisms of North and South. There were the few pronounced POLITICAL. 555 anti-slavery men of the North, and the few pronounced slavery men of the South, and the Union lovers (as they were called dur- ing the latter period) attempting to hold the two together, not by a mild and consistent adherence to truth plainly spoken, but by suppressing truth and conviction, and saying, " Everything for the Union." Now during this period I took this ground, that if the " Union" meant nothing but this — a resignation of the national power to be made a tool for the maintenance of slavery — Union was a lie and a degradation. (Great cheering.) All over New England, and all over the State of New York, and through Pennsylvania, to the very banks of the Ohio, I, in the presence of hisses and execrations, held this doctrine from 1850 to I860 — namely, " Union is good if it is for justice and liberty ; but if it is Union for slavery, then it is thrice accursed." (Loud cheer- ing.) For they were attempting to lasso anti-slavery men by this word " Union," and to draw them over to pro-slavery sympathies and the party of the South, by saying, " Slavery may be wrong and all that, but we must not give up the Union," and it became necessary for the friends of liberty to say, " Union for the sake of liberty, not Union for the sake of slavery." (Cheers.) Now we have passed out of that period, and it is astonishing to see how men have come to their tongues in the North (hear, hear, and laughter), and how men of the highest accomplishments now say they do not believe in slavery. If Mr. Everett could have pro- nounced in 1850 the oration which he pronounced in 1860, then might miracles have flourished again. (Hear, hear.) Not until the sirocco came, not until that great convulsion that threw men as with a backward movement of the arm of Omnipotence from the clutches of the South and from her sorcerer's breath — not until then was it, that with their hundreds and thousands the men of the North stood on their feet and were men again. (Great cheer- ing.) More than warehouses, more than ships, more than all har- vests and every material form of wealth, is the treasure of a nation in the manhood of her men. (Great applause.) We could have afforded to have had our stores of wheat burned — there is wheat to plant again. We could have afforded to have had our farms burned — our farms can spring again from beneath the ashes. If we had sunk our ships — there is timber to build new ones. Had we burned every house — there is stone and brick left for skill again to 550 I1KMIY WARD BEECHER. construct them. Perish cvm material element of wealth, but give me the citizen intact : give me the man thai fears G-od and therefore loves men, and the destruction of tlie mere outside fabric is nothing — nothing (cheers) — but give me apartments of gold, and build me palaces along the streets as thick as the shops of London ; <*ive me rich harvests and ships and all the elements oi wealth, hut corrupt the citizen, and I am poor. (Immense cheer- ing, during which the audience rose, and enthusiastically reiterated the applause.) I will not insist upon the other elements. I will not dwell upon the moral power stored in the names of those young heroes that, have fallen in this struggle. [Here the speaker manifested considerahle emotion.] I cannot think of it but my eyes run over. They were dear to me, many of them, as if they had carried in their veins my own blood. How many families do I know, in which once was the voice of gladness, in which now father and mother sit childless ! How many heirs of wealth, how many noble scions of old families, well cultured, the heirs to every apparent prosperity in time to come, Hung themselves into their country's cause, and died bravely fighting for it. (Cheers.) And every such name has become a name of power, and whoever hears it hereafter shall feel a thrill in his heart — self-devotion, heroic patriotism, love of his kind, love of liberty, love of God. (Re- newed applause.) I cannot stop to speak of theses things ; I will turn myself from the past of England and of America to the future. It is not a cunningly-devised trick of oratory that has led me to pray God and his people that the future of England and America shall be an undivided future and a cordially united one. (Hear, and cheers.) I know my friend Punch thinks I have been serving out "soothing syrup" to the British Lion. (Laughter.) Very properly the picture represents me as putting a spoon into the lion's ear instead of his mouth ; and I don't wonder that the great brute turns away so sternly from the plan of feeding. (Laughter.) If it be an offence to have sought to enter your mind by your nobler sentiments and nobler faculties, then I am guilty. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) 1 have sought to appeal to your reason and to your moral convictions. I have, of course, sought t< me in on that side in which you were most good-natured. I knew it, and so did you, and I knew that you knew it ; and I think that any man with common-sense would have attempted the same POLITICAL. 55? thing. I have sacrificed nothing, however, for the sake of your favor (cheers), and if you have permitted me to have any influ- ence with you, it was because I stood apparently a man of strong convictions, but with generous impulses as well. It was because you believed that I was honest in my belief, and because I was kind in my feelings toward you. (Applause.) And now when I go back home I shall be just as faithful with our " youno- folks" as I have been with the " old folks" in England (hear, hear, and cheers), I shall tell them the same things that I have said to their ancestors on this side. I shall plead for Union, for confidence. (Cheers.) For the sake of civilization ; for the sake of those glories of the Christian Church on earth which are dearer to me than all that I know ; for the sake of Him whose blood I bear about, a perpetual cleansing, a perpetual wine of strength and stimulation ; for the sake of time and the glories of eternity, I shall plead that mother and daughter — England and America — be found one in heart and one in purpose, following the bright banner of salvation, as streaming abroad in the light of the morning, it goes round and round the earth, carrying the prophecy and the fulfil- ment together, that, " The earth shall be the Lord's, and that his glory shall fill it as the waters fill the sea." (Loud and prolonged cheering.) And now my hours are moments, but I linger because it is pleasant. You have made yourselves so kind to me that my heart clings to you. I leave not strangers any longer — I leave friends behind me. (Loud cheers.) I shall probably never at my time of life — I am now fifty years of age, and at that time men seldom make great changes — I shall probably see England no more ; but I shall never cease to see her. I shall never speak any more here, but I shall never cease to be heard in England as long as I live. (Cheers.) Three thousand miles is not as wide now as your hand. The air is one great sounding gallery. What you whisper in your closet is heard in the infinite depths of heaven. God has given to the moral power of his Church something like his own power. What you do in your pulpits in England, we hear in America ; and what we do in our pulpits, you hear and feel here ; and so it shall be more and more. Across the sea, that is, as it were, but a rivulet, we shall stretch out hands of greeting to you, and speak words of peace and fraternal love. Let us not HENRY WARD BEECHER. fail to bear " Amen," and the responsive greeting, whenever we call to yon in fraternal love for liberty — for religion — for the Church of God. Farewell ! (The reverend gentleman resumed his seat amid enthusiastic applause.) y A Man of Many Moods. DESCRIPTIVE. THE ALPS.* Our first glimpse of Mont Blanc was at Gereva, as the sun was going down, on the 30th of July. It appeared on the hori- zon as a pale and faint dome, looking like th<; very dream of a cloud. I cannot tell you why such a feeble vision should have such a power. But in a moment I ceased talking, and gazed as if I had seen a spirit rising from the other world with messages of solemn import. There was an inexpressible yearning toward it, and a strange tenderness as if I had all my life sought some secret that was now coming toward me. The moon soon arose, and the vision departed. Too much light extinguished it. There are many things, both of this world and of the other, that are best seen in twilights, but refuse to appear when the eye is full of glaring light. On Friday we left Geneva early for Chamounix. Our next glimpse of Mont Blanc was had at St. Martin, near Sallanches, where we stopped for a morning. I crossed the bridge, and laid down on the grass under some Lombardy poplars that lined the road. Over against me was the renowned range of Mont Blanc, but not to be full) 7 seen. Clouds had gathered about it, soft, round-edged, luminous, ever-changing. Within that glowing pavilion the White King dwelt. Parts only gleamed forth for a moment — now the lower portion, then a flank, once or twice the summit alone. But after waiting as long as we could, we had been but tantalized with the reserved and capricious mountain. All the afternoon we clomb hills, and when we began to descend into the valley, the sun was filling the upper portion with light, * Reprinted from the N. Y. Independent, 1863. 502 BENRY WARD BBECHER. while the plain was already gathering twilight. Now began to appear the glaciers thai came down in every valley from the range. Only that most l>eautiful of all, Bosson, made any impression on my eye. The valley varies in width from half a mile to a mile ; and for about twelve; miles is Banked on the one side by the Mont Blanc range, and on the other by a parallel but subordinate range. You must not imagine the rounded forms of mountains such as prevail in America. The line of the summit is splintered, jagged, toothed, even more than the seemingly most exaggerated cuts and pictures have represented it, and long declining ridges come down toward the valley, like ribs, except at the very lower portions uncovered witli trees or grass. We turned from the door of the hotel, and looked up through the cool evening air right upon the whole summit of Mont Blanc ! It lay calmly revealed, without cloud or vapor. Against the gray-blue of the sky it rested, glowing white, with the sun which had left us below in twilight, pouring full upon it in radiant tranquillity ! And yet we were disappointed ! There was no enthusiasm, no yearning, no sense of wonder, very little even of beauty. The distance seemed but little and the mountain small. We were too near it. There was not only the want of perspective, but we had nothing to compare it with and could see none of its relations to surrounding mountains. It was a brilliant snow-dome with its grand glacier, Bosson, like a hoary beard, stretching down to the very plain ; but yet it was near, not magnitudinous. By no reasoning or comparison or effort could we excite in ourselves an adequate sense of size or distance. How different from this was our experi- ence of the Jungfrau ! Our Sabbath at Interlachen was one of rain and clouds. The evening before, we had seen this most beautiful of Swiss snow mountains in part ; for clouds were busy coming and going. It was a great disappointment, the next day, to see nothing. The whole was obliterated. A dull, spiritless, gray drizzle occupied the day tediously. Our courier was to waken us early should there be prospect of clearing. At four he rapped on the door. Out of the window we saw clouds, but broken, rapidly travelling, and in new directions. The wind had changed. We soon were on our way to Lauterbrunnen. The Staubbach Fall did not disappoint us, nor interest us. It is a mere track of mist marking the face of the cliff. In some moods and DESCRIPTIVE. 5G3 in certain lights it would be beautiful. But it is thin and feeble. We crossed the Wangern Alp, and at noon found ourselves in front of Jungfrau. Clouds still clung to one and another- part of it, radiant, fleecy, ever-changing clouds, that seemed moved by the rapid flying of spirits within. Here we first beard the distant roar of avalanches. It may be likened to distant thunder. But wo have heard a wagon passing a bridge sound like both of them. We detected one or two in their flight. Some one cries, " There's one !" — all look ! all see a very filmy and smoky trace upon the side of the mountain. That is all. To one in their track they are no doubt sufficiently terrible. But at this distance they are sublime only by what the imagination lends them. My imagina- tion had always pictured so grand a spectacle that it refused to work in the presence of these little whiffets of snow-dust. But midsummer avalanches are neither the large nor the dangerous ones. They are only masses of ice and snow breaking off, as glaciers or snow deposits, moving to the edge of precipices, are melted in the midday heat, and break off in masses of moderate size. The winter and spring avalanches — when the overburdened mountains can hold no more snow, and the mass slides down, collecting as it goes, plunges into the valleys vast and immeasur- able stores — are both sublime and terrible ! We went on over the little Scheideck, and upon the summit gained the first full and glorious view of Jungfrau and its com- panion Monch, Eiger, and Wetterhorn. I shall never forget that hour. I knew then, first and surely, that John's vision, the Great White Throne was no magnification of an earthly king's chair of state. A snow-mountain, long hid in mysterious clouds, at length disclosing itself, and standing apart from all earthly things, far up against the everlasting sky, brings near the soul the reality of God, of the city to be revealed ; and nothing else less than the grandeur of this ethereal summit, alone, in transparent ether, blazing with sunlight, amid solemn silence, could afford a fit symbol of that decending Throne which filled the apocalyptic vision ! ******** An afternoon ride back to Interlachen, in the golden sunlight, or through the cool shadows of the mountains, along the side of the valley, was full of dreaming rest and gladness. As we drew 564 11 KNKV WARD BEECHER. near to Interlachen, Jungfrau, with the setting sun shining full upon it, rose up from behind us with a beauty so exquisite that I felt drawn to it more as to a human being than to a snow- covered rock ! I stood up in the carriage, and as the road wound round among orchards and fields, it was lost, or flashed forth again ; was hidden only to gleam forth with pure white again. And so it played with me as a mother with her child — hiding her face and showing it alternately, to the babe's infinite delight ! And all the evening I sat upon the veranda, looking at that vision, on which the sun went down, long after he had left us ; on which the moon rose, shedding all over it a glory beyond that of the day, ineffably transcendent ! Between the two great hither mountains this enchantress rose — two green mountains the only frame in which such a glorious picture could be fitly set. ******** It was not wonderful, then, that Mont Blanc disappointed me, though it was thousands of feet higher than the Jungfrau. We had no distance. It was as if one should be brought close up to an oil-painting. The exceeding clearness of mountain air put all our reckoning at fault. To the summit it seemed a mile ; scarcely more. It was, as the crow flies, ten or twelve ! The eye thought that it could see any feature of the summit, so near and so clear was it. And yet, in the full morning light we knew that two parties were ascending the dome, in all some twelve, and yet not the slightest trace of them could the unaided eye detect. A fine opera-glass was tried, but it could raise nothing. Yet, when we took a powerful telescope, forth came the party, like so many little black ants crawling up upon a white wall. The glory is departed from Mont Blanc as a mountain of ascent. It is done now by scores every summer, and by women even. It is no longer reckoned a wonder. Indeed since the English have taken to the Alps as their favorite summer resort, and the Alpine Club have raised the ambition of bold and tough young men, there is scarcely anything left in Switzerland that is not ascended. The magnificent and solitary column of Wetterhorn has not yet felt the foot of man, though he has reached within two hundred feet of it, and will inevitably reach the summit of it ! A price is put upon the head of the difficult mountains. A party returned with ill success from Aiguillevert, I believe it was, failing to earn the DESCRIPTIVE. 565 five thousand francs offered to any one who would plant a flag upon its summit ! Formerly to ascend Mont Blanc was a work of extraordinary renown. Four or five guides and as many porters were required, and ample provisions. But a young Englishman from Coventry reached the summit, while we were at Chamounix, with only a single guide. Just behind him all the way up was a German military gentleman with ten guides and porters. But our brave young Englishman led them all the way. Now, when he came down, no cannon were fired, and no parade made. The officer's return set the valley booming with cannon and echoes. It had cost the Englishman about twenty dollars to do his work. The officer spent three or four hundred. Not what you do but what you spend determines the honors heaped upon you at Chamounix. We left the valley by the Col de Balme. Only when we had reached this height and distance did we begin to take the full measure of Mont Blanc. The whole range is before you. Now the dome seems highest, which before we only knew to be. I stood long upon the summits of this pass. On the west lay the whole valley of Chamounix and the range of Mont Blanc ; on the east the Oberland Alps, like a line of giants, plumed with white. I leave the company at the chalet, and climb, by myself, to a solitary point of outlook. I will not weary you with descriptions, Avhich at best must be shadowy, serving rather to renew the memory of those who have seen these glories than to excite any clear apprehension in those who have not. For we always meas- ure and imagine unknown things by a comparison with things known. Now, there is nothing in all Eastern America that can serve as a model of Switzerland. Its mountains are original, peculiar to itself, and their likeness is not reproduced upon our continent, unless it be among the Rocky Mountains. PHILOSOPHICAL. EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION.* On Saturday evening, January 6th, 1883, Mr. Beecher gave in Cooper Union his new lecture on Evolution and Revolution. Half an hour before the time for the lecture to begin the hall was so full that the police closed the doors and allowed no more to enter. Mr. Beecher spoke substantially as follows : A greater change has taken place within the last thirty years, probably, than ever took place in any former period of live hundred consecutive years. It has been a revolution ; and yet the revolutionary tendencies of the doctrine of evolution are more in seeming than in fact, and, though extremely radical, are radical in the right direction, and are of the right kind^ As con- tradistinguished from the old notion of creation by the instantaneous ohedience of matter to the divine command, it is the teaching of the divine method of creation as gradual, and as the result of steadily acting natural laws through long periods of time — periods so long that not even the imagination can stretch to the border- land of their far-off horizon. We have been brought up largely to found our notions of creation upon the poetic expressions of sacred Scripture. The command, " God said, Let there be light ; and there was light," is sublime poetry. We felt as if God came to the fore-front on the creating day, and said, " Let there be light," and instantly there was light. This was the almost universally prevalent impression. But it has now been sufficiently demonstrated that the divine method of creation was utterly different from this ; that it was a creation beginning with the very smallest elements * Reprinted from The Christian Union. PHILOSOPHICAL. 567 — elements inconceivably small — and then, gradually, through the force of divinely ordained natural laws, unfolding little by little the whole terraqueous globe. This, in short, is the theory of evolution. While there are may divergencies among scientific men as to details, there is absolutely no difference of opinion as to the general application of this doctrine to the formation of the globe, of the vegetable kingdom, and of the animal kingdom — until you come up to man. When we come to that point, were it not for the fear which good men entertain of the effect of such a doctrine, I suppose that it would be thought that man himself has been unfolded from the lower forms into the human form, and with human intelligence. If this conception of his origin were to throw out the idea of divine creation from it, it would be repugnant. But it does not involve any such consequences. There are three classes of evo- lutionists when you look at them in reference to moral questions — the atheistic, of which class Mr. Haeckel, of Germany, is a very able exponent ; the agnostic, to which class most of the eminent English physicists belong ; and the theistic, or Christian evolution- ists. There is a difference among them as to what were those influences which determined the variations, and that discussion, though tending to a closure, is not yet entirely settled. But when we come to man, the Christian philosopher takes his stand, and says that there were superadded to natural forces certain direct influences that conduced to the formation of the human mind. The doctrine of evolution, in these various forms, is the philos- ophy by which ninety-nine per cent of the scientific investigators of our time are working. It is gradually spreading to all depart- ments of effort. Its nomenclature and its thought are getting into the schools and the newspapers. The attempt to suppress it will fail. The old folly of throwing the Bible at it ought not in our day to be repeated. They threw the Bible at the sun and the moon once, and it came back on their heads, and astronomy stands. They threw the Bible at geology, and geology stands. Let not the folly be repeated of throwing the Bible at the origin of man. I am not prepared to say that I believe man came from the lower animals, but I am prepared to say that if he did it will afford explanation of many difficulties for which I can find no 5G8 HENRY WARD BEECH KH. solution anywhere else. As yet it is a hypothesis, and the process of procedure with a hypothesis is to see if it will give a solution of all difficulties, and give a better solution of them than any other theory. That is what I think evolution docs. Look, for a moment, at the relation which it sustains to the almost universal belief in the existence and agency of a supreme intelligence. There are many who say that this notion of evolu- tion is the product of atheism and that it will lead to atheism. I need uot say that I believe in the existence and the agency of a divine, omnipotent, omnipresent God. With all my heart, and all my soul, and all my mind, and all my strength, 1 believe in Him. The scientific man tells me that it is not possible to prove the existence of God. And I say the same — but on the same ground that I should say to a man who should bring me a pair of scales and ask me to weigh the smell of the rose, " Not by those scales can I weigh it." There are other methods by which I could indicate the existence of the perfume. The hypothesis of the existence of God leads a man through fewer difficulties and solves more questions than atheism ever did or ever could. But the highest proof of the existence of God is moral intuition. A thousand men may go past a magnificent picture and yet think there is nothing in the color. An artist comes past and it blazes with sup- pressed color to him. These men turn and say to him, " Well, prove the color. We are as good as you are. We don't see it." " Don't you wish you did ? It is there, and I see it and thrill with the feeling of it. If you say you don't, that merely char- acterizes where you stand." Now, it is given to highly organized moral natures to have a sense, a luminous incoming conviction, of the existence of God ; to feel it as plainly as one feels the balmy spring air and knows that it is spring, and not winter, without his almanac. A man may be an atheist and be an evolutionist ; but a man may be an evolutionist and believe in God with all his heart and strength and soul. The agnostic says : " We don't know it." But they mean by that they don't know it as they know inferior facts. We know it as we know the highest and noblest truths of human life. The interpreting power of the highest development of human conscience is far greater than most men have ever dreamed. Many men say, "Admit that there is an atheistic ground on PHILOSOPHICAL. 569 which we can stand ; what is going to be the influence of this doctrine of evolution upon sacred Scriptures?" Very beneficial. It is going to correct the absurd uses to which that book has been for so many ages condemned. The Bible itself is a most wonderful evolution. What other book ever was there that it took probably more than ten thousand years to write ? Mr. Ingersoll's whole pivotal power is the fact that among so large a number of men there has been an impression that everything in the Bible has been derived directly from God. What is the Bible ? The Bible is an encyclopaBdia of history, describing what has been the course of progress down to the present time ; and to pick out here and there an absurdity and then say, " There is your God telling" folks to do so and so " — how foolish, how wicked it is, except as- an answer to men that believe in plenary and verbal inspiration. But there is no other such record on the face of the earth, nor has any other nation, except the Israelite nation and the sequent nations, down to the present day, had any such history or any such unfolding of the process by which men rose from the lowest stages of animalism and came to the effulgence of modern civilization?) And remember that from the beginning to the end of this book you cannot find one single, solitary sjdlable in favor of oppression. All of the oldest of the Old Testament is in favor of the working- man. There is no more humanity than that in the institutes of Moses. One would be astonished to see how far in many respects it is ahead of the practical morality of our day. All the way down through the singers and prophets of the Old Testament, the Bible is a thunderbolt of denunciation against wrong. There never has been a modern nation that was oppressed by creeds, driven out from home, wronged by priestcraft and civil tyranny, that did not take refuge in the Old Testament, because the whole spirit of it, with trumpet tones, was marshalled like a man-of-war against all evil and all oppression for humanity and for kindness of love. And you come down to the New Testament, and you find there the very charter of the rights of the weak and of those liable to be despoiled, as nowhere else you can. For look at one single passage of the Master in the pictorial parable in which he gathers all nations of the earth to judgment. To one he said, " Come," and to the other, "Depart," and the law that determined that 570 BENRT WARD BEECHER. was the law of love. Ee says to them, " I was sick, I was op- pressed, I was hungry, thirsty, naked, and a stranger, and ye came and ministered to me ;" and they with wonderful surprise say to him, " When did we ever Bee this man naked, forsaken, or in prison, and came to him ?" The crowd around him was made of lepers, thieves, laz/.aroni, harlots, poor miserable creatures, and he said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have done it to me." When God would testify what his sense of the value of humanity is he does not take the advanced and unfolded ; he does not take the man nursed in regal power ; he does not take the one foremost in statesmanship ; he goes down so low that there is nothing below it, and takes the poorest and meanest ; not that he is good, but bad as he is there are a sacredncss and sanctity in him that no man should dare to harm or even to neglect him. And if that is the value that is put upon humanity, the poor, the oppressed, the laboring, are the last men that should sutler the torch to be thrown into the temple of their faith in regard to the sanctity of the Word of God ; it is the poor man's shield ; the poor man's port of refuge. It places him at his highest value, by the judgment of him who judges man not by what he is in this world, but by what he is to become in a better soil and a finer clime, when he will have another chance for development. This doctrine of the descent of man from an inferior race throws light on the question of the origin of sin and evil. The lion is not guilty of murder when he kills. lie violates no restraint, because that is what he was made for. Look at his claws. The wolf was made to be a wolf, and a fox a fox. You might as well find fault with granite for being hard, or with clay for being soft, as with the animal creation for having the quali- ties of their nature. To them was given no reason, no moral sense, no sense of beauty, of taste, of imagination — nothing but to feed themselves, to propagate their species, and then die. Now, man in his early history was an animal, but superinduced upon his animal nature was the moral sense. Here is the line between instinct and moral consciousness. The moment that came in, then the question was, Which shall rule — the animal sense or the higher sense ? That struggle is going on to-day with every man. There is not a man anywhere who does not feel day by day, in the battle of life, that his purposes are better than his acts. It is PHILOSOPHICAL. 571 a conflict between the upper man and the under man that consti- tutes the great bulk of sinfulness ; and there you have a theory that throws light upon a whole field that has hitherto been shrouded not merely in twilight but in impenetrable darkness. Of course, beyond this point there are a great many nice ques- tions as to the nature of sin — the voluntary doing of that which a man knows to be wrong. These are questions of profound importance but do not belong exactly to the topic of the lecture this evening. Men say, " If this doctrine be true, what light will it throw on the struggling questions of to-day ; on the endless strife and endeavor to equalize the conditions of men ?" ^Evolution throws light on that also. There are various schemes for the reorgan- ization of society — to equalize weakness and strength. That is not nature, and nature will not tolerate it. We cannot equalize weakness and strength of brain. If man has a little brain he must be a little man, and if he has a large brain he must be a large man. Such a partnership as that the strong shall care for the weak is an ideal which is Christian and beautiful. But you can't make an unthinking man equal to a thinking man. You can't make a spendthrift equal to an economical man. Men are essen- tially different in their composition, and nature sifts and riddles everything from the lowest to the highest, and always in the direction of increasing strength, sacrificing the relative imperfection, throwing it away, and from generation to generation advancing, that by and by the average strength may be vastly increased. You can never baffle that great law of nature that makes two twice as much as one ; that makes four twice as much as two ; that makes a man all through five times as great as a man that is only half a man. With all your schemes of benevolence — they are very benevolent, and ofttimes very noble and effecting great good — you cannot touch bottom until you get to this law ; that the human mind determines the condition of a man and his worth everywhere. He who is strong not in physical strength, but in mind and moral strength, is the highest ; and if there are many of them that class is the highest, and you cannot by any boosting, or by any method of screws, or adjustment, make the under equal to the upper under such circumstances ; and the way out from poverty and insignificance and all the miserable experiences of 572 I1KXHY WARD BEECHER. undercast men is : up yourself, and your affairs will come up after you ; development, education, more brain, better brain. The elevation of mankind in moral and intellectual culture is the only way to cure the evils of society. Men say, " Well, if the doctrine of evolution is true, your chnrches arc all cut up by the roots." I beg your pardon ; theol- ogy is going to be — no doubt about that. I shall not mourn it. All my early days were spent in the West, in that State populous with trees, Indiana, and there we never could raise a good crop fit for human food until we had cut the trees off . Theology looks to me like a thicket in the forest, and as soon as we can get a good deal of it open to the air we will plant better theology and have better crops. But it does not touch the question of churches. The churches are a manifold organization. All claims to be inheritors of the whole authority of God, of course, will gradually pass away. It is not necessary for me to go back to the Apostles to find out that I was ordained to preach ; I found that out when I preached and found folks wanted to hear me. The churches are schools of moral culture. They are authorita- tive, apostolic and divine when they succeed in producing moral culture ; and the great majority of the churches of all denomina- tions are doing it, for they generally leave off their theology. They have to run into the block-house, as the old settlers did, when their theology is attacked. Then they have to go in and fight for it. What arc the churches doing ? They are going after families ; teaching men how to bring up their children ; organiz- ing for benevolence ; endeavoring to carry out the basic princi- ples of the doctrines of Christ and to introduce them in all matters, manners and customs in the whole community. That is their business. It is a grand business. I would not have one church less ; T would multiply the whole. And as to the ques- tion of ordinance, well, let every one have such ordinance as he wants. One man wants to sharpen his scythe on a grindstone ; another wants to sharpen his on a whetstone ; and they have a quarrel, and one says the divine way of sharpening a scythe is with a whetstone, and the other says no, it is with a grindstone. I say it doesn't make any difference if the scythe is sharp. The churches that mollify the manners, cure the prejudices, extract the poison of hatred and bring men together, and not separate them, PHILOSOPHICAL. 573 produce concord, sympathy, mutual love, and helpfulness, are divine institutions. Their works are divine not because they have, any of them, any charter, or any of them any link or title which goes up out of sight and then, they say, is hitched on to the train of one of the Apostles. Many a ship throws over its deck-load in order to reach the harbor. Many churches will get along better if they don't undertake to meddle with creeds and the current theologies of the time. The whole theory of morals is to be profoundly advantaged, I think, by the question of evolution. Of course just now there is a great deal of thinking, and more or less comparison of thought, on the principle of an amicable adjustment of controversies as respects the origin of morals ; but one thing is very certain, and that is that the human race is unfolding in the direction of reason and moral sense and affectionate sense. The essential truths of God run down and throw their roots into the great natural laws^ For every great precept, every essential, practical doctrine, it is better for the world that we should be able to say that it stands, not on the authority of the priest, nor even on the authority of experi- ence, but that it stands rooted in nature itself. If we cast off intolerable superstitions, year after year, influences will work with the very seasons in favor of virtue and of a true religion. I thank God, therefore, for the growing light and power of the great doctrine of Christian Evolution. AGRICULTURAL. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE APPLE. [Tx the Hudson River, nearly opposite Peekskill, and in the very jaws of the "Race" (as the narrow passage through the Highlands is called), there is a small, rocky island, by the name of Iona. The name was borrowed from across the water, by Dr. C. W. Grant's father-in-law, who owned this gem — for gem it was and is for those who love rocks, glades, fine old trees, and absolute seclusion. But who ever would have thought of such a place for vine- yards ? Yet, Iona became the very Jerusalem of grape-vines. Dr. C. W. Grant, formerly of Newburg, purchased the island, and, adopting the then new grape — the Delaware — commenced propagating it for commercial purposes. It may bo fairly said that no man in America ever gave to grape culture a greater impulse than Dr. Grant. Abundant sales at length brought in abundant revenues. But his ideas expanded with his means, and outran them. The island was to become another Paradise. Here the magnolia was to be propagated in such numbers that every man in America could have it in his yard, holding white cups filled with perfume to his windows. The rhododendron was to be sent forth to every farm. New grapes were originated. Every year developed its own marvel. But whether it was pear, Downlng's mulberry, grape, or ornamental tree, the good democratic heart of Dr. Grant intended no narrower field than the continent. Men were to be raised to a higher level by familiarity with better and better grapes. The taste was to be refined. Every creature under the western heavens was to sit under his own grape-vine, and not under one alone, but a whole vineyard of them. Health failed. Business got tangled. The kind doctor sold out. He is gone from his vineyards. The island remains. One of these days, in the hands of some one who unites taste and thrift with abundant means, it will become a marvel of beauty. But it will hardly have a pleasanter day than when, in 1864, were gathered there two or three score or more of ladies and gentlemen AGRICULTURAL. 575 — not a few of them famous in art, in literature, in music, in pomology, and in sanguine plans of fruit culture — for a good time. Among the contributions to the general amusement, I was appointed Orator to discourse upon " The Apple," and the address was to have been published, together with minutes of the proceed- ings, other speeches, and various interesting matter. But years passed on without progress toward publication. What has become of other things I know not, but this apple-talk has been fished up and saved. I fear it will never again be as fresh or as powerful as in its first estate. For there now hangs upon my cellar wall a huge pan, lacking but a few inches of three feet in diameter, upon which the ladies who had heard the address established and perfected an apple-pie — sent to me for New Year's Day of 1865 — of so rare a spirit that every one of the hundreds who tasted it declared it to be as good as it was large. Alas ! the pan remains, and the poetry which came singing its merits ; but the pie — where is it ? So, too, the island of the Hudson stands secure ; but where are the joyous people that thronged it on that autumn day ?] THE ADDRESS. I am to discourse of the apple to an audience, many of whom know much more about it than I do, and all of them full as much. It does not, on that account, follow that I should not speak. What a terrible blow would fall upon all professions if a teacher should be forbidden to speak upon things of which he knew nothing, and to an audience who knew more about them than he ! One large part of the duty of a teacher is to remind his hearers of how much they know, and tempt them to a better use of their knowledge. Instruction is one thing, and important in its place ; but the inspiration of men to a good use of the things that they already know is far more needed. While the character of the ladies and gentlemen present makes it proper for me to hide, with due modesty, my knowledge of the apple in the department of culture, there is what may be called the Political Economy of the Apple, by which I mean the apple in its relation to domestic comfort and commerce ; and on that sub- ject I think I can speak, if not to edification, at least without fear of being tracked and cornered. The apple is, beyond all question, the American fruit. It stands absolutely alone and unapproachable, grapes notwithstanding. Originating in another hemisphere, neither in its own country nor 576 BENRY WARD BEECHER. in any other to which it has beet] introduced lias it flourished as in America. It is conceded in Europe that, for size, soundness, flavor, and brilliancy of coloring, the American apple stands first — a long way first. But it is American in another sense. This is a land in which diffusion is the great law. This arises from our institutions, and from the character which they have imprinted upon our people. In Europe, certain classes, having by their intelligence and wealth and influence the power to attract all things to themselves, set the current from the centre toward the surface. In America, the simple doctrines that the common people are the true source of political power, that the government is directly responsible to them, and therefore that moral culture, intelligence, and training in politics are indispensable to the common people, on whom every state is to rest safely, have wrought out such results that in all departments of justice and truth, as much as in politics, there is a tendency toward the popularizing of everything, and learning, or art, or any department of culture, is made to feel the need of popularity ; a word which is very much despised by classicists, but which may be used in a sense so large as to make it respect- able again. Things that reach after the universal, that include in them all men in their better and nobler nature, are in a proper sense popular ; and in this country, amusement and refinement and wealth itself, first or last, are obliged to do homage to the common people, and so to be popular. Nor is it otherwise in respect to horticulture. Of fruits, 1 think this, above all others, may be called the true democratic fruit. There is some democ- racy that I think must have sprung from the first apple. Of all fruits, no other can pretend to vie with the apple as the fruit of the common people. This arises from the nature of the tree and from the nature of the fruit. First, as to the tree. It is so easy of propagation, that any man who is capable of learning how to raise a crop of corn can learn how to plant, graft or bud, transplant, and prune an apple- tree — and then eat the apples. It is a thoroughly healthy and hardy tree ; and that under more conditions and under greater varieties of stress than perhaps any other tree. It is neither dainty nor dyspeptic. It can bear high feeding and put up with low feeding. It is not subject to gout and scrofula, as plums are ; AGRICULTURAL. 577 to eruptions and ruptures, as the cherry is ; or to apoplexy, as the pear is. The apple-tree may be pampered, and may be rendered effeminate in a degree ; but this is by artificial perversion. It is naturally tough as an Indian, patient as an ox, and fruitful as the Jewish Rachel. The apple-tree is among trees what the cow is among domestic animals in northern zones, or what the camel of the Bedouin is. And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient things, it is homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (1 am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be some dissent ; but this is the orthodox view. It seems as if the evil incident to human nature had struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair ; while the homely are so because the virtue within has purged and expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. Have you never seen a maiden that lovers avoided because she was not comely, who became, nevertheless, and perhaps on that account, the good angel of the house, the natural intercessor for afflicted children, the one to stay with the lonely when all the gay had gone a-gadding after pleasure, the soft- handed nurse, the story-teller and the book-reader to the whole brood of eager eyes and hungry ears in the nursery ; in short, the child's ideal of endless good-nature, self-sacrifice, and inter- cessorship, the Virgin Mary of the household— mother of God to their love, in that she brings down to them the brightest concep- tions of what God may peradventure be ? And yet, such are stig- matized old maids, though more fruitful of everything that is good (except children) than all others. One fault only do we find with them— that they are in danger of perverting our taste, and leading us to call homeliness beautiful. All this digression, ladies -and gentlemen, is on account of my dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up — a woman so good and modest that she will spend ages in heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, and that the angels will always be wondering why she was not there from all eternity. I have said, with some digressions, that the apple-tree is homely ; but it is also hardy, and not only in respect to climate. It is almost indifferent to soil and exposure. We should as soon think of coddling an oak-tree or a chestnut ; we should as soon think of shielding from the winter, white pine or hemlock, as an 578 BENRY WARD BEECHER. apple-tree. If there is a lol too steep for the plough or too rock) for tools, the farmer dedicates it to an apple orchard. Nor 'I" the trees betray his trust. Yet, the apple loves the meadows. It will thrive in sandy loams, and adapt itself to the toughest clay. It will bear as much dryness as a mullein-stalk, and as much wel almost as a willow. In short, it is a genuine democrat. It can be poor, while it loves to be rich ; it can be plain, although il prefers to be ornate ; it can be neglected, notwithstanding it wel- comes attention. But, whether neglected, abused, <>r abandoned, it is able to take care of itself, and to be fruitful of excellences.. That is what I call being democratic. The apple-tree is the common people's tree, moreover, because it is the child of every latitude and every longitude on this conti- nent. It will grow in Canada and Maine. It will thrive in. Florida and Mexico. It does well on the Atlantic slope ; and on the Pacific the apple is portentous. Newton sat in an orchard. and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in Cali- fornia the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us. Wherever Indian corn will grow, the apple will thrive ; and wdierever timothy-grass will ripen its seed, tin- apple will exist fruitfully. Nor is the tree unworthy of special mention on account of health and longevity. It is subject to fewer diseases than almost any tree of our country. The worms that infest it are more easily destroyed than those upon the currant or the rose. The leaf is subject to blight in so small a degree, that not one farmer in a hundred ever thinks of it. The trunk is seldom winter-killed. It never cracks. It lias no trouble, as the cherry does, in unbuck- ling the old hark and getting rid of it. The; borer is the only important enemy : and even this is a trifle, if you compare the labor required to destroy it "with the pains which men willingly take to secure a crop of potatoes. Acre for acre, an apple orchard will, on an average of years, produce more than half as many bushels of fruit as a potato-field — will it not ? And yet in plough- inn - ;iI1( l planting and after-ploughing and hoeing and digging, the potato requires at least five times the animal labor which is. needed by the apple. An acre of apple-trees can be kept clean of AGRICULTURAL. 579 all enemies and diseases with half the labor of once hoeing a crop of potatoes. And if you have borers it is your own fault, and you ought to be bored ! The health of the apple-tree is so great that farmers never think of examining their orchards for disease, any more than they do cedar posts or chestnut rails. And the great longevity of the apple-tree attests its good constitution. Two hundred years it sometimes reaches. I have a tree on my own place in Peekskill that cannot be less than that. Two ladies, one about eighty years of age, called upon us about three years ago, saying that they were brought up on that farm, and inquiring if the old apple-tree yet lived. They said that in their childhood it was called the old apple-tree, and was then a patriarch. It must now be a Methuselah. And, not to recur to it again, I may say that it is probably the largest recorded apple-tree of the world. I read in no work of any tree whose circumference is greater than twelve or thirteen feet. This morning I measured the Peekskill apple- tree, and found that six inches above the ground it was fourteen feet and six inches, and, at about four feet, or the spring of the limbs, fourteen feet and ten inches. I am sorry to add that the long-suffering old tree gives unmistakable signs of yielding to the infirmities of age. The fruit is sweet, but not especially valu- able, except for stock. I do not expect to live to see any of my other trees attain to the size and age of this solitary lingerer of other centuries ! I cannot help reverencing a tree whose leaves have trembled to the cannonading of the guns of our Revolution, which yielded fruit to Putnam's soldiers when that hill was a military post, and under whose shadow Washington himself — without any stretch of probability — may have walked. I ought not to omit the good properties of the apple-tree for fuel and cabinet-work. I have for five autumns kept up the bright fire required by the weather in an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace, using apple-wood, procured from old trees pruned or cut up wholly ; and, when it is seasoned, I esteem it nearly as good as hickory, fully as good as maple, and far better than seasoned beech. I have also for my best bureau one of apple- wood. It might be mistaken for cherry. It is fine-grained, very hard, solid as mahogany, and grows richer with every year of age. In Europe, the streets and roads are often shaded by fruit trees, 580 Ill-.NUY WARD BEECHER. the mulberry and the cherry being preferred. In some parts, the public are allowed t<> help themselves freely. When the fruit of any tree is to be reserved, a wisp of straw is placed around it, which suffices. Upright-growing apple-trees might be employed, with pears and cherries, in our Btreets and roads, and by their very number, and their abundance of fruit, might be taken away one motive of pilfering from juvenile hands. He must be a pre- ordained thief who will go miles t<> steal that which he can get in broad daylight, without reproach, by his door. One way to stop stealing is to give folks enough without it. 1 have thus far spoken of the apple tree. I now pass to the fruit — to the apple itself. The cpiestion whether it sprang from the wild crab I do not regard as yet settled. It is not known from any historical evidence to have had that origin. You cannot prove that lliis, that, or the other man, of any age or nation, planted the seed and brought forward the fruit. Nor am I aware that any man has conducted experiments on it like those of Vail Mods on the pear, or those which Dr. Grant has made on the grape that is cultivated in this country, to show that it sprang from the wild grape of Europe. Until that is done, it will Ik; only a theory, a probable fact, but, not a fact proved. And, by the way, it might be worth some man's while, at his. leisure, to take the seeds of the American wild grape, and see if, by any horticultural Sunday-school, he can work them up into good Christian vines. The apple comes nearer to universal uses than any other fruit of the world. Is there another that has such a range of season ? It begins in July, and a good cellar brings the apple round into July again, yet unshrunk, and in good flavor. It belts the year. What other fruit, except in the tropics, where there is no winter, and where there are successive growths, can do that ? It is a luxury, too. Kinds may be had so tender, so delicate, and, as Dr. Grant — the General Grant of the vineyards — would saj , so refreshing, that not the pear, even, would dare to vie with it, or hope to surpass it. The Vandervcer of the Hudson River, the American Golden Russet, need not, in good seasons, well ripened, fear a regiment of pears in pomological convention, even in the city of Boston. It may not rival the melting qualities of the peach, eating which one knows not whether he is eating or AGRICULTURAL. 581 drinking. But the peach is the fruit of a clay — ephemeral ; and it is doubtful whether one would carry through the year any such relish as is experienced for a few weeks. It is the peculiarity of the apple that it never wearies the taste. It is to fruit what wheaten bread is to grains. It is a life-long relish. You may be satisfied with apples, but never cloyed. Do you remember your boyhood feats ? I was brought up in a great old-fashioned house, with a cellar under every inch of it through which an ox-cart might have been wheeled after all the bins were full. In this cellar, besides potatoes, beets, and turnips, were stored every year some hundred bushels of apples — the Rhode Island Green- ing, the Roxbury Russet, the Russet round the Stem, as it was called, and the Spitzenberg ; not daintily picked, but shaken down ; not in aristocratic barrels set up in rows, but ox-carts full ; not handled softly, but poured from baskets into great bins, as we poured potatoes into their resting-place. If they bruised and rotted, let them. We had enough and to spare. Two seasons of picking over apples — a sort of grand assizes — but the matter all right. In all my boyhood I never dreamed of apples as things possible to be stolen. So abundant were they, so abso- lutely open to all comers — who went down into the cellar by the inside stairs instead of the outside steps — that we should as soon have thought of being cautioned against taking turnips, or asking- leave to take a potato. Apples were as common as air. And that was early in December and January ; for I noticed that the sun was no more fond than I was of staying out a great while on those Litchfield hills, but ran in early to warm his fingers, as I did mine. When the day was done, and the candles were lighted, and the supper was out of the way, we all gathered about the great kitchen fire ; and soon after George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A boy's hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack butterflies with, a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring up apples in. And a big-headed boy's old felt hat was not stingy in its quantities ; and when its store ended, the errand could always be repeated. To eat, six, eight, and twelve apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than the neighbor- hood mill, through whose body passed thousands of bushels of 582 \\KS\l\ WAIIU BEECHER. iMin. leaving; it no fatter at the end <>f the year than at the begin- ning. Cloyed with apples? To eat an apple is to want to eat another. We tire of cherries, of peaches, of strawberries, of figs, of grapes I say it with reverence in this presence !) bat never of apples. Nay, when creature comforts fail, and the heart — hopeless voyager on the troubled sea of life — is sick, apples are comforters ; or, wherefore is it written : " As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. lie brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons," — undoubtedly of cider ! — " comfort me with apples ; for I am sick of love." If this is the cure of love, we may the better understand why the popular instinct should have resorted to the apple-tivr as a cure for ambition, singing, ' We '11 hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree." There is, in this toothsomeness of the apple, together with its utter harmlessness, a provision for nurses and mothers. There is a growing period when children are voracious. They must be filled ; and it is a matter of great account to know what to fill them with. If you give them but bread, that seems meagre. l'i