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PAULINE FORE MOFFITT
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY
33oofcd frp Ipman Abbott, 3D. 2X
HENRY WARD BEECHER. With Portraits.
Crown 8vo, $1.75, net. Postage extra.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. A Study in Twentieth-
Century Problems. Crown 8vo, $1.30, net.
Postpaid, $1.44.
THE LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE AN-
CIENT HEBREWS. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. i6mo,
$1.25.
CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
i6mo, $1.25.
THE THEOLOGY OF AN EVOLUTIONIST.
i6mo, $1.25.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PAUL THE
APOSTLE. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, AND COMPANY,
Boston and New York.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1103
TO PLYMOUTH CHURCH
IN APPRECIATION OF THE KINDLY WELCOME
AND CORDIAL SUPPORT EXTENDED TO ME,
WHEN, ON THE DEATH OF MR. BEECHER, I WAS
CALLED TO SUCCEED HIM IN THE PASTORATE,
THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
408
INTRODUCTORY
In 1854 I entered the law office of my brothers in
New York City, and went to live with the older of
them in Brooklyn. He was attending Plymouth
Church and I naturally went there with him. He
was a son of New England, a Puritan, though of
liberal temper, and a Webster Whig, and therefore
originally had a triple prejudice against the young
preacher who had recently come to Brooklyn, and
who was in manner a Westerner, and in theology
and politics a radical. But my brother had char-
acteristically resolved to listen to six successive
sermons from the preacher before finally deciding
about him, and, as a result, was already a sympa-
thetic listener and a devoted friend. I was not yet
twenty years of age, and the defects and the excel-
lences of Mr. Beecher appealed alike to my boyish
nature : his exuberant life, his startling audacity,
his dramatic oratory, his passionate fire, his flashes
of humor, his native boyishness, all combined to
fascinate me. But this superficial enthusiasm soon
gave place to a deeper feeling. I had constructed
for myself a crude theology, doubtless largely bor-
viii INTRODUCTORY
rowed from others, but for which I ought not to
make others responsible. That theology may be
briefly described in a sentence thus : I had in-
herited from a depraved ancestry a depraved na-
ture ; I had broken the laws of God, and deserved
punishment ; God was a just God, and justice
compelled him to insist on the penalty ; but Christ
had borne the penalty that the law might be justi-
fied and still God's justice maintained ; if I accepted
Christ as my Saviour, the law would be honored,
God could be merciful, and I could be released
from the penalty. For me, religion was acceptance
of this mercy, and obedience to the laws which I
had before disobeyed ; the Bible was the source of
my knowledge of those laws ; the Holy Spirit was
a helper to enable me to keep them. I was afraid
of God, I was attracted to Christ, and, partly im-
pelled by the fear, and partly inspired by aspiration,
I wished to listen to conscience, to obey the law,
to do my duty; but I had no assurance that I
could, or perhaps I should rather say, that I would
do either persistently.
Mr. Beecher revolutionized my theology by
revolutionizing my life. I obtained through him a
new experience of God, of Christ, of salvation, of
religion : I began to see that Jesus Christ was
what God eternally is, that his laws are the laws
INTRODUCTORY ix
of my own nature ; that I have not more truly in-
herited disease than health, depravity than virtue,
from my ancestors ; that salvation is life, and that
Jesus Christ came into the world to give me life ;
that God is my Father and my Friend, and that
my fellowship may be with him ; that the Bible is
the record of the experiences of men who knew him
and his love and his fellowship, and who narrated
their experiences that others might share them ;
that religion is not the obedience of a reluctant soul
to law, but the glad captivity of a loyal soul to the
best of all loved friends. As this new life was
born in me, there was born also in me the strong
desire to impart it to others ; and after long hesi-
tation, and much debate with myself, I abandoned
the profession of the law in which, at the age of
twenty-two, I was already successfully engaged as
a member of the New York bar, thanks to my two
older brothers with whom I was associated. After
a year of special study, with some accompanying
experience in preaching to a village congregation in
Maine, I gave myself to the work of the Christian
ministry. From that day to this my desire has been
by voice and pen to give to others the life which
had been given to me when I learned that God is
love and Jesus Christ is love's interpreter, and
therefore God's interpreter.
x INTRODUCTORY
In 1858 I left Brooklyn, and therefore Plymouth
Church, and did not return until 1887, when, on
Mr. Beecher's death, I became his successor. Dur-
ing those nearly thirty years of absence from
Brooklyn, I rarely heard Mr. Beecher preach or
lecture. I was at one time intimately associated
with him in preparing a special edition of his ser-
mons, and in the work of preparation examined
with care several hundred of them ; and later I
was in constant fellowship with him as his asso-
ciate in the editorship of " The Christian Union. "
But during these years I was less a pupil of Mr.
Beecher than a critical student of his work. For
guidance and inspiration I went less to him than
to those to whom he had gone : first of all to the
Four Gospels ; next, to the Epistles of Paul ; then
to those teachers in the Church, from Clement of
Alexandria to Robertson and Maurice, who had
seen in religion a life rather than a law, in God a
Friend rather than a Judge, and in salvation char-
acter rather than destiny. I went back also to the in-
structors of my childhood. I read again my father's
" Young Christian," from which I had received the
first conscious impulse which any voice or pen had
given me to the Christian life. I followed the clue
which Mr. Beecher had given me, and I lived and
honored him none the less for the discovery that
INTRODUCTORY xi
the Church had never been without witnesses to a
faith and life like his. That faith and life were
not new except as the song of every bird is new,
though the same note has been sung by a thousand
ancestors. But they were new to me when in my
youth I heard them and accepted them in Plymouth
Church. To Mr. Beecher I am indebted for a new
interpretation of and a new impulse to the life of
faith and hope and love. So, when the publishers
of this volume asked me to prepare it, I acceded
to their request in the hope that it might serve to
bring to others, through the story of Mr. Beecher's
life, that conception of Christian truth and that
experience of Christian faith which Mr. Beecher
had brought to me. Nearly half a century has
passed since from the young preacher of Brooklyn
I received the impulse which sent me into the min-
istry, the message which subsequent study has done
much to develop, but nothing to contradict, and the
faith which life has never disappointed, but has
constantly enlarged and enriched. That half cen-
tury has been largely spent with other masters, and
I believe that I am now far enough from the spell
of Mr. Beecher's personal presence to estimate
justly his life and character. Certainly this volume
will not be coldly critical ; I do not mean that it
shall be indiscriminately eulogistic.
xu INTRODUCTORY
Generally the preface to a volume is the portion
last written. Before I set pen to paper on the
substance of this volume, I write this preface to
make clear to myself, and I hope also to others, my
purpose. It is not to tell the full story of Mr.
Beecher's personal life : that has already been done
by his wife and son and son-in-law, in a volume
which is essentially autobiographical and to which
I could add nothing. It is not to write the life
and times of Mr. Beecher: he was so identified
with all the great events of his time that to write
such a volume would be to write the history of the
United States in what is perhaps the most critical
and certainly the most dramatic period of the na-
tional life. In this volume, I, his friend, who
gladly acknowledge my own indebtedness to him,
seek to interpret the life and character of a man of
great spiritual and intellectual genius, whose faults
were superficial, whose virtues were profound,
whose influence will outlive his fame, and who has
probably done more to change directly the religious
life, and indirectly the theological thought in Amer-
ica than any preacher since Jonathan Edwards.
LYMAN ABBOTT.
CORNWALL-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Meaning of Mb. Beecher's Life 1
CHAPTER n
The Making of the Man 16
CHAPTER HI
Early Ministry 39
CHAPTER IV
Plymouth Church 72
CHAPTER V
The Pastor of Plymouth Church 100
CHAPTER VI
Parenthetical 133
CHAPTER VII
The Anti-Slavery Reformer 156
CHAPTER Vni
The Anti-Slavery Campaign 195
CHAPTER IX
The Civil War 223
CHAPTER X
The Campaign in England 244
CHAPTER XI
Reconstruction 264
*v CONTENTS
CHAPTER XII
Under Accusation 288
CHAPTER Xni
Later Ministry 300
CHAPTER XIV
Editor and Author 328
CHAPTER XV
The Yale Lectures on Preaching 353
CHAPTER XVI
He finishes his Course 374
CHAPTER XVII
Estimates and Impressions 386
APPENDIX
Mr. Beecher's Analysis of Romans, Chap. vn. . . . 422
Mr. Beecher's Theological Statement 429
Index 451
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Henry Ward Beecher Frontispiece
From a photograph hy George G. Rockwood. This is
believed to be the latest portrait.
Dr. Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and
1 1 im;v Ward Beecher 30
From a photograph taken about 1861.
Henry Ward Beecher 162
From a daguerreotype taken by Irving about 1851. By
conrtesy of George G. Rockwood.
Copies of English Incendiary Placards against Mr.
Beecher in 1863 253
Facsimile Letter from Mr. Beecher to Dr. Lyman
Abbott 410
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[Prepared by Rev. W. E. Davenport.]
Cincinnati Journal. Edited in part by Henry Ward
Beecher. Cincinnati, O., 1836-37.
Sermon on the Occasion of the Funeral of Noah Noble,
late Governor of Indiana, pp. 27. Indianapolis, 1844.
Seven Lectures for Young Men. Indianapolis, 1844;
Salem, 1846 ; Boston, 1849, '51, '53, '55, '63, '65, '68, and
'69 ; New York, 1851, '53, '60, '73, '79, '81, '84, '93, '98 ;
London, England, 1851, and many reprints ; Philadelphia,
as Industry and Idleness, 1850. Copyright expired 1895,
and since that published by Henry Altemus, Philadelphia.
A Dissuasive from Moral Intolerance. Address by
Henry Ward Beecher, at Bloomington, Ind. Indianapolis,
1845.
Indiana Farmer and Gardener. Edited by Mr. Beecher.
Indianapolis, 1845. 24 numbers.
Western Farmer and Gardener. Henry Ward Beecher,
Editor, 1846. Indianapolis, 24 numbers.
A Discourse Delivered at Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving
Day, November 25, 1847. Cady & Burgess : 60 John St.,
New York, 1848.
Address before the Society for Promoting Collegiate Edu-
cation in the West. (In annual report of Society, 1848.)
Plymouth Church Manual. New York, 1848, '50, '54, '67,
'74. One in 1848 and one in 1850 printed by Henry Speer,
78 Wall St., by vote of the Church.
The Independent, Star Contributor, beginning October 18,
1849.
Sermon for Thanksgiving Day. Hunt's Merchant Maga-
zine, December 12, 1850. New York, 1851.
Two Papers on Politics and the Pulpit. New York, 1851.
xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY
National Anti-Slavery Standard (Sermons and Addresses
in). New York, 1851.
On the Choice of a Profession. Address by Henry Ward
Beecher. 1851.
Book of Eloquence, by Charles Dudley Warner. Selections
from H. W. B. Cazenovia, 1853.
Pulpit Portraits of American Preachers, by John R. Dix.
Chapter on H. W. B., with portrait. Boston, 1854.
Off-hand Takings; or, Crayon Sketches of Noticeable Men
of Our Age, by G. W. Bungay. (Article on H. W. B., and
portrait.) New York, 1854.
Autographs of Freedom. (Includes portraits of and
sketches by Lewis Tappan, H. B. Stowe, and Henry Ward
Beecher.) Auburn and Rochester, N. Y., 1854.
Star Papers. J. C. Derby: New York, 1855, '59. En-
larged edition, 1873.
The American Portrait Gallery. (Portrait and Sketch
H. W. B.) New York, 1855.
The Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes. Preface
H. W. B. A. S. Barnes & Co.: New York, 1855, '56, '59,
'62, '67, '68, '83.
Bartlett's Distinguished Modern Agitators. (Article on
H. W. B.) New York, 1855.
Fowler's American Pulpit. (Includes able article on
H. W. B.) New York, 1856.
Man and his Institutions. An address to the Society for
Promoting Collegiate Education in the West. Delivered in
Boston, May 28, 1856. American Journal of Education,
July, 1856. Republished, New York, 1856.
Defence of Kansas. By Henry Ward Beecher. Washing-
ton, D. C, 1856. Buell & Blanchard, printers.
Banner of Light. Includes sermons by H. W. B. Boston,
1856.
Social Reform Tracts, No. 5. The Strange Woman of the
Scriptures described and the young cautioned of her wiles
and of their dangers, being a lecture addressed to young men
by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, U. S. (brother of Mrs.
Stowe). Edited by J. Harding. London: Simpkin, Mar-
shall & Co., 1857.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xix
Inquirer and Chronicle. Includes sermons by H. W. B.
New York, 1857.
American National Preacher, No. 1, vol. xxxi. Sermon
by H. W. B., on Christ Knocking at the Door of the Heart,
January, 1857. New York, 1857.
The Baptist Collection. Being the Plymouth Collection
adapted for Baptist use. New York, 1857.
Social Reform Tracts, No. 6. The Home of the Harlot,
its description, character, and tendencies as seen under the
Scripture lamp ; being the concluding part of the celebrated
lectures to young men by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
(U. S.), brother of Mrs. Stowe. Edited by J. Harding. Lon-
don : Simpkin & Marshall, 1857.
Life Thoughts. Extracts from extemporaneous discourses,
edited by Edna Dean Proctor. Boston, 1858, '59 (30th
thousand). Large paper edition, 1860; London, 1860; New
York, 18$), '69, '71, '80.
Life Thoughts. Henry Ward Beecher. Complete edi-
tion. London, 1858: Hamilton & Adams Co. Alexan-
der Strahan & Co. : Edinburgh, 1859.
Life Thoughts, by Henry Ward Beecher, with a biograph-
ical sketch. London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1863.
Life Thoughts, gathered from the extemporaneous dis-
courses of Henry Ward Beecher. London: Wardlock &
Tyler, Warwick House, Paternoster Row.
God's Seal and Covenant, with a list of members of Ply-
mouth Church. Brooklyn, 1858.
Revival Hymns, by Henry Ward Beecher. Boston: Phil-
lips, Sampson & Co., 1858.
Letter to Messrs. Brown & Co., Boston, recommending
the torches manufactured by them. 1858.
The New York Ledger (many contributions). New York,
1858.
The Power of the Spirit, by Henry Ward Beecher. Lon-
don, 38 Ludgate Hill.
Men's Excuses for not becoming Christians, and Discour-
agements of the Christian Life. Two sermons by Henry
Ward Beecher, with portrait. New York, 1858.
How to become a Christian. A tract for the times.
Boston.
xx BIBLIOGRAPHY
How to become a Christian, by Henry Ward Beech er.
New York, 1858, '62 ; Brooklyn, 1862. Revised by the
author, and published by the American Tract Society of
Boston, 117 Washington St.
A Narrative of Remarkable Incidents, by W. C. Conant,
with introduction by H. W. B. Derby & Jackson: New York.
Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher (12mo). One sermon
in each number, published weekly. London: J. Heaton,
Norwich Lane, Paternoster Row, 1859.
The Telegraph and Fireside Preacher. (Includes sermons
by H. W. B.) New York, 1859.
Memorial of the Revival in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn,
in 1858, comprising incidents and fragments of lectures and
sermons by the pastor. By a member of the Church. New
York, 1859.
William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and Theo-
dore Parker. Boston, 1859. pp. 15.
Articles on T. Parker ; An Explanation of Views on Total
Depravity. Printed by authority of the Fraternity Course
Lectures Society, Boston. A. Williams & Co., 1859.
Notes from Plymouth Pulpit. A collection of memorable
passages from the discourses of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,
with a sketch of Mr. Beecher and of the Lecture-room. By
Augusta Moore. New York: Derby & Jackson, 1859. New
edition greatly enlarged, Harper & Bros., 1865.
Pulpit and Rostrum. (Includes sermons by Mr. Beecher.)
New York, 1859.
Who is our God : the Son or the Father ? By Rev. Thos.
J. Sawyer. A reply to Henry Ward Beecher's articles on
Theo. Parker.
Vagabondia, by Adam Badeau. (Includes articles on
H. W. B.) New York, 1859.
Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns.
(Includes oration by H. W. B.) Edinburgh, 1859.
Plain and Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers, and
Farming, by Henry Ward Beecher. Derby & Jackson : New
York, 1859; Boston: Brown, Taggard & Chase, 25 & 29
Cornhill, 1859 ; London, 1859.
Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers, and Farming, by
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxi
Henry W. Beecher. New edition, with additional matter
from recent writings, published and unpublished. J. B.
Ford & Co.: New York, 1874.
New Star Papers; or, Views and Experiences of Religious
Subjects. Derby & Jackson : New York, 1859, '69. Pub-
lished as Summer of the Soul, London.
Address on Mental Culture for Women, by H. W. B.
and James T. Brady, in Pulpit and Rostrum. New York,
1859.
Echoes from Harper's Ferry, by James Redpath. Includes
pp. 257-279, sermon by H. W. B. preached in Plymouth
Church, Sunday evening, October 30, 1859.
Italian Independence, by J. P. Thompson. (Includes ad-
dress by H. W. B.) New York, 1860.
Woman's Influence in Politics. An address in New York,
February 2, 1860. Boston, 1860, '69, 71.
Civil War : Its Causes, its Consequences, its Crimes, and
its Compromises. Series No. 1, by Henry Ward Beecher
and Archbishop Hughes. Published by Reuben Vose, New
York, 1851. 8vo. pp. about 24. Pamphlet appeal against
Mr. Beecher and in favor of stopping " this horrid war " ;
quotes from Mr. Beecher's addresses.
Remarks by Henry Ward Beecher, at the funeral of Ed-
ward Corning, Plymouth Church, Thursday afternoon, Janu-
ary 31, 1861. For private circulation.
War and Emancipation. A Thanksgiving Sermon
preached in Plymouth Church, November 21, 1861. Phila-
delphia, 1861.
The Independent. Edited by H. W. B., December 19,
1861, to December 21, 1862.
The Love Element of the Gospel. H. W. B. Printed at
request of Father Cleveland, Boston.
Crime and its Remedy. H. W. B. Issued by the Howard
Association, London.
Fast-Day Sermons ; or, The Pulpit on the State of the
Country. Peace be Still. H. W. B. pp. 265-292 ; Rudd
& Carlton: New York, 1861.
Sermon before the Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting of the
New York and Brooklyn Foreign Missionary Society. Pub-
lished with the Proceedings. New York, 1862.
xxii BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eyes and Ears, from the New York Ledger. Boston, 1862 ;
London, 1862 ; Boston, 1863 ; (3d edition) Boston, 1866,
'67; New York, 1887. Printed in England as Royal
Truths.
Eyes and Ears, by Henry Ward Beecher (author of Life
Thoughts). London: Sampson & Co., 1862.
The Methodist. (Includes sermons by H. W. B.) New
York, 1862.
Royal Truths, by Henry Ward Beecher. (6th thousand.)
Alexander Strahan & Co. : Edinburgh ; Hamilton Adam &
Co.: London, 1862.
Freedom and War. Discourses on Topics Suggested by
the Times. Boston : Ticknor & Fields, 1863.
American Cause in England. Address at Manchester,
England, October, 1863. James Redpath, Boston, 1863 ;
New York, 1863.
American Rebellion. Report of Speeches of Henry Ward
Beecher delivered in England at Public Meetings in Man-
chester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London ; and
at the farewell breakfasts in London, etc. Manchester,
England, 1864 ; London, 1864.
Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher. (15 nos.) London:
J. Heaton & Son, 42 Paternoster Row, E. C, 1864.
Sermons of H. W. Beecher. 2 vols. Dickinson: London,
1864.
Aids to Prayer. New York : A. D. F. Randolph & Co.,
1864, '66, '87.
Our Minister Plenipotentiary, by O. W. Holmes, in The
Atlantic Monthly. Boston, 1864.
Universal Suffrage. An Argument by H. W. Beecher,
including report of conference between Secretary Stanton,
General Sherman, and Freedmen in Savannah. Delivered in
Plymouth Church, Sunday evening, February 2, 1865.
Printed by William E. Whiting, New York, 1865.
Trip of the Oceanus. Address at Fort Sumter, April 14,
1865. New York, 1865. Also reprinted as an Old South
Leaflet, Boston.
Sermon on Lincoln's Death. New York, 1865.
Universal Suffrage and Complete Equality in Citizenship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxiii
Discourses by H. W. Beeeher, Andrew Johnson, and Wen-
dell Phillips. Boston, 1865.
Reports of the New England Society of New York. (In-
clude addresses by H. W. B.) See Reports for 1866, '67,
'71, '72, '73, '74, and '83.
Presentation Memorial to Workingmen. Oration at the
raising of the old flag at Sumter, and sermon on the death
of Lincoln, with sketch of Lincoln. Manchester, England,
1865.
Letter to the Soldiers and Sailors. New York, 1866.
The Political Status of Women, by Henry Ward Beeeher,
in The Friend, vol. i. New York, 1866.
Address at the Anniversary of the American Missionary
Association, 1866.
595 Pulpit Pungencies. G. W. Carleton: New York, 1866 ;
London, 1866.
Address at National Woman's Rights Convention, May 10,
1866. Reprinted as Woman's Duty to Vote, 1866. Re-
printed, 1898.
The Methodist. Has fortnightly sermons by H. W. B.
New York, December 8, '66, to February 13, '69.
Norwood, a novel (from New York Ledger). New York,
3 vols., by Scribners, 1867, '68, '80, '91. J. B. Ford, 1874
and 1898; London, 1867; Sampson, Low & Co., 1887.
Address at Laying Corner-stone of Adelphi Academy,
Brooklyn. Brooklyn, 1867.
On Health. An Address delivered before the New York
Medical Students' Union, Brooklyn. Brooklyn, 1867.
Royal Truths, by Henry Ward Beeeher. Boston : Tick-
nor & Fields, 1867.
Prayers from Plymouth Pulpit. Stenographically re-
ported. A. C. Armstrong : New York, 1867 ; Scribners'
seventh edition, 1868 , Armstrong, 1895.
Famous Americans, by James Parton. Chapter on
H. W. B. and his Church. 1867.
Article on Plymouth Church, The Atlantic Monthly, Bos.
ton, 1867.
Sermons by Henry Ward Beeeher. Edited by Lyman
Abbott. 2 vols. Harper & Bros.: New York, 1868.
xxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY
Prayers in the Congregation, by Henry Ward Beecher,
D. D. Strahan & Co.: 58 Ludgate Hill, London, 1868.
Putnam's Magazine (sketch of H. W. B.). New York,
1868.
Sunshine and Shadow in New York. Chapter on Beecher
and Plymouth Church, by Matthew Hale Smith. Hartford:
T. B. Bun & Co., 1868.
Men of our Times, by H. B. Stowe. (Includes chapter on
H. W. B., and portrait.) 1868.
Illustrated Bible Biography. (Introduction by H. W. B.)
Boston, 1868.
Plymouth Pulpit, New York, September, 1868, to Septem-
ber, 1873. J. B.Ford & Co.
Gnaw-Wood ; or, New England Life in a Village. A
satire on Norwood. New York : National News Co., 1868.
Sermons, by H. W. Beecher. Dickinson : London, 1869,
and thereafter to 1886.
Oratory, Sacred and Secular, by Wm. Pittenger. In-
cludes note on and sketch of H. W. B. New York : Samuel
R. Wells, 1869.
The Funeral Service of Mrs. Lucy W. Bullard. Address
by H. W. B. Worcester, 1869.
How Beecher Makes his Sermons, by Ralph Meeker.
Packard's Monthly, March, 1869.
The Overture of the Angels, by H. W. Beecher. J. B.
Ford, 1869.
The Great Metropolis, by J. N. Browne. Chapter 27 on
H. W. B. Hartford, 1869.
The Christian Union. Edited by Henry Ward Beecher,
January 1, 1870, to November 2, 1881. New York. Now
The Outlook.
The Potato Book, by G. W. Beat. Includes article on the
Potato Mania by H. W. B. 1870.
Familiar Talks on General Christian Experience, by
Henry Ward Beecher. London : Nelson & Sons, Paternos-
ter Row, 1870 ; Edinburgh and New York.
Lecture-Room Talks. A Series of Familiar Discourses
on Themes of General Christian Experience. J. B. Ford &
Co., 1870.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxv
O. P. Morton's Oration. Prayer by H. W. B. 1870.
Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, by Augus-
tus Maverick. Includes Mr. Beecher's funeral sermon.
Hartford, Conn., 1870.
1000 Gems from the Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher,
by the Rev. G. D. Evans, Victoria Park, London. Hod-
der & Stoughton : 27 Paternoster Row, 1870.
Common Sense for Young Men on the Subject of Tem-
perance. A sermon by H. W. B., in Plymouth Church.
New York : Natioual Temperance Society, 1871.
Address at Semi-Centennial of Amherst College, July,
1871.
On Labor ; Popular Errors in the Education of American
Youth. By H. W. B. Baltimore, 1871 and 1872.
The Unity of Italy. Includes address by H. W. B., at
Academy of Music. New York, 1871.
My Summer in a Garden. Charles Dudley Warner. In-
troduction by H. W. B. Osgood : Boston, 1871.
My Summer in a Garden. Charles Dudley Warner, with
an Introduction by Henry Ward Beecher. London : Samp-
son & Low.
Morning and Evening Exercises. Edited by Lyman Ab-
bott. Being selections from the published and unpublished
writings of Henry Ward Beecher. Harper Bros., 1871.
The Heavenly State and Future Punishment. Two ser-
mons by Henry Ward Beecher. New York, 1871.
The Life of Jesus the Christ, by Henry Ward Beecher.
One vol. J. B. Ford & Co., 1871. Large edition, New York,
1872. Completed in two vols, by bis sons, 1891. Reissued
by E. B. Treat, 1896.
The Life of Jesus the Christ, by Henry Ward Beecher.
Loudon : T. Nelson & Sons, Paternoster Row, 1871. Also
issued in Edinburgh.
Successful preaching, by J. Hall, T. L. Cuyler, and Henry
Ward Beecher. American Tract Society : New York, 1871.
Forty-eight Sermons preached by Henry Ward Beecher
previous to 1867. London : R. D. Dickinson, 1871.
Great Fortunes, by John B. McCabe. (Includes chapter
on H. W. B.) New York, 1871.
xxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY
Una and her Paupers. Memorials of Agnes E. Jones.
(Introductory preface by H. W. B.) New York, 1872.
Remarks and Prayer at the Funeral of Elizabeth Cripps.
1870.
Records of the Proceedings at the Unveiling of the Frank-
lin Statue at Printing-House Square, New York City. (In-
cludes an address by H. W. B.) New York, 1872.
A Day in Plymouth Church, — Henry Ward Beecher's.
S. W. Partridge & Co.: London, 9 Paternoster Row, 1872 ;
Glasgow : Thomas Murray & Son, 1872.
Popular Lectures on Preaching, by Henry Ward Beecher.
Glasgow: Joseph Man & Sons ; London: Simpkin, Marshall
& Co., 1872.
Should Libraries and Public Reading-Rooms be opened
on Sunday ? Address delivered by Henry Ward Beecher
at the request of members of the Mercantile Library Asso-
ciation of New York, at Cooper Union Hall, Monday, April
22, 1872. Phonographically reported by T. J. Ellinwood.
Contemporary Review. Sketch of H. W. B., by H. R.
Haweis. London, 1872.
Temperance Sermons, No. 10, Liberty and Love. An
Appeal to the Conscience to Banish the Wine Cup. New
York, 1872.
Men of our Day, by L. P. Brockett. (Includes portrait
and chapter on H. W. B.) St. Louis, 1872.
Scribner's Monthly. Article by A. McElroy Wylie.
New York, October, 1872.
The History of Plymouth Church, including Historical
Sketches of the Bethel and the Navy Missions, by N. L.
Thompson. J. W. Carleton: New York, 1873 ; London,
1873.
New York Tribune Extra, No. 2. Lecture by H. W. B.
on Compulsory Education.
Yale Lectures on Preaching, by H. W. B. 3 vols. J. B.
Ford & Co.: New York, 1872-74, also 1881 and 1893 ; Three
vols, in one, 1900. London, 1872.
The Present Fearful Commercial Pressure. Discourse by
Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church. London : W.
Howell & Co. Price, one penny.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxvii
Letters on the Future Life, addressed to Rev. Henry-
Ward Beecher by B. F. Barrett. Philadelphia : Claxton,
Remsen & Hafflinger, 1873
Duyckinck's Eminent Women and Men of America and
Europe. Sketch and portrait of H. W. B. 1873.
Plymouth Pulpit (New Series). New York : J. B. Ford
& Co. Begun September 27, 1873 ; ended September 18,
1875 ; 4 volumes. Reprinted, 1891.
New York Tribune Extras, Nos. 6 and 7. Yale Lectures
for Ministers, by Henry Ward Beecher.
Account of Services of Silver Wedding Week at Plymouth
Church. Edited for Committee by H. C. King. New
York, 1873.
Sketches of Representative Men, by Augustus C. Rogers.
Portrait and sketch of H. W. B. Atlantic Pub. Co.: New
York, 1873.
Proceedings at the Farewell to Professor Tyndall. (In-
cludes address by H. W. B.) New York, 1873.
William H. H. Murray's The Perfect Horse. Introduc-
tion by H. W. B. Boston : James R. Osgood, 1873.
Memorial of Horace Greeley. Funeral address by H. W.
B. New York, 1873.
The Discipline of Sorrow. H. W. B. J. B. Ford,
1874.
Proceedings of the Evangelical Alliance. (Includes address
by H. W. B.) New Vork, 1874.
Clergy of New York and Brooklyn, by J. A. Patton.
Sketch of H. W. B., and portrait. New York, 1874.
A Summer Parish. Sketch and Discourses of the Morning
Services at the Twin Mountain House, N. H., 1874. New
York: J. B. Ford, 1875.
Great Modern Preachers. Sketches of Spurgeon, Stop-
ford Brooke, and Henry Ward Beecher. London, 1875.
Truth and Candor Vindicated from the Assaults, and
Christian Ministers Vindicated from the Compliments of Dr.
Parker, City Temple, in his recent defences of Mr. Beecher,
by Senex Rusticus. London : R. Coulcher, 50 Chancery
Lane, 1874.
Paxton's Complete and Illustrated Edition ; The Great
xxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooklyn Romance. All the Documents of the Beecher-
Tilton Case, unabridged. New York: J. H. Paxton, 1874.
The Great Sensation ; History of the Beecher-Tilton-
Woodhull Scandal. Chicago, 1873.
Ye Tilt-on Beecher; or, The muddle of ye mutual friends
in verse, by the author of Ye Ball. pp. 24. New York,
1874.
The Brooklyn Council of 1874 ; Letter Missive, State-
ments, and Documents, together with a full stenographical
report of the proceedings, and the result of the Council.
New York, 1874.
The Romance of Plymouth Church, its Pastor, and his
Accusers, by E. P. Doyle. Hartford, Conn., 1874.
Beecher and his Accusers, including Life of H. W. B.,
by F. P. Williamson. Philadelphia, 1874.
New York Tribune Extra, No. 16. The Brooklyn Con-
gregational Council (complete). New York, 1874.
Wickedness in High Places, by E. B. Fairfield. Mans-
field, O., 1874.
Case of E. B. Fairfield, by R. R. Raymond. New York,
1874.
Metropolitan Sermons. New York Tribune Extras,
Nos. 19 and 20. Includes sketches of four sermons by
H. W. B.
The Story of Henry Ward Beecher and Theo. and Mrs.
Tilton, by the Editor of the Anglo-American Times. Lon-
don: Anglo-American Press, 1874.
History of Plymouth Church, — Manual, Officers, and
full list Members, pp. 92. 1874.
Truth Stranger than Fiction. Guelph, Ont., 1874.
The Beecher-Tilton Investigation ; Full and Impartial
Account, pp. 126. E. E. Barclay & Co.: Philadelphia,
1874.
Drama of Deceit. (A Satire in Verse on H. W. B.)
Worcester, Mass., 1875.
The Little Clincher, being the Great Biblical Defense of
Henry Ward Beecher ; Spicy Poems and Pleasing Articles
on the Beecher-Tilton Scandal (with scurrilous illustrations).
Washington, D. C, 1875.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxix
Case of Mr. Beecher. Opening address by Benj. F.
Tracey. New York, 1875.
Official Report of Trial of Henry Ward Beecher. Notes
and References, edited by Austin Abbott. 2 vols. New
York, 1874.
The Vail Removed. (A Scurrilous Attack on H. W. B.)
New York, 1874.
A Looking-Glass for Henry Ward Beecher. (Similar to
above in part.)
H. W. B. vs. Theo. Tilton : Trial Proceedings. New
York: McDivitt & Campbell. 2 vols., 1875.
True History of the Brooklyn Scandal, by C. F. Marshall.
Philadelphia: National Pub. Co., 1875.
Catholic Sermons, Select Discourses by Eminent Minis-
ters of Various Denominations. Vol. ii., pp. 97-108, Thank-
fulness, H. W. B. London: F. E. Langley, 29 Warwick
Lane, Paternoster Row, E. C, 1875.
The Brooklyn Council of 1876. (Published by Plymouth
Church.) New York: A. S. Barnes, 1875.
Non-conformity upon the Henry Ward Beecher Case, —
A protest against the action of Joseph Parker, in the City
Temple, in sympathy with H. W. B. London, 1875. 2
editions.
Uncontradicted Testimony in the Beecher Case. Preface
by Lyman Abbott. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875.
The Result of the Brooklyn Advisory Council of 1876,
with the Letters of Dr. Leonard Bacon, President Timothy
Dwight, D. D., etc., etc. New York : A. S. Barnes & Co.
The Beecher Trial. A Review of the Evidence for the
New York Times, July 2, 1875. New York, 1875.
Mr. Beecher's Trial : with Portrait. Harper's Weekly
Supplement, June 5, 1875.
An Address on Congregationalism as affected by the de-
clarations of the Advisory Council held in Brooklyn, N. Y.,
February, 1876. By Richard S. Storrs, D. D. March 13,
1876. No publisher.
References and citations prepared for the convenience of
the Brooklyn Council of 1876. With prefatory note by
Henry M. Storrs. No publisher.
xxx BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ingersoll, Beecher, and Dogma, by R. S. Dement. Chi-
cago, 1875.
Views and Interviews on Journalism. (Includes address
by H. W. B., before State Editorial Reunion at Pough-
keepsie.) Chas. F. Wingate, 1875.
The Brooklyn Theatre Fire. Includes address by H. W. B.»
at Memorial Services, Brooklyn. Daily Times Print, 1876-
The Holocaust at the Brooklyn Theatre. Includes ad-
dress by H. W.B. Daily Argus, Brooklyn, 1876.
Oratory, An Oration by H. W. B. Philadelphia, 1876,
'86, '92, '95, '97, '99.
Centennial Orations. Includes address by H. W. B.
Tribune Extra, No. 32, 1876.
The Plymouth Chimes. Devoted to Plymouth Church
and its Missions. 1877-1903.
Address to the Army of the Republic, H. W. B. Spring-
field, Mass., 1878.
Past Perils and the Perils of To-day. A sermon by
H. W. B. Christian Union Print, New York, 1878.
The Background of Mystery. A Sermon by H. W. B.,
December 15, 1877.
The Whole World in Pain. A sermon by H. W. B.
Christian Union Print, 1878.
The Strike and its Lessons. A sermon by H. W. B.
New York, 1878.
In the West. A sermon by H. W. B., with note by
Lyman Abbott. Christian Union Print, 1878.
Christianity Unchanged by Change. Two sermons by
H. W. B., under one cover. Christian Union, No. 10, 1878.
An Hour with the American Hebrew. Includes sermon
by H. W. B. on Jew and Gentile. 1879, New York.
The Plymouth Triangle. A paper of Plymouth Fair?
with article by H. W. B. Brooklyn, March, 1879.
An Account of the Visit of the 13th Regiment, N. G. S.,
New York to Montreal, Canada. Includes address by
H. W. B. Brooklyn, 1879.
Golden Gleams from Henry Ward Beecher's Words and
Works, by John T. Lloyd. Newcastle-on-Tyne, England,
1880.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xm
Plans for Reading. Edited by Lyman Abbott. Includes
article by H. W. B. New York, 1880.
Channing Memorial. Address by H. W. B. Brooklyn
Academy of Music. Boston, 1880.
Memorable Men of the Nineteenth Century. Life, H.»
W. B., with portrait. J. T. Lloyd, London, 1881.
Sermons of H. W. B., 1873-74. Fords, Howard & Hulbert,
New York, 1882.
New England Society of Brooklyn. Addresses by H. W. B.
In Proceedings for 1881, '82, '84, '86.
Henry Ward Beecher's Statement of Belief before the
New York and Brooklyn Association. New York: Funk
& Wagnalls, 1882 ; The Christian Union, 1882.
O. A. Brownson, Works, vol. xiii. and vol. xix. Beech-
erism and its Tendency. Detroit, 1882 and 1887.
Progress of Thought in the Church, by H. W. Beecher.
North American Review, August, 1882.
In Memoriam : Hobart Schroeder. Portions Mr. Beecher's
Friday evening talk. No date.
Funeral Service of Dr. H. B. White. Address of H.
W. B. March 28, 1883.
On Free Trade and Congressional Elections. H. W. B.
1883.
A Circuit of the Continent : Account of a tour through
the West and South. By Henry Ward Beecher. With por-
trait. Being his Thanksgiving Day discourse, Nov. 29, 1883.
New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
Life of Henry Ward Beecher by Lyman Abbott, assisted
by S. B. Halliday. pp. 604. New York : Funk & Wagnalls,
1883; and with additional matter, London, 1887.
Articles of Faith and Principles and Rules of Plymouth
Church. Brooklyn, 1884.
Leading Orators of 25 Campaigns, by W. C. Roberts,
Portrait and sketch of H. W. B. New York : K. L. Strouse
& Co., 1884,
Address at the Brooklyn Rink, by H. W. B. Brooklyn,
October, 1884.
Wendell Phillips ; A Commemoration Discourse, by H.
W. B. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1884.
xxxii BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beecher's Cleveland Letters : — Two Letters on the Re-
construction of the Southern States, written by H. W. B.,
in 1866, with introductory postscript. 1884..
A Circuit of the Continent. A Thanksgiving sermon by
H. W. B. New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1884.
Comforting Thoughts (arranged by Irene Ovington from
Beecher's sermons). New York: Fords, Howard & Hul-
bert, 1884, '90, '93, 1901, with introduction by Newell
Dwight Hillis.
A Surrender to Infidelity. A reply to Rev. H. W. Beecher.
A sermon preached by Justin D. Fulton, D. D., in the Cen-
tennial Baptist Church, Brooklyn. New York : Funk &
Wagnalls, 1884.
Fifty Years among Authors, Books and Publishers.
Reminiscences by J. C. Derby. Chapter on H. W. B. New
York, 1884.
Evolution and Religion. A few sermons by H. W. B.,
with portrait. New York : Gallison & Hobson, 18§5.
Evolution and Religion. Part i. Theoretical. Part ii.
Practical. Eight sermons discussing the bearing, of the
Evolutionary Philosophy on the Fundamental Doctrines of
Evangelical Christianity. New York : Fords, Howard &
Hulbert, 1885, '86. London : James Clarke & Co.
Dedication Ceremonies of N. Y. Lodge No. 1, B. P. O.
Elks, at Evergreen Cemetery. Address of H. W. B.
New York, 1885.
H. B. Claflin Memorial Address, by H. W. B., March 14,
1885. New York, 1885.
Funeral Sermon of Mary Carrington Healy, by H. W. B.
No date.
The New Theology of Henry Ward Beecher Briefly Re-
viewed, by Henry Webb. Philadelphia, 1885.
Memorial Volume of City of Boston, of U. S. Grant,
including Eulogy of Grant by H. W. B. Boston, 1886.
Beecher Book of Days. Compiled by Eleanor Kirk and
C. B. Lerow. New York, 1886.
E. T. Mason's Humorous Masterpieces. Selections from
H. W. B. New York, 1886.
Henry Ward Beecher's Last Sermon. Preached in
Plymouth Church. London, 1887.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxiii
I am resolved what to do. Last sermon of Henry Ward
Beecher, February 27, 1887. New York: Gallager &
Hoeffer, 1887.
Sermons in the Brooklyn Magazine, 1886-87.
The Beecher Calendar for 1887. New York, 1887.
Beecher as a Humorist. Selections from the published
works of H. W. B. by Eleanor Kirk. New York. Fords,
Howard & Hulbert, 1887.
Henry Ward Beecher : A Memorial — Plymouth Church,
1887.
The Christian Union Supplement : March 17, 1887. Il-
lustrated. Containing biographical sketch, tribute, sermon
by H. W. B., incidents, and anecdotes. The Christian Union
Pub. Co.
Henry Ward Beecher : His Life and Work. Partly re-
print of above. Illustrated. The Christian World, London,
No date.
Beecher Memorial. Contemporaneous Tributes to His
Memory. Edited by Edward W. Bok. New York: 1887.
Same, London, James Clarke & Co., 1887.
Memorial of Henry Ward Beecher, by Jos. H. Knight,
New York, 1887.
A Tribute to H. W. Beecher, by Rev. Frank Fitch, March
13, 1887. Buffalo, New York, 1887.
Henry Ward Beecher. A Sermon by John W. Chadwick,
March 13, 1887. G. H. Ellis, Boston, 1887.
Henry Ward Beecher. A discourse delivered in the Union
Park Congregational Church, March 13, 1887, by Rev. F.
Noble, D. D. Chicago, 1887.
Sermon in Plymouth Church, by Rev. Thomas Armitage,
D. D., March 7, 1887. Brooklyn, 1887.
Joseph Parker's Eulogy on Henry Ward Beecher, with
letters by Gladstone and Grover Cleveland, with postscript,
James Clarke & Co., London, 1887.
Sermon by Rev. Duncan McGregor, D. D., preached in
the Carroll Park M. E. Church on the death of Henry
Ward Beecher. Printed by request of the Trustees. Brook-
lyn, 1887.
Henry Ward Beecher : A sketch of his career : with
xxxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY
analyses of his power as a preacher, lecturer, orator, and
journalist ; and incidents and reminiscences of his life. By
Lyman Abbott, D. D., assisted by Rev. S. B. Halliday. Hart-
ford, Conn.: Am. Pub. Co., 1887.
A Chaplain's Record. Article on H. W. Beecher, by Capt.
D. E. Austen, in North American Review, April, 1887.
New York, 1887.
Patriotic Addresses in England and America, 1850 to
1885, by John R. Howard, with biographical sketch. New
York, 1887 and 1891.
Life of Henry Ward Beecher, by Joseph Howard, Jr.
Hubbard Bros. : Philadelphia.
Routledge's World Library — Henry Ward Beecher in
the Pulpit, with an introduction by Rev. Hugh Reginald
Haweis, M. A. London: Routledge & Son, Ludgate Hall,
1886.
A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher, by
James B. Pond. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert,
1887.
Beecher's Personality. Article in the North American
Review, by W. S. Searle, M. D. May, 1887.
Henry Ward Beecher in England in 1886. James Clarke
& Co. Addresses, Lectures, Sermons and Prayers, London,
1887. With biographical sketch and portrait.
Beecher : Christian Philosopher, Pulpit Orator, Patriot
and Philanthropist. A volume of representative selections,
with biographical sketch, by Thos. W. Hanford. Chicago,
1887.
Catalogue of the library, etc., of H. W. B. American
Art Association : New York, 1887.
Henry W. Beecher. A Lecture delivered by Felix Adler,
for the Society of Ethical Culture at Chickering Hall, New
York, 1887.
Annual Cyclopaedia, Biography of H. W. B. New York,
1887.
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. By Wm. Drysdale. New
York: D. Appleton & Co., 1887.
As above, with introductory note by Joseph Parker,
D. D., City Temple, London. Chas. Burnett & Co., 1887.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Moral Uses of Luxury and Beauty, by H. W. B.
The Christian Union Print, 1887.
The Boyhood of Henry Ward Beecher. A Litchfield
Beecher Day, by Frank S. Child, New Creston, Conn.
1887. pp.32.
Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher, by Thos. W.
Knox. Hartford, Conn., 1887.
Speeches on the American Rebellion (first published in
America). Edited by John Anderson, Jr. New York, 1887.
Religion and Duty ; or, Fifty-eight Sunday Readings from
Henry Ward Beecher. Selected and arranged by Rev. J.
Reeves Brown. London : James Clarke & Co., 1887.
The Apostle Preacher. A sermon preached in Wood St.
Congregational Church, High Burnet, on Sunday, March 27,
1887, in memory of the late Henry Ward Beecher, by Rev.
J. Matthews, with a preparatory note by Rev. Joseph Par-
ker, D. D. London: G. W. Cowing.
Life of Henry Ward Beecher, by W. C. Griswold. Por-
trait and illustrations. Centrebrook, Conn., 1887.
Anecdotes of Henry Ward Beecher, by N. A. Shenstone.
Chicago : R. R. Donnelly & Son, 1887.
Albany Law Journal, J. D. Parsons, March 19, 1887.
Proposed Memorial to the late Henry Ward Beecher.
F. W. Evans, Mt. Lebanon College, New York, 1887.
Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by W. C. Beecher
and Samuel Sooville, assisted by Mrs. H. W. Beecher.
New York : Chas. L. Webster & Co., 1888.
The above, London, by Sampson, Low, Marston & Co.,
1888.
Current Religious Perils, by Joseph Cook. (Contains re-
marks on H. W. B.)
Henry Ward Beecher. Memorial Address delivered in
Plymouth Church, by R. W. Raymond, March 11, 1888.
A String of Pearls. Selections from H. W. B. New York,
1888.
Beecher, by G. W. Washburn. J. B. Lippincott : Phila-
delphia, 1888.
Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by C. E. Stowe. (Con-
letters from H. W. B.) New York, 1889.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Signs oil Promise. Sermons by Lyman Abbott. (Contains
Memorial Sermons on H. W. B.) New York, 1889.
Crown of Life. Selections from the writings of H. W. B.,
by Mary Storrs Haynes, with introduction by R. W. Ray-
mond. Boston : D. Lothrop & Co.
Memorial Service in Plymouth Church, March, 1891, with
Memorial Address by Thos. G. Shearman. New York :
Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1891.
Mr. Beecher as I knew him. Mrs. H. W. Beecher, in
Ladies' Home Journal, Philadelphia, October, 1895.
Faith. Mr. Beecher's last (morning) sermon. Ellinwood :
Brooklyn, 1891, '92.
The Hidden Manna and the White Stone. A sermon by
Mr. Beecher, July 6, 1866, with appendix by Mrs. Beecher.
Ellinwood : Brooklyn, 1892.
A Book of Prayer, by H. W. Beecher. Compiled by El-
linwood. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1892 ; Dickinson :
London, 1892.
Addresses. Edited by F. Saunders. (Includes the Advance
of a Century by H. W. B.) 1893.
Bible Studies. Readings in the early history of the Old
Testament, with familiar comments ; Plymouth Church,
1878-79. Edited by John R. Howard. Fords, Howard &
Hulbert, New York, 1893.
Best Thoughts of Henry Ward Beecher, with portrait and
biographical sketch, by Lyman Abbott, D. D. H. G. Good-
speed & Co., 1893.
Life of H. W. Beecher, the Shakespeare of the Pulpit.
By J. H. Barrows, D. D. New York : Funk & Wagnalls,
1893. London and Toronto.
Other Essays from the Easy Chair. G. W. Curtis. In-
cludes account of Mr. Beecher's preaching on Lincoln's
death. New York, 1893.
The Plymouth Hymnal. Edited by Lyman Abbott. (Con-
tains historical introduction on the service rendered to
hymnology by H. W. B.) New York : The Outlook Co.,
1893.
Donn Piatt : Sunday Meditations. Includes selected
sketches by H. W. B. Cincinnati : Robt. Clark, 1893.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxvii
Beecher Exonerated. A poem by Isaac M. Inman. New
York : Franklin Press Co., 1893.
History of the 13th Regiment. Chapter on H. W. B. as
chaplain, with portrait. Brooklyn, 1894.
Famous Leaders Among Men. Sarah Knowles Bolton.
Includes account of H. W. B. New York and Boston,
1894.
Metaphors, Similes, and other Characteristic Sayings
from the Discourses of H. W. B. Edited by Ellinwood.
Introduction by H. B. Sprague. Andrew Graham : New
York, 1895 ; London, 1895.
Specimens of Argumentative Modes. Compiled by George
P. Baker, Assistant Professor in English', Harvard University.
Henry Holt & Co., 1896. Includes speech delivered by H.
W. Beecher in Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, October 18,
1863, with notes by the editor, as an illustration of persuasive
oratory.
Library of the World's Best Literature. Includes por-
trait of H. W. B., and review of his work, by Lyman Ab-
bott, in vol. iii. New York, 1896.
Men Who Win ; or, Making Things Happen, by Wm.
Thayer. Has chapter on H. W. B. T. Nelson & Sons, New
York, 1896.
The Literature of America, by W. W. Birdsall and others.
Account of H. W. B. Chicago and Philadelphia, 1897.
The New Puritanism. Addresses at the Semi-Centennial
of Plymouth Church, by Lyman Abbott, Amory H. Brad-
ford, Charles A. Berry, George A. Gordon, Washington
Gladden, and W. J. Tucker. Introduction by R. W. Ray-
mond. New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1897 ; Lon-
don : James Clarke & Co., 1897.
Poetical Sermons; Including the Ballad of Plymouth
Church, and The Heart of the Republic. (Poems on H. W.
B., by W. E. Davenport.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1897.
Address on H. W. B., by J. B. Pond, before the Long
bland Historical Society. Brooklyn, 1897.
Giants of the Republic, by J. H. Vincent. Chapter on
H. W. B. 1898.
xxxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY
Autobiographical Reminiscences. Edited by T. J. Ellin-
wood. Selections from talks by H. W. B. New York, 1898.
R. C. Ringwalts. Modern American Oratory. Includes
The Sepulchre in the Garden, by H. W. B. New York, 1898.
American Orations. Edited by A. Johnson. Includes
H. W. B.'s Liverpool Address. 1898.
The Fruit of the Spirit, by Rev. Alford B. Penniman.
Chapter on H. W. B. Adams, Mass., New York, 1898.
Reminiscences, by Justin M'Carthy. Chapter on H. W. B.,
and Woman's Rights. Harper Bros. : New York, 1899.
Patriotic Nuggets. New York : Fords, Howard & Hul-
bert, 1899.
The Clergy in American Life and Letters, by D. D.
Addison. Includes account of H. W. B. London: Macmillan,
1900.
The World's Best Orations. Edited by David J. Brewer.
Includes oration by H. W. B. New York, 1899.
Brooklyn Eagle Library. No. 39, Plymouth Church An-
nals. February, 1900.
Eccentricities of Genius, by J. B. Pond. Chapter on
H. W. B. New York : G. W. Dillingham, 1901.
Henry Ward Beecher. Article in Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, by Lyman Abbott, D. D. 1902.
Henry Ward Beecher Souvenir. (A booklet of quota-
tions.) No date.
Translation into German, by Rossiter W. Raymond, of
Life Thoughts, by H. W. B. Berlin. No date.
Translation into German of Royal Truths, with a Sermon
on the Slavery Question, by H. W. B. Berlin.
Translation into German of Sermons, by H. W. B., with a
biographical introduction by Henri Tollin. Berlin, 1870.
Translation into Welsh of quotations from H. W. B. and
others. Crexham, Hughes & Son. No date.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
HENRY WARD BEECHER
CHAPTER I
The beginning of Mr. Beecher's real life was a
spiritual experience which he himself has graphi-
cally described. I can find no exact date for this
experience ; but the opening sentence of his de-
scription implies that it occurred after his gradua-
tion from Amherst College ; and in his address to
the London ministers in 1886 he refers to it as
having taken place in the Ohio woods, and " when
he had studied theology," evidently therefore dur-
ing his seminary course.
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 before God, the brightest
thing I shall look back upon will be that blessed morning
of May when it pleased God to reveal to my wandering
soul the idea that it was his nature to love a man in his
sins for the sake of helping him out of them ; that he did
2 HENRY WARD BEECHER
not do it out of compliment to Christ, or to a law, or a
plan of salvation, but from the fullness of his great heart ;
that he was a Being not made mad by sin, ^ut sorry ; that
he was not furious with wrath toward the sinner, but pitied
him — in short that he felt toward me as my mother felt
toward me, to whose eyes my wrong-doing brought tears,
who never pressed me so close to her as when I had done
wrong, and who would fain with her yearning love lift
me out of trouble. And when I found that Jesus Christ
had such a disposition, and that when his disciples did
wrong he drew them closer to him than he did before
— and when pride, and jealousy, and rivalry, and all vul-
gar 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 everything low and debasing to superi-
ority, I felt that I had found a God. I shall never for-
get the feelings with which I walked forth that May
morning. The golden pavements will never feel to my
feet as then the grass felt to them ; and the singing of
the birds in the woods — for I roamed in the woods —
was cacophonous to the sweet music of my thoughts ; and
there were no forms in the universe which seemed to me
graceful enough to represent the Being, a conception of
whose character had just dawned on my mind. I felt,
when I had 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 was never far from
me, but was always near me, as a companion and friend,
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 3
to uphold and sustain me. This was the last and the best
revelation of God's Spirit to my soul. It is what I con-
sider 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 cannot be a good man until then ;
but he has not got to Jerusalem till the gate has been
opened to him, and he has seen the King sitting in his
glory, with love to him individually.
To the interpretation of this vision and the im-
partation of the life which it begot in him he
thenceforth gave himself. Was this vision true ?
Was this life of value ? By the answer to these two
questions his character and career must be meas-
ured.
Some changes in public sentiment are so radi-
cal and so widespread that it is almost impossi-
ble for one born in the later time to realize from
what they have been delivered or the price which
has been paid for their deliverance. It is difficult
for readers living in the light and warmth of the
twentieth century to realize the conception of reli-
gious truth and life which dominated the reason and
the conscience in the beginning of the nineteenth
century. But some understanding of this concep-
tion is absolutely necessary if one would compre-
hend the life or estimate the public service of Henry
Ward Beecher. For that service lies not so much
in any definite contribution to theological thought
as in a change made in the atmosphere of religious
thinking and living.
The nineteenth century opened with very little
4 HENRY WARD BEECHER
of either light or warmth in the Puritan churches
of England and America. Aggressive piety was al-
most confined to the Methodist churches, which had
not yet lost the enthusiasm of their first great love
and their first surprising successes. The philosophy
of Locke was the dominant philosophy in England,
and was preparing the public mind for the material-
ism of Maudsley, the agnosticism of Herbert Spen-
cer, and the Utilitarianism of Bentham and of Mill.
In the Church of England worship was a dull rou-
tine and faith a cold intellectualism. The orthodox
definition of faith made it synonymous with belief,
the orthodox definition of virtue made it synony-
mous with happiness. Mental philosophy ignored
the spiritual element in man ; moral philosophy de-
nied the virtues of self-denial and suffering. Already,
as the first quarter of that century drew to its close,
the protest of the unquenchable instincts of the
heart had begun to make itself felt in three distinct
but substantially contemporaneous movements. In
the Oxford Movement earnest men, making quest
for that life which the popular philosophy of the
day either quietly ignored or dogmatically denied,
turned their faces backward, and sought, by reviv-
ing the mystical doctrines and the elaborate ritual
of the half -pagan church of the early ages, to revive
the life which had animated both. Under the inspi-
ration of such devout souls as the poet John Keble
and the prophet John Henry Newman, there was
a revival of archaeology in religion, the results of
which are still to be seen in a revived Anglo-Ro-
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 5
manism, an imitative ritualism, and a vigorous and
vital work of Christian beneficence among the poor
and the outcast. Simultaneously started, though
without organism or acknowledged leader, the Broad
Church Movement, in which men, equally dissat-
isfied with the superficial philosophy of the age,
sought for spiritual truth by looking within for the
witness to it, a movement whose prophets — Er-
skine, Maurice, Thomas Arnold, Robertson, Kings-
ley, Stanley, and Farrar — have made their voices
heard across the Atlantic, where their interpre-
tation of life has been caught up and reechoed
by such prophets as our own Munger, Mulford,
Brooks, and a score of others. The same dissatis-
faction with the ideals of the Church and the uni-
versities sent still another school in search of spirit-
ual life to the Scriptures, whose truths found new
interpreters in such scholars as Tregelles, Words-
worth, Davidson, Ellicott, Alford, and Conybeare
and Howson.
This threefold reaction against a spiritless psy-
chology and a superficial if not an Epicurean moral
philosophy must not be forgotten in making any
true estimate of the progress of thought in our own
churches on this side of the Atlantic. For here, too,
the churches had lost their power over the masses
of the people, though from other causes. They
were manacled by a fatalism which they had in-
herited from the Reformation. Luther himself de-
clared that man had lost his freedom by the Fall,
and that God had in his secret counsels reserved
6 HENRY WARD BEECHER
certain of his children to inevitable reprobation.
Calvin, equipped with less tender sympathies and
with more remorseless logic, had undertaken to
drag these counsels out from the secret places where
Luther left them in hiding, and to blazon them
abroad throughout all Europe. The Methodist re-
volt against a fatalism as inconsistent with Scrip-
ture as it is with personal consciousness had only
intensified in the churches of Puritan descent the
dangerous dogmas of unconditional election and
reprobation. These churches held that God existed
for his own glory ; that he had eternally elected a
few to salvation, and reprobated the many to end-
less sin and shame ; that he had made this choice
for them without reference to their character or
actions ; that the decree was absolutely irrevocable ;
that the damnation of the many and the salvation
of the few served equally, not only to enhance his
majesty and redound to his praise, but also to in-
crease his joy and the holy joy of the blessed. The
least of the evils which accompanied the preaching
of this travesty on the Scriptures, founded on the
misapprehension of a few enigmatical texts taken
out of their connection and therefore robbed of
their true meaning, was the infidelity which it fos-
tered. It quickened unbelief and deadened vital
piety. There were no revivals. The churches did
not believe in them. The minister was a winnower
whose Gospel was a fan in his hand, with which he se-
lected the eternally chosen grain, while the unalter-
able chaff was swept away into unquenchable fire.
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 7
Theology is at once the cause and the product
of the religious life ; and the religious life of New
England in the first quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury was such as this theology might well be ex-
pected to indicate. Intemperance was all but
universal. It entered not only every village, but
every home. Every store was a drinking store.
The noisome odors of the bar polluted even the
parsonage on the occasion of ordinations and other
kindred ministerial gatherings. Slavery not merely
held three millions of slaves in bondage, but con-
trolled the nation, and openly formed its plan for
making of the republic a great slave empire ; denied
the right of free speech in both North and South ;
denied the right of petition in Congress ; and so
stifled the Church that only in isolated pulpits was
the voice of remonstrance raised against it. There
was no missionary zeal, and at the beginning of
the century no missionary organization, either
home or foreign. The American Board, the mo-
ther of them all, was organized only three years
before Mr. Beecher was born, and then against the
open opposition of conservatism in the Church
and the still more serious obstacle of an almost
universal indifference. Infidelity was common.
Thomas Paine was far more popular in his day
than Robert Ingersoll has been in ours, and Byron
was far more read and admired than is Swinburne
now. When Dr. D wight took the presidency of
Yale College, there were in it two Thomas Paine
societies and only four or five students known to
8 HENRY WARD BEECHER
be professing Christians; and so popular was
French infidelity that a number of the leading
members of the Senior class had dropped their
own names and taken instead the names of lead-
ing French infidels, as Voltaire, Rousseau, and
D'Alembert. There was, it is true, a " Moral
Society of Yale College ; " but apparently it was
organized only to debate religious and ethical ques-
tions, and it is significant that it was a secret soci-
ety, and any disclosure of its proceedings was pun-
ishable by expulsion.1 In the churches long creeds
were being substituted for the short and simple
covenants of the earlier Puritans, in a vain hope
thus to turn back the current. The great Uni-
tarian revolt against Puritan theology had already
begun with the settlement of Channing in Boston
in 1803, a revolt which became organic in the
formation of .the Unitarian Association in 1825.
There was already impending the battle between
the Old School and the New School in theology,
which subsequently rent the Presbyterian denomi-
nation, and would have rent the Congregational-
ists also if they had been sufficiently organized to
be capable of division.
Such was the legacy which the Puritan theology
of the eighteenth century had left to New Eng-
land : a fear of God ; a reverence for his law ; a
strenuous though narrow and conventional con-
1 Life of Timothy Dwight : Introduction to Dwighfs Theology,
p. 20 ; Two Centuries of Christian Activity at Yale College, p. 55 ;
Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher, i. 43.
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 9
science ; but also a religion divorced from ethics ;
a Church silent in the presence of intemperance
and slavery ; without missionary zeal or mission-
ary organization; threatened by the intellectual
revolt which eventually carried from it some of its
wisest and noblest men ; and surrounded by a com-
munity lapsing into indifference and neglect or
combining in open and cynical infidelity.
But already conscience was beginning to protest
within the Church against these spiritual condi-
tions. Dr. Timothy Dwight in New Haven put
the infidelity of Thomas Paine on trial by a re-
statement of Christian doctrine in more rational
forms than those which had created the infidel
reaction against Christianity. Dr. Lyman Beecher
in Boston restated orthodox doctrine in reply to
the criticisms of Dr. Channing, and in such a way
as to provoke the criticisms of the conservative in
the orthodox churches. Albert Barnes was put on
trial in Philadelphia for teaching that God is love
and man is free. Drs. Finney and Nettleton em-
phasized their faith in a new theology by the " new
measures " which they inaugurated in revivals of
religion. The organization in 1810 of the Ameri-
can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
was followed by the organization of the American
Home Missionary Society1 in 1826. The first
gun in the long temperance campaign, fired by
Dr. Lyman Beecher in 1826, was followed by the
1 The name has since been changed to The Congregational
Home Missionary Society.
10 HENRY WARD BEECHER
organization of the Washingtonian Society and the
birth of the Washingtonian Movement in 1840.
Into this atmosphere of awakening life Henry-
Ward Beecher was born, and in it he grew up to
manhood. The theological movement which had
radically changed the character and spirit of the
Church had in America many leaders ; chief among
them I count Horace Bushnell, Charles G. Finney,
and Henry Ward Beecher : the first, the prophet
of faith ; the second, the prophet of hope ; the
third, the prophet of love.
Dr. Emmons died in 1840, the last of the merely
logical preachers of New England ; and with him
died the orthodox rationalism which, up to the
close of the eighteenth century, dominated the
Puritan pulpit. This rationalism assumed that
man is a reasonable creature ; that the reason is
the supreme faculty ; that this reason is to be con-
vinced by the truth ; and when it is convinced, the
will must of necessity obey ; and that when this
result is reached, the man is a converted man and
a new creature. Such was the philosophy which,
sometimes avowed, sometimes unrecognized, under-
lay the earlier Puritan preaching. The whole
fabric of the religious life was built by logical pro-
cesses, with doctrine, on the human reason. But
all men are not logical, and all men do not obey
the truth even when it is made clear to their lo-
gical understanding. Spiritual truth is not mined
by picks and beaten out by hammers ; it is not to
be arrived at by slow processes of demonstration,
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 11
but to be apprehended and appreciated upon the
bare presentation of it. Truth is a form of life ;
and only as it is received as a life, vitalizing and
dominating the soul, is it spiritually efficacious.
Of this philosophy, which is more than a philo-
sophy, Horace Bushnell was the chief exponent in
the Puritan churches. That the invisible world
is immediately and directly seen by the spirit of
men ; that God is no mere hypothesis to account for
the phenomena of creation, but man's best friend,
his Father, and intimate personal companion ; that
inspiration is no remote phenomenon, once attested
by miracles now buried forever in the grave of a
dead God, but the universal and eternal commun-
ion between living souls and the living God ; that
the Bible is no infallible record offered as a sub-
stitute for such communion, but a prophetical illus-
tration of its reality and an incentive to its con-
tinuance ; that; the forgiveness of sins is infinitely
more than any theory of atonement, and that no
theory of atonement can comprehend the full mean-
ing of the forgiveness of sins — these were not the
theories of a philosopher, but the vital convictions,
because the living experiences, of the saint, whose
sainthood must be in the heart of the critic of
Horace Bushnell before he can criticise, and in the
heart of the disciple before he can comprehend.
This progress toward a more spiritual apprehen-
sion of truth carried with it a clearer conception
of human liberty. All theories of fatalism fall
away before the personal test of self-consciousness.
12 HENRY WARD BEECHER
That man is a free moral agent ; that he can do
right and is therefore blameworthy for doing
wrong ; that he is sinful — not because he was
made so, but because he had made himself so:
the nineteenth century is the century of political
and industrial emancipation, because in the redis-
covery of this truth it has won spiritual emancipa-
tion. The Lutherans have long since disowned
Luther's theory of a secret counsel of God. The
Calvinists have abandoned John Calvin's doctrine
that man lost moral freedom by the Fall. The
doctrines of limited atonement and of uncondi-
tional election, though they may still be preserved
in fossiliferous creeds, are rarely, if ever, dragged
forth from their archaeological retreat, at least by
any son of the Puritan in any Puritan church.
Civilization disowns them absolutely, unanimously,
and with indignation. The power of Charles G.
Finney lay in his vigorous and vehement interpre-
tation of this indignant protest within the orthodox
Church against the spirit of fatalism. His clarion-
like voice, his logical mind, his legal education, his
intensity of conviction, his singularly unaffected
and unconventional piety, his impressive personal-
ity, combined with his overmastering sense of
man's liberty and therefore of man's responsibility,
made him the most remarkable revival preacher
of his age. To men paralyzed by the despair
engendered by fatalism, his message was, You can,
therefore you may ; to men paralyzed by the indif-
ference engendered by fatalism, his message was,
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 13
You can, therefore you must. Liberty and re-
sponsibility are always coterminous ; hope and duty
are different aspects of the same experience. Dr.
Finney was the preacher of liberty and responsi-
bility ; he was therefore an apostle of duty and of
hope.
If Horace Bushnell was the apostle of faith,
and Charles G. Finney was the apostle of hope,
Mr. Beecher was characteristically the apostle of
love. The Puritan did not believe that God is
love. His conception of God was represented by
the phrase most commonly used to describe him —
"The Moral Governor of the Universe." The
phrase " Fatherhood of God " is rarely found in
the sermons of the older Puritan divines. The
dominant doctrine concerning God in the Puritan
churches in the first third of the nineteenth cen-
tury is fairly represented in Dr. Edward Payson's
sermon on " Jehovah, a King " : " Jehovah is a
great king ; under obligations to make laws for his
subjects ; the best and wisest laws possible ; and to
enforce those laws and inflict the threatened pun-
ishment on all who transgress them." The dom-
inant doctrine concerning the Bible is represented
by Dr. Lyman Beecher's sermon in 1817 on " The
Bible a Code of Laws " : " The word of God is a
code of law which the Moral Governor of the Uni-
verse has given us to set forth his glory."
To Henry Ward Beecher, from that day in May
when the vision was afforded to him which he has re-
counted, Christ was God ; not a messenger sent from
14 HENRY WARD BEECHER
God ; not a Someone coming between God and the
human soul to appease God and admit the human
soul to the privileges of a purchased mercy ; not
a manifestation of the mercy of God, holding back
for a little while the wrath of God, as hounds are
held back by the leash until it is cut and they are
set free ; but God manifest in the flesh : no wrath
in God that was not in Christ ; no justice in God
that there was not in Christ; no judgment which
God has ever rendered or ever will render that
Christ has not typified in his earthly judgments on
Publican and Pharisee ; no meekness, tenderness,
sympathy, patience, long-suffering in Christ that
are not in the Father whom he manifested on the
earth. This to Mr. Beecher was not a theory : it
was a vital experience. He honored Christ as he
honored the Father ; to him all revelation of God
was in Christ, all revelation of duty was in Christ's
life, all revelation of truth was in Christ's teach-
ing. Criticised because he lectured in Boston
upon Theodore Parker's platform, he thus replied
to the intimation that he was at one with Theodore
Parker in his religious beliefs : —
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 thought arises,
and that is the Holy Spirit. But neither are to me
aught tangible, restful, accessible. They are to be re-
vealed to my knowledge hereafter, but now only to my
THE MEANING OF MR. BEECHER'S LIFE 15
faith. But Christ stands my manifest God. All that
I know is of him, and in him. I put my soul into his
arms, as, when I was born, my father put me into my
mother's arms. I draw all my life from him. I
bear him in my thoughts hourly, as I humbly believe
that he also bears me. For I do truly believe that we
love each other ! — I, a speck, a particle, a nothing, only
a mere beginning of something that is gloriously yet to
be when the warmth of God's bosom shall have been
a summer for my growth ; — and HE, the Wonderful
Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father,
the Prince of Peace !
How this faith grew up in Mr. Beecher, how as
a boy he was prepared for it, what it came to mean
to him, what in theological and ethical instruction
it involved, how far he was faithful to it, and what
effect his preaching of it by pen and voice has pro-
duced in the life of the American people, it will
be the purpose of this volume to show. For in
this faith we find the key to the interpretation of
his character and his career, as a preacher, a moral
reformer, an editor, a lecturer, and an author.
CHAPTER II
THE MAKING OF THE MAN
Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield,
Connecticut, June 24, 1813, the eighth child of
Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher.1 I make no
attempt to trace his genealogy farther back ; those
who desire to do so will find the material in the
" Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman
Beecher."
Lyman Beecher was a Congregational minister,
who attained in his day an eminence scarcely less than
that which his son later attained. During his active
pastorate (1798-1834) the country was smaller; the
means of intercommunication less; there were no
railroads; steamboats were just coming into use;
the telegraph did not exist ; newspapers were few
and poorly equipped, and rarely gave reports of ser-
mons or religious assemblages ; the questions which
stirred the public excited neither the passion of en-
thusiasm nor the passion of rancor which was aroused
by the antislavery conflict and the Civil War. For
these reasons, if for no other, the reputation of the
1 The statement in the family Biography of Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher that he was the ninth child (page 41) is evidently a slip
of either pen or type, as appears from a comparison with other
statements in the Biography and with the Autobiography and Cor-
respondence of Lyman Beecher.
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 17
father never extended so widely as that of the son.
But contemporaries who were familiar with both
not infrequently rated the elder preacher as the
equal in forcefulness and power of the younger. I
recall, as one of the dim memories of my boyhood,
a sermon which I heard Lyman Beecher preach in
Boston something over half a century ago, probably
after his retirement from the active ministry. It
was directed against the doctrine that man can be
saved by good works. I recall the figure of the
preacher, the spectacles upon the nose while he was
reading his notes and thrust up upon the forehead
or sometimes held in the hand while he was extem-
porizing, the impassioned gestures, the torrent of
words, the vehemence of conviction behind them,
and the general outline of the sermon — an imagi-
nary ledger page, with the good deeds put on the
credit side, and the failures, the omissions, and the
sins on the debit side, and the balance cast up at
the foot of the page. More than this I do not
recall. But I am sure that no sermon would be
remembered by me for fifty years if it had not
been one of extraordinary impressiveness. In fact
there is only one other sermon, only two addresses
of any kind, of that period, that have left any
impression on my mind : the first, a sermon by
the elder Tyng to young men ; the second, the
address by Daniel Webster given in 1850, in
Niblo's Garden.
Both the theological and the moral issues of 1813
were very different from those of the latter half of
18 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the nineteenth century. In theology the burning
questions were two : one, Is man a free moral agent,
or is he under unalterable decrees of an omnipotent
Creator ? the other, Is man so ruined in the Fall
that he can be saved only by divine omnipotent
grace through Jesus Christ, or is he by nature a
child of God, possessing God's nature, needing little
more than the corrections which come through
normal development and healthful education, and
is Jesus Christ only a teacher to direct him and
an example for him to follow ?
It seems strange now to read, in a letter of one
of Dr. Lyman Beecher's contemporaries written to
him in 1816, the following sentence : " The doc-
trines of free agency and sinners' immediate duty
to repent do wonders among my people. I preach
them publicly and privately. I have no fear. My
congregation the first Sabbath I preached after I
got home stared as if I was crazy. * I am not mad,
most noble Festus.' " It is difficult for us to-day to
imagine a condition in which such preaching should
have aroused opposition, excited enthusiasm, and
produced revivals ; but such was the fact. Dr. Ly-
man Beecher was an earnest advocate of this, which
was then the " new theology," and he employed
freely what were then known as the " new methods : "
the prayer-meeting, the revival sermon, the inquiry
bench, rising for prayer, and the open confession of
Christ. A little later, when he moved from Litch-
field to Boston, he represented the conservative ten-
dencies in opposition to Unitarianism, as before he
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 19
had represented the progressive tendencies in oppo-
sition to Calvinism, and became by dint of his force-
fulness and the earnestness of his convictions and
his dramatic and oratorical ability the representa-
tive of the Orthodox, as Channing was the repre-
sentative of the Unitarians. He was by nature a
warrior and delighted in battle. Theology was to
him no dry and jejune science, but living and prac-
tical. Truth was instrumental ; his problem always
how so to use it as to stir, quicken, and develop life.
He brought his theological controversies into the
home circle, and set his boys arguing with him on
every kind of question, political, moral, and theo-
logical. He thus developed their mental muscle,
taught them to do their own thinking, and to stand
by their convictions and defend them against strong
opposition. He had a delightful, naive, childlike
egotism, quite free from self-conceit, yet inspiring
him with a kind of self-assurance which is often
the precursor of victory. Henry Ward Beecher
once said to me : " My father always had the angel
of hope looking over his shoulder when he wrote.
I have always written with the angel of sorrow
perched upon my pen ; success has always come as
a surprise to me." Henry Ward Beecher was a
man of many moods, and it was not safe to take
too seriously such a self-interpretation, but that he
rightly interpreted his father I have no doubt. The
father's " Autobiography and Correspondence " af-
fords many illustrations of this wholly unconscious
egotism ; one instance will suffice to make clear
20 HENRY WARD BEECHER
to the sympathetic reader this characteristic. The
death of Alexander Hamilton in his duel with
Aaron Burr had shocked the whole country. Dr.
Lyman Beecher had taken the occasion to write and
preach a sermon on dueling, which being published
created no little stir. He followed it with a resolu-
tion in the synod at Newark^ New Jersey, — for at
this time he was settled in East Hampton, Long
Island, and was in the Presbytery, — recommending
the formation of societies against dueling. What
ensued he thus describes : —
I anticipated no opposition. Everything seemed go-
ing straight. But next morning a strong reaction was
developed, led by Dr. . The fact was, a class of
men in his parish, politically affiliated with men of
dueling principles, went to him and said the thing must
be stopped. He came into the house and made opposi-
tion, and thereupon others joined, and it suddenly raised
such a storm as I never was in before nor since. The
opposition came up like a squall, sudden and furious,
and there I was, the thunder and lightning right in my
face ; but I did not back out. When my turn came, I
rose and knocked away their arguments, and made them
ludicrous. Never made an argument so short, strong,
and pointed in my life. I shall never forget it. There
was a large body; house full; my opponent a D. D. ;
and I was only thirty, a young man nobody had ever
heard of. I shall never forget the looks of Dr. Miller
after I began to let off. He put on his spectacles, came
round till he got right opposite to where I stood, and
there he stared at me with perfect amazement. Oh, I
declare ! if I did not switch 'em, and scorch 'em, and
stamp on 'em ! It swept all before it. Dr. made
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 21
no reply. It was the centre of old fogyism, but I mowed
it down, mid carried the vote of the house.1
From this incident the reader will correctly sur-
mise that Dr. Lyman Beecher carried into ethical
questions the same intensity of conviction and fiery
earnestness which he carried into theological con-
troversies. He was more of a theologian than his
son, but he was not less a moral reformer. Drink-
ing in his time was universal ; drunkenness was
common; alcoholic liquors were always provided
at church ordinations, and not infrequently by the
church, and charged in as a part of its expenses.
It was customary to appoint a committee on tem-
perance at the General Association, and it was cus-
tomary for the committee to satisfy itself with
platitudes. In 1812 a committee of the General
Association of Massachusetts brought in a report
of this description, the gist of it being, as Lyman
Beecher afterwards summarized it, that intemper-
ance had been for some time increasing in a most
alarming manner, but that the committee were
obliged to confess that they did not perceive that
anything could be done. This report of inability
was just the thing to stir the blood of Lyman
Beecher. He rose instantly and moved the appoint-
ment of a new committee ; he was necessarily made
its chairman ; and the next day he brought in a
report which he characterizes as " the most impor-
tant paper that ever I wrote." This was followed
1 Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher, vol. i.
p. 153.
22 HENRY WARD BEECHER
by a series of resolutions recommending the min-
isters to preach on the subject of temperance, the
churches to discontinue the use of ardent spirits at
church meetings, and the people to cease using
them as part of hospitable entertainment in social
visits, to substitute palatable and nutritious drinks
in the place of alcohol in providing for the work-
inginen on the farm and elsewhere, and to cooper-
ate with the civil magistrates in the execution of
the laws. He did not at that time urge total
abstinence. Fourteen years later he preached a
famous series of sermons on temperance, which was
one of the causes that led to the great Washing-
tonian Movement.
Such was the father of Henry Ward Beecher.
The mother was not less remarkable, though in
temperament and character singularly different.
Roxana Foote came of a Cavalier ancestry, and
her family had remained loyal to King George
throughout the American Revolution. She was
early confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and re-
mained attached to its ceremonial ; but the reader
must remember that the Episcopal Church at that
time was in its religious conceptions, if not in its
theological dogmas, as Puritan as the Congrega-
tional Church. Her temperament was poetic. She
was a lover of polite literature, a great lover of
nature, and would surely have been an enthusiastic
lover of art and music had she lived under cir-
cumstances in which she could have indulged and
developed such a love. She wrote and spoke the
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 23
French language fluently ; sang, accompanying
her voice on the guitar ; had considerable skill in
the use of the pencil and the brush ; and notable
skill in the various uses of the needle, from plain
sewing to fine embroidery. Her delicate and sen-
sitive nature incapacitated her for certain of the
functions which at that time in New England a
pastor's wife was expected to perform ; for she was
so sensitive and of so great natural timidity that
she never spoke in company or before strangers
without blushing, and w^s absolutely unable to
lead the devotions in the women's prayer-meetings.
Yet with this personal timidity was intermingled
that peculiar strength which comes from close and
intimate communion with God. Gentle and yet
strong, lover of peace yet glorying in her husband's
battles and in his victories, wholly at one with him
in a supreme consecration to God, her piety of
spirit and her placidity of temperament combined
to give to her an equipoise which made her the
trusted counselor of her husband, on whose judg-
ment he depended, and in whose calm his own
more turbulent spirit found rest.
She died when Henry was but three years old,
yet her influence remained a potent factor in the
formation of his character. From her he inherited
his love of nature, of music, and of art ; from her
the susceptibility to culture, which his education
never fully developed ; from her that femininity
of character, that tenderness and sweetness of
spirit, which endeared him to those who knew him
24 HENRY WARD BEECHER
best, but was almost wholly unrevealed to the
world without, and sometimes assumed by censori-
ous critics to be nothing more than a dramatic as-
sumption. To her also must perhaps be attributed
his affection for the Book of Common Prayer,
which he loved and read, but never, I think, used
in public. I fancy he never could have become an
Episcopal clergyman ; the spontaneity of his
character, his unconventionalism, his serene dis-
regard of traditions of every kind, would have
made it impossible for him to express his devo-
tional spirit in words selected for or imposed upon
him by others. His love and reverence for her he
retained throughout his life. He was accustomed
to say that through his feeling for this, almost un-
known mother he could understand the feeling of
the devout Roman Catholic for the Virgin Mary.
Do those who die remain as guardian angels to
guide, to guard, and to inspire us ? The question
is one which it is impossible to answer. Certainly
the affirmative cannot be demonstrated, but cer-
tainly there is much to warrant the hope, if not to
sustain the hypothesis. Perhaps it is my own half
conscious experience of the influence of a mother
who died in my early childhood which makes me
the more ready to believe that this mother's per-
sonal influence over her boy of strange contradic-
tions did not end when God took her from his
sight. About a year after the mother's death the
father married Miss Harriet F. Porter, of Port-
land, Maine, — "a beautiful lady, very fair, with
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 25
bright blue eyes and soft brown hair, bound round
with a black velvet bandeau," but " so fair, so deli-
cate, so elegant that we [children] were almost
afraid to go near her." x Serene, ladylike, pol-
ished, never lacking in self-possession, but stately
and not easy of approach, she inspired the children
with a reverential affection, but even more with
awe. It was impossible that Henry should ever
have become intimate with her. His nature was
too shy, hers too reserved. Yet indirectly she
strongly affected his early experience by intensify-
ing his awe of religion as something preternatural,
and by cultivating in him a habit of self -inquiry
and self-reproach that were quite foreign to the
healthful development of so exuberant a nature.
The father, mother, and stepmother were not the
only ones who exercised a strong formative influ-
ence over Henry Ward. He came into a family
of brothers and sisters, each of whom possessed
a strongly marked individuality. It would indeed
be difficult to name another family in our times
in which were so many children who in after life
developed character akin to genius. Catharine, as
a school-teacher, became one of the pioneers in
the movement for giving woman a higher educa-
tion, a movement whose consummation she did not
live to see. Edward, as college president in the
West and as pastor in the East, attained no incon-
siderable eminence as educator, preacher, and theo-
logian. Harriet became perhaps the most famous
1 Mrs. Stowe : quoted in Biography, p. 54.
26 HENRY WARD BEECHER
of all American novelists. This was not wholly
because a great historical situation gave to her
dramatic ability a rare opportunity of which she
availed herself in writing " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Had she never written this, her most effective and
striking fiction, u The Minister's Wooing," would
still have made her famous. It takes a place in
the front rank of historical novels as a graphic
and vital picture of a notable epoch. Charles, as
the musical collaborator of his brother Henry in
the preparation of the " Plymouth Collection,"
was one of the earlier contributors to the cause
of congregational singing, and, although his music
no longer survives, and his editorial judgment
does not stand the test of later musical criticism,
the churches of Puritan faith and order owe him
no little debt for the impulse he gave to con-
gregational singing. A half brother, Thomas K.
Beecher, built up in Elmira, New York, an insti-
tutional church before the institutional church
had been heard of, and it remains to this day
one of the best conceived, in its equipment, of
any of its class. So unique was the family that
the classification of humanity, suggested by some
American wit, has passed into a proverb : he
divided mankind into " the good, the bad, and the
Beechers."
There were other members of the family, too, of
whose influence in the formation of Henry's char-
acter account must be taken. There was Aunt
Esther, Lyman Beecher's half sister, who, after
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 27
the death of the mother, became the caretaker and
housekeeper ; who was, as Henry Ward Beecher
once said, " so good and modest that she would
spend ages in Heaven wondering how it ever hap-
pened that she ever got there, and that all the
angels will be wondering why she was not there
from all eternity ; " in whom with this modesty
and goodness was combined the Puritan conscience
applied in that housekeeping which was her spe-
cific sphere ; who was anxious, self -exacting, self-
distrustful, but never fault-finding ; a close econo-
mist, keeping house for Mr. Lyman Beecher, who
was a careless though never a self-indulgent
spender; a thorough believer in the maxim that
order is the first law of Heaven ; superintending a
house whose master was too impetuous and eager
to observe that law, but whose unselfishness of
disposition prevented the friction which otherwise
would have been inevitable. There was Aunt Mary,
the mother's sister, who was a lover of literature
and fiction, and a beautiful reader, and was accus-
tomed to read from Irving and Walter Scott to the
family circle. Although she died a few months
after Henry Ward was born, she left a sacred
memory and a sacred influence behind her. There
was Uncle Samuel, the mother's sea-captain brother,
who made occasional incursions into the family,
bringing all sorts of mementoes from foreign shores,
with exciting stories of his adventures, and whose
humorously combative nature led him to glorify
the vi rt i n -s of the Turks and the pagans and the
28 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Jews, and arouse the master of the house to long
and heated discussions, semi-theological.
There was the society of the town also to share
in moulding the character of the boy. In the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, manufacturing
was in its infancy ; there were no factory towns ;
and the concentration of population in great cities
had not yet begun. The English habit of living in
the country was still continued ; and the best society
was found in the rural districts. There were excel-
lent schools, which made Litchfield an educational
centre. It was a county town, and there gathered
here from time to time, for days together, leading
members of the bar. Its church was a social centre,
and it was ambitious to have an able and intellectual
preacher, and was proud of the one it had. In the
autobiography of Lyman Beecher it is said that
Count , who in youth had spent some years in
Litchfield as a student of the law school, in later
life, though he had in the interim moved in the
highest circles of French society, dwelt with enthu-
siasm on the society of Litchfield, which he declared
was the most charming in the world. Some allow-
ance must be made for the politeness of a French-
man, and for the imperfection of an old man's
recollections, but the testimony is significant.
In such society and in such a family let the
reader imagine Henry Ward Beecher growing up.
The family government was firm but not rigid ;
in general gentle, occasionally severe. Prompt obe-
dience was required. Two or three experiences of
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 29
discipline at the father's hand were sufficient to
teach this lesson ; thereafter a decided word from
father or mother was always sufficient. These
occasions of discipline did nothing to break the
fellowship between the father and the child. The
father's chief daily recreations were frolics with
his children. " I remember him," says Catharine
Beecher, " more as a playmate than in any other
character during my childhood. He was fond of
playing pranks upon us, and trying the queerest
experiments with us, for his amusement as well as
ours. I remember once he swung me out of the
garret window by the hands, to see if it would
frighten me, which it did not in the least." The
father was fond of fishing, and took the children
often with him on his fishing excursions. He shared,
too, the chores and work of the household with the
boys ; and often lightened the household duties with
story-telling, one of the children giving, while the
rest worked, the best account he could of incidents
in one of Scott's novels, which they had recently
read together in the family circle. A Puritan family
it certainly was, in the strength of its conscience,
in the authority of law, in the exactitude of obedi-
ence required. But the picture which in after years
remained on the minds of the children was not like
the conventional picture of the Puritan home. It
is thus portrayed by Mrs Stowe: "One of the
most vivid impressions of the family as it was in
my childish days was of a great household inspired
by the spirit of cheerfulness and hilarity, and of
30 HENRY WARD BEECHER
my father, although pressed and driven with busi-
ness, always lending an attentive ear to anything
in the way of life and social fellowship."
Outside the family there were none who exer-
cised any very direct influence in moulding the char-
acter of the growing boy, unless possibly the very
humble serving-man, whose religion was simply
emotive and untheological, and whom Henry Ward
ever after held in grateful remembrance. I am in-
clined to believe, however, that Mr. Beecher's grati-
tude exaggerated the influence which Charles Smith
exerted upon him. There was not much to inspire
in the church services, held twice every Sunday in
the meeting-house, with its turnip-like canopy over
the minister's head, and its large square pews, and
its singers' seat, and its quaint fuguing tunes, or
in the sermons, unintended and unadapted for chil-
dren ; and as little was there to give true education
in the district school, in its square pine building,
blazing in the unshaded sun in summer, with its
box-iron stove red-hot in winter, and under the
rigorous and unsympathetic discipline of its sharp-
eyed school-mistress, "precise, unsympathetic, keen,
untiring."
So the boy grew up with that curious contradict-
ory nature, so often recognized in after life as
belonging to children, so rarely recognized in the
child by those who have his training. To observers
he seemed simply a wild, careless, frolicsome boy,
full of pranks and mischief, bubbling over with
animal spirits ; restless in school and in church,
•msagmsagBgmm
32 HENRY WARD BEECHER
his father and his second mother as ready to die,
and of himself as not ready to die, and so of a
great gap between himself and them, growing ever
wider and wider, and certain to issue at last in the
great gulf which separated Lazarus from Dives.
The younger generation of this age can never
understand the anguish of soul suffered by chil-
dren brought up in even the more liberal schools
of Puritan theology of the olden time, in which
religion was regarded, not as the transfusion of all
life by the spirit of love and consecration, but as
a separate and preternatural experience, apart from
life, into which one could come only by a spiritual
cataclysm, called regeneration. It is out of her
own experience that Mrs. Stowe has, in "The
Minister's Wooing," so graphically described the
effects of this theology on simple-hearted natures.
At length the love of adventure and the spirit of
unrest combined provoked in the growing boy a
resolve to go to sea. His wise father did not oppose
him — rather commended him ; but told him that
for success in this he must have a course in mathe-
matics and navigation, and to the boy's response,
" 1 am ready," answered by sending him to Mt.
Pleasant, a preparatory school at Amherst, Massa-
chusetts.
Here came a new and potent influence in the
formation of his character. Up to this time he
had been no student, and by his instructors was
counted rather exceptionally dull, though by his
companions in play exceptionally bright. The
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 33
teacher of mathematics at Mt. Pleasant school, W.
P. Fitzgerald, taught him to conquer in studying ;
the teacher of elocution, John Lovell, inspired him
with patience to endure the drudgery of a daily
drill. Now for the first time, at the age of fourteen,
he began to put into brain activity the force and
vigor which up to this time had either gone into
sports or had been worse than wasted in desultory
wrestling with spiritual problems too great for him.
Ever after his experience at Mt. Pleasant he proved
himself capable of that hard work which some one
has declared to be the essence of genius. It has
often been said that Mr. Beecher was not a student.
If to be a student is to be patient, persistent, assid-
uous in the accumulation of facts and the investi-
gation of minute details, it is true Mr. Beecher
never was a student. He was accustomed to get
the results of such investigations from others for
whose ability he always entertained the greatest
respect. But if to be a student is to formulate to
one's self the problem to be investigated, to gather
light from all sources in its investigation, and in
that light to wrestle with the problem until a solu-
tion is found which one dares defend against all
opposers, Mr. Beecher was preeminently a student.
He was no mere omnivorous reader, browsing
among books for self-indulgence, nor gathering
from them simply to pass on to others, as a kind
of reporter, what he had read. He both read for
a purpose and used to good purpose what he read.
For this capacity to study questions, to reach
34 HENRY WARD BEECHER
results, and to defend them against all assailants,
lie was indebted first of all to his father, next, so
I judge from his own reminiscences, to the Mt.
Pleasant preparatory school.
He had not yet joined the church, for he had not
been converted; but in a letter to his sister he
quite unconsciously illustrates the kind of religious
life which has grown up in him without conversion :
" I do not like," he says, " to read the Bible as
well as to pray, but I suppose it is the same as it
is with a lover, who loves to talk with his mistress
in person better than to write when she is afar off."
A little later than this there was a revival at Mt.
Pleasant, and a wave of feeling passed over him
which he thought might be conversion. His father
was quite satisfied on the subject, and partly from
a kind of shamefacedness which kept the boy from
saying he did not think he was a Christian, he " let
them take me into the Church." Like a ship built
on the land that on some moment must be launched
into the sea are some souls ; like a fish born in the
sea and growing up there are others. Henry Ward
Beecher belonged to the latter class ; he never was
launched and needed no launching. The churches
of the Puritans have grown wiser than they were
in his father's time, for which wisdom no little
thanks are due to Dr. Bushnell and his bitterly
criticised book on " Christian Nurture."
This is the boy who in 1830, at seventeen years
of age, entered Amherst College, in a class of forty
members. Out of the evangelical passion in the
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 36
New England churches during the early half of
the nineteenth century, of which Dr. Lyman
Beecher was so distinguished a representative, this
college was born, in 1821. It was organized to
promote the interests of evangelical religion by
providing for the education of indigent young men
for the ministry. The story of its birth is one of
persistent and indomitable enthusiasm overcoming
great obstacles. The friends of Williams College
feared the rivalry of a new institution ; many of
the friends of Christian education doubted the
wisdom of establishing two colleges in western
Massachusetts ; the Unitarian element in the state
saw in this new movement a new attack upon lib-
eralism, and prepared to thwart it at the outset.
It was difficult to secure an agreement among the
advocates of the evangelical faith, difficult, when
the agreement was reached, to raise the fifty thou-
sand dollars which constituted the financial basis
for beginning the work, difficult, when the money
had been secured, and the first building had been
erected, to obtain a charter from the legislature.
But when these obstacles had been overcome, there
was no difficulty in securing students. In 1830,
when Henry Ward Beecher was ready to enter
college, Amherst had its land, two dormitories, a
chapel with recitation rooms annexed, the begin-
ning of a college library, a faculty consisting of a
president, six professors, and one tutor, and about
two hundred pupils. Everything, however, was
on a scale of extreme simplicity. The salaries of
36 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the professors ranged from 8600 to $800 a year,
the expenses of tuition from $30 to $40, board
from $1 to $1.25 a week. The students took care
of their rooms, made their own fires, and generally
sawed their wood. The entire expenses for a four
years' course did not exceed $800. The students
assembled for prayers every morning at a quarter
before five in the summer, and at a quarter before
six in the winter. Their working-day was divided
into three nearly equal portions, in each of which
two or three hours were set apart for study, and
each study period was followed immediately by a
recitation. The college discipline was rigorous,
the college regulations minute and exact. Obedi-
ence was enforced by a system of fines. There
were long vacations to enable the students to add
to their slender resources by teaching in the dis-
trict schools.
Such was the college which Henry Ward Beecher
entered in the eighteenth year of his age. He
carried with him a nature of strange contradic-
tions : a masculine robustness of nature mated to
a femininity of spirit ; great spontaneity of charac-
ter coupled with a morbid habit of self-examina-
tion ; an inborn love for church and for his fellow-
men together with a hopeless endeavor to create
in himself that preternatural change which was
thought to be essential to Christian character ; a
habit of hard work, but a habit of working ac-
cording to his own mood, not according to rules
prescribed for him by others. His college stand-
THE MAKING OF THE MAN 37
ing is indicated by his later remark that he once
stood next to the head of his class ; it was when
the class was arranged in a circle. He studied
the lessons allotted him by the college, so far as
was necessary to enable him to get through, but
no farther ; but he threw himself with enthusiasm
into courses ' of reading and study to which his
mood impelled or his judgment guided him. In
accordance with the custom of the time he taught
school during the long winter vacation to add to
his limited means. The missionary spirit which
he had imbibed from his father already began to
ferment within him; and he conducted prayer-
meetings, gave lectures on temperance, and later
on phrenology, and preached in villages what would
be called sermons, except that he was not a min-
ister. Once he earned ten dollars as a lecturer,
and spent it in buying an edition of Burke, the
foundation of his future library. He got no great
standing at college for scholarship, and no appoint-
ment at Commencement ; but he was regarded as
one of the fine debaters in the college debating
society, and outside of it was recognized by his
classmates as an intellectual leader. He was
profoundly religious, yet perpetually perplexed by
skepticism ; was alternately inspired by a great
hope and whelmed in a sort of half despair. At
the end of four years he graduated, leaving behind
him an academic record respectable but not emi-
nent, having carried on throughout the four years
an aggressive though fitful and boyish Christian
38 HENRY WARD BEECHER
and philanthropic work, and carrying with him
the results of a wide though desultory reading ;
very much in earnest in his resolve to use his expe-
rience and his voice for the service of his fellow
men ; very much in uncertainty respecting himself
and the value of his own inner life.
CHAPTER III
EARLY MINISTRY
In 1834 Henry Ward Beecher was graduated from
Amherst College, at twenty-one years of age. Dur-
ing these twenty-one years America had made
rapid growth in size and population, and new and
complex problems were arising which the young
graduate would in his later years help to solve. In
1813 the little village of Cleveland, Ohio, formed
the northwestern outpost of the nation. The fron-
tier line ran thence in a southwesterly direction to
the Tennessee River, and thence in a southeasterly
direction to the southern border of Georgia. In
1834 the republic had extended far to the west of
this line ; the Mississippi River formed its western
frontier, the southern shores of Lake Erie and Lake
Michigan its northern frontier. Michigan, Wiscon-
sin, Minnesota, and Iowa were, however, still prac-
tically uninhabited, and all west of the territory
now occupied by those states was untrodden wilder-
ness. The population had increased from less than
eight million to over twelve million. The increase
had been nearly equally divided between North and
South, but not between East and West ; the centre
of population was a little east of Washington. The
first steamboat to make its way against the Missis-
40 HENRY WARD BEECHER
sippi current from New Orleans to Cincinnati had
given in 1815 a prophecy of the future commercial
importance of the latter city which far-seeing busi-
ness men were not slow to comprehend ; it promised
to be the metropolis of the West, for Chicago,
though an important trading-post on the frontier,
was but just incorporated as a town and had a
population of less than four thousand. The rail-
road was yet in its experimental stage. In a race
run in 1829 between a locomotive and a horse, the
horse outdistanced the locomotive. A year and a
half later the first real railroad was operated in the
state of South Carolina, and in six months there-
after a second short line of railroad between Albany
and Schenectady was in operation ; but as yet a
railroad to be operated by a steam locomotive was
looked upon by most practical business men as
wholly impracticable. The " big ditch," as the Erie
Canal was contemptuously called, had been dug
between Albany and Buffalo, making a completed
waterway between the Northwest and the ocean —
the foundation of the future commercial greatness
of New York City. Baltimore and Philadelphia,
which had to depend upon teaming over the Alle-
ghanies, awoke to the necessity of finding some
contrivance to compete with the canal, and this ne-
cessity gave to the railroad enterprise its first con-
siderable impulse. As yet, however, though many
roads were planned, few were constructed, and as
late as 1830 there were but thirty-six miles of com-
pleted roadbed in the country. When the young
EARLY MINISTRY 41
graduate went from Amherst College to Cincinnati,
whither his father had now removed, he must have
gone either by stage to Albany, by canal to Buffalo,
by steamboat on Lake Erie, perhaps to Cleveland,
and then again by stage across Ohio to the Ohio
River, or by stage over the Alleghanies to Pittsburg
and thence by boat on the Ohio to Cincinnati.
While Henry Ward Beecher was at Amherst
College his father had removed from Boston to Cin-
cinnati, to take the presidency of Lane Theological
Seminary. The young metropolis of the West was
described by one of the promoters of this enter-
prise as at the heart of four millions of people, and
in twenty years to be at the heart of twelve mil-
lions — " the most important point in our nation
for a great central theological institution of the first
character." For Christian men were as far-seeing
as commercial men, and as eager to take advantage
of the opportunities which the growing West af-
forded. They procured a charter in 1829, secured
a donation of sixty acres of land, and started the
new seminary with one professor and three or four
students. What the students did for instruction,
when after a few months the professor was sent
East to obtain funds, history does not tell. The
professor failed in his endeavor and resigned. The
enterprise would apparently have been abandoned
but for the indomitable enterprise of one man, the
Rev. F. Y. Vail, who wisely judged that to get East-
ern funds Eastern confidence must first be secured,
and for this purpose an Eastern man obtained to
42 HENRY WARD BEECHER
act as president of the yet unborn institution. He
came to Boston and applied to Dr. Lyman Beecher.
" There was not on earth a place but that," said
Dr. Beecher afterwards, " I would have opened my
ears to for a moment, but I had felt, and thought,
and labored a great deal about raising up ministers,
and the idea that I might be called to teach the
best mode of preaching to young ministry of the
broad West flashed through my mind like light-
ning. I went home and ran in, and found Esther
alone in the sitting-room. I was in such a state of
emotion and excitement I could not speak, and she
was frightened. At last I told her. It was the
greatest thought that ever entered my soul ; it filled
it, and displaced everything else." He accepted the
call. His acceptance secured a gift of twenty thou-
sand dollars from Arthur Tappan, of New York,
whose interest in all forward movements was shown
throughout his life, both by his generous benefac-
tions and his active services. It was a matter of
course that Henry Ward Beecher, now fully re-
solved upon the ministry as his life work, should
go, on graduation, to Lane Theological Seminary,
to complete his preparations under the instructions
of the father whose theological debates in the fam-
ily, during the son's boyhood, had already familiar-
ized him with theology, both abstract and applied.
Cincinnati was at this time a city of about thirty
thousand inhabitants. The seminary was outside,
in the woods, where the whistle of the quail, the
flight of the turkey, the rush of wild pigeons, were
EARLY MINISTRY 43
to be heard. The father did not believe in dissociat-
ing theology and religion. He lectured during the
week, and preached in the city on Sunday ; carried,
alternately, his theology into his sermons, and his
religion into his lectures. The young student did
not, so far as I can learn, get a great deal out of
the regular theological course. He began writing
a journal " of events, feelings, thoughts, plans, etc.,
just as they have met me ; thus giving in part a
transcript of my inner and outer life." His biogra-
phers say that they " find very little, almost nothing,
concerning the regulation, work, and studies of the
theological course, possibly because some other
book, which has not come down to us, contains
these.' ' I think it far more probable that it was
because the work and studies of the theological
course, as prescribed by the authorities, did not
greatly interest him. This was not because he was
idle, but because his temper was such that he was
never able — perhaps I should rather say never
inclined — to work along lines marked out for
him by others. He was an omnivorous reader, and
always read to some purpose and for some result.
Thus, when he had finished Scott's " Antiquary,"
he wrote a comparison of " The Antiquary " and
" Ivanhoe ; " and a little later, a critical comparison
between Scott and Shakespeare. Whether his com-
parison is adequate or even sound is not a matter
of consequence; that he wrote it illustrates the
fact that his reading was thoughtful and discrim-
inating. His studies, however, constituted by no
44 HENRY WARD BEECHER
means the whole, perhaps not even the major part,
of his life. He sang in the church choir, and some-
times led it ; he conducted a Bible-class, which
was practically a lecture on the Bible, and gave,
contemporaneously, a course of temperance lectures
through the week ; and he preached on Sundays,
as opportunity offered, throughout the theological
course. He began also to accumulate a library,
which numbered early in the second year of his
theological course a hundred and thirty-five vol-
umes, intelligently selected and carefully read,
only about one third of them professional books.
The anti-slavery controversy was beginning to
assume serious proportions. He was much more
interested in it than in the theological controversies
in which his father was engaged; at one time
added amateur editorship to preaching, lecturing,
teaching, and choir leading ; at another volunteered
as a special constable, and for several nights
patrolled the streets of Cincinnati to protect the
negroes and their friends from a mob. On the
whole the picture of these seminary days, which
we gather from his journal and letters, so far as
published, are those rather of a zealous man of
affairs than of a patient and painstaking student.
It must be remembered, however, that in 1834 no
such sharp line between the period of preparation
and that of action was drawn as is drawn in our
day. Engineering schools were practically un-
known ; the engineer rose from the ranks. Law
schools were few and poorly patronized. John
EARLY MINISTRY 45
Marshall, perhaps the greatest jurist America has
ever seen, went directly from a country academy
into a law office, from a law office into politics, and
from politics to the bench ; a single course of law
lectures at William and Mary College was all the
academic legal instruction he ever received. Only
a minority of the ministers of that day took any
theological seminary course, many of them no col-
lege course ; piety, that kind of familiarity with
the Bible which all children obtained through home
training, and a very moderate acquaintance with
the well-established theology of the time being con-
sidered an adequate equipment for preaching the
Gospel. It was quite in accordance, therefore, with
the spirit of the time that Henry Ward Beecher
should divide his energy between academic studies
and practical work, giving, I suspect, if not the
larger portion of his time, certainly the larger
portion of his energy and enthusiasm, to the work.
Whether the modern method of keeping the student
apart from life in academic pursuits for ten or
fifteen years, and then plunging him at once into
active life, under such pressure as makes the con-
tinuance of systematic study almost impossible,
furnishes a better preparation for life than the
method of our fathers, in which practice and theory
were more intermingled, both in the period of
study and in the period of work, may be open to
question ; I am inclined to think a partial reversion
to the older method would be an improvement on
the method now pursued.
46 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Throughout the seminary course there were
periods in which Henry Ward Beecher was subject
to serious skepticism and to serious spiritual de-
pression. At times he thought of abandoning the
ministry altogether, on account of his theological
doubts, — for they were theological rather than
religious ; at other times he resolved to preach
whether Presbytery approved or not. He would at
all events maintain his independence. " I must,"
he said, " preach the Gospel as it is revealed to me,
not as it is laid down in the schools." It was at
some time in this seminary course that he had that
experience of Christ, as a supreme manifestation
of God, which I have recorded in the opening of
the first chapter of this volume. From the time of
that revelation he seems never to have had a doubt
respecting his mission, or a hesitancy about endea-
voring to fulfill it, only hesitation about the path to
be taken toward its fulfillment.
About twenty miles south of Cincinnati was the
little village of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the Ohio
River. It had at one time hoped to be the metro-
polis of the West ; it is hardly larger to-day than
when Henry Ward Beecher settled there, while
Cincinnati has become one of America's great
cities. Here was a feeble Presbyterian church,
consisting of twenty persons. In one of his ser-
mons Mr. Beecher thus graphically describes his
early experiences there : —
I remember that the flock which I found gathered in
the wilderness consisted of twenty persons. Nineteen
EARLY MINISTRY 47
of them were women, and the other was nothing. I
remember the days of our poverty, our straitness. I
was sexton of my own church at that time. There were
no lamps there, so I bought some ; and I filled them
and lit them. I swept the church, and lighted my own
fire. I did not ring the bell, because there was none to
ring. I opened the church before prayer-meetings and
preaching, and locked it when they were over. I took
care of everything connected with the building.
His journal contains some definite resolves, on
some of which I think he instinctively acted all his
life long : " Remember you can gain men easily if
you get round their prejudices and put truth in
their minds ; but never if you attack prejudices."
" My people must be alert to make the church
agreeable, to give seats, and wait on strangers."
" Secure a large congregation ; let this be the
first thing." His resolution to " visit widely " I
do not think he ever fulfilled. What the Method-
ist contemporary in Lawrenceburg said respecting
Mr. Beecher there, Mr. Beecher's subsequent life
confirms : " Mr. Beecher could outpreach me, but
I could outvisit him." The church voted him a
salary of two hundred and fifty dollars, which
seems to have dwindled in the payment to one hun-
dred and fifty ; the Home Missionary Society added
one hundred and fifty more. Three hundred dol-
lars was a small salary, even in those days, on
which to marry and begin housekeeping, but Mr.
Beecher's courage always overtopped his caution.
With characteristic impetuosity, as soon as he had
48 HENRY WARD BEECHER
been formally called and before he had been for-
mally ordained, he wrote to Miss Eunice Bullard,
to whom he was engaged, suggesting that their
marriage be celebrated shortly after his ordination,
and then followed and almost overtook his letter
with a proposal to have the wedding first and the
ordination afterwards. This sort of impetuosity
generally succeeds in such cases, and it did in this
case. They were married August 3, 1837, left
New York a little later, and, traveling day and
night, reached Cincinnati the last of August.
Four children of this marriage survived Mr.
Beecher : Henry Barton ; William C. ; Herbert
F. ; and Harriet E. ; the latter married the Kev.
Samuel Scoville, a Congregational clergyman. The
family life of Mr. Beecher has been written by
the son, William C, and the son-in-law, Samuel
Scoville, assisted by the widow, Mrs. Henry Ward
Beecher. To that volume the reader of this is re-
ferred for all the domestic side of Mr. Beecher's
life. It would not be seemly either to repeal; here
what they have written, or to supplement it by
anything additional.
The ordination of Mr. Beecher was not so simple
an affair as he had perhaps anticipated it would be.
The battle between the Old School and the New
School party in the Presbyterian Church was already
in progress. Lyman Beecher represented the New
School or progressive element. The Miami Pres-
bytery was largely composed of Scotch-Irish Pres-
byterians, whose views were what they would call
EARLY MINISTRY 49
consistently, what their opponents would call ex-
tremely, Calvinistic. Henry Ward Beecher was
familiar with theological distinctions, little as he
cared for them. He had been trained in them
from his boyhood. He was always quick-witted,
and never quicker than when under mental excite-
ment. His resolve to get round prejudices, not to
attack them, was put to the test, and his skill in
fulfilling that resolve was demonstrated. In spite
of a prolonged and hostile examination, he stood
his ground, and, if orthodoxy alone had been in
question, would have been ordained in spite of
opposition, but when a resolution was introduced
requiring the candidate to pledge his adhesion to
the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly,
and so part company with his father, who was a
leader in the New School party, he peremptorily
refused, at the hazard of relinquishing his church
and the little salary which was pledged to him,
and beginning his married life with nothing. But
his little church cared more for its minister than
for the theological controversy, and promptly de-
clared itself independent of the Presbytery.
The two years of his ministry in Lawrenceburg
were years of poverty, but of joyful self-denial.
The bride and groom lived in two rooms over a
stable at a rental of forty dollars per annum.
They furnished the rooms with second-hand furni-
ture — a little of it bought, more of it given. The
preacher welcomed gifts of cast-off clothing, and
thought himself "sumptuously clothed." His lit-
50 HENRY WARD BEECHER
tie church was crowded, but his people were better
satisfied with his preaching than he was himself.
He has not recorded any notable spiritual results
from it. The sermon was yet to him an end, not
a means to an end. He knew how to make a ser-
mon that would interest, but not how so to use a
sermon as to affect character. After two years of
ministry in this discouraging field, where he worked
hard for little pay and with no considerable results,
he accepted a call, thrice repeated, and removed to
Indianapolis.
The growth of this country has been so rapid,
and the changes in its conditions so kaleidoscopic,
that it is impossible for us now to realize the mate-
rial, social, and moral conditions which existed less
than three quarters of a century ago. In 1839,
when Mr. Beecher moved to Indianapolis, it was
an unkempt village, growing up in the midst of a
wilderness. A few houses, clustered together, con-
stituted the centre of the future town. From this
centre houses of wood straggled off in every direc-
tion. Many of the unoccupied squares were fenced
in, so as to constitute paddocks, in each one of which
one or more milch cows were kept during the day.
The passages between the squares, into which, ac-
cording to Western fashion, the town was laid out,
were overgrown with dog-fennel, save where wagon
tracks had made a sinuous road, avoiding a stump
on the one side and a mud hole on the other. When
these roadways became impassable some enterpris-
ing traveler opened a new one through the dog-
EARLY MINISTRY 51
fennel. In winter these ways were often impassable
by reason of mud, in summer insufferable by rea-
son of dust. There was no sewerage ; the town was
flat ; and the water stood in pools, or found its way
slowly through open ditches, often choked up with
weeds or refuse. Save in the very centre of the
town, there were no sidewalks ; such as existed
were mere strips of gravel, with depths of mud on
either side. Pioneers coming hither from the East
to make their fortune had foreseen a great future
for this embryo capital. They had already planned
six railroads to centre in this town, for the travel
which did not yet exist, and the legislature, more
audacious than private capital, had undertaken to
begin their construction. A state bank had been
organized, a state-house built, a fire-engine com-
pany formed, and a great scheme of public works
for the improvement of the anticipated city had
been devised and entered upon. The result of this
enterprise had shown that, in material as in spirit-
ual things, faith without works is dead. The vigor-
ously engineered boom had collapsed, and in 1839
and for several years thereafter the village was suf-
fering from the consequences of too much misdi-
rected energy.
As a result of the division of the Presbyterian
Church into Old School and New School, fifteen
members of the First Presbyterian Church had
withdrawn to foimd the Second Presbyterian
Church. The rivalry between the two churches
was intensified, rather than lessened, by the fact
52 HENRY WARD BEECHER
that both possessed the same traditions and the
same creed. The new church was worshiping in a
hall, but had already projected the construction of
a meeting-house. Mr. Beecher's promised salary in
Indianapolis was twice his nominal salary in Law-
renceburg. But six hundred dollars a year was not
munificent even then ; it may be reasonably esti-
mated as about equivalent to twelve hundred dol-
lars in our own time. The first of the Indiana
railroads had been built from Madison as far as
Vernon, twenty miles on its way to the capital, and
it is said that Mr. Beecher and his wife took the
first train over this uncompleted railroad, riding
this twenty miles in a box-car ; the rest of the jour-
ney, it is to be presumed, they took over the miry
roads, through the untraveled wilderness, in a
springless wagon.
From the scanty materials furnished by such
books as W. R. Hallaway's " History of Indiana-
polis," and J. P. Dunn's " History of Indiana," and
the letters of Mr. Beecher himself, it is possible to
form some conception, though vague and inade-
quate, of the kind of population in which the next
eight years of Mr. Beecher's life were to be spent.
The earlier settlers of Indiana were French Catho-
lics, coming up from Louisiana and down from
Canada. They possessed both the virtues and the
vices characteristic of the French pioneer. They
were kindly, humane, easy-going. They brought
slavery with them, but it was a form of slavery
quite different from that which later prevailed in
EARLY MINISTRY 63
the Anglo-Saxon portions of the continent. Their
laws provided for the education of the slaves in the
Roman Catholic faith, and for the protection of
marriage relations, and forbade excessive and cruel
punishments ; in brief, it was, to quote Mr. Dunn,
P as endurable as any slavery could be." The ordi-
nance of 1787, under which the whole Northwest
Territory was organized, forbade slavery; but it
was strenuously contended, with considerable sup-
port from judicial decisions, that this ordinance did
not forbid the continuance of slave relations which
existed before the ordinance was passed ; and in
fact, up to the admission of Indiana to the Union
as a state, December 11, 1816, slavery in a mild
form still continued throughout the territory. In
the judgment of these French settlers there was
nothing immoral in drinking, or even in drunken-
ness, and it must be said, in explanation if not
in defense of their position, that drunkenness with
them rarely led to the brawls and the violence
which it so often inspires in the Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon races. Gambling was also looked upon as an
entirely innocent recreation, though again it must
be said, in explanation if not in defense, that the
gambling was generally for sums which the gam-
blers could afford to lose, was conducted according
to the rules of the game, and was inspired, not by
greed and covetousness, but by the pleasurable ex-
citements incident to such games of chance.
But into this population had come a new ele-
ment, bringing with it a much more strenuous life.
64 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Pioneers from the Atlantic seaboard, mostly from
the middle states, had come hither, seeking their for-
tune. They brought an intensity of nature wholly
foreign to the French character. They were more
thrifty but more greedy of gain ; more enterpris-
ing but harder and less good-natured. When they
gambled, it was to make money ; when they drank,
they quarreled ; and drinking and gambling being
both against their conscience, demoralized their
character and became gross and flagrant vices.
When enterprise gambles, it becomes professional
gambling, and professional gambling is rarely if ever
honest. The fact that Indianapolis was the capital
of the state brought to it a class of politicians
whose character was not always above reproach and
intensified the tendency toward the twin vices of
drunkenness and gambling. Street brawls were fre-
quent, and were sometimes of a ferocious character.
" Fighting," says Mr. Hallaway, " in the early days
of the capital was quite a feature in its social or
unsocial life. No Saturday passed without one,
or commonly half a dozen brawls." One incident
which Mr. Hallaway narrates serves to illustrate,
better than any general description could do, the
rude character of the people and the period. A
certain bully of the town, often drunken and vio-
lent, and when so an unendurable terror to his
neighbors, made his appearance at a Methodist
camp-meeting. His drunken threats terrified the
congregation, and threatened to break up the ser-
vices. The Methodist preacher once or twice
EARLY MINISTRY 55
requested him to go away in peace ; finding this
unavailing, he came down from his pulpit, gave the
fellow the first thrashing he had ever had in his
life, and then went back and finished his sermon.
The thrashing seems to have been effectual — per-
haps did more good than the sermon ; at all events,
as the story goes, with a dramatic fitness quite
worthy of Shakespeare, the bully, humiliated at
being thrashed by a preacher, and unable to with-
stand the jeers of his comrades, reformed, and lived
the rest of his life, and died at last, a temperate
and self-respecting citizen.
It will be a mistake, however, if the reader should
get the impression that Indianapolis was wholly
given over to these influences. If some of the im-
migrants from the East had left their religion and
their conscience behind them, there were others
who brought into the religious life of the nascent
metropolis the same energy and enterprise which
they brought into its commercial activities. There
were some vigorous and efficient churches, and
some strong and effective preachers, in the place.
Four years before Mr. Beecher's arrival there had
been organized, by the moral leaders in the com-
munity, an agricultural society, a benevolent soci-
ety, and a literary society ; all of course undenomi-
national, yet all working in harmony with the
Christian churches of the place, and indirectly
supported by them. Within four years after his
arrival, there was organized a state hospital for
the insane, of which Mr. Beecher was made one of
56 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the trustees, and a female collegiate institute for
the higher education of girls, and musical taste had
been sufficiently developed to call for the opening
of a piano factory. One of the noblest Christian
men I have ever known must have been already
exerting a considerable influence in Indianapolis.
Sympathetic but never sentimental ; never conceal-
ing his faith, and never obtruding it; refusing
upon principle to accumulate wealth, though he
had good opportunity to do so ; using alike his
money and his time in the service of his Master
and his fellow men — " Uncle Billy Jackson," as he
was affectionately called through all that commun-
ity, bore a witness to the sweetness and the strength
of a true Christian character, such as transcends
all eloquence of the voice. He illustrated a certain
type of Christian character, careless of creeds,
" zealous of good works," possessing the spirit of
Christianity but not very regardful of its forms,
with the enterprise, the energy, and the unconven-
tionalism of the West directed in spiritual chan-
nels and to spiritual ends, such as is rarely seen
except in new communities during their formative
period. Men and women of this type, with others
less original but not less devout, gathered about
Mr. Beecher, and supported him in his work. Of
them he subsequently said : —
My memory of these persons will never grow dim.
My heart goes out to them ; and I guess they think of
me. I think they requite all the love I bestow upon
them. When dying, many and many of them have sent
EARLY MINISTRY 57
me messages. Many and many of them, as they parted
from this shore, bore testimony that the sweetest hours
of their life were those passed under my instructions,
and sent back messages of encouragement to me. How
many times I think of five or six rare, beautiful, sainted
ones, who sent me messages from the other side — I
think they were halfway across at any rate — that my
preaching of Christ was true ; that they had gone so far
that they felt it to be true ! I felt as though they were
messages from heaven itself. And shall I have under
my own roof spirits that are more sacred to me than
these?
From the beginning the new preacher was what
men call a success. Notwithstanding malarial
attacks, to which, in common with all his neighbors,
he was sometimes subject, he was generally over-
flowing with health and energy. His vivid im-
agination, redundant rhetoric, and dramatic per-
sonification of every character he wished to portray,
his musical voice, capable of every intonation, from
thunder of indignation to gentlest and softest note
of invitation, and, behind all, his absolute freedom
from cant and every suspicion of professionalism,
gave him unexampled power in the pulpit. His
animal spirits, hopeful temper, humaneness of dis-
position, which made him unfeignedly interested
in everything that interested any of his fellows,
attracted to him socially all sorts and conditions
of men. His lack of conventionality, illustrated
by the fact that he was the first minister to be seen
with a felt hat, and that he did not hesitate to take
an active part in painting his house, or carrying
68 HENRY WARD BEECHER
home a load of groceries in a wheelbarrow, would
have subjected him to criticism in an older com-
munity, but in this heterogeneous population it won
for him additional commendation. The hall which
constituted the temporary meeting-place of his
church was crowded from the first, and at the close
of the first year the church had constructed and
moved into a permanent and more commodious
edifice, which in turn was thronged. From the first
his church was a church of strangers. The members
of the legislature attended it almost in a body.
The rule that he had laid down for himself in Law-
renceburg — " My people must be alert to make
the church agreeable, to give seats, and wait on
strangers " — was carried out in Indianapolis, as
it was subsequently in Brooklyn. He was always
more interested in preaching to sinners than to
saints, to skeptics than to believers, to the world
than to the church. In this respect he was essen-
tially an evangelist, and would not have remained
long in any church whose doors were not hospit-
ably open to all the people. That he had crowded
and attentive congregations never satisfied him.
Years afterwards, in Brooklyn, when, as the result
of some sermon, an unexpected conversion followed,
and some one in prayer-meeting spoke of the arrow
shot at a venture accomplishing its mission, Mr.
Beecher replied : "I never shoot an arrow at a
venture ; I always aim at a mark, though I may
not hit the mark I aim at." It was in Indiana-
polis, if we may trust Mr. Beecher's recollection,
EARLY MINISTRY 59
that he first began to recognize this fundamental
principle underlying all successful preaching. It
is this which distinguishes the sermon from an
essay or a literary address. If it be a true ser-
mon, it has a definite object in the preacher's mind.
It is not an end, but a means to an end. The
subject is to be chosen, the text selected, the line
of argument or exposition pursued, the illustra-
tions employed, the rhetoric adapted — all to this
one definite end which, from first to last, the
preacher has in view. In expounding this truth
Mr. Beecher disavows any claim for originality.
" Others had learned this," he says. " It was the
secret of success in every man who ever was emi-
nent for usefulness in preaching. But no man can
inherit experience ; it must be born in each man
for himself." It was in Indianapolis that this
experience was born in him ; and without this
experience he never would have been the great
preacher he became. He labored continuously and
zealously for revivals. At one time he preached
seventy nights in succession ; at another he rode
two days through the forests, to Terre Haute, to
join with Dr. Jewett, the Congregational preacher
there, in revival services. The memory of those
services, of that preaching, and of the house-to-
house and store-to-store visiting which the two
preachers conducted in connection with the ser-
vices, remained a significant and sacred memory
when I went to become the successor of Dr. Jewett
in Terre Haute in 1865.
60 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Mr. Beecher's active labors did not prevent in-
dustrious study. He continued his accumulation
of a library. He went over the four Gospels,
compiling them and classifying their incidents and
teachings according to a method of his own, and
in the process familiarizing himself with their most
vital truths. He added editorial to pastoral labors.
There were nothing but political papers in the
state at the time. At the request of the "Indiana
Journal " Mr. Beecher undertook to edit a depart-
ment in it, to be printed monthly, under the title
" Western Farmer and Gardener." Any one who
is familiar with Loudon's cyclopedias of horti-
culture and agriculture, will, I think, agree with
me that, however valuable as authorities, they do
not appeal to the imagination. Mr. Beecher sup-
plied the imagination. He read and re-read in
these cyclopedias, which he found in the state
library, and invested them with pictorial charac-
ter by his own creative mind. " In our little one-
story cottage," he says, " 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." Only a man who possessed the
power of creating a picture, provided he was given
pigments and a canvas, could have obtained such
a knowledge by such a process. How vivid this
EARLY MINISTRY 61
creative work was is illustrated by a curious inci-
dent which I had from his own lips. He wrote a
description of some remarkable flower, the name
of which I have now forgotten, which was copied
far and wide as a rare portrait of a rare plant.
Some years afterward the gardener in an Eastern
hothouse showed him a specimen of the flower
which he had so graphically described. Mr.
Beecher asked its name, whereat the astonished
and indignant gardener, thinking his guest was
chaffing, told Mr. Beecher, to his astonishment,
that he was looking on the original of his own
description, and could hardly believe Mr. Beecher's
solemn assertion that he had never set eyes on the
flower before.
The study of men now began to grow with Mr.
Beecher into a habit which was continued through-
out his life. As a boy at college he had taken up
phrenology and put into the study of it much more
enthusiasm than he did into scholastic philosophy ;
he accepted in the main its craniology ; observed
critically the shape of men's heads, their complex-
ion, the color of their eyes and hair; classified
them according to their temperaments, and judged
of them accordingly. This method of study, entered
upon in an amateurish way in college,* became now
instinctive. But it was men not phrenology which
interested him, and phrenology only because it was
a means of studying men. His interest in men
was both personal and professional ; the two were
so intermingled that it would be as impossible for
62 HENRY WARD BEECHER
his biographer as I doubt not it was for him to
discriminate between them. He mixed with all
sorts of men, partly because all sorts of men inter-
ested him dramatically, partly because he wished
to study them as a lawyer studies his jury, or as a
doctor studies his patients. It is said of Christ
that he knew what was in men ; Mr. Beecher made
it his business to learn what is in man — the aver-
age man, the merchant, ^the lawyer, the politician,
the man of the street and the shop. He was as
audacious in his disregard of social distinctions as
was his Master ; as careless of what people would
say or think. When in his course of " Lectures to
Young Men," of which I shall speak more fully
presently, he wished to depict the perils- of gam-
bling, then the popular vice in Indianapolis, he
succeeded, I know not by what method, in getting
one of the gambling fraternity to visit him in his
study, and describe to him the practices of the
profession, as a novelist might have done had he
wished to dramatize the vice. The result was a
description so realistic and vivid as to stir the
whole capital as it had never been stirred on that
subject before. Yet his professional interest in
humanity was only an incident in an interest which
was far wider. All life appealed to him ; all
opportunity summoned him ; every kind of achieve-
ment had attractions for him. Washington Hall
took fire. " Mr. Beecher," Mr. Hallaway tells us
in his " History of Indianapolis," " was one of the
foremost in carrying the hose-pipe right into the
EARLY MINISTRY 63
burning portion of the house, and after two hours'
work, came out a mass of soot and dirt and ice
and blood from his cut hands ; but with the fire
subdued." Yet these and kindred incidents were
but incidents ; his work was that of a preacher,
and to preaching everything else in his life was
subordinated.
Mr. Beecher's preaching at this period of his
life was preeminently reviyal preaching ; but the
reader would misapprehend its nature if he thought,
from this characterization of it, that it was devoted
to producing emotional excitements. Emotional it
certainly was, for the young preacher threw his
heart into everything he said ; he believed, to use
Paul's phrase, " with the heart unto righteous-
ness." But with him the one clause was as essen-
tial as the other. He was preeminently a practical
preacher. His three sermons on slavery produced,
in their way, as real an impression in Indianapolis
as his father's six sermons on intemperance had
produced nineteen years before in Connecticut,
though the impression was more local and more
temporary. But his most distinctive and most per-
manent work in his Indianapolis pastorate was his
course of " Lectures to Young Men." These are,
indeed, so far as I know, the only sermons of his
Indianapolis ministry which have been preserved.1
They illustrate all the combined characteristics of
1 One special sermon and one address delivered in the West
were printed, but they are out of print See Bibliography in end
of this volume.
64 HENRY WARD BEECHER
his power as a preacher : his knowledge of men ;
his grasp of moral principles ; his quick detection
of hypocrisies and false pretenses with which vices
are disguised ; his logical power of orderly arrange-
ment of thought ; his artistic power of graphic por-
traiture ; his directness of purpose ; his incisive-
ness of speech ; and, above all, his absolute courage.
I wish it were possible to transfer to these pages
the whole of his lecture on " Gamblers and Gam-
bling," and ask the reader to consider it as de-
livered by a soul on fire with an eager purpose to
save young men, using voice, face, and gesture, all
thoroughly trained instruments of expression, and
spoken to a community in which gambling consti-
tuted a recognized and profitable profession.
His text is the picture of the soldiers gambling at
the foot of the Cross. He begins by describing the
vice of gambling ; portrays the first steps — a com-
paratively innocent wager of a sixpence over a
pack of cards ; traces the downward progress, as
he has seen it himself, and sets, as in a Rogues'
Gallery, the photographic likenesses of the dif-
ferent types of gamblers — the taciturn, quiet
gambler ; the jolly, roystering gambler ; the lying,
cheating gambler ; the broken-down lawyer or poli-
tician, turned gambler. Next he traces the evil of
gambling to its source and spring — the passion
for excitement ; and describes the evils which it be-
gets — idleness, the overthrow of domesticity, the
provocation to other vices, especially drink and dis-
honesty ; all this given in words which, even now,
EARLY MINISTRY 66
read in a wholly different atmosphere, and sixty
years after they were uttered, are aflame with the
speaker's indignation. He ends his sermon with
four pictures portraying the successive scenes in a
gambler's life. Two of these scenes I transfer to
these pages as an illustration of the type of Mr.
Beecher's oratory in 1840, though with full con-
sciousness that these paragraphs, wrested from
their connection, do his oratory injustice.
Scene the third. Years have passed on. He has seen
youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then with only
silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils ;
and, finally, he has himself decoyed, 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 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, some-
times 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,
66 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the fiercest, the drunkest 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
hung. 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 sup-
ported 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 convulsed 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.
No doubt the modern critic will condemn these
pictures as over-oratorical, as he will condemn
Hogarth's pictures of " The Rake's Progress " as
theatrical ; for what the second are in art, the first
are in literature. But oratory is to be measured
by its practical effectiveness. It is an instrument
for producing results, and the instrument must be
adapted to the time, the place, the circumstance ;
the orator is himself in some sense a product of
that time and place and circumstance. It is doubt-
ful whether the oratory of Daniel Webster would
hold the United States Senate to-day ; it is certain
that the oratory of Rufus Choate would not win
from the juries of to-day the verdicts he was accus-
tomed to win from the juries of his time. Mr.
EARLY MINISTRY 67
Beecher's later preaching in a different community
possessed a different quality, as we shall see. The
one conclusive answer to all criticisms on his ora-
tory in Indianapolis in 1840 is the fact that the
year following their delivery, and, as there is good
reason to believe, in no small measure as a conse-
quence of their delivery, the professional gamblers
were driven out of Indianapolis by a committee
organized to carry on a war against them, and
threatening them with prosecutions which they
thought it best to avoid by flight.
Thus throughout the eight years of Mr. Beecher's
pastorate in Indianapolis he was more than a par-
ish minister; he was preacher, editor, moral re-
former, public citizen. Throughout those years the
popular judgments respecting him were as conflict-
ing as they were in his later life. He was variously
regarded with love, with admiration, with distrust,
with dread, with bitter hatred. " Woe unto you,"
said Christ, " when all men speak well of you ! "
Never in his ministry did Mr. Beecher fall under
this condemnation. He paid little heed to the theo-
logical discussions which were at that time the
subject of heated debate in the Presbyterian
Church. To men who regarded religion as identical
with theology his indifference to theology seemed
to be irreligion. His sense of humor confirmed
this impression in the minds of that considerable
class who think that a man cannot be serious unless
he is always solemn. His disregard of social con-
ventionalism shocked the taste of some, his disre-
68 HENRY WARD BEECHER
gard of religious conventionalism made him seem
irreverent to others. He was by nature a radical
and a reformer. To those who regard social safety
as dependent upon the preservation of the estab-
lished order he appeared, as Paul did to the same
class of minds in the first century, as one bent on
turning the world upside down ; they dreaded him.
To the lewd fellows of the baser sort he was espe-
cially obnoxious. He did not concern himself with
the question of the Fall, or the extent or degree
of Total Depravity , and already foreshadowed, by
his indifference to these doctrines, his later re-
pudiation of them. But if he did not preach
against sin in the abstract, he acquainted himself
with the sins which were current and popular in
the city in which he ministered, and described
them in scathing terms, and condemned them with
a fiery indignation, of which the quotation I have
given above furnishes a single illustration. The
men who profited by drunkenness and gambling
found their traffic interfered with, and felt the
latent moral sense of the community aroused
against them, and they hated him. More than
once he was threatened with assault ; but he never
believed in non-resistance ; he was vigorous and
muscular ; and though I do not know that he was
familiar with the art of boxing, it is certain that,
had he been assailed, he would have lacked neither
the will nor the power to make a vigorous defense.
He was absolutely fearless, and this was itself a
protection. On one occasion it is narrated of him
EARLY MINISTRY 69
that a would-be assailant met him on the street,
pistol in hand, and demanded of him a retraction
of some utterance of the preceding Sunday. " Take
it back right here," he demanded, with an oath,
" or I will shoot you on the spot." " Shoot away,"
was the preacher's response, as he walked calmly
on. Whether the would-be assassin was cowed
by the preacher's calmness, or whether he only
intended a threat which he did not mean to carry
out, the shooting did not take place.
But if Mr. Beecher was distrusted, dreaded, and
hated by some classes in the community, he was
admired and loved by others. To his dying day
he retained a boyish nature. His love for children,
his unaffected and spontaneous interest in their life
and in all their sports drew the children to him.
"Children and dogs," he once said, "are good
judges of human nature." He stood this test well.
There are some persons whose sympathetic nature
is chiefly receptive — they need sympathy; there
are others whose sympathy enables them to under-
stand the perplexities, the burdens, and the sorrows
of others, and whose strength makes them a tower
of refuge into which the pursued may flee. Such
was Mr. Beecher's nature ; his sympathy was a
door at which any one might knock, through which
any one in any kind of trouble might enter. This
combination of sympathy and strength drew to
him the troubled and distraught. Of pastoral
work, in the conventional sense of that term, he
did very little; but he rendered personal help,
70 HENRY WARD BEECHER
through personal sympathy, to many who were not
in his church or regular attendants upon his min-
istry. His interest in public questions, his know-
ledge of actual conditions, his audacity in describ-
ing them as they existed, his courage in confronting
them, and in challenging to battle those who lived
by the weaknesses, the follies, and the vices of
mankind, fascinated the strong men of the com-
munity, and drew them to hear him ; many went
away to criticise, but returned again, attracted in
spite of themselves. His unfeigned love of his fel-
low men, his indomitable faith in them and hope
for them, inspired similar faith and hope and love
in others ; for these are qualities which are always
contagious. His presentation of God as a Father
of infinite compassion, whose character is revealed
in the earthly life of Jesus Christ, was, in that time
and place, extraordinarily novel ; men knew not
what to make of it ; and curiosity commingled
with higher motives to attract audiences eager to
hear this strange gospel. The sincerity and sim-
plicity of the preacher's faith, and his unmistak-
able access to God in public prayer, with whom he
talked as with a friend in familiar intercourse,
appealed to the truly devout souls, and brought to
him that kind of gratitude and affection which the
soul always feels toward one who has brought him
into a new fellowship with God. His message was
interpreted with a freshness of thought, a vividness
of imagination, a power of impassioned feeling,
and an oratorical skill, which had become to him a
EARLY MINISTRY 71
second nature ; but these outward qualities would
never have given him his influence had they not
been instruments for the expression of a gospel of
life and love. His reputation extended throughout
the state. When men came up to the capital they
went as matter of course to hear Henry Ward
Beecher, if they remained in the city over Sunday.
Saints and sinners alike crowded to hear him. The
echoes of his fame extended beyond the boundaries
of the state. He began to be heard of on the At-
lantic seaboard. Simultaneously he received two
invitations — one to become assistant pastor in the
old established and famous Park Street Congrega-
tional Church, of Boston, then, next to the Old
South Church in Boston, the most influential one
of the denomination in the United States ; the
other to the just organized Plymouth Church of
Brooklyn. He had expected to spend his life out
in the West ; but his life in the West proved to
be only a preparation for a larger life of national
influence and importance.
CHAPTER IV
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
Opposite the lower end of Manhattan Island,
and separated from it by the East River, Long
Island rises in a precipitous bluff from sixty to
seventy feet above the tidal water at its base.
This bluff extends along the river for nearly a
mile, and early became a residence district for
merchants doing business in the adjoining city.
The region still bears the name of Brooklyn
Heights, or in local parlance, " The Heights." In
1847 Brooklyn, which had been incorporated thir-
teen years before, had become a city of sixty thou-
sand inhabitants ; New York contained half a
million of inhabitants, and extended from the Bat-
tery to Fourteenth Street, beyond which was open
country. On the northern edge of " The Heights,"
where the hill slopes down to the river, was a Pres-
byterian church. The worshipers had found its
location unsatisfactory because too far from the
centre of the aristocratic section, all of which
lay to the south ; to the north was, and still is, a
population to which a church may minister, but
which can do little to build up a church. The
church had therefore purchased lots farther south,
on " The Heights," and they offered their Orange
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 73
Street property for sale. Half a dozen earnest
Congregationalists interested, as subsequent history
showed, less in Congregationalism than in that
theological and civic liberty for which the Puritan
churches have historically stood, decided to pur-
chase this property and make it a nesting-place for
a second Congregational church in the city of
Brooklyn. They purchased the property for twenty
thousand dollars, and then looked about for a
preacher, a church, and a congregation. At that
time the great religious and philanthropic societies
were accustomed to hold their annual meetings
during one week in May, which was accordingly
designated Anniversary Week. Mr. William T.
Cutter, one of the men interested in the new enter-
prise, who had heard Mr. Beecher in the West,
secured from one of the missionary societies an
invitation to him to deliver the annual address or
sermon on this Anniversary Week. Thus brought
to New York, it was not difficult to secure his con-
sent to preach in the Orange Street church edifice
on Sunday. He afterwards said that he accepted
the invitation to deliver the missionary address in
order " to urge young men to go West, to show
what a good field the West was, and to cast some
fiery arrows at men that had worked there and
got tired and slunk away and come back. ... I
came East not knowing what I did ; it was a trap."
The unconscious candidate of the unborn church
produced the impression which Mr. Cutter believed
he would produce. Early in June a church of
74 HENRY WARD BEECHER
twenty-one members was organized, and a call was
at once extended to Mr. Beecher to become its
pastor. An almost simultaneous call to the Park
Street Church in Boston was promptly declined ;
with more hesitation and after considerable delay
the call to Brooklyn was accepted. A few sen-
tences from a private letter, written in the pre-
liminary correspondence before the question was
settled, indicate the spirit with which the young
preacher entered upon his new field. As the letter
expresses with great clearness and evident sincerity
the purpose which animated Mr. Beecher through-
out his career, it is worth quoting at some length.
But if ever I come to you or go to any other place,
although I have no plans as to situations, I have, I hope,
an immovable plan in respect to the objects which I
shall pursue. So help me God, I do not mean to be a
party man, nor to head or follow any partisan effort.
I desire to aid in a development of truth and in the pro-
duction of goodness by it. I do not care in whose hands
truth may be found, or in what communion ; I will
thankfully take it of any. Nor do I feel bound in any
sort to look upon untruth or mistake with favor because
it lies within the sphere of any church to which I may
be attached. *
I do not have that mawkish charity which seems to
arise from regarding all tenets as pretty much alike —
the charity, in fact, of indifference — but another sort :
a hunger for what is true, an exultation in the sight of
it, and such an estimate and glory in the truth as it is
in Christ that no distinction of sect or form shall be for
one moment worthy to be compared with it. I will over-
leap anything that stands between me and truth. Who-
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 75
ever loves the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in
truth is my brother. He that doeth God's will was, in
Christ's judgment, His mother, His sister, His brother,
His friend, His disciple.
On the first Sunday of his public ministry, Octo-
ber 10, 1847, the preacher made his position per-
fectly clear. His morning sermon was on Jesus
Christ as the source of true religion, and the power
of personal character ; the evening sermon on the
relation of the Church to the public ethical pro-
blems of the day — specifically, its duty to deal
honestly and courageously with intemperance and
with slavery. The reader of the present generation
cannot easily comprehend what such an utterance
as this indicated in the first half of the nineteenth
century, in what was practically part of the com-
mercial metropolis of the nation. Not only were
the great missionary societies silent on the subject
of slavery, not only were the churches, with rare
exceptions, equally silent, but this silence was de-
fended and eulogized. Religion was regarded as a
purely personal matter; its office to make right
the relations of the individual soul with God. This
done, it was assumed that the relations between
individuals would of themselves become righteous,
and the social duties due from man to his fellow
men would be performed. Hence the pulpit had
little to say respecting the purely temporal and
social aspects of life, and, with rare exceptions,
nothing concerning its political aspects, except on
special occasions, as on fast days and thanksgiving
76 HENRY WARD BEECHER
days, and even then only to a limited extent. The
revolution in preaching, which, as a result has
made the pulpit a powerful force in dealing with
every-day problems, — a revolution in which Mr.
Beecher was a foremost leader, — has been so suc-
cessful that those who know only the American
pidpit of to-day can hardly imagine what it was in
1847. No doubt the desire for peace, the fear of
disturbing the churches, the consciousness in the
preachers of inability to deal with the complicated
problem of slavery for which they had received no
special training, the spirit of conservatism which
makes any innovation seem difficult if not danger-
ous, and the strong political and commercial inter-
ests banded together in the support of the slavo-
cracy combined to make silence easy and speech
difficult ; yet it is but just to recognize the fact
that the Christian religion in that generation was
largely regarded as a means, not for making life
on this earth better and happier, but for prepar-
ing, in this life, by theological beliefs or by so-
called religious experiences, for a better and hap-
pier life hereafter.
Whether because the doctrines which he pre-
sented were obnoxious, or because his Western
unconventionally repelled more than it attracted,
or because there were few or no social influences
to draw men to the new enterprise, or because the
preacher had not yet got himself in hand, did not
understand his surroundings, had not, as the say-
ing is, found himself, or simply because the best
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 77
and most effective public teaching does not in-
stantly attract, the new preacher at first drew but
moderate congregations. It was not until early in
1848, that is, after six months of preaching, that
the church building began to be crowded ; but
from that time on, it was unable to accommodate
the congregations. It was therefore not a disaster
but a good fortune that in 1849 the church build-
ing was so badly damaged by fire that it became
necessary to rebuild. A temporary " tabernacle "
of wood was erected to serve as a place of worship
until the first Sunday in January, 1850, when the
new church was ready for occupancy. This con-
sisted of two buildings — the church auditorium,
and the lecture and Sunday-school room; the
latter in two stories, the lecture-room below, the
Sunday-school room above, with what was then a
novelty in church architecture, social parlors,1 and
I believe also a kitchen. The size of the audito-
rium was, in popular reports, exaggerated ; its
legitimate seating capacity was 2050. This was
subsequently increased by aisle seats so contrived
as to be folded, when not in use, against the adjoin-
ing pew. Including those occupying these seats,
the average congregation during Mr. Beecher's
ministry approximated twenty-five hundred ; in-
cluding those who stood in the vacant spaces or on
the stairs and in the hallways the auditorium some-
times contained approximately three thousand.
1 These were subsequently thrown into the Sunday-school room
to accommodate the increasing number of pupils. The present par-
lors were built in 1862.
78 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Baedeker's " United States " characterizes Ply-
mouth Church as " without architectural preten-
sions." It is, indeed, both in exterior and interior,
absolutely unadorned. It contains no stained-glass
windows and no ecclesiastical ornaments, and is
characterized by no architectural beauty. This
was due to no accident but to deliberate design.
There are two services which, from the earliest
ages, the Church of God has rendered in the com-
munity : it has expressed and at the same time
cultivated the piety of devout souls; and it has
furnished religious instruction and inspiration both
to the devout and to the undevout. These services
can be conjoined ; but they also can be and some-
times have been entirely separated. In the Jewish
Church the worship was conducted by the priest-
hood, who gave no religious instruction in connec-
tion with the Temple services ; religious instruction
was given by the prophets, who conducted no wor-
ship in connection with their public teaching. In
Christ's conversation with his disciples at the Last
Supper, as recorded in the Fourth Gospel, devotion
and instruction were intermingled ; but no public
worship accompanied the Sermon on the Mount as
it is recorded by Matthew. Prayer and teaching
were combined in the simple services of the Apos-
tolic Church, held in the houses of disciples ; but
Paul's famous sermon at Athens was unaccompa-
nied with any worship. In the modern church the
worship and the instruction are habitually though
not always united ; but in one class of churches
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 79
greater provision is made for the worship, in the
other for the teaching. The Roman Catholic and
Episcopal churches lay emphasis on the ritual and
the sacraments, and relegate the sermon to a
second place or omit it altogether ; the Puritan
churches make the sermon predominant and at-
tach less relative importance to prayer and praise.
The first construct a cathedral, equip it with all
the aesthetic elements, musical and artistic, capable
of promoting spiritual delight in the worshiper,
and allow this cathedral to be used for no other
purpose than that of the worship of God, generally
but not always accompanied with public instruc-
tion. The second build a " meeting-house," where
the people of the community may gather for any
legitimate function, where academic exercises may
be held, literary, political, and moral reform lec-
tures may be delivered, and on Sunday religious
instruction may be afforded, which is almost in-
variably though not necessarily accompanied with
public worship. The best type in America of the
first conception of the church building as a house
of worship is probably that furnished by Trinity
Church, Boston ; the best type in America of the
second conception of the church building as a
house for religious instruction is probably that
furnished by Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. It
would be difficult to find in church, hall, or thea-
tre a more perfect auditorium. Standing upon the
platform, which serves as a pulpit, the speaker is
seen by every person in the house — there are no
80 HENRY WARD BEECHER
great pillars to obstruct the view — and heard by
every auditor in the house — there is no vaulted
roof in which the voice is lost, no angles to catch
and to deflect it. A voice of very ordinary carry-
ing power can be heard in a conversational tone
throughout the edifice, and a voice like Mr.
Beecher's, of extraordinary carrying power, can
be heard in tones scarcely raised above a whis-
per. For nearly forty years Mr. Beecher preached
in this meeting-house. Without adventitious aids,
either musical or aesthetic, by the simple power of
his oratory as some would say, of his personal
character I should prefer to say, he drew to this
meeting-house a congregation which ordinarily
filled every seat, and which often so crowded it
that hundreds were turned away unable to get
admittance.
The congregation was large but not wealthy.
Wealth is conservative, and Mr. Beecher's radical-
ism repelled those who were interested in main-
taining the established order. To meet the cost of
the church a scheme was devised of popular sub-
scriptions to stock, the interest of which was pay-
able in pew rents only, the principal being payable
from the surplus revenues of the church. The pro-
blem how to pay the current expenses still remained
to be solved. This is always a problem of difficulty,
but in the case of Plymouth Church it was one of
peculiar difficulty ; for almost from the day of the
completion of the new edifice the demand for pews
was in excess of the supply. How to meet this
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 81
demand without favoritism, and without exclud-
ing by high prices the plain people to whom Mr.
Beecher wished to preach, was a question not easily-
answered. To answer it a rental was attached to
the pews lower than that customarily charged in
other churches in the city, and for a considerable
number of the pews so low that no one need feel
himself excluded by reason of the expense ; then
every year the pews were put up for hire at public
auction ; and the sums bid in excess of the rent
attached were added to the fixed rents in making
up the income of the church. Good-natured rivalry
among certain of the wealthier or more prominent
members of the church often pushed up the price
of a few seats in the centre of the church to a high
figure ; others were bid in at a moderate premium ;
a large number were always left to be taken with-
out any premium at all. This plan of " auctioning
off " the pews, which was discontinued after Mr.
Beecher's death, is not free from objection, but the
objection is chiefly one of sentiment. While it was
in operation it resulted in giving an income which
speedily paid off the debt upon the church, and
thereafter furnished, over and above all the church
expenses, a considerable sum which was wisely used
in paying the cost of the city missionary enterprises
which the church carried on.
The church was Congregational. Mr. Beecher
was radical, the members who gathered about him
were radicals, and the church was in its Congrega-
tionalism radical. The principles of Congregation-
82 HENRY WARD BEECHER
alism are two. First, the independence of the local
church. Each church is absolutely autonomous,
frames its own organization, adopts its own creed,
arranges its own ritual, administers its own dis-
cipline. From its decisions there is no appeal ; it
recognizes no superior ecclesiastical body. There
is, it is true, a fellowship of the churches, but it is
simply fellowship. The Conferences of the Con-
gregational churches are social and intellectual
assemblies; the Councils of the Congregational
churches are bodies to give advice, not to enact
law. The relation between Congregational churches
Mr. Beecher has somewhere aptly compared to
the relations between families in a village : if one
family misbehaves itself, the others cease to visit
it ; but they have no power over its local adminis-
tration of its own concerns. The other principle
of Congregationalism is the absolute equality of
all its members. The minister is without any
ecclesiastical authority whatever. Theoretically he
may be, and in England he sometimes is, simply a
layman, selected by the congregation to be their
teacher because he is apt to teach. No doubt in
practice these principles are sometimes materially
modified. The resolutions of Conferences and the
acts of Councils come to have the effect of law ;
the withdrawal of fellowship, the effect of penalty.
A church which in its creed, its ritual, or its dis-
cipline departs too far from the traditions and
habits of other Congregational churches is liable
to be disfellowshiped and to suffer opprobrium, if
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 83
nothing worse, in its isolation. In some Congrega-
tional churches also the minister is made ex officio
moderator of all business meetings, and thus given
a power to appoint committees ; in others a stand-
ing committee is created, through which all busi-
ness must pass, and from which no appeal to the
church is effective, even if it is allowed. As we
shall see later, Plymouth Church was determined
to maintain its independency, no matter what sac-
rifice that independency might involve. It was
equally determined to maintain the equality of all
its members. Its pastor was not ex officio modera-
tor of its business meetings, and in fact infre-
quently presided. It is rare that a pastor possesses
as great influence in his church as Mr. Beecher
possessed, but he had no ecclesiastical power what-
ever beyond that of the single vote which he cast
in what was a pure democracy.
T Theologically, the church was orthodox;? It
adopted a creed which embodied the doctrines of
the Fall of man, the Depravity of the human race,
the Trinity in unity of the Godhead, the provision
for salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ,
the inspiration and authority of the Bible, the
future judgment with its final awards of everlast-
ing punishment and eternal life ; in brief, its theo-
logy was of the New School Presbyterian Church,
and of the New England theology of the orthodox
Congregational churches of the middle of the nine-
teenth century. IBut from the very initiation of the
church its pastor's influence was steadily exerted in
84 HENRY WARD BEECHER
favor of substituting spiritual and ethical standards
for intellectual standards of character! The ques-
tions asked in the examination of candidates for
admission were practical rather than doctrinal. In
the pulpit, in the prayer-meeting, and in the ad-
ministration of the church the question, What do
you believe ? was rarely heard ; the question, What
is your life ? was, in varying forms, constantly reit-
erated. The creed adopted by the church at its
foundation remains unchanged as the historic creed
of the church ; but since 1870 subscription to this
creed has no longer been required ; the only con-
dition of admission to the church is assent to and
acceptance of the following covenant : —
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 consecrate 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 ?
If any one thinks this covenant furnishes too
open a door for admission to the Church of Christ,
I reply by saying that one of the most prominent,
influential, and devout members of that church, for
many years one of its deacons, told me that for a
year he remained outside the church before he
could decide that he would pledge himself to con-
secrate his " whole soul and body to the service of
God." Such a covenant as the above, if it be truly
interpreted and earnestly pressed, constitutes a far
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 85
stricter test of membership than can be furnished
by any creed, long or short.
From the first the church was1 preeminently a
social organization. Circumstances conspired to
make it so. Its original membership was composed
of households of about equal social standing.
Without either the very rich or the very poor,
Brooklyn, though a city of sixty thousand inhabit-
ants, still retained village characteristics, as indeed
to some extent it does to this day.1 The new pas-
tor therefore had not to create but only to foster
the social life of the church. There were at first
three weekly services : a lecture on Tuesday even-
ing, a social gathering on Thursday evening, and
a prayer-meeting on Friday evening. The first two
were ere long discontinued, and the three were
combined in the Friday evening meeting, which
became lecture, social gathering, and prayer-
meeting. The people were accustomed, however,
to gather in the lecture-room in little groups be-
fore the hour of service, and to remain for social
intercourse after the conclusion of the service. Not
infrequently this after social meeting was almost
as long as the more formal meeting which preceded
it. But that meeting itself was informal. Mr.
Beecher sat in his chair upon the platform and
talked to the congregation, as a friend with friends.
The congregation caught the spirit of informality
1 Chauncey Depew in an after-dinner speech some ten years ago
characterized it as the fourth largest city and quite the largest
village in the United States.
86 HENRY WARD BEECHER
from his spirit ; and though the size of the meet-
ing prevented it from ever becoming truly collo-
quial, and the tact of the pastor prevented its ever
degenerating into a debating-society, there was a
freedom in the interchange of opinions and ex-
periences which was sometimes startling to those
accustomed to the more staid methods of ordinary
assemblages for worship. In the latter years the
pastor's talks were taken down by a shorthand
writer, and many of them were published in the
press, and some of them collected in book form as
" Lecture-room Talks." To many of his congrega-
tion Mr. Beecher seemed at his best in these infor-
mal meetings, in which he was less the orator than
the personal counselor and friend.
But it was not only at occasional meetings organ-
ized for social intercourse, nor at informal Friday
evening meetings, that the social life of the church
was developed. The village church which I at-
tended in my boyhood was on Sunday morning truly
a "meeting-house." The farmers drove in from
miles about, fastened their horses in the shed, and
gossiped with one another over the crops, while their
wives talked over family concerns until the church
bell tolled. Service over, the social gossip was taken
up where it had been dropped, and continued until,
little by little, the congregation melted away. This
New England method was unconsciously adopted in
a modified form in the Plymouth Church services.
After the first year the pewholders found it neces-
sary to be at church ten minutes before service
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 87
began, to make sure of their seats. They did not sit
meditatively during these ten minutes ; they talked
freely, in the vestibule, in the aisles, in the pews,
sometimes going from pew to pew. The buzz of
conversation did not stop when the organ voluntary
began ; but when the preacher rose in the pulpit
to offer the invocation, there was an instant hush.
I always have thought that Mr. Beecher's habit of
commencing the invocation in tones hardly audible
was caused, not wholly by the wise determination
not to imperil his voice, but also by the purpose
to add impulse to the desire for silence in order to
reverential participation. After the benediction
was a second social gathering ; friends and strang-
ers streamed up to shake hands with Mr. Beecher,
who remained near the pulpit for that purpose,
and who thus encouraged them to shake hands with
one another, cementing old friendships and making
new acquaintances. I am here describing the habit
of Plymouth Church neither to commend nor to
criticise it. It was partly due to the neighborhood
character of the early church, partly to the quasi
village life of the community, partly to the trans-
ference to a city of early habits by the New Eng-
landers who made the great proportion of the con-
gregation, partly to the social necessities of a new
and democratic organization in which are so many
topics for mutual consideration, partly to the
preacher's strong conviction that freedom of social
intercourse of man with his fellow man is in no wise
incongruous with the spirit of devoutness in man
88 HENRY WARD BEECHER
toward his God. If every preacher could by his
strong and spiritual personality transfuse the con-
gregation with the spirit of devotion in the first
brief prayer of invocation, as Mr. Beecher did, it
would be safe for every congregation to maintain
the social prelude to religious service which Ply-
mouth Church maintained, — but not otherwise.
Music was from the first a feature of the wor-
ship in Plymouth Church, but it was music fur-
nished by, not to, the congregation. Back of the
pulpit stood an organ of considerable size and a
gallery which furnished accommodation for a con-
siderable chorus choir ; the organ was subsequently
replaced by what was, when constructed, I believe,
the largest church organ in America. When John
Zundel first came to Plymouth Church I do not
know, but for many years he was, as its organist,
Mr. Beecher's spiritual coadjutor. Nervous, irrit-
able, with genius, but, I suspect, without what in
our time would be regarded as adequate training,
he loved music as an expression of the spiritual
life. " I cannot," he said, " pray with my lips, I
pray with my fingers." His music was profoundly
devotional. He sympathized heartily in what
was regarded in the earlier years of Plymouth
Church as one of Mr. Beecher's oddities, — his pas-
sionate desire for congregational singing. Artists
would probably criticise his accompaniment of the
congregation, for he often marked the time with
strongly accentuated pedal movement, but the
result was that " dragging " was almost unknown
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 89
in the congregational singing of Plymouth Church.
The effect of a melody sung by two thousand out of
the three thousand of the congregation — and cer-
tainly that proportion sang in Plymouth Church —
might not have been musical, but to any one sensi-
tive to human feeling it was intensely devotional.
Here, again, allowance must be made for differ-
ences of temperament. The cultivated musician
might well find his devotional nature more ap-
pealed to by the choral singing in a great cathe-
dral, or even by the concealed quartette in a
cathedral-like church, but most men are more sen-
sitive to human feeling than to musical chords,
and to such the congregational singing of Ply-
mouth Church would be a greater expression and
inspiration of devotional life.
This congregational singing did not, however,
spring spontaneously into existence. I believe the
scientists are generally agreed that, in biology,
spontaneous generation has no place ; I am sure it
has none in social development. There was neither
music-book nor hymn-book adapted to congrega-
tional singing when Mr. Beecher came to Brook-
lyn; congregational singing was not common in
practice, and those who advocated it were looked
upon as impracticable innovators. Yet we can
now see that unconsciously the Puritan churches
had been preparing for it. The habit of singing
sacred music in the home, the singing-schools and
the musical institutes common throughout New
England, the revival spirit caught from the
90 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Methodists and naturally expressing itself in popu-
lar songs, and the pioneer musical work done by
Lowell Mason and his two pupils, George F. Root
and George James Webb, had done much to cre-
ate a desire for popular participation in church
music, though as yet but little to develop ability
for it. Mr. Beecher was no musician, but he loved
music. He proposed to the musical conductor in
Plymouth Church to prepare a hymn and tune-
book for the use of the congregation in church
services. " Temple Melodies," almost the first book
of its description, was the result. It did not satisfy
Mr. Beecher's ideal. Its success inspired him with
the ambition for a larger undertaking, and he be-
gan the preparation of " Plymouth Collection "
with a catholic courage rare in any minister. He
laid all poetry under contribution ; not only the
Calvinistic Watts and the Arminian Wesley, but
also such Roman Catholic authors as F. W. Faber,
Madame Guion, and Francis Xavier ; such Unita-
rians as Miss Martineau, Henry W. Longfellow,
Sarah Adams, and John Pierpont ; such secular
poets as Mrs. Browning, William Cullen Bryant,
John G. Whittier, and James Russell Lowell.
There is now scarcely a single collection of any
value in use in our churches which does not con-
tain contributions from these sources. But though
their use in 1855 was not wholly unprecedented,
Mr. Beecher was severely criticised for his bold-
ness. " Even those who applauded him anticipated
no great results from the innovation." Said a re-
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 91
view of " Plymouth Collection," in the " Brooklyn
Eagle," " We do not look for any great extension
of really congregational singing in the more settled
parts of our country. Refinement (it is so called,
we believe) does not tend in that direction." It
certainly did not. Even chorus singing in the city
churches was rare ; the favorite instrument for
church music was the quartette. When " Plymouth
Collection " was published it is doubtful if there was
a score of congregations in the United States which
were supplied with music-books for congregational
use ; now the use of such books is almost univer-
sal in the non-liturgical churches in our cities,
towns, and larger villages. The musical develop-
ment in England and America which " Plymouth
Collection " has done something to promote has,
during the last half century, called into existence
a great number of new hymns and tunes, and thus
left " Plymouth Collection " wholly inadequate for
present church service. But it was the work of a
pioneer, and in estimating the relation of Mr.
Beecher to the church life of America, what he
did to give impulse to congregational singing, by
showing its possibilities while as yet it was only an
apparently impossible dream of the idealist, ought
never to be forgotten.
In coming to Brooklyn Mr. Beecher brought
with him a definite purpose to make Plymouth
Church a spiritual church. He says : " I had no
theory ; but I had a very strong impression on my
mind that the first five years in the life of a church
92 HENRY WARD BEECHER
would determine the history of that church and
give to it its position and genius ; that if the ear-
liest years of a church were controversial or bar-
ren it would take scores of years to right it ; but
that if a church were consecrated, active, and ener-
getic during the first five years of its life, it would
probably go on through generations developing the
same features. My supreme anxiety, therefore, in
gathering a church, was to have all of its members
united in a fervent, loving disposition ; to have
them all in sympathy with men ; and to have all
of them desirous of bringing to bear the glorious
truths of the Gospel upon the hearts and con-
sciences of those about them." From the first and
with increasing power this spiritual atmosphere was
prevalent in Plymouth Church. Conversions were
frequent, additions on confession of faith numer-
ous, and presently, revivals of religion accompa-
nied with great ingathering of members. The first
service in the new Plymouth Church was held on
the first Sunday in January, 1850. In 1852 one
hundred and two were added to the church on con-
fession of faith ; six years later three hundred and
sixty-nine. These were the fruits of definitely
marked revivals of religion, accompanied by some
unusual services; but in both cases the services
were the product of the revival ; the revival was
not the product of the services.
The revival of 1857-58 was the last of those
spiritual quickenings produced by the theological
revolution which I have described in the first chap-
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 93
ter. It extended throughout the country; my
impression is that it was nowhere more fruitful
in spiritual results than in New York, and that in
New York no church gave greater evidence of its
practical power in the spiritual life than Plymouth
Church. I write of it from personal recollection,
dimmed but not effaced by the lapse of years.
One Sunday evening in the winter of 1857, Mr.
George A. Bell, an active and devoted member of
Plymouth Church, invited me to meet with a few
other members of the church the next morning on
our way to business for an hour of prayer. The
morning brought a blocking snowstorm ; a little
over a score gathered in the lecture-room ; the
pastor was not present. He was invited but de-
clined; disavowed his belief in manufactured
revivals ; appeared almost to discourage the meet-
ings ; really threw the responsibility for beginning
them upon the laity of the church. Reluctantly
they took it ; for two or three weeks they carried
the meetings on, with increasing attendance and
interest. Then one Sunday evening Mr. Beecher
announced his intention to be present and there-
after he invariably presided. This was the begin-
ning of a remarkable series of prayer-meetings,
continued until the early summer of 1857, and re-
sumed again in the winter of 1858. Those who
attended those meetings will never forget them;
" their freedom of intercourse, their social warmth,
their spiritual tenderness ; the commingling of
humor and pathos, of the intellectual and the
94 HENRY WARD BEECHER
emotional, of the practical and the spiritual, in
a word their life, genuine, free, untrammeled,
varied life, gave them a character wholly inde-
scribable." 1 Always at the close those who desired
prayer for themselves or others were asked to indi-
cate their desire ; such requests were always pre-
sented, and a closing prayer was invariably offered
by Mr. Beecher, who grouped together these re-
quests in a supplication, in which none of them
were forgotten. After the meeting, which was al-
ways closed promptly at the end of the hour, Mr.
Beecher remained to converse with those who de-
sired personal counsel for themselves or others.
He called in assistants, both men and women, in
whose tact and judgment he had confidence, to aid
him in this personal work, and often to carry it on
by visiting inquirers in their homes.
In this revival Mr. Beecher had no help from
any professional evangelist and little help from
any of his brother ministers. Every spiritually
efficient minister was too busy in his own parish
to take much part in the work of other parishes.
He made no attempt to drive men into the kingdom
of God ; little or none to make them feel either the
present evil or the future peril of an unsaved con-
dition ; the burden of his preaching was a presen-
tation of the joy inherent in the life of faith, hope,
and love. " I have sat in my own pulpit," he once
1 Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career, by Lyman
Abbott, assisted by Rev. S. B. Halliday. American Publishing
Company.
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 95
said to me, " and seen Finney get the sinner down
and pound him until I have wanted to pull Finney
by the coat and cry out, O let him up, let him up."
Dr. Finney drove men to repentance ; Mr. Beecher
drew them. The themes of his revival preaching
might almost be summed up in the saying of
Hosea: "I drew them with bands of love." One
evening he read a letter from an unknown young
man, unknown I think to him, certainly to the
congregation, saying that he was going to destruc-
tion under temptations which he could neither re-
sist nor escape, and imploring Mr. Beecher "to
preach to me the terror of the law, anything to
arouse me from this fearful lethargy." With this
as his text Mr. Beecher preached the love of God
in Jesus Christ as the only remedy for sin, saying,
" If this love of God will not move you, the fear of
God will not." The incident was characteristic.
Mr. Beecher believed in retribution — at that
time more definitely than he did subsequently.
But he rarely preached it, and when he did so, it
was only as a dark background, that he might
make the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ
more luminous. The most definite declaration of
his faith in this subject at this time is found in
the following paragraph in his sermon on " The
Gentleness of God : " —
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
96 HENRY WARD BEECHER
deep that blackness was ; and listening — still listening
— no sound returns ; no sullen plash, no clinking stroke
as of rock against rock — nothing but silence, utter si-
lence ! And so I stand upon the precipice of life. I
sound the depths of the other world with curious in-
quiries. 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 everlast-
ing ; and with equal directness and simplicity they de-
clare that the doom of the wicked is everlasting.
And therefore it is that I make haste, with an incon-
ceivable ardor, to persuade you to be reconciled to your
God. I hold up before you that God who loves the sin-
ner and abhors the sin ; who loves goodness with infinite
fervor, and breathes it upon those who put their trust
in him ; who makes all the elements his ministering ser-
vants; who sends years, and weeks, and days, and
hours, all radiant with benefaction, and, if we would
but hear their voice, all pleading the goodness of God
as an argument of repentance and of obedience. And
remember that it is this God who yet declares that he
will at last by no means clear the guilty ! Make your
peace with him now, or abandon all hopes of peace.1
With this persuasive, attracting, enticing char-
acteristic of his revival preaching was another, —
its extreme simplicity. It was without technical
theological terminology ; it was without metaphy-
sical refinements ; it presented the religious life as
preeminently natural, the sacrifice it required was
1 Sermons, Harper & Brothers' edition, vol. i. p. 109.
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 97
a " reasonable sacrifice." Of this characteristic a
notable illustration is afforded by an address de-
livered in March, 1858, in Burton's old theatre on
Chambers Street, on "How to become a Chris-
tian." It was delivered at a week-day meeting;
the theatre was crowded to its utmost capacity ; I
had difficulty in getting in. The interested reader
will find it reported in the " New Star Papers." I
can here only quote a few typical sentences ; any
condensation would fail to interpret its spirit : —
I do not think that there is a man in this congrega-
tion 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.
A man who knows enough to take care of his busi-
ness, to live obediently to the laws of the land, to live
in the affection of the family, knows enough to begin a
Christian life.
It is not needful that you have a great deal of feeling.
. . . The less feeling there is required to effect a moral
revolution, the better.
Do you desire the love of God? Do you desire it
more than you do your pleasure, more than ambition,
more than selfish indulgence ? . . . Why do you not
take three minutes of this sovereign power of choice to
become a Christian ?
I care for you ; not out of my own nature, but be-
cause the spirit of my Master makes me thus care for
your soul. He sent me to tell you that He — glorious
as He is — that He cares for you ten thousand times
more than I do.
Such preaching as this was not calculated to
98 HENRY WARD BEECHER
produce excitement. The emotionalism, developing
occasionally into hysteria, which has too often ac-
companied revivals of religion, and which some
readers erroneously imagine to be characteristic of
all revivals of religion, was noticeably absent from
the experience of Plymouth Church. It is not too
much to say that it was never seen there, in either
Sunday service or weekly prayer-meeting. Feeling
there was, often deep feeling ; but always natural,
moral, rational. " The less feeling there is re-
quired to effect a moral revolution, the better,"
interprets all Mr. Beecher's spiritual endeavor.
The sermons were expository, not hortatory, though
expository rather of spiritual experience than of
either the letter of Scripture or the doctrine of
theology. The prayer-meetings were simple, collo-
quial, unconventional. The spiritual activity of
both pastor and people was unmarked by efforts
either to coerce or cajole attendants into uniting
with the church ; it was characterized, on the con-
trary, with distinct efforts to caution, especially
the young, from too sudden action springing from
momentary impulse. At the end of ten years,
partly as the result of these revivals, the church
had grown in membership from twenty-one to
twelve hundred and forty-one. Anticipating here
for a moment future history, it is legitimate to add
that at the semi-centennial of Plymouth Church,
celebrated in 1897, it was reported that thirty-
six hundred and thirty-three persons had come
into the kingdom of God through the doors of the
PLYMOUTH CHURCH 99
church, an average of little over seventy-two each
year, for the most part, without special measures
or meetings of any kind. Humanly speaking, these
results were due primarily to the intellectual and
spiritual power of the pastor. To some account of
him and his methods, as I personally knew both at
this epoch in his ministry, the next chapter will
be devoted.
CHAPTER V
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH
It was seven years after the organization of Ply-
mouth Church that I first began to attend it, and
I here speak of Mr. Beecher as I knew him then,
but I judge that no great change had been made
either in his person, his habits, or his preaching
in those seven years, save that perhaps his powers
had improved a little, certain roughness due to his
Western experiences had been rubbed off by attri-
tion with the East, and the too exuberant rhetoric
of his earliest ministry was mastered and pruned.
In person he was slightly under six feet ; power-
fully built ; not corpulent, but stocky. His gen-
eral appearance suggested great physical strength.
Mr. Fowler, the phrenologist, said of him that he
was a " splendid animal," and no one looking on
his magnificent physique could doubt the fact. He
had a great brain ; a great forehead, bearing wit-
ness to his intellect ; a domed crown bearing
witness to his reverence and his benevolence ; a
broad back of the head, bearing witness to the
strength and force of his will; and heavy eye-
brows, indicating power of observation. He had
a good digestion and an excellent nervous system.
Shortly before his death, in answer to some one
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 101
who asked him if he was going to Europe for his
health, he replied, " I already have more health
than I know what to do with." Vigor of health
was characteristic of him throughout his life. No
doubt nature had endowed him with a fine phy-
sique, but he cooperated with nature and took ex-
cellent and intelligent care of his body. He used
neither tobacco nor alcohol, until the latter years
of his life, when he made occasional and rare use of
the lighter forms of the latter. He did not use tea
or coffee in excess, and in his diet was never self-
indulgent. He had studied the relation of differ-
ent foods to different physiological conditions, and
adapted his own diet intelligently to his own needs ;
eating, for instance, little beef, because it made
blood, and he was too full-blooded by nature. He
was an early riser, and usually finished his work
in the study in time to allow some out-of-door
exercise or excursion before a two-o'clock dinner.
The afternoon was given to rest; part of it to
sleep, part of it to social calling or out-of-door em-
ployment. After a light supper he entered on the
work of the evening, which was almost invariably
given up to some public engagement. He was al-
ways a sound sleeper, and had the gift, somewhat
rare I think, of throwing off cares and anxieties,
whether they belonged to him or others, when he
believed that further carrying them would do no
good to him or to them. He early adopted the
principle that it is better to rest before one's work
as a preparation for it, than after one's work as a
102 HENRY WARD BEECHER
recuperation from it. Saturday, therefore, was al-
ways given to rest ; for he believed that the sab-
bath commandment was as applicable to ministers
as to laymen, and, with rare exceptions, he did his
work six days in the week, and rested on the sev-
enth. But Saturday, not Sunday, was his rest-day.
Whatever he may have been before, after I
knew him he was not, in any ordinary sense of the
term, a pastor. The work of a pastor is twofold :
to organize his church as a captain of its spiritual
industries, and to visit from house tq house, doing
personally in the household work somewhat ana*
logous to that done by the Catholic priest in the
confessional. Mr. Beecher did neither.
He did not organize his church. He inspired
those who gathered about him with generous aspi-
rations, pointed out to them work to be done, in-
cited them to do it, but left them to do it in their
own way. Even up to the time of his death, it
might be said that Plymouth Church was rather a
body of workers- than a working body. Many, if
not most churches, are over-organized ; the machin-
ery is too great for the steam generated to operate
it. Plymouth Church was under-organized ; the
steam generated by the Friday evening meeting
and the Sunday morning service was greater than
the organism afforded scope for. There were or-
ganizations and very effective ones in connection
with Plymouth Church, but they were independent
of any one central control ; and while their effi-
ciency was due to the energizing power of Mr.
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 103
Beecher, their form and framework were due to
the organizing capacity of others.
Nor did Mr. Beecher, to any considerable ex-
tent, do pastoral work from house to house. He
did little visiting, except of a restful sort, in the
houses of intimate friends. He was not often to
be seen at the bed of the sick, or even of the
dying; he was not always to be had for either
the funerals or the weddings incident to his great
parish. When the necessity for this work became
apparent, and it also became apparent that the one
man could not do the preaching and public speak-
ing in which Mr. Beecher was engaged, and also
the personal, pastoral, house-to-house visiting, a
pastor's assistant was secured, and on the Rev.
S. B. Halliday, for years Mr. Beecher's faithful
coadjutor, this form of personal work devolved, and
by him it was done with admirable fidelity. Never-
theless, Mr. Beecher did do, in his own way, a
personal work much greater and more influential,
I am inclined to think, than the average of even
notably efficient pastors. For sometimes half an
hour after the Friday evening prayer-meeting he
held what I may call a religious reception. He sat
on or near the platform, to talk with old friends
or meet with new acquaintances ; he shook hands
with any one that offered him a hand; an old
friend returning after a long absence was instantly
recognized and greeted with the warm cordiality of
the love that is without dissimulation ; if any one
wished to see him privately, he sat down in the
104 HENRY WARD BEECHER
pew beside the seeker, heard his experience, di-
vined his need before the narrative was half fin-
ished, and went to the heart of the matter in a
quick sympathetic or pungent sentence ; if further
help was needed, he referred the petitioner to some
wise counselor, or made with him an appointment
for some further and fuller interview. He ex-
pressed to me once his admiration for the tact,
skill, and forcefulness of Dr. Nettleton's personal
work of this description. I fancy that he had
studied Dr. Nettleton's methods, and to good ad-
vantage.
But it was as an orator, in the pulpit and on the
platform, in church, lecture-hall, and public assem-
bly, that Mr. Beecher exercised his principal influ-
ence on the nation, and on his own church. By
oratory I mean the art of influencing masses of
men by spoken address. Any man who possesses
this art, and actually does so influence men, I call
an orator, whatever his elocutionary or rhetorical
gifts, whatever the methods which he employs. In
fact, Mr. Beecher had remarkable elocutionary and
rhetorical gifts. He gave me once an account of
the methods which he pursued in his boyhood,
when under a skilled elocutionist, he spent some-
times an hour at a time simply practicing the use
of the vowel o, with its varied intonations, or took
a posture at a chalk-mark on the floor and went
through varied gestures, exercising each movement
of the arm under his instructor's direction, as he
was told how far the arm should come forward,
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 105
where it should start from, how far go back, and
under what circumstances these movements should
be made. Whatever stiffness and artificiality such
drill might have at first produced had entirely disap-
peared by the time Mr. Beecher came to Brooklyn ;
for the effects of this drill made ease, flexibility, and
variety of voice and movement a second nature to
him. His voice, his arms, his whole body, and in
some sense preeminently his face, were the quick
and potent servants of his alert mind. Training had
given his voice great carrying power. His contem-
porary and friend, Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, once
said to me that the secret of vocal power without
vocal weariness is knowing how to use the bel-
lows. Mr. Beecher knew how to use the bellows.
He never strained his throat in vehemence of
speech; the throat was simply used to determine
the quality of the tone ; the forcefulness of it was
given by the abdominal muscles. The reading of
the Scripture lesson in too many Congregational
churches is a piece of perfunctory ritualism. It
was a lesson in elocution to hear Mr. Beecher read
a Scripture lesson. You might not agree with his
interpretation, but you could not misunderstand it.
I recall once hearing him, in a sermon on the gen-
tleness of Christ, pause and say : " But did not
Christ denounce the Pharisees with bitterest invec-
tive ? That depends upon the spirit with which He
uttered and with which we read His words." Then
he took up the New Testament, turned to the
twenty-third chapter of Matthew and read three or
106 HENRY WARD BEECHER
four verses — " Woe unto you, scribes and Phari-
sees, hypocrites " — with thunder in the tones,
frown upon the brow, wrath in the voice ; then,
without note or comment, he read them again as a
lamentation, with infinite pathos, with suppressed
tears in the tones of his voice. Then he closed the
New Testament and went on with his sermon.
With this remarkable elocutionary power was a
sympathetic imagination that made him, for the
moment, enter into and participate in every ex-
perience which he described. Coupled with a keen
and quick observation of things, his imagination
made him a graphic painter of scenes, which were
portrayed with a vividness such as made them for
the moment present to the audience. Coupled
with a sympathetic insight, his imagination made
him a dramatic portrayer of characters, who were
introduced upon the platform as though they for
the moment were addressing the audience. Coupled
with his devout spirit, his imagination enabled him
to realize himself and make his congregation realize
the presence of the living God, as really known
through transcending knowledge. Thus variously
working, his imagination made him at once the
most graphic, the most dramatic, and the most
devout of orators. Whether in his pulpit or his
parlor, he enacted with his voice, gesture, and facial
expression the incidents he narrated. His face had
not less flexibility than his voice, nor was it less
obedient to his instant and unconscious volition.
It was this dramatic quality which made men say
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 107
of him sometimes that he was a great actor. That
he could have made a great actor, in the pro-
fessional sense of the term, I do not believe ; he
could not have coerced himself into playing a part ;
moral enthusiasm was necessary to create the con-
ditions under which face and voice and gesture
would serve his purpose.
His rhetoric, no less than his elocution, was al-
ways subordinate to moral ends. Both were instru-
ments which he had come by ten years of practical
use, unconsciously for the purpose of moving the
audience he was addressing. I do not think, after
he came to Brooklyn, he ever preached sermons
analogous to those " Lectures to Young Men " de-
livered in Indianapolis, to which I have referred in
a previous chapter. His descriptive powers became
subordinated to his philosophical thought. It might
be too much to say that he was rhetorical and im-
aginative rather than thoughtful in Indianapolis ;
but it is certain that he was thoughtful rather than
imaginative and rhetorical in Brooklyn. It was
because his rhetorical forms were thus instrumen-
tal that he almost never verbally repeated himself.
He acted on the aphoristic advice which Professor
Edwards A. Park is said to have given his students :
" There is no objection to preaching an old sermon
if it is born again." Mr. Beecher had favorite and
familiar lines of thought and he repeated them
again and again. But he had no old sermons. I
do not recall that he ever repeated a sermon " by
request." I do not think he could have done so if
108 HENRY WARD BEECHER
he had tried; any more than he could have re-
peated a conversation. In a sense, every sermon,
every address was a conversation with his audience.
In the phrasing of it always, in the figures employed
often, in the anatomical structure of it sometimes,
the audience took an unconscious part. It was this
conversational attitude in which Mr. Beecher stood
to his audiences, and as a result of which he re-
ceived from them impressions while he was impress-
ing himself upon them, that made his sermons
always fresh; this also partly accounted for the
great variableness of his power. That power de-
pended partly on his own mood, but also partly on
the mood of his audience.
His interest was in men, not in theories; in
life, not in philosophy. He saw everything in the
concrete, and his generalizations were, therefore,
always interpreted in concrete forms. His illustra-
tions were not ornaments attached to his discourse,
like fringe upon a garment ; they were woven into
it, a part of its web and woof, so that, in general, it
was impossible to remember the illustration with-
out remembering the truth which, it illustrated.
At the same time he dealt not with isolated facts
but with broad principles. From the particulars
he evolved the general truth, then returned to the
particulars to illustrate and enforce it. Although
his method changed somewhat afterward, his ser-
mons at this time generally revolved, each one
about one central principle, so that the congrega-
tion went away, not dazzled by pyrotechnics, not to
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 109
discuss the oraior and his methods, but impressed
by some vital principle which elocution, oratory,
rhetoric, argument had combined to enforce.
Whatever interested men, interested him. He
was thus an instinctive student of human affairs ;
knew about trades, industries, domestic concerns,
the affairs of the kitchen, the street, the shop ;
and they all came into his discourses, not only to
illuminate his thought, but also to make connec-
tion with the men and women before him whose
lives were in these various spheres. It was inter-
esting to sit, as at one time I did, in the choir-gal-
lery, looking upon the great congregation, and see
how different references to different phases of life
would catch and compel the attention of different
hearers. He would capture a merchant with an
illustration from the stock exchange, an artist with
a reference to a picture, a mother with a reference
to a garden or to children, a musician with a
reference to a symphony or an oratorio, and they
all would bear upon the one central truth which
he determined not merely to make clear to the
minds but to make potent in the lives of his hearers.
It has been sometimes said that Mr. Beecher was
not a scholar. Whether he was or no I will not
undertake, to say, for the term scholar connotes
different ideas to different minds; I will simply
describe him as he was. He made no direct use of
the Hebrew, and if he had ever known the lan-
guage, had, I am sure, forgotten it. If he wanted
exegetical information on a passage of the Old
110 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Testament, he went to his brother Dr. Edward
Beeeher, or to his friend Dr. Thomas J. Conant,
both of whom were expert Hebraists. He was fa-
miliar with the Greek, and in his New Testament
studies made constant use of it. When I decided
to go into the ministry I sought his advice as to the
best books for my library ; he said, " Buy Alford's
Greek Testament, whatever you do." It took all
the little money I had, but I was very glad after-
wards I had made the expenditure. In his time
this certainly was, if it is not still, the best critical
apparatus for the study of the Greek New Testa-
ment. During his anti-slavery campaigns he not
only had in his library " Curtis on the Constitu-
tion " and " Kent's Commentaries on Law," but he
carefully studied them. No one would claim for
him that he was a constitutional lawyer, but he
had his own well-considered opinions, formed after
careful study, on the great constitutional questions
involved in the anti-slavery controversy. He was
familiar with the best books of his time on phy-
siology, was a believer in the principles of phreno-
logy, which he acquired at their fountain head, the
works of Gaul and Spurzheim, and he made habit-
ual use of the phrenological nomenclature in his
analyses of human life. He was familiar with cer-
tain of the great classics, though that familiarity
rarely appeared in his addresses, partly because he
was not given to quotation, partly because he had
no verbal memory, and could not quote without
breaking in upon the current of his discourse to
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 111
read the quotation. He read and re-read such writ-
ers as Homer, Dante, Milton, Thackeray, Scott,
— the first two in translations. He not only read,
he studied them. The best discrimination between
Dante and Milton I have ever heard or seen I
heard from his lips in private conversation. He was
familiar, too, with the latest contributions of mod-
ern thinkers on subjects co-related to his themes —
Herbert Spencer, John Tyndal, Thomas H. Huxley,
Matthew Arnold, and I believe was instrumental
in securing the republication of their works in this
country, and so introducing them to American
readers. Rarely was I at his house, unless for the
briefest errand, that he did not call my attention
to some noteworthy book, or some specially valu-
able article in a late review, English or American.
This familiarity with current literature was partly
due to his habit of mousing among the book-stores
and in the libraries, and getting information as to
the things most worth knowing from others whose
business it was to know the whole field of literature
and philosophy. When he went on a lecture tour
he carried with him a black bag ; I suppose at
some time it must have been new. In that black
bag was a small library. It usually contained a
book of poetry, one of philosophy, one of history,
one of fiction. Pursuing synchronously courses of
poetry, history, philosophy, and fiction, he took up
his course in either one according to the mood of
the hour. He called himself a slow reader ; I rather
think he was, for he read not primarily to acquire
112 HENRY WARD BEECHER
information but to stimulate thought. He chose
books of power, and when the thought was stimu-
lated, closed the book, and followed the clue which
it had put into his hand ; yet he acquired the habit
of quickly ascertaining what a book had for him,
would turn with a kind of unerring instinct to that
portion and pass by the rest. " I never read a book
through," he said to me once ; " a book is like a
fish : you cut off the head, you cut off the tail, you
cut off the fins, you take out the backbone, and
there is a little piece of meat left." I called on him
once at his dinner hour to obtain his opinion on a
treatise on phrenology. At the end of the first
course he left the table and sat down by the win-
dow, took the pages, and ran over them, much in
this way : " Yes ! no ! that is not true." " Ah !
that is old." " Yes, that is so." " Well, I don't
know about that." In fifteen minutes he had gone
through the volume and knew it better than I did
after an hour or two of examination. I believe he
read Froude's " History of England " between the
dinner courses. Such reading is an unsocial habit
not to be recommended, but it is one which cer-
tainly would not be fallen into by a man who was
" no student."
But a book is only the reflection of a man ; it
only tells what a man has thought about some-
thing. Mr. Beecher got directly from men much
which most students get indirectly through printed
pages. He was preeminently a student of nature,
man, and the Bible.
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 113
In nature he saw a hieroglyphic language and
read the lesson which it had for him. Whether he
was familiar with the writings of Wordsworth I
do not know ; but no man I have ever known pos-
sessed a mind so much in this respect like that of
Wordsworth as Henry Ward Beecher. He says
in one of his lecture-room talks, " Have you ever,
as a part of your obedience to Christ, taken time
to sit down and think what birds and flowers
mean? You have taken flowers and you have en-
joyed them — their forms, their colors, their odors
— simply as objects which had a relation to a cer-
tain sense of beauty in yourself. That is very well,
although it is the merest superficial treatment of
that profound subject, and does not fulfill the com-
mand of God. The command of prayer, of meek-
ness, of humility may rank higher in the moral
scale, but they are not one whit more commands
than is this passage a command in relation to birds
and flowers, and they do not address you one whit
more than this does. Consider. It is not smell, it
is not admire, it is not enjoy, it is not even look
at ; it is consider. And to consider is to ponder ;
it is to take a thing up into your mind and turn it
over and over that you may know what it means."
In these words he describes his own habits. He
considered, that is, pondered much. If he read
books less than most ministers, he thought more
about what he read than most ministers think. If
he ate less, he digested more, and it is what we
digest, not what we eat, that makes us strong.
114 HENRY WARD BEECHER
He carried the same spirit into his study of
men. He did not visit much from house to house,
nor, so far as I know, did he ever belong to a
club ; clubs were not as common then as now.
But he made himself a welcome guest in the shop,
the office, the factory. He did not confine his fel-
lowship to any class or circle in society. He says
somewhere, "There is no man that is not wiser
than I am on some subjects ; I can get something
from everybody." In another place he says,
" There is not a deck-hand on the ferry-boats, nor
a man at Fulton Ferry whom I do not know, and
who has not helped me." This was the secret of
his interest in all manner of things. While he
was getting information from men he was getting
insight into men. In his Yale lectures to young
men he tells them how in his pastoral intercourse
he adjusts his ministry to the character of the man,
as their character is interpreted to him by the
structure and organism of the individual before
him. Despite this constant intuitive study, he was
easily cheated. There is a profound truth in the
epigram attributed to Edward Eggleston — "I
never knew a person who knew man so well and
men so ill as Henry Ward Beecher." He studied
men with a "charity which thinketh no evil;"
looked not so much to see what was in the man to-
day as what were the possibilities for the man in
the future. But it was because of this ineradicable
faith in the possibility of goodness in men that he
was the great preacher. " We are saved by hope : "
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 115
if the pulpit universally recognized this truth it
would possess a much greater saving grace.
In the same spirit in which he studied nature and
man, he studied the Bible. A pocket Bible was his
constant companion. If by being a Bible preacher
is meant a preacher who gathers by concordance a
great accumulation of texts and quotes them as
demonstration of a proposition which he wishes to
establish, Mr. Beecher was not a Bible preacher.
If by a Bible preacher is meant a man who is
suffused through and through with the spirit, in-
spiration, and uplifting influence which is in this
collection of Hebrew literature, Mr. Beecher was
preeminently a Bible preacher. " Under the fos-
sil,'* says M. Taine, " there was an animal ; and
behind the document there was a man. Why do
you study the shell except to bring before you the
animal ? So you study the document only to know
the man." So Mr. Beecher studied the Bible. " A
Bible alone," he says, "is nothing. A Bible is
what the man is who stands behind it — a book of
hieroglyphics, if he be nothing but a spiritual
Champollion ; a book of rituals, if he be nothing
but a curiosity-monger or an ingenious framer of
odds and ends of things ; and a valuable guide, full
of truth and full of benefit for mankind, if he be
a great soul filled with living thought." The Bible
is primarily a revelation of the higher spiritual ex-
perience of men ; it is a revelation of God just in
so far as God is in spiritual experience. The study
of the Bible as a document, that we may know the
116 HENRY WARD BEECHER
men who produced the document, and so better
understand the spiritual experience in and through
which God is revealed, constitutes the miscalled
" Higher Criticism." It was the recognition of the
man behind the document, and the spiritual expe-
rience in the man, which both made famous and
subjected to severe criticism Dean Milman's " His-
tory of the Jews" and Dean Stanley's "History
of the Jewish Church." To what extent the same
spirit actuated Mr. Beecher's pulpit use of the Old
Testament, and to what extent the results of the
"Higher Criticism" were anticipated by him, is
indicated by the volume of popular lectures on the
Bible preached during the winter of 1878-79, and
subsequently published under the title "Bible
Studies."
But it was the New Testament which he chiefly
studied. He did not merely read it and re-read it ;
he did not merely study the interpreters of it ; his
study was not mainly nor even largely textual and
verbal ; I doubt whether he ever spent much time
over questions of grammatical construction or ver-
bal translation ; the object of his study was always
to get at the living thought of the writer, to under-
stand and put himself in possession of the writer's
experience. In this study he made use of his pen,
working over the passage under his consideration,
analyzing it and writing down the analysis, either
to clarify it, to fasten it in his own mind, or to
preserve it for future reference. A striking illus-
tration of this his method of study is an analysis
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 117
of the seventh chapter of Romans, which he wrote,
I believe, some time in the seventies. He subse-
quently gave it to me, and it was published in
" The Christian Union " in 1887, at the time of his
death. The analysis is worked out in a manner
analogous to that of a lawyer's brief, and with a
detail which recalls the. method of Dr. Charles G.
Finney.1 While he thus familiarized himself, not
only with the writings and the thoughts, but even
more with the vital experiences of Paul, he gave, if
not a more assiduous, a more constant and compre-
hensive study to the life and teachings of Jesus
Christ. " Christ," says William Arnot, " is the
living Seed ; the Bible is the husk that contains
the Seed." It was that he might understand and
interpret this living Seed that Mr. Beecher studied
and used the Four Gospels. I doubt whether any
minister ever lived who in a stricter sense preached
Jesus Christ. When he died, leaving his life of
Christ but half finished, his sons were able to com-
plete it, with scarcely a break, by quotations from
his sermons, except that there was no sermon to
be found describing the crucifixion. This scene
was so sacred to Mr. Beecher that he never ven-
tured to attempt a portrayal of it.
If it is a mistake to suppose that Mr. Beecher
was no student, it is equally a mistake to suppose
that he was accustomed to speak without prepara-
tion. In his early ministry he had made a careful
analytical study of the old English divines, not so
1 See Appendix II.
118 HENRY WARD BEECHER
much for their thought as for their style. He wrote
his early sermons fully and sometimes with consid-
erable care. I think his " Lectures to Young Men,"
given in Indianapolis, were fully written. Rhetoric
had thus become to him, as had elocution, a second
nature. But at the time of which I am writing his
preparation of his theme was chiefly a brooding, a
meditating, a considering. This took no little time ;
but the immediate analysis of his theme, its formu-
lation, and the verbal phrasing of it, were ac-
complished with marvelous rapidity. He told me
once his method ; I describe it from memory. " I
have," he says, " half a dozen or more topics lying
loose in my mind through the week ; I think of
one or another, as occasion may serve, anywhere,
— at home, in the street, in the horse-car. I
rarely know what theme I shall use until Sunday
morning. Then, after breakfast, I go into my
study, as a man goes into his orchard ; I feel among
these themes as he feels among the apples, to find
the ripest and the best ; the theme which seems
most ripe I pluck ; then I select my text, analyze my
subject, prepare my sermon, and go into the pulpit
to preach it while it is fresh."
In this preparation he wrote the introduction
and the earlier portions of his sermon in full, but
as the time for the church service grew near, the
writing was more abbreviated; then mere heads
were jotted down, in single sentences, or perhaps
single words ; and at last, almost as the bell began
to toll, he caught up his unfinished manuscript,
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 119
walked with long, rapid strides to the church,
edged his way through the throng, with a greet-
ing here and there to a special friend, dropped
his soft felt hat by the side of his chair, put his
notes on the table beside him, sometimes added
to them with a pencil while the choir was sing-
ing the anthem.1 When the time for the sermon
came, the notes lay on the open Bible before him.
He read in a quiet manner, not always easily audi-
ble throughout the church unless it were notably
still, the first and fully written pages, dropped his
manuscript to throw in a thought that flashed
upon him, came back to it again, dropped it again,
presently dropped it altogether, either not to recur
to it at all, or to recur to it only to catch from
some word or sentence a hint as to the next point
in the current of his thought. To the careless it
seemed that Mr. Beecher's preparation of his ser-
mon was left to Sunday morning ; in fact, he rarely
if ever in his ordinary preaching treated a theme
until he had given to it weeks of meditation. In
his earlier years there lay on his study table a
little notebook with flexible covers, about the size
of a sheet of commercial note-paper, full of hints,
subjects, themes, sketches of possible sermons,
with an occasional fully articulated skeleton. Later
I think he gave up this notebook, but his pocket
was generally half full of letters, on the back of
1 This was his method daring the earlier years of his Brooklyn
ministry ; subsequently he often preached from mere notes jotted
down on a sheet of note-paper.
120 HENRY WARD BEECHER
any one of which he would jot down thoughts for
sermons, as they might strike him, wherever he
happened to be. A single illustration may serve
to make clear this excogitation of his sermons.
He was to preach at an ordination in New Eng-
land. " I think," he said to me, " I shall preach a
sermon on pulpit dynamics ; you had better look
for it." I did look for it, and it was nothing but
a description of the incidental advantages of and
happiness in the ministry as a profession. When
I next met him I asked, " Where is that sermon
on pulpit dynamics ? " " It was not ripe," he re-
plied ; " but I shall get something out of it yet."
What he did get out of it was, ten years later, the
Yale "Lectures on Preaching," one of the best
pieces of work he ever did.
When I turn from some account of Mr. Beecher's
general and specific methods of preparation to an
analysis of the sermons themselves, the difficulty of
furnishing any generic analysis is almost insuper-
able. This is partly due to the extraordinary vari-
ety of elements which entered into them. " The
most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare,"
Charles H. Spurgeon is said to have called Mr.
Beecher. This myriad-mindedness shows itself in
the structure and composition of his sermons. He
advised the young men at Yale Theological Semi-
nary never to preach two sermons alike, if they
could help it — counsel founded upon his own prac-
tice. The Harper and Brothers edition of his
" Sermons " containing a selection of forty-six dis-
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 121
courses, taken from the preaching of ten years,
includes an autobiographical exposition of the
spirit and purpose of his ministry in " Thirteen
Years in the Gospel Ministry, a Sermon of Minis-
terial Experience ; " a prose poem in " The Sepul-
chre in the Garden ; " a theological discourse in
" The Divinity of Christ maintained in a Consid-
eration of his Relations to the Soul of Man ; " a
spiritual rhapsody in " The Gentleness of God ; "
a meditation, the fruit of a spring day spent on
his farm, in " The Lilies of the Field, a Study of
Spring for the Careworn ; " an interpretation of
nature in u The Storm and its Lessons ; " an expo-
sition of the simplest ethical duties in " Faithfulness
in Little Things ; " an exposition of an Old Testa-
ment story in " Three Eras in Life : God — Love
— Grief — as Exemplified in the Experience of
Jacob ; " — in truth, there are scarcely two ser-
mons in this collection which in form, structure, and
method are alike.
There are, however, certain general character-
istics which may be said to belong to all of Mr.
Beecher's sermons. He rarely preached a textual
or expository sermon.1 " A text," he has some-
where said, " is like a gate ; some ministers swing
back and forth on it ; I push it open and go in."
His texts were rarely more than mottoes for, or
introductions to his discourse. This was by no
accident ; it sprang by necessity out of his methods
1 His Bible Studies may be regarded as an exception, but they
were lectures rather than sermons.
122 HENRY WARD BEECHER
of preparation. He first determined the object
that he wished to accomplish by his sermon — some
change in life, practical, spiritual, or intellectual,
in an individual, or in a type, or in a church, or in
the entire community ; then he selected the theme
which would be, in his judgment, most instrumental
to this end ; and lastly the text which would serve
as an introduction to the theme. I do not mean
that his mind always went through these processes
in this order ; I do mean that in the order of im-
portance the object to be accomplished came first,
the theme by which it was to be accomplished sec-
ond, the text which was to introduce the theme
third. He never forced texts out of their connec-
tion, nor imputed to them a fanciful meaning, nor
employed them as mere devices to awaken a guess-
ing curiosity in the minds of the congregation.
Strictly doctrinal sermons were few ; occasionally
he preached one for the purpose of denning his
position and reaffirming his substantial agreement
with the evangelical Protestantism in which he had
been bred. When he essayed an entrance into pure
theology he was not at his best. His argument
for the divinity of Christ derived from his rela-
tions to the human soul is effective, not because it
is an exposition of philosophy, but because it is an
interpretation of experience ; but when he attempts
to define this divinity, as in a sermon preached in
1879, and subsequently in the introduction to his
life of Christ, as " simply the Divine Spirit in a
human body," he offers a definition with which it
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 123
is impossible to reconcile the spirit of his own
preaching. Nowhere in religious literature is the
essential humanity of Christ's nature more illus-
trated and enforced than in Mr. Beecher's preach-
ing ; nor anywhere is Christ's essential divinity
more emphasized.
In truth, Mr. Beecher was indifferent as to theo-
logical theories, ritualistic observances, and church
connections ; only the realities of life interested
him. He was a Congregationalist, partly because
he was born in New England, partly because he
was independent by nature ; but he was quite ready
to co-work with ministers of all denominations,
and he would have been equally ready to work in
any denomination if he could have had in it equal
liberty. As we have seen, the creed of his church
did not differ from that of New School Presbyte-
rianism ; there was a baptistry under the pulpit, and
candidates for admission were baptized by immer-
sion or sprinkling, as they preferred ; the prayer-
meetings had the fervor of Methodist prayer-meet-
ings; Mr. Beecher was by nature too unconventional
to adopt a liturgy, but for the liturgy of the Epis-.
copal Church he had a great affection. " Should
our own children," he says, " find their religious
wants better met in the service of the Episcopal
Church than in the Plymouth .Congregational
Church, we should take them by the hand and lead
them to its altars." On the questions at issue be-
tween the different denominations I think he rarely
if ever preached, unless the preaching of his later
124 HENRY WARD BEECHER
years against certain tenets of the severer type of
Calvinism affords an exception.
But though he was not a theological preacher,
if by that is meant a preacher whose aim it is to
expound a certain philosophy of religion, a simple
but consistent theology underlay all his ministry
from its beginning to its end. Professor William
James, in his volume on the " Varieties of Reli-
gious Experience," declares that " there is a cer-
tain uniform deliverance in which religions all
appear to meet. It consists of two parts : 1. An
uneasiness ; 2. Its solution. — 1. The uneasiness,
reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there
is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from
the wrongness by making proper connection with
the higher powers." This is very analogous to
Professor Christlieb's declaration that evangelioal
Christianity is all summed up in the two words
" sin " and " salvation." In the evangelical theo-
logy as interpreted by Christlieb, in the message
of universal religion as interpreted by Professor
James, Henry Ward Beecher was a devout and
earnest believer. It is true that in his later years
he repudiated the doctrine of the Fall of man in
Adam, and he always repudiated the idea that the
race could justly he held responsible for any such
fall. It is true that he repudiated, in vigorous and
even vehement terms, the doctrine of Total Deprav-
ity. This word, he said, " is an interloper ; it is
not to be found in the Scriptures ; we do not be-
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 125
lieve that it is even to be found in the catechism
and confessions of faith of Protestant or Catholic
Christendom ; we do not feel called upon to give
the mischievous phrase any respect; we do not
believe in it, nor in the thing which it obviously
signifies ; it is an unscrupulous, monstrous, and
unredeemable lie." But he did believe, " with con-
tinual sorrow of heart and daily overflowing evi-
dence, in the deep sinfulness of universal man ; "
believed that " no man lives who does not need to
repent of sin, and to turn from it ; " believed that
" turning from sin is work so deep and touches so
closely the very springs of being that no man will
ever change except by the help of God." This was
in him no theoretic conception based either on
a 'priori reasoning or on ancient Biblical history ;
it was a conviction borne in upon him by his own
personal experience and by his wide observation of
life. Few ministers in the American pulpit have
preached more searchingly on human sins, or
awakened more vividly in men's consciousness the
sense of their wrong-doing ; it is doubtful whether
any minister has preached more effectively practi-
cal ethics — the supreme obligation of love to God
and man as the controlling motive of the life, and
the various specific obligations which that supreme
obligation involves.
But this was not the burden of Mr. Beecher's
preaching. His aim was less to convince men
"that there is something wrong about us as we
naturally stand " than to make available to them
126 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the true solution, namely, " that we are saved from
the wrongness by making proper connection with
the higher powers." He believed that the Gospel
is the " power of God unto salvation," and his
preeminent ambition in the ministry was to make
that Gospel effectual. He affirmed in the strong-
est terms that success in preaching depends on the
power of the preacher to put before men the Lord
Jesus Christ ; that high above all other influences
is Christ, "a living Person who gave himself a
ransom for sinners and now ever lives to make
intercession for them ; " that " there can be no
sound and effective method of preaching ethics
even which does not derive its authority from
the Lord Christ ; " that " all reformations of evil
in society, all civil and social reformations, should
spring from this vital centre ; " that " all philan-
thropies are partial and imperfect that do not grow
out of this same root ; " that " all public questions
of justice, of liberty, of equity, of purity, of intel-
ligence should be vitalized by the power which is
in Christ Jesus." * In these respects Mr. Beecher's
preaching was the antipodes of naturalistic. He
believed profoundly in the declaration of the Ni-
cene Creed that Jesus Christ " for us men and for
our salvation came down from Heaven." He be-
lieved, in other words, that the connection with the
higher powers has been made for us by the life,
sufferings, and death of Jesus Christ ; and the aim
of his preaching was to persuade men to accept
1 Sermons, Harper and Brothers' edition, vol. ii. p. 200.
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 127
this connection, and so escape from the sinfulness
in which they were enmeshed.1
As his preaching was non-naturalistic, so it was
non-rationalistic. The basis of naturalism in reli-
gion is the assumption that men can save themselves
from sinfulness without a divine helper ; the basis
of rationalism in preaching is the doctrine that men
are governed by their reason, and if they are per-
suaded of a truth will follow it. Mr. Beecher did
not believe that men are governed by their reason ;
he believed that they are governed by their motive
powers. He therefore appealed directly to their
emotions. It was often said in criticism of him
that he was an emotional preacher. He would not
have denied the assertion. He was an emotional
preacher, partly by reason of his emotional temper-
ament, partly by reason of his psychological con-
ception of the forces that determine life. Even more
than to show men the right way, he sought to fur-
nish them with power which would impel them in
the right way. He believed in enthusiasm, and he
imparted enthusiasm to all who came under his
dominating influence. He did not confound the
sentiments and the emotions ; he did not attempt
to play upon the sentiments. As little as any man
I ever knew was he ambitious to move men either
to laughter or to tears, except as through laughter
and tears he could inspire men to higher spiritual
living. With him oratory was not an end, but a
1 Compare for a consideration of the substance of his preach-
ing, chapters i. and iv.
128 HENRY WARD BEECHER
means. His aim was not to amuse, excite, or even
instruct, but through instruction and inspiration,
through humor and pathos, to bring the whole man
into vital union with God, and the whole life into
conformity with the law of God as it is interpreted
by the life and character of Christ.
Thus his preaching was more than emotional, it
was spiritual. He believed in the potential divinity
in every man; he believed that if this potential
divinity were once awakened and given its true
place, it would bring all the man into subjection to
the law of God, and he sought, by reason, by imagi-
nation, by humor, by pathos, by illustration, and by
emotion, but yet more than by any or all of these,
by direct spiritual contact, to evoke this divine
potentiality and make it actual and effective. Mr.
Beecher would not have been the preacher that he
was if he had not been essentially a mystic. By a
mystic I mean a man who possesses the power of
seeing immediately and directly the invisible and
the eternal. " If I were asked," he told the Yale
theological students, " what had been in my own
ministry the unseen source of more help and more
power than anything else, I should say that my
mother gave to me a temperament that enabled
me to see the unseeable and to know the unknow-
able, to realize things not created as if they were,
and oftentimes far more than if they were, present
to my outward senses." Mr. Beecher's imagination
was not a mere faculty for ornamentation, it was a
power of immediately perceiving the invisible. His
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 129
belief in God was not what Carlyle contemptuously
calls "an hypothetical God." God was to him a
perpetual presence. He knew God and walked with
him. So natural and simple was this faith that it
required for its cultivation no adventitious circum-
stances ; it was entirely congruous in his mind with
secular activities, domestic enjoyments, ebullient
mirth. He had the faith of a child who never thinks
that he may not be merry in his father's presence.
Merriment and reverence were not to him in the
least incongruous. Men who were repelled by a
faith of a more austere type appreciated a faith
whjch was so simply and naturally human. The
consciousness of God was awakened in men by one
who recognized God's fellowship in all the com-
mon experiences of life. This pervasive faith made
him not merely an orator about religion, but an
imparter of religion, and constituted the secret of
his pulpit power. It interprets at once his real re-
verence and his seeming irreverence ; his fellowship
with God no less in secular than in sacred hours,
and his disregard for the conventions of religion
the utility of which for less impressionable souls he
sometimes failed to realize. And yet this mystical
power that makes all ideals realities because all
ideals are parts of the Infinite and the Eternal
power was mated in Mr. Beecher to a cool, hard,
practical common sense. He was mystical, but he
was rational. All the visions that were brought to
his mind through his imagination he tested and
measured by the judgment. He was not at times
130 HENRY WARD BEECHER
a rationalist, and at times a mystic ; all his mys-
ticism was rationalistic mysticism, and all his
rationalism was a mystical rationalism. A great
deal of the skepticism of our day I think is due to
the fact that men are trying to demonstrate reli-
gious truth by the faculties by which it can only be
tested ; they are trying to build up faith in God by
the process by which only faith in God can be mea-
sured after it exists. As though men should attempt
to make flowers by tearing flowers to pieces; as
though men should attempt to make life by dissect-
ing the living body. Mr. Beecher saw and knew
the Eternal. Then what he had seen he brought to
the judgment bar of reason and conscience, and his
pulpit gave the joint testimony of his faith and his
reason.
This mystic quality of Mr. Beecher gave to his
prayers a spiritual power quite as remarkable as
the power of his preaching. The Puritan doctrine
that regeneration entirely changes the character
was perhaps the cause which led the Puritan
churches to assume that any regenerate soul can
lead a congregation in prayer, and to impose upon
every layman, cultivated and uncultivated, the
duty of praying in public in the prayer-meeting.
In truth, there is no intellectual exercise so diffi-
cult as that of public prayer. He who would con-
duct the devotions of a congregation must not
think of the congregation, otherwise he will in-
stinctively address them ; he must think of the
congregation, otherwise he will engage in a mere
THE PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH 131
monologue, while the congregation listen to his
closet talk with God. Which of these two is the
more indecorous and irreverent it is not easy to
say. It is because of this inherent difficulty that
extemporaneous prayers fall so readily into one of
three categories : unrealized ritual, practically a
repetition of old-time forms, without the graceful
and well-ordered phraseology which belongs to an
historic liturgy ; a spiritual monologue, with the
congregation in the attitude of eavesdroppers ; or
a public speech, nominally addressed to God,
really to the human audience. Mr. Beecher's
prayers for many years were taken down by a
shorthand writer and were published with his ser-
mons in " The Christian Union," subsequently in
pamphlet form, and eventually selections of them
in two volumes. Having undertaken some years
ago to compile a book of devotions for private and
family use, I necessarily made a somewhat large
collection, and a somewhat careful study, of the
literature of prayer. If there is any collection of
prayers which surpasses these published prayers
of Mr. Beecher in simple spiritual eloquence, in the
self-revelation of childlikeness of heart and famil-
iarity of fellowship with the Everlasting Father,
and in understanding and interpretation of the
wants, simple and complex, superficial and pro-
found, of the human heart, I have never seen it.
Rarely does one of these prayers trench in charac-
ter upon public address ; occasionally it is, in part
at least, a monologue ; more frequently it is sim-
132 HENRY WARD BEECHER
ply a new phrasing of common and oft reiterated
petitions ; but in general it is a gathering up of
the experiences of the varied congregation and
their interpretation to the Father on behalf of his
children. A prophet is one who interprets God to
man ; a priest is one who interprets man to God.
Mr. Beecher would have disavowed being a priest ;
he would have insisted that every man can carry
his own wants to God without the intervention of
any intermediary. But far more than most minis-
ters he was a true priest, interpreting men's deeper
wants to themselves, and so acting as their inter-
preter in declaring those deeper wants to him who
alone can provide for them.
No one can understand Mr. Beecher as a social
reformer who does not first understand him as a
pastor and preacher, a minister to the spiritual
life, a prophet and priest, an interpreter of man to
God and of God to man. From this aspect of his
character and life we turn to that aspect presented
by his career as a reformer, a service necessarily
more prominent in the history of his country, but,
as I believe, less profoundly influential in the real
life of his generation.
CHAPTER VI
PARENTHETICAL
The movements of the generation just preceding
the existing generation are usually those least com-
prehended by the existing generation ; they are not
remote enough to constitute past history, they are
not recent enough to constitute current history;
but it is impossible to understand correctly the atti-
tude of Mr. Beecher, or to measure intelligently
the influence which he exerted, without understand-
ing something of the complicated issues which he
confronted when he came to Brooklyn in 1847.
It is therefore necessary to turn aside from
the narration of the events of his life in order to
trace briefly the growth both of slavery and of the
anti-slavery sentiment in the United States, and
to describe briefly the conflicting opinions of the
abolitionists on the one side, and of the timid,
the reactionaries, and the apologists for slavery on
the other, as they existed at the time when Mr.
Beecher began to take a prominent part in the
discussions to which slavery gave rise.
The anti-slavery issue in 1847 was far more
complicated than it appears to be to the reader in
1900. Roughly speaking, the community in the
North was divided into three parties: there was
1M HENRY WARD BEECHER
an occasional advocate of slavery, a conservative,
who defended it because " whatever is, is right ; "
an economist, who thought it essential to the cotton
industry, and the cotton industry essential to the
welfare of the country ; a romanticist, entranced by
the patriarchal aspects of domestic slavery, or re-
pelled from the anti-slavery movement by the vitu-
perative spirit of the radical abolitionists ; but on
the whole there was no sentiment in the North in
favor of slavery. There was a great deal of apathy ;
there were a great many who regarded the issue as
remote, and dreaded its approach ; there were men
who cared more for the integrity of the political
party, or of the ecclesiastical organization, than
they did for their fellow men ; there were ministers
who did not think that Christianity had to do with
social questions, and who condemned the preaching
of liberty and humanity as the preaching of politics ;
there were editors who had never studied the Con-
stitution of the United States, and did not realize
that under the Constitution anything could be done
to limit or restrict what they conceded to be a
serious evil ; there were moralists, all of whose
indignation was expended on the abolitionists for
their attacks on the Constitution and the Church,
and who had no indignation left to expend on the
pro-slavery spirit, which denied in the Southern
States, and sought to deny throughout the nation,
free press, free speech, and free schools. These
classes, grouped together, constituted what was
sometimes called the " conservative," sometimes.
PARENTHETICAL 135
the "pro-slavery" party, though neither epithet
properly described them. There were, secondly,
the abolitionists, who demanded the immediate
and unconditional abolition of slavery, and as a
means to that end, the dissolution of the Union,
under the mistaken impression that so they would
secure immediate and unconditional abolition. And
there were, thirdly, the anti-slavery men who be-
lieved that the Constitution gave to the federal
government ample powers to prevent the extension
of slavery, who wished to exert those powers for
that purpose, and who believed that, if the exten-
sion of slavery was thus prevented, it would be
possible to secure eventually the peaceable aboli-
tion of slavery even in the slave states. In order
to understand Beecher's share in the ultimate over-
throw of slavery, it is necessary to understand these
three parties and something of the history which
produced them.
The year 1620, which saw the Pilgrim Fathers
landing on Plymouth Rock, saw a vessel with
slaves on board landing on the Virginia coast.
Nor was slavery at first confined to any section.
In 1790 — the first term of George Washington —
it existed in every state of the Union, except only
Massachusetts ; it did not finally disappear from
the state of New York until 1827; and, as has
been shown in a preceding chapter, was maintained,
in spite of the Ordinance of 1787, in Indiana until
the admission of Indiana as a state into the Union
in the year 1816. From the first it existed under
136 HENRY WARD BEECHER
protest. The abolition sentiment, nurtured in
England by the abolition movement under the
leadership of Wilberforce and Clarkson, crossed
the sea and made itself felt in the American
Colonies. The first anti-slavery societies included
Southern as well as Northern men. In the original
draft of the Declaration of Independence, one of
the counts in the indictment against King George
was, that he had insisted on maintaining the slave-
trade in spite of the protests of the state of Vir-
ginia. The first anti-slavery convention, held in
1793 in the city of Philadelphia, was attended
alike by Northern and Southern men, and empha-
sized the issue between slavery and freedom as dis-
tinctly as it was emphasized, half a century later,
by Henrys Ward Beecher, William H. Seward, and
Abraham Lincoln. In the address issued by that
convention it was distinctly affirmed that liberty
and slavery cannot exist together on the same con-
tinent. This anti-slavery movement was nurtured
and promoted by the churches. The Presbyterian
and Methodist churches, especially, were distinctly
anti-slavery in their teachings, as well as in their
sentiments, and the Friends' Meeting was even
more outspoken and vigorous. Nor was this work
of the Christian Church and of the philanthropic
anti-slavery societies nugatory. The anti-slavery
sentiment grew apace. Partly owing to the indus-
trial conditions, partly to political considerations,
and partly to humane, philanthropic, and religious
teachings, slavery was gradually abolished in the
PARENTHETICAL 137
states north of the so-called Mason and Dixon's
Line — the geographical boundary between Penn-
sylvania and Maryland. In 1830 it had disappeared
absolutely from the last of the so-called Northern
States. Moreover, Under the influence of these
teachings, the slave-trade had been abolished by
Congress in 1808, the earliest date at which such
abolition was permitted by the Constitution, and it
had been practically abolished earlier than that by
statutes enacted in nearly every state in the Union
prohibiting the importation of slaves from abroad.1
This abolition of slavery was accomplished by a
gradual and wholly peaceful process, and in most
if not all the states with some measure of compen-
sation to the slave-owners.
If this movement could have gone on unchecked
slavery might have been peacefully abolished
throughout the United States by the end of the
nineteenth century. But it was not allowed to go
on unchecked. Simultaneously with the growth of
anti-slavery sentiment there grew up a pro-slavery
sentiment. The invention of the cotton-gin in 1793,
and- its general adoption by the year 1812, had
created a great demand for cotton. Experience
had demonstrated that cotton could be raised only
by negro labor, and it was assumed, without argu-
ment, that negro labor must be slave labor. The
South, responding to the demand for negro labor
created by the increased price and value upon cot-
1 Georgia and South Carolina took no such action; North
Carolina levied a tax on all slaves imported.
138 HENRY WARD BEECHER
ton, began to put a value upon slavery as an in-
dustrial condition which they had not earlier done.
This demand created a new industry — the rearing
of slaves in the Border States, to be shipped and
sold as laborers in the Gulf States. The men who
engaged in this traffic were universally despised
throughout the South ; but the traffic went on, and
indeed was a necessity of the slave system. These
industrial changes not only increased the commer-
cial value of slavery, but also changed its character.
Slaves engaged in domestic service as house ser-
vants were still kindly treated. They were regarded
as in some sense members of the family ; were well
fed, well clothed, well cared for, and in general
kindly, though not always respectfully, treated.
An attachment grew up between them and the
master, the mistress, and the children of the home,
such as was unknown in the domestic service of the
Northern States. But no such relations were pos-
sible between master and servant when the master
was engaged in rearing slaves for sale, and none
such were possible on the great cotton and sugar
plantations of the South, where the negroes worked
in gangs under overseers, often of their own race.1
Thus, while from the North slavery disappeared, in
the South slavery became the distinguishing char-
acteristic of its industrial system, and at the same
time radically changed in its character. Thomas
1 " Louisiana sugar planters did not hesitate to avow openly that,
on the whole, they found it the hest economy to work off their
stock of negroes about once in seven years and then buy an entire
PARENTHETICAL 139
Jefferson had urged in his later years that all chil-
dren born in slavery after a certain date should be
freed, provided with a home and with some mea-
sure of education at public expense, and as soon as
they reached competent age sent to some place out-
side the country, as San Domingo ; but he was the
last Southern statesman of any note to advocate
abolition, either gradual or immediate.
These changes in the economic conditions of the
South were accompanied inevitably by others.
Wherever labor is servile, labor is disgraced. La-
bor in the South was disgraced, and the free negro
and the poor white occupied positions less respected
than those of the slave. The Southern States
relapsed into a condition of feudalism far inferior
to that of the middle ages. Socially and politically,
they became an oligarchy ; retaining the form but
not the spirit of democracy, ruled by a small body
of land-owners and slave-owners. Education is
fatal to slavery, and the education of the slave
was discouraged in all the Southern States and ab-
solutely prohibited in many of them. The education
of the poor white would have inevitably produced
discontent among the negroes ; therefore there
was no adequate provision for their education. The
movement for free schools, beginning in New Eng-
land and moving westward, never crossed into the
region dominated by the slave power. Until after
new set of hands." James Ford Rhodes: History of the U. S.,
vol. i. p. 308. See this entire chapter iv. for a very judicial his-
torical picture of American slavery as it existed in 1850.
140 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the Civil War not a single Southern State pos-
sessed any approximation to a free-school sys-
tem.
The South was a purely agricultural country
and wished to buy its manufactured articles in
the cheapest market ; it therefore believed in free
trade. The North was a manufacturing commu-
nity; it wanted a monopoly for its manufactured
articles, and therefore demanded a protective tariff.
From the formation of the Constitution two par-
ties, representing two political tendencies, divided
the nation : one, led by Thomas Jefferson, dreaded
concentration of political power and emphasized
the value of local self-government ; the other, led
by Alexander Hamilton, dreaded the perils arising
from sectional self-interest and emphasized the
importance of a strong national organization. The
Constitution was an endeavor to harmonize these
two forces — the centrifugal and the centripetal.
For reasons which it is not necessary to go into
here, the centrifugal, or Democratic, or Jefferso-
nian, tendencies were greatest in the South ; the
centripetal, or national, or Hamiltonian, forces
were greatest in the North. The North prospered,
the South did not. Immigration poured into the
North, and avoided the South. The industry of
the North was diversified ; the South gave itself
up to a single industry, and that one dependent on
slave labor. Socially, the South was Cavalier and
aristocratic; the North Puritan and democratic.
Thus, the South and the North, united under the
PARENTHETICAL 141
same Constitution, drifted farther and farther
apart, and became at first alien and then hostile
to one another — industrially, economically, politi-
cally, socially. Mason and Dixon's Line crept
westward with the westward growth of the nation :
all south of that line became aristocratic, feudal,
slave; all north of that line became democratic,
modern, free.
When the inclination is strong it can generally
discover or invent reasons to justify it. The South
wished slavery, and found reasons for its mainte-
nance. The economic advantage was pleaded : We
must have slave labor for our cotton, our sugar,
and our rice industry. The social argument was
pleaded : The blacks must be kept in subjection to
the whites or we shall have intermarriage and all
the evils that will follow from intermarriage. The
religious argument was pleaded : The curse of God
upon the descendants of Ham ; the uncondemned
existence of slavery in the Old Testament times ;
the fact that Jesus Christ did not in explicit terms
condemn it in New Testament times. Southern
ministers forgot the radical difference between
Roman slavery and Hebrew slavery ; they forgot
that Hebrew legislation surrounded slavery with
such conditions that iu the time of Christ slavery
had almost if not entirely disappeared from Pales-
tine, except as it was imported there by Rome ;
they forgot that under the beneficent teachings of
Christianity slavery gradually disappeared from
Europe ; they assumed that a condition of labor,
142 HENRY WARD BEECHER
permitted for a little while in the early barbarism
of Judaism, was the best condition of labor for the
foremost and freest country on the face of the
globe in the nineteenth century.
At the same time with this growth of slavery
in the South and this abolition of slavery in the
North, there grew up in the North an unwonted
prejudice against the African. It would perhaps
be difficult to say why this prejudice was greater
in the North than in the South ; but of the fact
there can be no doubt. The negro was no longer a
negro : he was a " nigger." Special sections of the
great cities were, by a kind of common consent, set
apart for the negroes, like the ghettoes for the
Jews in the mediaeval cities. In the theatres they
were banished to the upper galleries, which were
called derisively " the nigger heaven." They were
directed to the galleries, or to special, and gener-
ally undesirable, pews in the churches. Only the
more servile forms of labor were permitted to them.
In Boston, later the centre of the Abolition Move-
ment, on the great days when the Ancient and
Honorable Artillery paraded on Boston Common,
the negroes were customarily hooted off the public
grounds before the parade began.
Something such was the condition of the country
in the year 1831. In that year two events occurred,
having no apparent connection, but having a cer-
tain striking dramatic relation : in Virginia a slave
insurrection broke out, accompanied with deeds of
barbarism and cruelty ; in Boston, William Lloyd
PARENTHETICAL 143
Garrison started " The Liberator," pledged to in-
stant and immediate abolition.
William Lloyd Garrison is a type of the radical
abolitionist of the North, the antipodes of the pro-
slavery propagandists of the South. Which pro-
duced the other has ever been a matter of hot
debate between the respective advocates of South
and North. The truth is, each produced the other :
the fire creates a draught ; the draught increases the
fire. It was inevitable that the extension of slavery
and the change in its character should excite alike
assailants and advocates ; it was inevitable that
every assault should intensify the resolute purpose
of the advocate, and every advocacy should inten-
sify the resolute purpose of the assailant. Mr.
Garrison contended that slavery was a sin, and,
because a sin, should be instantly abandoned. His
position is thus defined by Mr. Oliver Johnson, one
of his friends and biographers : —
Mr. Garrison had learned the doctrine of immediatism
from Dr. Beecher himself. The very keynote of the re-
vivals of that day, in which the Doctor took so prominent
a part, was the duty of every sinner to repent instantly
and give his heart to Christ ; but the men who were most
eloquent in urging this doctrine in its application to the
sin of unbelief, were prompt to deny it in its application
to the sin of slavery. Sin in general was something for
which there could be no apology or excuse, but the par-
ticular sin of treating men as chattels and compelling
them to work without wages could only be put away, if
at all, by a process requiring whole generations for its
144 HENRY WARD BEECHER
consummation ! Such was the moral blindness of the
time — a blindness not of the multitude alone, but of
the professed expounders of the will of God.1
This was not all. If slavery was a sin, so Mr.
Garrison argued, the slaveholder is a sinner. The
original slaveholder stole the slave from his home
in Africa ; he was a man-stealer. But the parti-
cipant is as bad as the thief ; therefore the man
who took the slave from the slave-dealer is him-
self a man-stealer. But a thief can give no title
to his goods; therefore the slave-owner, who in
Georgia or South Carolina had, two centuries after
the original theft, inherited a negro, was himself
a man-stealer. He ought not, so Mr. Garrison
argued, to be admitted to fellowship in any church ;
he ought, so Mr. Garrison argued, to be treated
as a man-stealer, and no more socially recognized
than any other thief. The proposition for grad-
ual emancipation Mr. Garrison vehemently con-
demned : slavery was a sin to be instantly broken
off. The proposition for compensation he equally
condemned : to compensate the slaveholder, he
said, is to pay him for his stolen goods, to acknow-
ledge that his crime is not a crime. But the Con-
stitution of the United States interposed a con-
siderable obstacle to the instant and immediate
emancipation of the slave. The Northern States
had no more power over slavery in South Carolina
1 Oliver Johnson : Life and Times of William Lloyd Garrison,
p. 45.
PARENTHETICAL 146
than over serfdom in Russia. William Lloyd Gar-
rison was quite ready to meet this constitutional
argument. He found in the Book of Isaiah a text
which he thought appropriate. That prophet had
declared that the men in his time who had no faith
in God scoffed at the divine warnings because they
had made a covenant with death and an agreement
with hell, and the prophet scornfully affirmed that
such covenant with death and agreement with hell
would be annulled, as the people would find to
their cost. William Lloyd Garrison applied this
phrase to the Constitution of the United States.
It was, he said, a covenant with death and an
agreement with hell; let us away with it. The
Northern States were responsible for the sin of
slavery because they allowed themselves to remain
in partnership with the slaveholders. He demanded
the instant abolition of this partnership with slave-
holders by the secession of the Northern States
from the Union.
These radical and uncompromising principles
were put forth in a radical and uncompromising
temper. Whoever did not agree with the aboli-
tionists, both in the end to be sought and in the
methods to be pursued, was denounced as a pro-
slavery man. When the time for political action
came, Frederick Douglass, himself an emancipated
negro, and the foremost representative of his race
then, as Booker T. Washington is the foremost
representative now, withdrew from the Abolition
party, to vote with the Liberty party. He was
146 HENRY WARD BEECHER
instantly scored by the abolitionists as an apostate
and renegade. James G. Birney was nominated
as a candidate by the Liberty party on a platform
demanding that there should be no further exten-
sion for slavery. He was instantly denounced as
a political place-hunter. Those in the Church of
Christ who did not agree with the radical prin-
ciples of the radical abolitionists came in for a
similar denunciation. Said Mr. Garrison : —
" Christianity indignantly rejects the sanctimonious
pretensions of the great mass of the clergy in our land.
It is becoming more and more apparent that they are
nothing better than hirelings, in the bad sense of that
term — that they are blind leaders of the blind, dumb
dogs that cannot bark, spiritual popes — that they love
the fleece better than the flock — that they are mighty
hindrances to the march of human freedom, and to the
enfranchisement of the souls of men." 1
It is perhaps not astonishing that ministers so
characterized did not find themselves prompted to
march in company with the leader who so charac-
terized them.
Along with these principles and this temper, it
was charged upon the abolitionists that they sought
to bring about the instant and immediate emanci-
pation which they demanded by insurrectionary
and incendiary methods. That charge has been
denied. Whether true or false, it certainly was not
without ground. Abolition tracts were freely cir-
1 William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of his Life, Told by his
Children, vol. ii. p. 140.
PARENTHETICAL 147
culated throughout the Southern States ; pictures
were printed upon cheap handkerchiefs, such as
might be easily circulated among the slaves, and
were sent to them — pictures, the only effect of
which, whatever may have been their object, must
have been to arouse the slaves to insurrection.
The notion was currently entertained that the
slave population was restless, discontented, ready
to revolt, kept in subjection only by a knowledge
that the whole resources of the federal government
would be employed to put the insurrection down.
This notion attributed to the negroes a knowledge
which they did not possess and sentiments which
belong to a much higher state of moral devel-
opment than they had attained. John Brown's
famous raid assumed a readiness on the part of
the slave to rise in revolt if the opportunity was
afforded him, which the subsequent history of the
Civil War demonstrated beyond all question to be
wholly lacking. But the programme as well as the
platform of the abolitionists took for granted the
existence of such a widespread discontent among
the negroes of the South, which only awaited an
opportunity to break out in efficacious revolt. It
is not the only case in history in which reformers
have attributed their own instincts and inclinations
to a people wholly incapable of them.
It is never quite fair to cite single paragraphs
out of passionate utterances in a time of great
excitement, for the purpose of interpreting the
views of a party, a faction, or a leader, since in
148 ' HENRY WARD BEECHER
such times all men are apt to say what in cooler
blood they would modify. But the careful enun-
ciation of its principles by a party may be justly
taken by the historian as a true interpretation both
of its purpose and its spirit. The following decla-
ration of principles was kept standing at the head
of the columns of " The Liberator," the official
organ of the radical abolitionists : —
All men are born free and equal, with certain natural,
essential, and unalienable rights — among which are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Three millions of the American people are in chains
and slavery — held as chattels personal, and bought and
sold as marketable commodities.
Seventy thousand infants, the offspring of slave
parents, kidnapped as soon as born, and permanently
added to the slave population of Christian (!), Republi-
can ( ! ! ), Democratic (!!!) America every year.
Immediate, unconditional emancipation.
Slave-holders, slave-traders, and slave-drivers are to
be placed on the same level of infamy, and in the same
fiendish category, as kidnappers and men-stealers — a
race of monsters unparalleled in their assumption of
power, and their despotic cruelty.
The existing Constitution of the United States is a
covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.
No Union with Slave-holders ! 1
The first three paragraphs state truly enough,
though the latter of the three is inflammatory rhet-
oric, the evils of American slavery as it existed in
1847 ; the other four, which embody the remedy
1 The Liberator of January 1, 1847.
PARENTHETICAL 149
for those evils which the abolitionists proposed,
were each one of them false ; Mr. Beecher believed
each one of them to be false.
No Union with slaveholders was not a sound
principle of political action. Secession from the
Union was neither right nor expedient. It was not
right, because the North as well as the South was
responsible for the existence of slavery ; the North '
as well as the South had entertained and maintained
it ; the importation of slaves was carried on by-
New England shipping merchants and defended
by New England representatives; and when the
proposition came before the Constitutional Con-
vention for the prohibition of the slave-trade New
England voted for the clause that it should not be
abolished until 1808. Thus the North shared with
the South in the responsibility for the sin and shame
of slavery, and it had no right, Pilate-like, to wash
its hands and say, "We are guiltless of this matter."
It was under sacred obligation to remain in the part-
nership and work for the renovation of the nation.
As it was not right, so neither was it expedient.
There was no time when the Middle States would
have thought of withdrawing if the New England
states had followed the advice of Garrison and
Phillips. If they had followed that advice, slavery
would almost certainly have forced itself upon the
far West, as it attempted to do upon Kansas, would
probably have reentered Indiana, and not impos-
sibly have won recognition in even Ohio, Penn-
sylvania, and New York. If the North Atlantic
150 HENRY WARD BEECHER
States had followed the counsels of " The Liber-
ator " and withdrawn from the Union, there is every
probability that to-day all the Southern States, and
a possibility that a considerable proportion of the
Western States, would have been united in a great
slave confederacy. The advice of the abolitionists,
if followed, would not have abolished slavery; it
would have established slavery.
It is not true that the United States Constitu-
tion was " a covenant with death and an agreement
with hell." It had some serious defects — the most
serious, that of compromise with slavery, which
later gave birth to the fugitive-slave law ; but its
excellencies exceeded its defects. It was a noble
instrument of freedom, greater than any other that
has ever been framed by a single convention or in
a single generation. By it there was conferred
upon Congress ample power to put such restraint
upon slavery as would eventually bring it to an
end. Under the Constitution Congress had power
to abolish the slave-trade and that power had been
exercised. It had power to put restraints upon
the interstate slave-trade, if not to abolish it alto-
gether; and such restriction would have crippled
slavery, such abolition would have ultimately de-
stroyed it. It had power to refuse the admission
of any new slave state into the Union and to pro-
hibit slavery in any territory of the United States,
the exercise of which power would have put slavery
in the way of ultimate extinction. It had power,
conferred by an explicit clause of the Constitution,
PARENTHETICAL 151
to protect a free press and free speech in every
state in the Union, a power which, had it been
wisely and vigorously exercised, would have made
possible a continuance of the agitation for emanci-
pation in the slave states themselves. More than
all this, John Quincy Adams, in the hot debates
in the House of Representatives, had suggested
that, if war ever broke out, slavery could be abol-
ished under the war powers which the Constitution
confers. His utterance was prophetic, and slavery
was so abolished. The Constitution was no cove-
nant with death, no agreement with hell : it had
in it all the vital powers necessary for the imme-
diate restriction and the eventual extinction of
slavery on the American Continent.
The slaveholder was not a man-stealer. The origi-
nal slave-dealer in Africa was ; but the man who
found himself in a slave state, the owner of slaves
bequeathed to him by his ancestors, was as truly
under the domination of the slave system as the
slave himself. What could he do? Emancipate
his slaves? In one state, if he did so, a tax was
laid upon the emancipated slave for the very pur-
pose of sending him back into slavery again ; in
another state, if he did so, he must give bonds that
the slave would never become a pauper, or the act
of manumission was illegal ; in another state, he
could not emancipate him legally unless he carried
him out of the state. What should this man do,
who had a hundred slaves in his possession, and
no money with which to provide for them ? Should
152 HENRY WARD BEECHER
he set his slaves free, run away from responsibility,
and leave them to be sold again at the auction
block to the highest bidder ? This in many cases
would have been the result of " immediate, uncon-
ditional emancipation," and this would not have
been liberation.
It was therefore not true that immediate, uncon-
ditional emancipation was the duty of the hour. It
certainly was not the duty of the Northern readers
of " The Liberator : " they had no more political
power to emancipate the slaves in the Southern
States than they had to emancipate the slaves in
Turkey. It was not necessarily the duty of the
individual slaveholder: if he undertook immedi-
ate, unconditional emancipation, he would in many
cases only pass his slave from one state of servitude
to another and a worse state. Whether it was the
duty of the individual state must at least be gravely
questioned. When a great wrong has been done by
a community, and has been wrought into the social
fabric of the community, it cannot be abolished
by a single act of legislation. When an individ-
ual is engaged in wrong-doing, it is his duty im-
mediately to cease wrong-doing; the doctrine of
immediatism, applied by Dr. Beecher to the indi-
vidual, is sound. When a community has become
pervaded by a social injustice which has been
wrought into its very structure, it is not always
its duty, by an immediate act of legislation, to de-
stroy the structure, in order that it may destroy the
evil ; the 4uty of immediatism, applied to the com-
PARENTHETICAL 153
munity by Mr. Garrison, was unsound. The single-
taxer traces land ownership back to robbery : the
Romans stole the land from the Europeans, the
Normans from the Anglo-Saxons, the Anglo-Saxons
from the Indians ; therefore the single-taxer pro-
poses to abolish all ownership in land. Even if it
be true that all land ownership is a kind of robbery,
it does not follow that it ought to be instantly
abolished, with the result of overturning in a day
the whole fabric of civilization built upon the pri-
vate ownership of land. No man ought to work
twelve hours a day three hundred and sixty-five
days in the year, with no opportunity for a Sabbath
or a holiday, save as he secures it sometimes by
working eighteen hours a day. It does not follow
that the iron-master, who finds himself as much
under the domination of the present industrial sys-
tem as the iron-worker, must put on three shifts,
while his neighbors are working with two, and
bankrupt himself, or must close his mills and turn
his hands out to starve. It is true that slavery
was founded on man-stealing; it is not true that
the best remedy for slavery was immediate and
unconditional abolition of the slave system, without
preparation of either slave or society for a better
industrial condition.
The doctrine of the abolitionists, summarized in
the last four clauses of the platform published
in " The Liberator," Mr. Beecher never accepted ;
he was not an abolitionist. The abolitionist af-
firmed, " No union with slaveholders ; " Mr. Beecher
154 HENRY WARD BEECHER
said, " We shall abide by the Union." 1 The aboli-
tionist denounced the Constitution as " a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell ; " Mr.
Beecher affirmed, " We believe that the compro-
mises of the Constitution look to the destruction
of slavery, not to its establishment." 2 Abolitionists
denounced slaveholders " as a race of monsters,
unparalleled in their assumption of power and their
despotic cruelty ; " Mr. Beecher affirmed that both
slave and master " are to be treated with Chris-
tian wisdom and forbearance: we must seek to
benefit the slave as much as the white man, the
white man as really as the slave." 3 The abolition-
ists demanded " immediate, unconditional emanci-
pation ; " Mr. Beecher said : "We do not ask to
interfere with the internal policy of a single state.
. . . We will not ask to take one guarantee from
the institution." 4 It is true that Mr. Beecher never
fell into the error of some about him who lost the
true perspective. He never imagined that aboli-
tionism was the provoking cause of the pro-slavery
spirit, or fancied that if Garrison and Phillips
could be silenced, slavery would of itself pass out
of existence. He never imagined that abolition
was the permanent and enduring evil to be fought,
and slavery the lesser and temporary evil to be con-
doned. He never turned aside from the work of
1 The Independent, Feb. 21, 1850: Patriotic Addresses, p. 177.
2 The Independent, Feb. 21, 1850 : Patriotic Addresses, p. 171.
8 Oct. 30, 1859 : Patriotic Addresses, p. 209.
* Biography : p. 242.
PARENTHETICAL 166
arousing the public conscience of the North to do its
whole duty respecting slavery, in order to enter
into a war of words with men who, by erroneous
methods and in an unloving spirit, were seeking
the same ultimate end as himself — the enfran-
chisement of the enslaved race. He devoted the
strength of his intellect, the power of his pas-
sion, the play of his humor, the keenness of his
sarcasm, his vivid imagination, his rhetorical and
elocutionary power, to the cause of freedom ; but
he believed that this cause of freedom was best
subserved by remaining in the Union, by sustain-
ing the Constitution, by treating slave and slave-
owner alike as brother men, by using the political
power of the nation to prevent the extension of
slavery into new territory, and by trusting to the
moral influence of persuasion to bring about its
gradual abolition in the states where it already
existed. In his anti-slavery principles Henry Ward
Beecher was at one, not with William Lloyd Gar-
rison and Wendell Phillips, but with James G.
Birney, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase,
Abraham Lincoln. He was not what he has some-
times been called — an abolitionist ; he was an
anti-slavery reformer, working within the Consti-
tution, under the law, by practical methods. This
general definition of his position must be borne
in mind by the reader, if he would understand
correctly the history of the events in whioh Mr.
Beecher took part, and of his participation in them,
as recorded in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VII
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER
Mr. Beecher's first participation in any public
discussion of the slavery question was in Amherst
College. He was chosen one of the disputants in
the college debating society. The question for
discussion was African colonization, a chimerical
scheme, then new, for solving the slavery question
by transporting the negroes back to Africa.
"Fortunately," he says in his sermon upon the
death of Wendell Phillips, " I was assigned to the
negative side of the question. In preparing to
speak I prepared my whole life. I contended
against colonization as a condition of emancipation
— enforced colonization was little better than en-
forced slavery — and advocated immediate eman-
cipation on the broad ground of human rights."
His next public service in the anti-slavery cause
was in Cincinnati, where, while a student at Lane
Seminary, he showed his enthusiasm by volunteer-
ing as a special constable, and patrolling the streets
to protect the negroes and their friends when pro-
slavery riots broke out in the city. There is no
record of his speaking on this subject at Lawrence-
burg.
In Indianapolis his method of dealing with the
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 157
topic was characteristic of his combined courage
and caution. In a campaign the wise leader, when
considering what to do, takes counsel of courage ;
when considering how to do it, takes counsel of
caution. In Indianapolis there was little hostility
to slavery, and bitter hostility to abolitionism.
Had Mr. Beecher begun his ministry by an attack
on slavery, his ministry would have ended on the
day on which it began. For some years, apparently,
he did not deal with the question directly. His
first reference to it was incidental and by way of
illustration. He pictured a father ransoming his
son from captivity among the Algerines in such a
way as to enlist the sympathy of his hearers with
the white slave against the negro slaveholders.
■ They all thought," he afterwards told the Yale
theological students, " I was going to apply it [the
illustration] to slavery ; but I did not. I applied
it to my subject, and it passed off : and they all
drew a long breath. It was not long before I had
another illustration from that quarter. And so, be-
fore I had been there a year, I had gone all over
the sore spots of slavery, in illustrating the subjects
of Christian experience and doctrine. It broke
the ice." It was not until toward the close of his
Indianapolis ministry that he preached directly on
slavery. He did so in compliance with a recom-
mendation by the Presbytery to all Presbyterian
clergy to preach at least one sermon during the
year on this theme. Mr. Beecher preached three :
in the first, discussing ancient slavery, especially
158 HENRY WARD BEECHER
among the Hebrews ; in the second, the doctrine
and practice of the New Testament respecting
slavery ; in the third, the moral aspects of Ameri-
can slavery and its effects upon the community.
One of these sermons was published in pamphlet
form, but is out of print. We may assume that in
them was embodied his subsequent teaching, in
which he drew sharply the distinction between Ro-
man and Hebraic slavery, and showed that the ex-
istence of the latter afforded no justification for the
former, so great was the difference between the two.
When he came to Brooklyn the conditions in
which he found himself were very different from
those which he confronted in Indianapolis. He
was the pastor of a church just organized. Its
character and spirit would depend largely upon
his ministry. The men who had organized this
church were of New England origin, and enter-
tained New England convictions respecting the sin
and shame of slavery. The year after he came
to Brooklyn " The New York Independent " was
founded. Its three editors, Dr. Leonard Bacon,
Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, and Dr. Richard S.
Storrs, were all pronounced anti-slavery men ; two
of its founders, Seth B. Hunt and Henry C.
Bowen, were among the founders of Plymouth
Church. How free a platform Mr. Beecher was
to have in Plymouth Church depended, there-
fore, primarily upon himself. In his first Sunday
evening sermon he declared his intention to apply
the principles of Jesus Christ to intemperance, to
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 159
slavery, and to all other great national sins ; and
it was his custom thereafter each year, before the
pew-renting, to preach a vigorous anti-slavery ser-
mon, that not only the members of his church, but
his pewholders also, might know what kind of a
gospel they were invited to support. Thus, partly
by reason of his circumstances, partly by reason
of his courage in availing himself of them, Mr.
Beecher avoided the peril which confronted so
many ministers in that epoch, who could not speak
upon the subject of slavery without stirring up,
not only hostility to themselves, but possible intes-
tine warfare within the church, and as a probable
result either their own expulsion from the pastor-
ate or the departure from their church and con-
gregation of some of their eminent and perhaps
necessary supporters. Throughout the campaign
of which we are to give some account in this and
the succeeding chapter, Mr. Beecher was supported
by a substantially unanimous and generally enthu-
siastic church and congregation.
Nevertheless, for the first two years Mr. Beecher's
main work in Brooklyn was that of a parochial
pastor and preacher. He gave himself to the work
of building up his church by his spiritual ministry
to the congregations which were attracted to it.
Like a wise general, he organized and inspired his
army before he began his campaign. The burning
of the original church building, necessitating the
erection of the new one, added to the difficulties inci-
dent to a new pastorate, and increased his parochial
160 HENRY WARD BEEGHER
labors. Six months of illness, during which time
he was forbidden to preach, interposed another and
a serious obstacle to his ministry. Despite these
facts, the church had grown at the close of the
year 1849, that is, in less than two years and a
half, from twenty-one members to three hundred
and twenty-seven. The church was stronger than
the number of its membership would indicate, for
it was thoroughly loyal to its leader, and was full
of enthusiasm for its work.
During these two years and a half the act which
most distinctly identified Mr. Beecher in the public
mind with the anti- slavery cause was the dramatic
conduct of an auction sale of two negro girls, pur-
chased, as the result of the sale, for freedom. These
two young women, of light complexion, but born of
a slave mother, finding themselves about to be sold
from Washington for exportation to New Orleans,
and probably for a fate more dreadful than death,
endeavored to escape, were captured, and brought
back to Washington. The story of their attempted
flight reached Northern ears ; a meeting was held
in the Broadway Tabernacle for the purpose of
raising the necessary funds for their emancipation ;
the young preacher from the West was one of the
speakers ; he extemporized on the platform a slave
auction and called for bids ; the necessary amount
was secured ; and the girls were pronounced freed
before the meeting adjourned. This was the first
of a series of similar purchases of slaves, through
Mr. Beecher' s instrumentality, during a period of
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 161
ten or twelve years. He was criticised by radical
abolitionists for wasting his energies in the eman-
cipation of a few individuals, while the great slave
empire was left undisturbed ; by others, for his
recognition of the right of the owner to his slaves
by paying money to the owner for their manumis-
sion; and by still others, more anxious that all
things should be done decorously and in order than
that anything should be done at all, for sensation-
alism in his methods. But Mr. Beecher's object
was not merely the manumission of a few individ-
ual slaves : he believed in the humanity of his fel-
low men ; he believed that thousands of his fellow
citizens, who would regard with apathy if not with
complacency the slave system at a distance, would
regard with abhorrence the return of an individual
slave girl to a life of enforced sin and shame. At
a later period he said : " The very men who give
their counsel and zeal and money against the unseen
slave of the South irresistibly pity the particular
fugitive whom they may see running through the
North. They give the Union Committee mouey to
catch the slave, and give the slave money to escape
from the Committee." He judged that in no way
could he so successfully arouse the dormant feeling
of the North against the slave system as by invit-
ing the cooperation of Northern men and women
to secure the emancipation of individual slaves.
Had he been inclined to defend his method from
those who criticised it as sensational, he might
have referred them to the method of the Hebrew
162 HENRY WARD BEECHER
prophets, who taught so often and so effectually
by dramatic object-lessons.
But such utterances as his first Sunday evening
sermon, in 1847, and such acts as the purchase of
the Edmondson girls, in 1848, were but like the
tuning of the instruments before the symphony, or
the testing of the arms before the beginning of the
battle. In the best sense of the term Mr. Beecher
was an opportunist. He spoke, not like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, merely to declare himself, — he
spoke always for a purpose ; his speech was always
addressed to an audience, and always for the pur-
pose of convincing it. He watched, therefore, for
his opportunity, seized it when it came, adjusted
his address to the occasion, and thus enhanced
its effectiveness. His opportunity came with the
introduction of the compromise measures into Con-
gress by Henry Clay, in January, 1850, the same
month in which Plymouth Church entered into
its new building. The object of these compromise
measures was to readjust the relations between the
North and the South ; to put an end to the grow-
ing separation between them and heal the breach
which already existed ; and to do this on the basis
of the Constitution of the United States by a series
of mutual concessions. The sincerity of Henry
Clay's patriotic purpose will not be doubted by
the impartial student of history. He was seventy-
three years of age ; he had recently embraced the
Christian religion ; the beginnings of his speech
on the compromise resolutions indicated not only
k
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 165
New Mexico was only " to reenact the will of God."
Mr. Webster declared himself ready to assert the
principle of the exclusion of slavery whenever ne-
cessary, but he would not do a thing unnecessarily
that wounds the feelings of others. He contended
that it was the duty of the North, under the Con-
stitution, not only to allow but to provide the
means for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and that
the South justly complained that the constitutional
duty of the North in this respect had not been ful-
filled.
The speech was received with an outburst of
bitter wrath by the anti-slavery reformers of New
England. Webster was called " a recreant son of
Massachusetts," " a fallen star — Lucifer descend-
ing from Heaven ; " his speech, " a blow struck at
freedom and the constitutional rights of the free
states which no Southern arm could have given ; "
comparable to no deed in American history done
by a son of New England " but the act of Bene-
dict Arnold ; " to be estimated only " as a bid for
the presidency." What was then regarded as the
sober second thought of New England did not sus-
tain these reproaches ; his old friends came to his
rescue ; and presently the 7th of March speech
came to be recognized as the representative utter-
ance of the overwhelming majority in the North,
who, with Webster, reverenced the Union, recog-
nized the Constitution as the supreme standard for
political action, dreaded a civil war, which they re-
garded as among the possibilities of a near future,
166 HENRY WARD BEECHER
and believed that the issues between North and
South could be adjusted by mutual concessions.
In estimating the public sentiment of the time,
the reader must recall, not merely the definite ar-
gument of a Clay and a Webster in favor of the
compromise measures, but the indefinite feelings of
the community which lay below all such arguments.
The slave was property. It might indeed be argued
that he ought not to be, but in fact he was ; eman-
cipation would mean the financial ruin of unnum-
bered thousands who had invested their all in this
property, which was impliedly secured to them by
the Constitution and explicitly secured to them
by law. The Constitution was the noblest document
struck off by the mind of man in a single epoch,
the basis of the national organization, the secret of
their growth, the hope of their future ; abolitionism
condemned the Constitution as "a covenant with
death and an agreement with hell." The union of
the states had given peace and prosperity to mil-
lions, and if it were preserved would give peace and
prosperity to millions more ; if it were dissolved
the hope of democracy would perish from the earth.
No one could estimate the world's loss in such a
catastrophe ; no one could be sure that it would
bring any real gain even to the negro. The sacred
rights of property, the sacred Constitution, the
sacred Union which that Constitution created and
conserved were all in peril ; abolitionism threat-
ened them all ; compromise alone could save them :
such was the argument, and it carried conviction
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 167
to the hearts of the great majority of patriotic citi-
zens, and made many who loved both liberty and
their fellow men hesitate at action the issue of
which in its effects on both no man could foresee.
Such were the political conditions, although the
7th of March speech had not then been delivered,
when Mr. Beecher wrote and published in " The
Independent " an editorial whose title indicated his
denial of the fundamental principle underlying the
compromise measures. The article was entitled
" Shall we compromise ? " In this article the im-
possibility of compromise is affirmed with eloquent
fervor. " Slavery is right, and slavery is wrong ;
slavery shall live, slavery shall die ; slavery shall
extend, slavery shall not extend: are these con-
flicts to be settled by any mode of parceling out
certain territories? Now the battle rages at one
point. By and by it will rage at another. These
oppugnant elements, slavery and liberty, inherent
in our political system, animating our Constitution,
checkering our public policy, breeding in statesmen
opposite principles of government, and making our
whole wisdom of public legislation on many of the
greatest questions cross-eyed and contradictory, —
these elements are seeking each other's life. One
or the other must die." Thus, denying at the out-
set the fundamental postulate of Mr. Clay and Mr.
Webster, Mr. Beecher proceeded to contrast the
two theories, the Northern, or democratic, the
Southern, or aristocratic, their birth, their growth,
their inevitable results. The North puts honor
168 HENRY WARD BEECHER
upon its laborers, who become reading and reflect-
ing men ; the South makes labor a disgraceful ne-
cessity, denying it education and compelling it by
the lash. "Liberty is a universal right — it be-
longs to men, on the one side ; it is a privilege, and
belongs to a class, on the other side." " The North
compacts, the South stratifies." He recognized the
fact that the possibilities of both systems were in
the Constitution, but they were there only in the
seed. The compromises of the Constitution were
adopted in the expectation that slavery would be
eradicated by the superior vitality of liberty. Those
compromises " looked to the destruction of slavery,
and not to its establishment." But slavery had ac-
quired a new growth and a new power. The agita-
tions which disturbed the community were not due
to the abolitionists ; they were due to the exist-
ence of these two irreconcilable systems. The South
has " found out that slavery cannot live and stand
still." It therefore demands room for extension ;
" for every Free state a state for Slavery ; one dark
orb must be swung into its orbit, to grow and tra-
vail in pain, for every new orb of liberty over
which the morning stars shall sing for joy." " No
compromises can help us which dodge the ques-
tion; certainly none which settle it for slavery."
It is the duty of the North " openly, firmly, and
forever to refuse to slavery another inch of terri-
tory, and to see that it never gets any by fraud."
" It is her duty to declare that she will under no
considerations be a party to any further inhumanity
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 169
and injustice." Mr. Clay's resolutions demanded
better provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
Mr. Beecher did not deny that such provisions are
called for by the compromises of the Constitution,
but he declared that there is a higher law than the
Constitution. "Not even the Constitution shall
make me unjust." "I put constitution against
constitution — God's against man's. Where they
agree, they are doubly sacred ; where they differ,
my reply to all questioners, but especially to all
timid Christian scruples, is in the language of
Peter : * Whether it be right in the sight of God
to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge
ye.' " As there is a higher law than the Constitu-
tion, so there is a higher ideal than the Union.
" The very value of our Union is to be found in
those principles of justice, liberty, and humanity
which inspire it." If "these principles must be
yielded up to preserve the Union, then a corpse
only will be left in our arms, deflowered, lifeless,
worthless." " Religion and humanity are a price
too dear to pay even for the Union ; " and religion
and humanity are set at naught by slavery, which
takes liberty from those to whom God gave it, for-
bids food for the understanding or the heart, takes
honesty from the conscience, and defense from vir-
tue, "gives authority into the hands of lustful or
pecuniary cupidity, scorns the family, and invades
it whenever desire or the want of money prevails,
with the same coolness with which a drover singles
out a heifer, or a butcher strikes down a bullock.
170 HENRY WARD BEECHER
These are not the accidents of slavery ; they are its
legitimate fruits, they are its vitality. If you stop
these evils you will destroy the system." The arti-
cle closes with a declaration of war against slavery.
" We shall study to circumscribe slavery where it
now exists. We shall oppose every party that se-
cretly or openly connives at it. We shall be hostile
to every measure which consults its interests. . . .
We will compromise any measures tending to pre-
vent the extension of slavery. We will compromise
as to the particulars of its death, laying out, and
burial. But every compromise must include the
advantage of liberty and the disadvantage of
slavery." "We shall abide by the Union. . . .
If there be those who cannot abide the Union, be-
cause it is pure and religious, just and humane, let
them beware of that tumultuous scene into which
they purpose to leap." But he does not believe
that any such issue will result. " Firmness is the
remedy for threats. If good men, having good
representatives, are but firm, the storm will beat
the stout oak and rage like a demon through its
twisted branches, but pass on and spend itself in
the wilderness ; meanwhile the returning sun shall
find the noble tree unwrecked and fast-rooted."
It is said that this article was read to John C
Calhoun, then on his death-bed, that he asked the
name of the author, and said : " That man under-
stands the thing ; he has gone to the bottom of it ;
he will be heard from again." It is because in this
article Mr. Beecher did go to the bottom of the
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 171
questions involved in the compromise measures that
we have given its substance at so great length. In
it he anticipated by three weeks William H. Sew-
ard's declaration that there is a higher law than
the Constitution, and by nearly ten years Abraham
Lincoln's declaration that there is an irreconcilable
conflict between slavery and liberty ; in it the fun-
damental principles of the Republican party were
asserted six years before the Republican party was
organized, and ten years before it elected Abraham
Lincoln upon a platform embodying those princi-
ples. In it were contained in compact statement
substantially all for which its author was to con-
tend through the ten years of incessant campaign-
ing which preceded the Civil War.
There is no advantage in treating Mr. Beecher's
views on the subject of slavery, from this time for-
ward, in any chronological order, because there was
in those views no chronological development. He
did not speak on the subject of slavery until he
had studied it in its various relations, well consid-
ered its various aspects, and determined what his
message should be concerning the whole subject,
and all the questions that would be likely to grow
out of it. In this respect he set an example which
ministers in haste to speak on the social questions
of our time would do well to follow. His posi-
tion on the complicated questions involved will be
better interpreted by giving them topically than
by giving them chronologically. In doing this
I depend largely upon the volume of " Patriotic
172 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Addresses," in which John R. Howard has brought
together the most important of Mr. Beecher's pub-
lic speeches on slavery, the Civil War, and recon-
struction.
I. The apologists for and defenders of Ameri-
can slavery Mr. Beecher met with a clear definition
of the American system and a scholarly discrimi-
nation of it from Hebrew slavery. The American
slave was a chattel; he was the property of his
master. The end of the system was judicially de-
clared to be " the profit of the master, his security,
and the public peace." The slave was judicially
defined to be "one doomed in his own person
and in his posterity to live without knowledge, and
without capacity to make anything his own, and to
toil that others may reap the fruits." The sys-
tem forbade marriage and legalized and promoted
lust. " A wedding among this unhappy people is
but a name, — a mere form to content their con-
science or their love of imitating their superiors.
Every auctioneer in the community has the power
to put asunder whom God has joined. The de-
generacy of their owner is the degeneracy of the
marriage relation in half the slaves on his planta-
tion." Such a system as this Mr. Beecher declared
to be incapable of reformation. " To say to three
million men made by God, * Ye are not men, but
like oxen and horses, like dogs and hogs, ye are
things, property, chattels,' — why, to talk of the
abuse of a system which has this for its elementary
principle is as wild as it would be to talk of the
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 173
abuse of robbery, the abuse of murder, the abuse
of adultery.' " There was nothing in the Hebrew
system of slavery to afford justification for the
American system. Among the Hebrews there were
three forms of servitude. First, that into which
the Hebrews themselves might come — a kind of
apprenticeship. Secondly, a public slavery ; that
of the Gibeonites, who did service for the common-
wealth. Thirdly, the Hebrew bond-service, which
was slavery proper. This slavery was not enacted
by Moses. He found it and he regulated it and
limited it. Only a heathen could be made a slave.
As a condition of his enslavement he must be cir-
cumcised, that is, introduced into the privilege of
the Church, and the master was obliged to give him
a religious education ; if he was wronged, he could
apply to the courts for redress ; if he was maimed,
he immediately became free ; if he ran away, he
could not be forcibly returned. " All the laws of
Moses were in favor of the slave — for his ad-
vantage, his benefit, his encouragement, his
defense."
The Hebrews legislated for their slaves as men, but
we make them property — chattels. They are not men
but brutes. Four thousand years ago the slave enjoyed
the privileges of the Church — the Temple worship;
now we give him no religion. Four thousand years ago
the slave enjoyed the rights and privileges of the family
state ; now the chastity of man and woman is no more
regarded than that of a dog. Four thousand years ago
the laws were made for the slave ; now they are made
for the master. Four thousand vears ago a slave could
174 HENRY WARD BEECHER
seek redress in court ; now there is not a court from
Mason and Dixon's Line through to Texas where a slave
can open his mouth as a witness and be believed. Ah !
if you will only bring American slavery on the platform
of Hebrew slavery — if you will give the slave the Bible,
and send him to school, and open the doors of the courts
to him, then we will let it alone — it will take care of
itself. In old times slaves were treated as children of a
family, trained, nurtured, educated. Let the Southern
slaveholder do like this. Then would slavery soon cease,
for the care and expense would be greater than any one
could bear.1
II. Between this slave system of the South and
the free system of the North compromise was im-
possible. The policy of the South was not one of
vexatious haughtiness ; it sprang from the irresist-
ible nature of their industrial system. If their
aggressive temper were due to violence provoked by
agitation, it would be reasonable to expect " that
forbearance, conciliation, and compromise will re-
store good temper, and with returning temper that
things will grow peaceable." But the aggressive
demands of the South came from a law stronger
than the volition — from a law which underlies
society and compels its movements. The South
could not endure free speech ; it was fatal to the
slave system. " One spark may explode a maga-
zine, and one word touch off a servile insurrection
fatal alike to master and slave. To keep fetters on
their servants they must keep fetters on their own
tongues. Their mouth is a prison, their tongue is
1 Patriotic Addresses, 183, 184.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 175
a prisoner. Liberty of the speech and of the press,
liberty of political action, in the slave states, but
especially the more southern ones, would break
them up." If American slavery was to continue,
therefore, free speech must be abolished, for " free
speech is wrong if slavery is right." And it was as
impossible to allow free speech in Congress or in
the North as in the South. " There is no theoretic
disposition to abridge liberty of speech in Con-
gress, but our country is now so sympathetically
connected, the transmission of news is so marvel-
ously easy and quick, that Congress has become
a speaking-trumpet. The whole nation hears its
speeches. . . . The Southern man says : ' With
you it is not a necessity to speak, with us it is a
matter of necessity to have silence. ... It is only
a theoretic sentiment that impels you, it is self-
existence that drives us.' As a matter of fact this
is true. A system of slavery is imperiled by the
natural contact of a system of liberty." The same
necessity compels the South to demand the exten-
sion of slavery. Free states increase in wealth and
population, slave states remain stationary or dete-
riorate. " Virginia cannot grow — Pennsylvania
cannot stand still. The Carolinas are sinking by
the nature of their industry, New York is advanc-
ing prodigiously. Georgia has no chance in a
match with Ohio. If the slave states stand as
they are and depend upon the inherent energies of
their own system, they are doomed, inevitably, to
become the last and least. That which they lack,
176 HENRY WARD BEECHER
therefore, in intrinsic force, they are compelled to
seek by extension. Arkansas supplements Virginia.
When New York weighs down the Carolinas, Texas
is thrown in to bring up the scale." But uncom-
promising adherence to principle does not involve
war upon the South. " If by compromise is only
meant forbearance, kindness, well-wishing, concili-
ation, fidelity to agreements, a concession in things,
not principles, why, then, we believe in compro-
mise ; — only that is not compromise, interpreted
by the facts of our past history." The anti-slavery
Northerner wishes no harm to the South or to its
people, covets not their territory, is not jealous of
their honors, does not ask to molest the South in
her own institutions, does not even deny them
liberty to retake their fugitive slaves where they
can find them. "But we will not be made consta-
bles to slavery, to run and catch, to serve writs
and return prisoners. . . . We will, and with grow-
ing earnestness to the end, fulfill every just duty,
every honorable agreement, and every generous act,
within the limits of truth and honor ; all this and
no more, — no more though the heavens fall, — no
more, if states unclasp their hands, — no more, if
they raise up violence against us, — no more."
Compromise was a sham. The promise of peace
through compromise was a deceitful promise. " The
only way to peace is that way which shall chain
slavery to the place it now has, and say to the
dragon, ' In thy den thou must dwell, and lie down
in thine own slime, but thou shalt not go forth to
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 177
ravage free territory or leave thy trail upon un-
spotted soil.' "
III. The duty of the North was in his view per-
fectly simple and perfectly plain. It was to use
the power conferred upon it under the Constitution
to confine slavery within its then existing limits.
That it possessed such power had been conceded in
Congress by the foremost statesman of the South-
ern States, John C. Calhoun. It was not until it
became clear that the consent of the North to the
extension of slavery into free territory would be
difficult if not impossible to obtain, that the doc-
trine was developed that Congress could not pro-
hibit slavery in the territories, — that slavery was
national, not local. Mr. Beecher did not argue the
constitutional question. He assumed the correct-
ness of the view held alike by North and South in
the earlier days of the republic. The North had
no right to interfere with slavery in the states ; but
it had the right to prohibit the extension of slavery
in free territory ; and it was under a sacred obli-
gation to exercise this right. That exercise ex-
hausted its powers under the Constitution, and
therefore fulfilled its political obligations. Such
restriction effected, the North must trust to time,
patience, and kindly influence, for the ultimate
extinction of slavery. This principle of political
action was so fundamental to Mr. Beecher's whole
course during the decade of anti-slavery agitation
from 1850 to 1860, and it so differentiates him
from the abolitionists, on the one hand, and the
178 HENRY WARD BEECHER
so-called conservatives, on the other, that we quote
at considerable length from his own statement in
" The Independent." 1
Our policy for the future is plain. All the natural
laws of God are warring upon slavery. We have only
to let the process go on. Let slavery alone. Let it go to
seed. Hold it to its own natural fruit. Cause it to abide
by itself. Cut off every branch that hangs beyond the
wall, every root that spreads. Shut it up to itself and let
it alone. We do not ask to interfere with the internal
policy of a single state by congressional enactments : we
will not ask to take one guarantee from the institution.
We only ask that a line be drawn about it ; that an in-
superable bank be cast up ; that it be fixed and forever
settled that slavery must find no new sources, new fields,
new prerogatives, but that it must abide in its place, sub-
ject to all the legitimate changes which will be brought
upon it by the spirit of a nation essentially democratic,
by schools taught by enlightened men, by colleges send-
ing annually into every profession thousands bred to jus-
tice and hating its reverse, by churches preaching a gos-
pel that has always heralded civil liberty, by manufac-
tories that always thrive best when the masses are free
and refined and therefore have their wants multiplied,
by free agriculture and free commerce.
When slavery begins, under such treatment, to flag, we
demand that she be denied political favoritism to regain
her loss ; we demand that no laws be enacted to give
health to her paralysis and strength to her relaxing grasp.
She boldly and honestly demanded a right to equality
with the North, and prophetically spoke by Calhoun that
the North would preponderate and crush her. It is true.
1 Quoted in the Biography, 242, 243.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 179
Time is her enemy. Liberty will, if let alone, always be
a match for oppression. Now, it is because statesmen
propose stepping in between slavery and the appointed
bourne, to which she goes, scourged by God and Nature,
that we resent these statesmen and refuse to follow them.
If her wounds can be stanched, if she may have adven-
titious aid in new privileges, slavery will renew her
strength and stave off the final day. But if it be forbid-
den one additional favor, and be obliged to stand up by
the side of free labor, free schools, free churches, free
institutions ; if it be obliged to live in a land of free
books, free papers, and free Bibles, it will either die or
else it ought to live.
Was Mr. Beecher right ? Would the restriction
of slavery have resulted in the ultimate extinction
of slavery ? History does not answer that question,
for slavery was overthrown by a very different pro-
cess. But it is clear that the slave power believed
with Mr. Beecher, that the extension of slavery was
necessary to its continued existence. Senator
Toombs, of Georgia, wished to see the South Amer-
ican states annexed in order to make room for
slavery ; Pierre Soule, of Louisiana, sought the
annexation of Cuba for the same purpose ; Bar-
ringer, of North Carolina, speaking in 1861, for
the secessionists, declared that no compromise could
be considered which did not concede new territory
to the slave states. " They know," he said, " that
when slavery is gathered into a cul de sac and sur-
rounded by a wall of free states, it is destroyed.
Slavery must have expansion. It must expand by
the acquisition of territory which now we do not
180 HENRY WARD BEECHER
own." It was because the leaders of the slave power
were convinced of this truth that when, by the elec-
tion of Abraham Lincoln, the North declared that
there should be no more extension of slavery in the
Uuion, they resolved to destroy the Union and seek
extension elsewhere. The abolitionists who sought
to destroy the Union in order to destroy slavery
enlisted on behalf of slavery the sentiments of
national patriotism and national pride ; the anti-
slavery reformers, among whom Mr. Beecher was
a leader, by insisting on the maintenance of the
Union and the restriction of slavery, at last saw
the sentiments of national patriotism and national
pride enlisted in the destruction of slavery that the
nation might be preserved.
IV. What was the duty of the North respecting
the Fugitive-Slave Law ? The answer to this ques-
tion in 1850—60 was not so clear as it now seems
to the unconsidering reader. The Constitution of
the United States (Art. iv., sec. ii., 3) provided
that persons lawfully bound in any state to service
or labor, who fled into another state, should be
delivered up on demand. This clause had been
unanimously adopted, and without debate, by the
Constitutional Convention. In point of fact, the
fugitive slaves were not delivered up on demand.
They escaped in considerable number to the North,
and the Northern States made no provision for
their return. On the contrary, many of the states,
by " personal liberty laws," encouraged the escape
of the slave and discouraged their capture and
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 181
return.1 State officers who assisted slave-hunters
were fined ; lawyers who conducted the cases of
alleged* owners were disbarred ; the confinement
of fugitive slaves in state prison was prohibited ;
state prosecuting attorneys were charged with the
duty of defending and if possible securing the dis-
charge of every arrested fugitive slave. Voluntary
organizations were formed in different parts of the
North to aid the escape of fugitive slaves. They
were sent from one trusted member of this organiza-
tion to another, until they found safety in Canada.
In an official report the secretary of one anti-slavery
society announced that four hundred fugitive slaves
had thus been aided to escape by that one organi-
zation. The South, believing that the slave was
property and that the North was bound in honor
by the clause of the Constitution to return the
slave, was indignant ; the North, believing the slave
was a man, that the return of a fugitive slave to
bondage was inhuman, and that humanity was of
higher authority than the Constitution, continued
to disregard the clause of the Constitution and to
aid in the escape of the slave.
Among the laws which, combined, constituted
the compromise measures of 1850, was a fugitive-
slave law, which intrusted to federal officers the
execution and enforcement of the provision of
the Constitution of the United States providing for
1 Some, if not most of these laws, were subsequent in date to
the Fugitive-Slave Law ; but they illustrate the feeling against
returning fugitive slaves prior to that law.
182 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the return of fugitive slaves. This law provided
for certain commissioners, to be appointed by the
circuit courts of the United States, who were to
take cognizance of fugitive-slave cases. The testi-
mony of two witnesses to the escape of a slave, and
the identification of the arrested fugitive by the
oath of one person, was declared to be satisfactory
proof on which to base his return to his master.
The proceedings were summary ; no jury trial was
allowed; the testimony of the accused was not
admitted; all good citizens were required to aid
in the execution of the law ; and any attempt to
harbor or conceal a fugitive slave was punishable
with fine and imprisonment.
Few in the North approved the spirit of this
law ; none in the North liked it ; but many de-
fended it. It was claimed that it simply fulfilled
the constitutional obligation which the North was
in duty bound to fulfill ; that the return of a fugi-
tive slave could not be wrong, since Paul returned
Onesimus to slavery ; that it was enacted by the
law-making power and that obedience to law was
the duty of the citizen, whether he liked it or not.
Mr. Beecher, I do not think, ever raised any ques-
tion as to the constitutionality of the law. That it
was constitutional cannot now be questioned by any
impartial historian. No provision had been made
by the states for carrying iuto effect the clause of
the Constitution requiring the return of persons
held to service or labor when they escaped from
one state to another state. The fact that the
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 183
clause was in the Constitution was sufficient to
authorize Congress to make provision for carrying
it into effect by federal machinery and through
the federal courts. The commissioners provided
for by the law might properly be regarded as spe-
cial judges created by statute, with special judicial
functions conferred upon them. Jury trial in the
state in which the fugitive was arrested was not
his constitutional right, since it was assumed that
the trial would take place in the state from which
he had fled, as it does in the case of an accused
fleeing from one state and carried back to it under
extradition proceedings for trial. But Mr. Beecher
denied that the clause in the Constitution pro-
viding for the return of fugitive slaves created a
moral obligation to return them. He affirmed that
the requirements of humanity were of superior
authority to those of the Constitution. That there
could be no higher law than the Constitution he
condemned as subversive alike of the fundamental
postulate of ethics and of the foundations of a
free state.
Human nature is a poor affair — man is but a pithy,
porous, flabby substance, till you put conscience into him ;
and as for building a republic on men who do not hold to
the rights of private conscience, who will not follow their
own consciences rather than that of any priest or public,
you might as well build your custom-house in Wall
Street on a foundation of cotton-wool. But the nation
that regards conscience more than anything else, above
all customs and all laws, is like New England with its
granite hills, immovable and invincible ; and the nation
184 HENRY WARD BEECHER
that does not regard conscience is a mere base of sand,
and quicksand too, at that.1
That any ministers should cite the return of
Onesimus to his master by Paul as an argument
for the return of a fugitive slave in America under
the Fugitive-Slave Law, would seem extraordinary,
were not such unintelligent use of Scripture com-
mon whenever external authority is substituted for
moral sense as the final test of conduct. Mr.
Beecher did not question the authority, but he de-
nied the analogy : —
There are two ways of sending fugitives back into
slavery. Paul gives us an account of one way, — the
way he sent back the slave Onesimus. Now, if people
will adopt Paul's way, I would not object. In the first
place, he instructed him in Christianity and led him to
become a Christian. Then he wrote a letter and sent it
by Onesimus. The slave was not sent off under the
charge of officers, but he went back alone, of his own
free will, with a letter and recommendation as a brother
beloved.2
But he spent little time in replying to half-hearted
apologies for the law. He appealed against it to the
moral sense of the North. He condemned it on the
ground that it violated the law of God ; in eloquent
terms and repeatedly he defied it.
The law is bad enough in obliging the officers to exe-
cute it, but when it comes down among the citizens,
when it forbids us helping a man to liberty, I say, " God
do so to me and more also, if I do not help him freedom-
ward."
1 Patriotic Addresses, p. 194. 2 Ibid. p. 189.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 185
He indicted the law not as unconstitutional, but as
inhuman in what it undertook to do — send back
a man to bondage, and a woman to the shambles
of lust ; immoral in what it required the citizen to
do, in requiring him to cooperate in such active in-
humanity ; impolitic, because it excited in the North
an indignation against the law which gave the fugi-
tive many friends where he before had few, and so
practically promoted the escape of fugitive slaves,
which it was the object of the law to prevent ; in-
jurious to the nation, because it stirred up ill blood
between North and South ; irreligious, because it
led men and even ministers to scout at " the higher
law," — the law of conscience, the law of God, the
law upon which obedience to all law is based ; un-
patriotic, because more than anything of recent oc-
currence it had promoted a disregard of authority
and a contempt for all law. To the argument that
law when enacted must be obeyed, and that there
is an end of all liberty based on law if each indi-
vidual in a free community may decide for himself
whether he will obey the law or not, and discard it
at his option, — an argument which perplexed many
conscientious citizens, — he replied by drawing
sharply the distinction between endurance of wrong
when inflicted and the commission of wrong when
required.
Every citizen must obey a law which inflicts injury
upon his person, estate, and civil privilege, until legally
redressed ; but no citizen is bound to obey a law which
commands him to inflict injury upon another. We must
186 HENRY WARD BEECHER
endure but never commit wrong. We must be patient
when sinned against, but must never sin against others.
The law may heap injustice upon me, but no law can
authorize me to pour injustice upon another. When the
law commanded Daniel not to pray, he disobeyed it;
when it commanded him to be cast into the lion's den,
he submitted.1
This principle he summed up in the following
aphoristic sentence : " Obedience to laws, even
though they sin against me : disobedience to every
law that commands me to sin."
V. The duty of the North was not merely nega-
tive ; it was not merely political ; it was not ful-
filled by refusing obedience to the Fugitive-Slave
Law and refusing to acquiesce in the extension of
slavery. The North had other and affirmative
duties to perform ; it had a transcendent duty of
maintaining in all its anti-slavery campaign a spirit
of brotherly kindness toward master as well as slave.
In an address delivered before the American and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in May, 1851, Mr.
Beecher said : —
The first business is to limit slavery within its present
bounds ; there is nothing in the Constitution against this,
at any rate ; then, secondly, to see to it that the South
has not factitious help from us in the support of slavery ;
and thirdly, not to interfere directly with slavery where
it is. We are to do what the sun does when it comes up
over the eastern hills ; it looks at a mountain of ice and
melts it. If our missionaries want to convert the Arabs,
they cannot preach to them when they are on horseback,
1 Quoted in Biography, p. 241.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 187
for they will run away ; they must make the Arabs sit
down and be fixed in one spot. And so must we do with
slavery ; we must hitch her and anchor her, and then
begin with brotherly affection to kill her. And then with
our hearts warm and kind, and with no hasty or hard
remarks, we must preach the Bible to them, and preach
till we make slavery a burden to their consciences, and
a burden to their pockets, as it is now a burden on God's
forbearance.1
This spirit pervaded all his anti-slavery addresses.
The North was not to treat the citizens of the
South with acrimony and bitterness because they
were involved in a system of wrong-doing. It was
not to breed discontent among the bondmen.
" Whatever gloomy thoughts the slave's own mind
may brood, we are not to carry disquiet to him from
without." The North ought not to encourage any
organized plan to carry the slaves off or to incite
them to abscond ; still less should it promote or
tolerate anything like insurrection and servile war.
" By all the conscience of a man, by all the faith
of a Christian, and by all the zeal and warmth of
a philanthropist, I protest against any counsels
that lead to insurrection, servile war, and blood-
shed. It is bad for the master, and bad for the
slave, bad for all that are neighbors to them, bad for
the whole land, — bad from beginning to end." 2
1 Patriotic Addresses, p. 187.
2 This explicit condemnation of John Brown's method, coupled
with appreciation of John Brown's fanatical courage, was uttered
in a sermon preached October 30, 1859, while John Brown was in
prison awaiting trial.
188 HENRY WARD BEECHER
The North should begin reform at the North.
There the free colored people were refused the com-
mon rights of citizenship, could not ride in the city
cars, were shut out from the common industrial
employments, were taxed for the schools and the
schools closed against their children, were barely
tolerated in the churches. All this ought to be re-
formed. " What can the North do for the South
unless her own heart is purified and ennobled !
The North must maintain sympathy and kindness
toward the South. We are brethren, and I pray
that no fratricidal influences be permitted to sunder
this Union." "If I might speak for the North,
I would say to the South : * We love you and hate
your slavery. We shall leave no fraternal effort
untried to deliver you, and ourselves with you, from
the degradation, wickedness, and danger of this
system, and for this we cling to the Union. There
is health in it.'" The North must be in earnest to
rid itself of all complicity with the sin of slavery.
" You and I are guilty of the spread of slavery
unless we have exerted, normally and legitimately,
every influence in our power against it." If we
acquiesce in slavery, " we clothe ourselves with the
cotton which the slave tills. Is he scorched, is he
lashed, does he water the crop with his sweat and
tears, it is you and I that wear the shirt and con-
sume the luxury. Our looms and our factories are
largely built on the slave's bones ; we live on his
labor." I think one would search Mr. Beecher's
speeches and writings in vain for a single instance
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 189
in which his condemnation of the sin of slavery was
tainted with the Pharisaic tone of " I am holier than
thou." His condemnation of slavery was also a
confession ; he took, as it were, upon himself the
sin and shame, against which he summoned all his
energies in a long and what at times seemed a
hopeless campaign.
VI. What had the Church to do with slavery ?
In a Democratic procession in Brooklyn in 1856
a transparency was borne bearing the legend,
"Henry Ward Beecher had better stick to the
pulpit." That any one should have thought that
preaching respecting a system which denied the
right of the laborer to his wages, the right of the
husband to his wife and the wife to her husband,
of the parents to the children and the children to
the parents, and of all to education and to freedom
in religion, was a violation of this legend, and that
to deal with such a system was to depart from the
legitimate function of a Christian teacher, seems
to us in this twentieth century wholly incredible.
But the Democratic legend expressed what was a
common and, in the beginning of the decade of which
we are writing, an almost universal belief in the
churches and among the clergy. It is not true that
the churches of the North in 1850 were pro-slavery;
but it is true that they did not think it the function
of the Church to deal with slavery. Nor was the say-
ing, " Let the minister preach the Gospel," a mere
cowardly evasion of a difficult and dangerous duty ;
genuine conviction lay behind this utterance. I
190 HENRY WARD BEECHER
think it was in 1875 that D wight L. Moody came to
Mr. Beecher, asking him to resign his pulpit and go
into an evangelical campaign for the conversion of
the world. " We two working together," he said, in
urging this plan upon Mr. Beecher, " could shake
the Continent as it never has been shaken before."
Mr. Beecher, in telling me this incident afterwards,
said, in substance, — of course I do not pretend at
this late date to remember and quote his exact words,
— " This proposition of Mr. Moody's was very at-
tractive to me. I should like to go up and down the
land preaching the gospel of the love of God in
Christ Jesus. But Mr. Moody and I could not pos-
sibly work together in such a mission : he believes
that the world is lost, and he is seeking to save from
the wreck as many individuals as he can ; I believe
that this world is to be saved, and I am seeking to
bring about the Kingdom of God on this earth."
These two conceptions of the Christian religion, one
of which regards as its end a world redemption and
the creation of a new social order founded on right-
eousness and inspired by love, the other of which
regards the end of the Christian religion the pre-
paration of few or many in this life of probation for
a heaven beyond the grave, are not necessarily in-
consistent — each may include the other ; in point
of fact, however, each has generally been held exclu-
sively of the other. The doctrine of a lost world from
which a few are to be saved for a future heaven
was inherited by the churches from a mediaeval
theology, and, though somewhat modified, was still
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 191
dominant in 1850. The Home Missionary Society,
the Foreign Missionary Society, the American
Tract Society, all maintained a policy of silence re-
specting slavery ; not merely because speech would
imperil the organization, but because slavery be-
longed to the present social order, — and they main-
tained that it was not their function to deal with the
present social order. Whether in 1850 Mr. Beecher
had formulated his theology respecting what has
since been called " social salvation " as clearly as he
had in 1875, I do not know ; I rather think not.
It was characteristic of Mr. Beecher, as it is of
most men of action, to act on his instincts first and
formulate his philosophy afterwards. His theory of
life grew out of his living ; and it was impossible
for such a man as he, inspired by the spirit of hu-
manity which animated him, to live in a country in
which slavery was spreading its baleful influences
over the whole nation, and have the opportunity to
speak, and still keep silence. " I do not know,"
he said in 1886, in an address before the London
Congregational Board, " what it is in me — whether
it is my father or my mother or both of them —
but the moment that you tell me that a thing that
should be done is unpopular, I am right there every
time. I fed oh the privilege of making men hear
things that they did not want to hear because I
was a public speaker. I gloried in my gifts, not
because they brought praise, for they brought the
other thing continually ; but men would come and
would bear, and I rejoiced in it." It was quite
192 HENRY WARD BEECHER
impossible that a man with this fire in his bones,
with men coming to hear what he had to say, could
be silent on slavery, when slavery was the upper-
most moral issue in the community.
Mr. Beecher was not a preacher and an anti-
slavery reformer ; he was an anti-slavery reformer
because he was a preacher. Slavery was an obsta-
cle to the Kingdom of God. It was the opposite of
that kingdom which is righteousness and peace and
joy. It involved wrongness and war and misery.
It destroyed men, and Jesus Christ came to build
men up. Mr. Beecher could not preach this Gos-
pel of Christ and work for this Kingdom of God
without coming in conflict with the system which
antagonized the one and destroyed the other. In
his " Review of Thirteen Years in the Ministry " he
states this principle broadly without making spe-
cial application of it to slavery.
When I hear men say they are ordained to preach
the Gospel, and that they are consequently not to med-
dle with public questions which disturb the peace, I
always ask myself what Gospel it is that man is or-
dained to preach which forbids him to meddle with
public questions that disturb the peace ; for it is ex-
plicitly declared that the Gospel of Christ should cause
disturbance. ... I hold that it is a Christian minister's
duty not only to preach the Gospel of the New Testa-
ment without reservation, but to apply its truths to
every question which relates to the welfare of men;
and, as far as I am concerned, I am willing to do this
and take the consequences, whatever they may be.1
1 Sermons, Harper's Edition, vol. i. pp. 28, 29.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY REFORMER 193
In an address delivered before the Anti-Slavery
Society, and in a subsequent letter to the "New
York Tribune," both of which are quoted from in
the " Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by his
son and son-in-law, he states this principle more
fully in its specific application to slavery. "My
earnest desire is that slavery may be destroyed by
the manifest power of Christianity. If it were
given me to choose whether it should be destroyed
in fifty years by selfish commercial influences, or,
standing for seventy-five years, be then the spirit
and trophy of Christ, I would rather let it linger
twenty-five years more, that God may be honored,
and not mammon, in the destruction of it." In re-
sponse to the " Tribune's " criticism of this senti-
ment, he reaffirmed and reinforced it.
Our highest and strongest reason for seeking justice
among men is not the benefit to men themselves, ex-
ceedingly strong as that motive is and ought to be. We
do not join the movement party of our times simply be-
cause we are inspired by an inward and constitutional
benevolence. We are conscious of both these motives
and of many other collateral ones ; but we are earnestly
conscious of another feeling stronger than either, that
lives unimpaired when these faint, yea, that gives vigor
and persistence to these feelings when they are discour-
aged ; and that is a strong, personal, enthusiastic love
for Christ Jesus. I regard the movement of the world
toward justice and rectitude to be of His inspirations.
I believe my own aspirations, having a base in my
natural faculties, to be influenced and directed by Christ's
spirit. The mingled affection and adoration which I
194 HENRY WARD BEECHER
feel for Him is the strongest feeling that I know.
Whether I will or not, whether it be a phantasy or a
sober sentiment, the fact is the same nevertheless, that
that which will give pleasure to Christ's heart and bring
to my consciousness a smile of gladness on His face in
behalf of my endeavor, is incalculably more to me than
any other motive. I would work for the slave for his
own sake, but I am sure that I would work ten times as
earnestly for the slave for Christ's sake.1
If this spirit distinguished Mr. Beecher from the
merely anti-slavery reformers on the one hand, and
from the theological and ecclesiastical preachers on
the other, it distinguished him also from certain
anti-slavery preachers who were rather reformers
than preachers of the Gospel, and whose churches
suffered in consequence from the diversion of
their interests and enthusiasms from a spiritual to
a merely ethical work. It was this recognition of
the anti-slavery movement as a Gospel movement,
and of humanity and liberty as essential elements
in the Kingdom of God of which the Christian
minister is a herald, that enabled him to carry on
his church work, and with extraordinary spiritual
results, and accompanied by a remarkable revival,
in the midst of an anti-slavery campaign from
which he never suffered himself to be diverted,
and in which he never relaxed his efforts.
1 Quoted in Biography, p. 269.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN
For the ten years 1850-60, Mr. Beecher devoted
himself to the propagation of the principles stated
in the preceding chapter : the fundamental truth —
that slavery is inherently and essentially wrong ;
the ultimate end to be constantly kept in view —
the abolition of slavery ; the means for the accom-
plishment of that end — the restriction of slavery
within the then existing limits of slave territory ;
the underlying principle — no participation by the
North in the sin of slavery, and therefore no return
by the North of fugitive slaves ; the spirit — one
of good will alike to black and white, to slave and
master ; a chief instrument in the working out of
this reform — the Church of Jesus Christ; the
dominant, animating motive — love for Christ and
loyalty to Him and His kingdom. He emphasized
now one of these principles, now another, accord-
ing to the exigency of the time, the nature of the
audience he addressed, his own mood ; but he never
retracted, never modified, never added to these
fundamental principles. With one exception, here-
inafter to be mentioned, all his teaching relating
to the slavery question was a development and
application of his article in " The New York Inde-
196 HENRY WARD BEECHER
pendent " of February 21, 1850, entitled « Shall
we compromise ? " 2
The compromise measures were enacted in July,
1850. Idaho and New Mexico were organized as
territories, with no reference to slavery. California
was admitted as a free state. Slave-trade was abol-
ished in the District of Columbia. The Fugitive-
Slave Law was enacted and its machinery set in
operation. Wherever a fugitive slave was arrested
popular excitement was aroused, popular hostility
to slavery was intensified, and converts to the anti-
slavery cause were made. Men who assented to
slavery as a patriarchal institution in the remote
South were aroused to indignation when they were
asked to aid or even acquiesce in the return to
slavery of a fugitive who had made his escape from
it. Prominent men took part in stirring up the
public to open, though fruitless, resistance to this
law ; others, with greater wisdom, aided in evad-
ing it. This was done not only by radical aboli-
tionists— not only such men as Samuel J. May
and Theodore Parker, but practical politicians like
Thurlow Weed, United States officials like George
S. Hilliard, anti-slavery editors like Horace Gree-
ley, aided and abetted the operation of the " under-
ground railroad." Sometimes these evasions took
on a whimsical turn. The story is told of a United
States marshal in Boston under a Democratic
administration, who, when he was applied to for
aid in arresting a fugitive slave, was accustomed
1 See page 167 ff.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 197
to reply, " I will see if I can find him ; " then
always went to William Lloyd Garrison's office
and said, " I want to find such and such a negro ;
tell me where he is." " The next thing I knew,"
he said afterwards, " the fellow was in Canada."
After nearly three years, it is said that not fifty-
slaves had been recovered under the Fugitive-
Slave Law.
But the excitements occasioned by the spasmodic
attempts to recover fugitive slaves in the North
were both local and short-lived. The general im-
pression was that the compromise measures were a
success. The country had a respite from the anti-
slavery agitation, and rejoiced in its peace. Who-
ever attempted to disturb that peace by reopening
the question aroused against himself the hostility
of the community. Strange as it may appear to us
now, to the great mass of the men in the North the
slavery question appeared to be settled. So marked
was this effect of the compromise measures that
President Fillmore, who had succeeded to the office
on the death of Zachary Taylor, was able to declare
that * the agitation which for a time threatened to
disturb the fraternal relations which make us one
people is fast subsiding," and to congratulate the
country " upon the general acquiescence in these
measures of peace which has been accepted in all
parts of the Republic." New issues arose to divert
public interest to other topics of public discussion.
The long dispute between the United States and
Great Britain respecting an isthmian canal connect-
198 HENRY WARD BEECHER
ing the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans was settled
by the famous Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and this
achievement turned public attention from national
to international problems. No one then realized that
half a century would pass and the canal would still
be uncompleted and, indeed, scarcely begun. The
dramatic revolution in Hungary aroused public
interest ; with the arrival of Kossuth on our shores,
it became a brief but passionate excitement. The
famous letter of Daniel Webster to Mr. Hulsemann,
the Austrian charge, affirming the interest of the
United States in this revolution, and its right and
intention to recognize, in its own discretion, any de
facto revolutionary government, aroused the enthu-
siasm of American lovers of liberty, and turned
their thoughts for the moment away from the vio-
lation of liberty within their own country. A new
native American party, with a secret oath-bound
organization, bearing the popular title of " Know-
Nothing," partly religious, partly political, which
aimed at the exclusion of foreigners from control,
and therefore from office, widened and intensified
the popular impression that the slavery issue was a
past issue, and that other and more immediately im-
portant questions had taken its place. This belief
found at once expression and confirmation in the
election of the Democratic candidate for the presi-
dency — Franklin Pierce — by an overwhelming
majority, two hundred and fifty-four electoral votes
against forty-two for the Whig candidate, Winfield
Scott, with a popular majority of more than two
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 199
hundred thousand, the largest which had ever been
received since any record was made of the popular
vote. Says James Ford Rhodes in his " History
of the United States : " " The reason of Demo-
cratic success was because that party unreservedly
indorsed the compromise, and in its approval
neither platform nor candidate halted. . . . The
people were convinced that the status of every
foot of territory in the United States, with regard
to slavery, was fixed ; that it had ceased to be a
political question."
From this pleasing illusion the North was sud-
denly aroused by the introduction into Congress
of the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Senator Stephen
A. Douglas, of Illinois. In 1820 Missouri had
been admitted to the Union on the conditions —
first, that no restriction as to slavery be imposed
upon Missouri in framing a state constitution, and,
second, that in all the rest of the country ceded by
France to the United States north of the southern
boundary line of Missouri, there should be neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude. This famous
Missouri Compromise Senator Douglas proposed to
repeal by an act providing for the organization of
Kansas and Nebraska as territories, with liberty
to the people of those territories to determine for
themselves whether they would allow slavery or not.
Senator Douglas's enemies, at the time, asserted
that his sole motive for this legislation, and for the
consequent reopening of the slavery question, was
his ambition to secure the Southern vote for the
200 HENRY WARD BEECHER
presidency in a future presidential campaign. The
historian has to do with the public acts, not with
the private motives, of men; but the historian,
whatever his judgment of Senator Douglas's act,
must recognize the truth that better motives than
that of personal ambition might have actuated him.
For ten years he had been urging the organization
of the Nebraska territory upon Congress, but in
vain. His avowed object was to open the line of
communication between the Missouri Valley and
our possessions on the Pacific Ocean, and prevent
the latter from coming under the domination of
Great Britain through the industrial activity of the
Hudson's Bay Fur Company. Three forces had
operated thus far successfully to resist this necessary
measure for the public welfare. The territory west
of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers had been
reserved to the Indians, with a guarantee that it
should never be open to white settlement " so long
as grass should grow and water should run." Mis-
taken humanitarians resisted any disregard of the
supposed rights and interests of the Indians guar-
anteed under these treaties. The Atlantic States
were jealous of the growth and expansion of the
Mississippi Valley, and resisted any policy which
might tend to promote that growth and expansion.
The South dreaded the political domination of the
North, and was jealous of the industrial growth of
free territory, and therefore it resisted any scheme
for opening the territory west of the Missouri River
subject to the restrictions of the Missouri Com-
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 201
promise. Senator Douglas may have believed that
the opening of this immense territory to settlement
and civilization would far outbalance any dis-
advantages which might grow out of a temporary
reopening of the slavery question ; he may have
believed that slavery would not enter this territory,
that, to quote the words of Daniel Webster, it was
not necessary to reenact the laws of God ; he may
have believed that, since slavery was a state insti-
tution and could not be interfered with in the state,
it was a legitimate extension of that principle to
allow the people of the territory, which was but an
inchoate state, to determine for themselves whether
they would or would not allow it. Whatever his
motive, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill,
by a vote of one hundred thirteen to one hundred
in the House, and by a vote of thirty-five to thir-
teen in the Senate, in May, 1854, aroused the
indignation of the North as it never had been
aroused before. This was not merely, perhaps not
mainly, because territory before consecrated to
freedom was now thrown open to slavery ; it was
rather because a sacred compact had been rudely
set aside. The North had fulfilled its part in the
contract : Missouri was a slave state. The South
now nullified its part in the contract and opened
the territory north of the southern boundary of
Missouri also to slavery. The contention of the
anti-slavery advocates that the slavery question
could never be settled by compromise was justified.
The North began to realize that compromises and
202 HENRY WARD BEECHER
compacts were in vain. Much of the hostility which
before had been directed against the abolitionists,
because they persisted in agitating the slavery
question, was now directed against the doctrine
of popular sovereignty, because it reopened that
agitation.
The Kansas-Nebraska bill was introduced into
Congress on the 23d of January, 1854. On the
11th of February Mr. Beecher entered the cam-
paign against this measure. " The Nebraska bill,"
said he in a speech in Boston, " is the death-strug-
gle of slavery for expansion, seeing that she must
have more room to breathe or suffocate. All ques-
tion as to whether slavery shall be agitated is now
at an end. The South says it shall be agitated, and
she cannot help it. The mask is off, and all dis-
guises are thrown to the winds, and the slave power
stands out in its true character, making its last and
most infamous demands upon the North. All we
have to do is to say No." Two weeks later he writes
to " The New York Independent," expressing the
deep religious motive which inspired his opposition
to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. " Everywhere I find
the Nebraska question to be a theme of anxious
interest. But there is little outward expression of
strong feeling. I fear that Christian men do not
look upon it as a religious question. The responsi-
bility which God has placed upon the religious-
minded North to hold that vast territory open to
the Gospel, to institutions which spring from a
religious feeling and will corroborate all religious
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 203
endeavors, is but little felt. Yet to me that seems
a very urgent view, the deepest." He urges upon
the people instant and immediate activity; recom-
mends that petitions be circulated in every school
district ; that documents be distributed among the
people, especially the speeches of Chase, Seward,
and Sumner ; that every man of influence write to
his representative ; that public meetings be held
all through the North ; that the women cooperate
in this movement ; that no one wait for his neigh-
bor, but " the poor men, uncultured men, mechan-
ics and laborers, in short, the great industrial class,
move with spontaneousness." He finds at last a
people ready to respond. A hundred and fifty-one
ministers of New York and vicinity memorialize
Congress against the Nebraska bill ; three thousand
ministers of New England unite in a petition against
it. But to Mr. Beecher the popular excitement
seems like apathy. He declares that by the bill " it
is proposed to doom a territory large enough to
make ten states as large as New York to slavery."
At times he apprehends the dissolution of the Union.
To his own people he says, in a prayer-meeting :
" Things have come nearly to the worst in this
nation ; but with the consciousness of Divine Provi-
dence, I will not despair. If God sees fit to destroy
this government He will raise up another to carry
out His purpose." This is on the 19th of May,
1854 ; seven days later the Kansas-Nebraska bill
is signed and becomes the law of the land.
There were two ways of meeting this movement
204 HENRY WARD BEECHER
for the extension of slavery: one by federal, the
other by local action. Both methods were simulta-
neously adopted by anti-slavery leaders.
There had been for twelve years a Liberty party
in the United States, insignificant in numbers, but
at least on one occasion influential. The vote for
James G. Birney in 1844 had drawn off votes
enough from Henry Clay to secure the election of
James K. Polk. In that election, the Liberty party
had been, or at least at the time appeared to be,
however unconsciously, an ally of the slave power.
But after the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed, it
began to be clear to those who regarded the slavery
question as the most important question before the
nation, that there was no longer hope from either
the Democratic or the Whig party for even moder-
ate anti-slavery action. The demands of slavery
were sustained alike by the Whig Millard Fill-
more and the Democratic Franklin Pierce. Never-
theless, shrewd politicians, whose anti-slavery
principles could not be questioned, doubted the
advisability of attempting the formation of a new
party. Chase, Sumner, and Wade approved it, but
Sumner had always been an independent, and
Chase was a Democrat ; Thurlow Weed and William
H. Seward at first discouraged it. The latter did not
believe that the various opponents of the Nebraska
bill were yet ready to work together in a common
organization for a common end. I do not know that
Mr. Beecher ever took part in the councils of those
who were framing the political machinery to resist
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 205
the extension of slavery. He was never, in any
sense of the term, a politician. But when, in 1856,
the heterogeneous political elements, which were
agreed in nothing but their hostility to further
extension of slavery, united in the nomination
of John C. Fremont for President of the United
States, Mr. Beecher at once entered heartily into
the canvass for his election. The week after the
nomination he writes from New Hampshire : —
Everywhere I find people aroused to the great ques-
tion of the times, and it seems as if at last the North
were determined to fulfill her mission and restore to the
land the principles which she first planted. I find in
every quarter that Fremont is gaining friends and bids
fair to carry every state in New England.
Two months later, at the end of the summer's vaca-
tion, when he would naturally be beginning the fall
work with Plymouth Church, at the request of a
number of eminent clergymen and others, he was
given a leave of absence by the trustees to devote
himself to the political campaign " in behalf of the
cause of liberty, then felt to be in peril." This was
in September, 1856. Upon this campaign he en-
tered with characteristic energy, speaking twice
and often three times a week, generally making a
two to three hours' speech, often in the open air,
to audiences of from eight to ten thousand people.
The burden of his campaign speeches was a reiter-
ation of the principles we have already reported as
urged by him on the platform and in the press.
When the opponents of Mr. Fremont tried to con-
206 HENRY WARD BEECHER
fuse the issue by making a new one, Mr. Beecher
did not follow their lead, and, by turning the laugh
on them, effectually prevented them from diverting
public attention from the real question at issue.
Certain astute politicians had endeavored to secure
the cooperation of the native American party with
the new Republican party, though wiser counsels
had prevailed and had prevented any open alliance
between the two. The opponents of the Republican
party endeavored to set this native American sen-
timent against John C. Fremont, because in his
runaway match he had been married by a Roman
Catholic priest. His political enemies insisted that
he was a Roman Catholic and concealed the fact
for political ends. The charge, though refuted, was
repeated again and again. Serious argument serves
little purpose in such a case. Mr. Beecher's story
of the dog named " Noble-at-the-empty-hole " over-
whelmed the accusation with ridicule. " Having on
one occasion seen a red squirrel run into a hole in
a stone wall, he could not be persuaded that he was
not there forever. . . . When all other occupations
failed, this hole remained to him. When there were
no chickens to harry, no pigs to bite, no cattle to
chase, no children to romp with, no expeditions to
make with the grown folks, and when he had slept
all that his dog skin would hold, he would walk out
of the yard, yawn and stretch himself, and then look
wistfully at the hole, as if thinking to himself:
1 Well, as there is nothing else to do, I may as well
try that hole again,' We had almost forgotten this
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 207
little trait until the attack of the < New York Ex-
press' in respect to Colonel Fremont's religion
brought it ridiculously to mind again. . . . The
'Express,' like Noble, has opened on this hole in the
wall, and can never be done barking at it. Day
after day it resorts to this empty hole. When
everything else fails, this resource remains. There
they are indefatigably, — 4 Express ' and Noble, —
a church without a Fremont, and a hole without a
squirrel in it. . . . We never read the 4 Express '
nowadays without thinking involuntarily, * Good-
ness ! the dog is letting off at that hole again.' "
The story was caught up by the press and went the
rounds of the country. " The dog Noble and the
empty hole " turned into ridicule the attempt to
make political capital out of the marriage of Fre-
mont by a Roman Catholic priest. It is doubtful
whether the incident lost General Fremont a vote ;
it is quite certain that it did not lose him so many
as were gained for him by the romance of the run-
away match.
Simultaneously with this national movement to
prevent the further extension of slavery was a
local movement, which eventually proved success-
ful, to secure Kansas and Nebraska for freedom by
planting in them a population determined to make
of them free states. For this purpose an Emigrant
Aid Company was organized in New England in
1854 by Eli Thayer. He was an ardent believer
in popular sovereignty. He felt sure, and events
proved him right, that under popular sovereignty
208 HENRY WARD BEECHER
freedom would win. A charter was granted by-
Massachusetts, capital was secured, emigrants were
invited. Its object was to plant capital in the new
territory in advance of population, and thus fur-
nish the incoming immigrant with the advantage
of mills, schools, and churches. It was not an
abolition society. Financial and patriotic motives
commingled in the intentions of its founders. Its
aim was to build up a prosperous community in
the prosperity of which the immigrant would share.
Its methods were peaceable: its first immigrants
went without any implements of war. u The Emi-
grant Aid Company," says Mr. Spring in his
history of Kansas, " never bought a firelock or
furnished its patrons with warlike equipments of
any sort."
From the outset this scheme of securing Kansas
and Nebraska for freedom met with opposition
from very different quarters. The men who loved
peace rather than liberty opposed it, because they
foresaw in it only a new phase of the interminable
strife which they abhorred. They anticipated the
incursion of armed forces from Missouri, and as a
result either civil war or the forcible overthrow of
the free-state settlers by their more warlike and less
scrupulous neighbors. Conservative anti-slavery
men regarded it as wholly impracticable. They
believed that these New England immigrants, who
had to travel fifteen hundred miles to the battle-
ground, would be no match for the slave popula-
tion from the adjoining state of Missouri, who
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 209
could in one day blot out all that the free-soilers
could do in a year. The abolitionists condemned it
as commercial in its spirit and impracticable in its
methods. " The Liberator " denounced the Emi-
grant Aid Company as " a great hindrance to the
cause of freedom and a mighty curse to the terri-
tory." Wendell Phillips declared that "the fate
of Nebraska and Kansas was sealed the first hour
Stephen Arnold Douglas consented to play his
perfidious part," for so his abolition of the Mis-
souri Compromise was regarded by the anti-slavery
sentiment of the North. To take possession of the
country by industry, by roads, by mills, by churches,
would take, he said, two centuries. Thomas Went-
worth Higginson maintained that even if the Emi-
grant Aid Society were successful, success would
achieve nothing ; Nebraska would be only a trans-
planted Massachusetts, and the original Massachu-
setts had been tried and found wanting.1
From the first Mr. Beecher threw himself heart
and soul into this movement, as did many of the
New England clergy. The anticipations of the
peace-lovers were presently realized. When elec-
tion day came, over seventeen hundred Missourians
came over into Kansas, and swelled the pro-slavery
vote. When the next election day came, five thou-
sand Missourians marched into Kansas to assist
in the election of the legislature. Judges of elec-
tion were awed into submission or driven away by
threats. Protests against the result of the election
l Eli Thayer : The Kansas Crusade, p. 101.
210 HENRY WARD BEECHER
were signed at the hazard of life. Election returns
were canvassed by the governor, in a room filled
with men armed to the teeth. But these Mis-
sourians came into Kansas only to vote. Southern
presses urged Southern men to carry their slaves
with them into the new territory. "Two thou-
sand slaves," said Mr. Stringfellow, a leader of
the Missourians, " actually lodged in Kansas will
make a slave state out of it. Once fairly there,
nobody will disturb them." But no slave-owner
was willing to act on this advice. Slaves carried
into a state surrounded by freemen, might become
discontented and run away, and if they did, their
capture would certainly be difficult.
What should the New England settlers do?
Should they practice non-resistance and submit to
be overawed by incursions from Missouri, or should
they arm for self -protection ? Many of the sup-
porters of the free-soil cause hesitated : some sim-
ply dreaded bloodshed; some on principle were
opposed to all use of force ; some insisted that
Christ taught the doctrine of non-resistance. But
the free-soilers on the ground prepared to meet
force with force. Mr. Beecher defended their right
so to do. He said : —
The New Testament declares that malign revenge or
hatred are not to be felt toward an enemy. We do not
think it touches at all the question of what kind of instru-
ments men may employ. It simply teaches what is the
state of mind which is to direct either kind of instrument,
moral or physical. If we reason and argue, love, not
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 211
malignity, is to animate us. If we are in extremities and
defend our lives with weapons, it is not to be in hatred,
but calmly, deliberately, and with Christian firmness.
We know that there are those who will scoff at the idea
of holding a sword or a rifle in a Christian state of mind.
I think it just as easy as to hold an argument in a Chris-
tian state of mind. The right to use physical force we
regard as a very important one. We do not see how it
may be right to use a little, but wrong to use a great
deal of force, when self-defense is the end, and when
the feelings are not malignant, but simply a calm,
conscientious standing for right.
He urged the emigrants to go to Kansas ; urged
those who had sons in Kansas to send them arms;
urged parents to pray that their sons " may not
have occasion to use them, hut if they must be
used, that the sons may so wield them that the
mother be not ashamed of the son she loves."
He practiced what he preached : aided in taking
up contributions to arm the f ree-soilers ; pledged
twenty-five rifles from Plymouth Church ; called
for subscriptions in the lecture-room of the church,
for their purchase. As the result of these and simi-
lar subscriptions in various parts of the country by
the friends of the free-soilers, rifles were sent out
to Kansas in considerable numbers. One or more
consignments were sent in boxes labeled " books."
It is said that one consignment was labeled
" Bibles." In one address Mr. Beecher defended
the use of rifles, which, he said, would be more
useful than Bibles in an argument with wolves.
For one or the other of these reasons, Sharpe's
212 HENRY WARD BEECHER
rifles sent to the free - soilers were dubbed
" Beecher's Bibles." In fact, the possession of the
rifles by the free-soilers sufficed to win a blood-
less victory. " We do not know," he subsequently
said, "that a single man has ever been injured
with them. They are guiltless of blood." Never-
theless they won a victory where otherwise defeat
would have been certain. The famous Wakarusa
War did not come to actual hostilities. The Mis-
sourian invaders, twelve to fifteen hundred armed
men, encamped on the Wakarusa River in the
vicinity of Lawrence. It must be said for their
courage that they probably did not fear Sharpe's
rifles in the hands of the free-soil men ; but they
did fear the popular sentiment of the country if
they should open the first battle of what might be
a civil war. When they found that there was a
resolute party in Kansas determined to fight for
freedom, they withdrew without firing a shot. The
battle for liberty was won, and, so far as events
can justify moral principles, the moral principle
which Mr. Beecher had advocated was justified by
the peaceful victory achieved by the possession of
Sharpe's rifles.
So passes ten years of constant, though inter-
mittent agitation, probably the most politically
stormy in the history of the American nation.
Cowards are silent, cautious men seek for com-
promise, belligerent men inflame popular passion
and arouse popular prejudice, honest men are sorely
perplexed. The issue remains always the same ;
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 213
but the aspect of the issue constantly changes.
The slave power grows more and more aggressive.
It first asks to be let alone ; then it demands new
territory by a compromise ; then it repudiates the
compromise it formerly demanded and seeks new
territory through popular sovereignty ; then it repu-
diates popular sovereignty and wishes the national-
ization of slavery. Simultaneously the anti-slavery
sentiment of the North grows more definite, more
resolute, more wide-spread. In all these changes
Mr. Beecher never departs from the principles
avowed in his first public utterance. When in
May, 1856, Charles Sumner is struck down by
Preston Brooks and beaten almost to death, Mr.
Beecher seeks not to inflame the passion of the
North against the assailant, but against the power
which that assailant too well represents. " The
nature of slavery," he says, in a public meeting in
Brooklyn, "has been for a long time to make
encroachment. But the time has come when it has
walked into the government. It takes possession
of the Senate Chamber." John Brown, erroneously
assuming that the slaves were eager for their lib-
erty, and if provided with a leader will arise, throw
off the yoke of slavery, and win freedom for them-
selves, undertakes his fatuous raid into Virginia.
Mr. Beecher believes neither in the paroxysm of
indignation nor in the passion of enthusiasm. His
prayer for John Brown and the other imprisoned
raiders indicates a principle which history confirms.
" Remember these that are in prison — Thy servants
214 HENRY WARD BEECHER
who in Thy providence have been permitted to lift
up their hands in a mistaken way, but out of which
Thou wilt yet induce good." When a public hall
is denied Wendell Phillips for a lecture, because
of his unpopularity, Mr. Beecher, radically as he
differs from Mr. Phillips in both spirit and methods,
secures from the trustees the use of Plymouth
Church for the obnoxious lecturer. Issuing a call
to battle against the compromise measures, Mr.
Beecher gives Mr. Clay sincere praise for desir-
ing peace. But when Daniel Webster, born and
bred in the atmosphere of New England, becomes
the advocate of this same measure, he denounces
the son of Massachusetts for his apostasy.
Nor is he, during these ten years, a man of one
idea. He is not merely an anti-slavery reformer.
Every event which concerns the liberty of his
fellow men concerns him. When Louis Kossuth
comes to America, Plymouth Church is put at his
disposal, and Mr. Beecher in introducing him calls
on the audience to " bear witness to me how often
from this place prayers have been offered and tears
shed when we have heard of the struggles of
Hungary." When the advent of Father Matthew
has revived interest in the temperance cause, Mr.
Beecher avails himself of the opportunity, and
speaks on the same platform with P. T. Barnum,
Dr. George B. Cheever, and Dr. Theodore F. Cuy-
ler, for temperance. When the electric cable to
unite the old world and the new is to be laid, Mr.
Beecher is among the early visitors to the frigate
THE ANTI-SLAVEKY CAMPAIGN 215
Niagara, which is charged with the duty of laying
it, and writes of the coming event as one which
will " bind two continents together, and be a road
for the business of the world." The Church and
amusements had always been thought to belong
in different fields, and the duty of the Church as
discharged in warning the young against tabooed
amusements. In 1857 we find Mr. Beecher preach-
ing on social amusements, and recommending gym-
nastics, wrestling, bowling, boating, and field sports
generally. Three weeks later he is pleading the
cause of the American Indian in a public meeting
in New York City. The corner-stone of a new city
armory is laid. He is there to speak, on broad
lines, of municipal and national patriotism. The
centenary of Robert Burns is to be celebrated.
Mr. Beecher gives the memorial address : " The
nation which reads Robert Burns in the nursery
will never have tyrants in the parliament house.
In all his weakness, sorrows, joys, and fears, he is
universal in his sympathies. . . . Dead, he has
made the world rich. His life was a failure until
he died ; and ever since it has been a marvelous
success." A reading-room and a coffee-house are
to be opened in the Bowery — one of the first
of the now numerous attempts to improve men
through other than conventionally religious means.
Mr. Beecher is there to indorse it. Italy is engaged
in her finally successful effort to throw off the yoke
of foreign bondage and become a free and united
nation. Mr. Beecher joins in a call for a public
216 HENRY WARD BEECHER
meeting, addresses it, and helps to raise a fund for
Garibaldi's aid. He speaks on the same platform
with Lucy Stone Blackwell for the emancipation
of woman : urges the enlargement of her influence
because it will involve an enlargement of her char-
acter ; insists that " she is better fitted for home
when she is fitted for something else." If he be-
lieved that the ballot for every one is necessary
both as a symbol and as a defense of liberty, he
shared with his contemporaries an opinion which
experience on a large scale has modified in the
minds of many who are devoted to human free-
dom.
There lies before me as I write a journal kept by
a member of Plymouth Church, during a period
extending from 1850 to 1869. I am amazed as I
turn its pages over at the mere physical endurance
of this man. For the ten years with which in this
chapter I have to do, he was engaged almost daily
in public service. The first four evenings of the
week he was generally speaking on some public
platform. As if moral reforms were not enough
to keep his brain busy, he engaged in the work of
lecturing. The lyceum lecture was then one of the
great instruments for public education, and Mr.
Beecher was in constant demand as a lyceum
lecturer, especially after the Fremont campaign.
Commerce, art, life, literature, everything but
theology, furnished him topics. Among his themes
are " The Ministry of the Beautiful," « Character,"
"Amusements," "Success in Life," "Wit and
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 217
Humor," " Mirthfulness," " The Commonwealth."
Beside all this he contributed to the press frequent
articles, grave and gay, long and short, sometimes
serious discussions of public themes, sometimes
chatty sketches of personal experiences or observa-
tions.
This more public ministry did not divert him
from his ministry to and in his own church. He
was almost invariably back from his campaigning
and lecturing in time to be at the Friday evening
meeting. At this meeting, which was always
crowded, he gave what he called a " lecture-room
talk," which was really a brief lecture. In these
lecture-room talks Mr. Beecher rarely dealt with
the topics of his weekly campaigning. His themes
were largely those of personal religious experience.
Religion has to do both with man's relation to his
fellow man and with his personal relation to his
God. In his weekly campaigns Mr. Beecher dealt
wholly with the former. In his lecture-room
talks he generally dealt with the latter. His
themes were such as " Communion," " Tears,"
"Groping after God," "Praise and Prayer,"
" Christian Joyousness," " The Spontaneous Good-
ness of God." Following the lecture was almost
always an after-meeting which was sometimes social,
sometimes pastoral, sometimes executive ; in which
inquirers were met, guidance given, plans of church
work briefly discussed. Saturday was a holiday ;
only the most pressing exigency was allowed to
break in upon this rest-day of the preacher. After
218 HENRY WARD BEECHER
he moved to Peekskill from Lenox, where he at first
had his summer retreat, he often went up for the
day to his country home in the spring and fall
when weather invited to outdoor occupations. On
Sunday he was rarely absent from his pulpit. His
people were generous ; they made no demands for
pastoral service, and he rendered very little ; but
they were always disappointed when he was absent
from his pulpit, and he knew it. Exchanges were
no relief to him, for he had no old sermons. So he
almost invariably preached, and habitually twice on
Sunday, and always to crowded congregations. The
pews and aisles were always full; more often than
not, all standing-room was taken ; the pulpit-stairs
were regularly used for seats by the young men and
children of the congregation ; often hundreds were
turned away unable to gain entrance to the church.
In the congregation were many Western and South-
ern merchants, coming to the city, according to the
fashion of those days, to buy goods ; and many men
of note in all the ranks of life. Kalph Waldo
Emerson, A. Bronson Alcott, Henry D. Thoreau,
Walt Wrhitman, Louis Kossuth, Abraham Lincoln
were a few among the notabilities. And it was not
chiefly curiosity to hear the reformer on public
themes that drew this congregation. Sermons on
the topic of the hour were occasional and excep-
tional. His sermons, as his lecture-room talks, were
largely on topics of personal life, — individual
rather than sociological.
During all this time Plymouth Church was not
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 219
merely a great congregation, attracted by the fame
of a great preacher. It was a living church, com-
posed of men and women actively engaged in Chris-
tian and philanthropic work, under the inspiration
which the preacher furnished. The Sunday-school
was so large as to fill the Sunday-school room full
to overflowing ; at times the lecture-room had to be
used to accommodate the overflow. The spiritual
efficiency of a church is indicated by the additions
to its membership upon confession of faith. Dur-
ing these ten years seven hundred and seventy-
three united with Plymouth Church on confession
of their faith. Its spiritual life is indicated by the
response it makes to a general awakening in the
community. It was in the midst of these stirring
events that the church experienced the revival of
which I have spoken in a previous chapter. Dur-
ing this revival Mr. Beecher's attention was con-
centrated on the spiritual work in his church, for
to this he always gave the first place, and from the
daily morning prayer-meetings held during that
revival he was rarely absent. In addition to his
platform work, his contributions to the press, his
preaching, and the special ministry involved in two
successive revivals, Mr. Beecher also found or made
time to prepare the " Plymouth Collection," of
which I have already spoken, and which was fin-
ished and published in 1855.
It is true that Mr. Beecher concentrated his en-
ergies on his public teaching, now by his pen, now
on the platform, now in the pulpit. He did little
220 HENRY WARD BEECHER
or no personal pastoral work from house to house,
little executive work in administration of church
activities. He inspired the church, and left it to
direct its own activities. But they were not confined
to those which are customary to church life in a
great city ; and something of the responsibility for
them must have fallen upon him. For the Plymouth
Church edifice was not idle throughout the week.
It was the best auditorium in Brooklyn for public
lectures, and was in frequent use. It served as a
lecture-hall as well as meeting-house. Among the
lecturers who were heard here were Thackeray on
the " Four Georges," Professor Youmans on " Alco-
hol and its Uses," John B. Gough on temperance,
Professor Mitchell on astronomy, Charles Sumner,
Joshua R. Giddings, George W. Curtis on aspects
of the slavery question, and Schuyler Colfax and
Thomas Corwin, on I know not what. Abraham
Lincoln, it is said, was to have lectured in Ply-
mouth Church on coming East in 1860, but was
transferred to Cooper Union in order the more
effectually to reach a New York audience.
Yet it would be a mistake were the reader to
suppose that either Mr. Beecher or Plymouth
Church was what is ordinarily called popular. If
he was the most admired orator and the most be-
loved preacher of his time, he was also the most
bitterly hated, excepting only Theodore Parker.
No language was too bitter, no epithets too stinging
to be applied to him. It was declared that " his
pulpit has been turned into a political engine to
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN 221
overthrow the institutions of the Southern States,
to dissolve the Union, and to foment civil war ; "
he was characterized as one of the clergy " who
attack not those sinners who hear them, but those
who are a thousand miles away ; " he was classed
with Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and all three
were warned that " a trip to Europe just now
would prove very beneficial to their health ; " that
" their ease and comfort will be anything but safe
in this country in six months from this time " (De-
cember, 1860). These unambiguous hints came
from a metropolitan journal of no insignificant
reputation. Jewish rabbis and Christian preachers
added their voice of condemnation against " all our
notorious abolition preachers, who have resorted to
the most violent processes of interpretation to avoid
the meaning of plain Scripture texts," and " who
make that to be sin which in the Bible is not de-
clared to be sin." This hostility reached its climax
after the election of Abraham Lincoln. That fall
Plymouth Church was threatened with a mob. One
evening the services were interrupted by a stone
thrown from outside which came crashing through
the window. But the congregation fell into no
panic; after the sermon an extemporized body-
guard followed the preacher to his home ; no further
violence was attempted ; and Mr. Beecher, in bid-
ding his friends good-night, made a reassuring
speech from the steps of his house : " I do not think
there is any occasion for alarm, nor do I imagine
that I really need your protection. If there had
222 HENRY WARD BEECHER
been, and I had fallen, it would have been the best
thing that could have happened for the cause ; but
nothing will happen to me or to my house. I have
not lived in this city for thirteen years for nothing."
The friendly crowd responded with cheers and
cries of "That's so," and separated, and so the
incident came to an end.
Abraham Lincoln's speech in Cooper Union,
February 27, 1860, won for him the nomination
to the presidency by the Republican party. His
speech became the platform of the party. In its
principles and in its spirit it represented what Mr.
Beecher had for ten years urged his fellow citizens
to incorporate in a national resolve and embody in
national action. It therefore made Abraham Lin-
coln Mr. Beecher's candidate for the presidency.
In the triumph of the Republican party upon this
platform, and with this man as its leader, the
epoch of anti-slavery agitation came to an end;
the epoch of civil war began. For from the day
when the election of Abraham Lincoln was an-
nounced, the issue before the people of the North
regarding slavery was changed. It was no longer,
Would they consent to the extension of slavery ?
That question was answered. It was, Would they
respond to Abraham Lincoln's appeal : " Let us
have faith that right makes might; and in that
faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it"?
CHAPTER IX
THE CIVIL WAR
Mr. Lincoln was elected in November, 1860 ;
his inauguration did not take place until March 4,
1861 ; this quasi interregnum of four months be-
tween the election and the inauguration of the
President of the United States cost the nation
unnumbered thousands of dollars and unnumbered
thousands of lives. That the Civil War could have
been absolutely prevented is not probable ; that its
duration would have been greatly lessened if Mr.
Lincoln had taken the reins of government within
four weeks after his election cannot be doubted, for
during the four months of interregnum the nation
was without a leader. Mr. Lincoln could not lead
because he was not President ; Mr. Buchanan could
not lead because he had not capacity. The nation
was confronting a great crisis, and Mr. Buchanan
was not the man for a crisis. A skillful diplomat,
a shrewd politician, skillful in the evasion of diffi-
cult questions, but without a statesman's ability to
understand or a brave man's courage to meet them,
incapable of comprehending a great situation or
grasping a great principle, Mr. Buchanan was
exactly not the man for the place.
There were in the country two conceptions of
224 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the nature of the federal government. The United
States of America is confessedly a union of sover-
eign states. Ought it to be regarded as a partner-
ship from which any partner may withdraw at will,
or a marriage which once consummated is indis-
soluble ? The South held the first view, the North
the second. The sovereignty resides in the people.
Was the supreme expression of this sovereignty in
the State or in the Nation ? in an issue between
the two which was the final arbiter? The South
answered, The State ; the North answered, The
Nation. Either view was self -consistent ; for either
view rational argument was possible. Mr. Buch-
anan, versed in the art of compromising by the
simple method of conceding something in every
controversy to each disputant, attempted to solve
this controversy by such a compromise. He said
in effect to the North : " You are right — this is
a nation; the union of the states is a marriage;
no state has a right to secede." He said in effect
to the South: "You are right — the sovereignty
of the state is supreme ; the sovereignty of the fed-
eral government is subordinate, and although no
state has a right to secede, the federal government
has no right to coerce it into submission if it does
secede." Such a compromise, pronounced by the
chief executive of the federal government, was
entirely satisfactory to the secessionists ; they did
not in the least care what theory Mr. Buchanan
held respecting the right of a state to secede, so
long as he refused to use or allow to be used the
THE CIVIL WAR 225
forces of the federal government in preventing se-
cession. Under his administration seven states were
permitted to hold conventions and proclaim their
withdrawal from the Union ; the Secretary of War
was allowed to retain his post and use his power to
equip the seceding states for the impending con-
flict ; the United States brigadier-general com-
manding the Department of Texas was allowed to
turn over his entire army, with all the posts and
fortifications, arms, munitions of war, horses and
equipments, to the Confederate authorities. Be-
fore Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and under Mr.
Buchanan's administration, the Confederate States
had taken possession of every fort, arsenal, dock-
yard, mint, custom-house, and court-house in their
territory except three — Fort Sumter, Fort Pick-
ens, and Key West. This was not accomplished
without strong opposition in the South. In South
Carolina, when the minister first dropped from the
service the prayer for the President of the United
States, James L. Pettigrew, the foremost lawyer
of the state, rose in his pew, and slowly and with
distinct voice repeated, " Most humbly and heartily
we beseech Thee with Thy favor to uphold and
bless Thy servant the President of these United
States ; " then, placing his prayer-book in the rack,
withdrew, with his wife, from the church, which he
never reentered. In Georgia, Alexander H. Ste-
phens, easily the foremost statesman in the South,
argued earnestly against secession ; pointed out
the fact tliat the Republican President faced a
226 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Democratic majority, both in the House of Repre-
sentatives and in the Senate, — could carry no
legislation, could appoint no officer, could not even
form a cabinet hostile to the interests of the coun-
try, as the Democratic majority interpreted those
interests. It may fairly be doubted whether the
ordinance of secession would have commanded a
popular vote in any state in the South except
South Carolina if the vote could have been pre-
ceded by a full and free discussion, if it could have
been unattended with threatening or violence, and
if the Unionists could have had the moral support
of the federal administration.
But it must be said, in apology for Mr. Buchanan,
if not in defense of him, that if public sentiment
was divided in the South, it was also divided in the
North. The radical abolitionists were opposed to
coercion and welcomed secession. They had them-
selves been secessionists from the first. Not a few
of those who voted for Mr. Lincoln, when they
found themselves confronting the peril of war,
would have been almost ready to cancel their vote,
and were quite ready to draw back from the prin-
ciples to which he was committed and from which
he never swerved. The commercial disasters which
war would involve appalled some, the terrible
tragedy of war appalled others, and an honest con-
viction of the impracticability of coercion con-
vinced still others. Three days after the election
the " New York Tribune," the most influential
journal of the Republican party, in a leading ar-
THE CIVIL WAR 227
tide said : " If the cotton states decide that they
can do better out of the Union than in it, we
insist on letting them go in peace. . . . We hope
never to live in a republic whereof one section is
pinned to the residue by bayonets." Most extraor-
dinary compromises were proposed to avoid the
peril of war. It was proposed that the Constitu-
tion should be amended so as to provide for slave
territory south of a given line and free territory
north of a given line, each inviolate from interfer-
ence ; that slavery should never be interfered with
in the territories ; that a clause should be inserted
in the Constitution recognizing the doctrine of
states rights and denying the power of coercion to
the general government ; that Mr. Lincoln should
resign and another president be elected less objec-
tionable to the South ; that the office of president
should be abolished and a council of three sub-
stituted, each of whom should have a veto on every
public act. Those who were most loyal, not only to
the government, but to the fundamental principles
of the Republican party, were divided in their
opinion respecting the best policy to be pursued.
It soon became plain that secession of the cotton
states could not be prevented by compromise. But
it was not so clear that it was impossible to dis-
suade the border states from casting in their lot
with the Confederacy. To prevent them from so
doing became the first object of leading men whose
loyalty to the nation and to liberty could not be
questioned. So clear-headed and loyal a statesman
228 HENRY WARD BEECHER
as Charles Francis Adams advocated the appoint-
ment of committees and summoning of conferences
and shaping of a compromise to secure this result.
That during such a time of intellectual confusion a
man of Mr. Buchanan's mould, temper, and educa-
tion should have been perplexed, irresolute, and
vacillating is not to be wondered at.
In all this time of confused counsels there were
some men, the strongest, as we can now see, who
never for a moment lost sight of the one guiding
principle that concession should never more be
made to the slave power under any pretext
whatever, be the consequences what they might.
Among these were the silent man at Springfield,
and the eloquent man in Brooklyn, neither of
whom for an instant hesitated. In December
Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mr. Washburne :
" Prevent as far as possible any of our friends
from demoralizing themselves and their cause by
entertaining propositions for compromise of any
sort on slavery extension. There is no possible
compromise upon it but what puts us under again,
and all our work to do over again." There is no
reason to suppose that at this time Mr. Lincoln
and Mr. Beecher had any understanding or any
correspondence with each other ; but what Mr.
Lincoln said in occasional private letters Mr.
Beecher said with vigor from the pulpit, on the
platform, and from the press. Mr. Beecher was
not a diplomat ; he had no skill in political arts ;
he did not know how to propose a scheme to blind
THE CIVIL WAR 229
the eyes of his opponents and to tide over a diffi-
culty, — a scheme to be abandoned as soon as the
crisis was passed. Despite rumors and reports that
he subsequently became a political adviser of Mr.
Lincoln, and a still more influential adviser of
President Grant, I am not able to find any his-
torical evidence that he ever was the adviser of
either. He is a wise man who knows his own powers
and his own limitations, exercises the first, and
keeps within the second. It was Mr. Beecher's
genius to create that public sentiment which un-
derlies and gives force to political action in a
democracy, and to give effective and eloquent
expression to that sentiment when it had been
created. To this work he gave himself with single-
ness of purpose, for he understood the mission to
which he had been called better than any of his
critics, better than some of his eulogists.
During this period of interregnum there were
two services which could be rendered by a man
who had access to the public mind and conscience.
He could do something to persuade the Union men
in the South that their constitutional rights and
liberties were not in danger. They were not
wholly without ground for their apprehension, cer-
tainly not without excuse for it, for the vehement
and inflammatory writings and speeches of the
abolitionists had been circulated far and wide.
But it was even more important to inform the
mind, sustain the courage, and strengthen the
resolution of the anti-slavery majority in the North,
230 HENRY WARD BEECHER
to make all the men who had voted for Abraham
Lincoln realize what Abraham Lincoln realized —
that no compromise of any sort concerning the
extension of slavery was possible. To this double
purpose Mr. Beecher gave himself.
At first, in common with the great leaders of
the Republican party, he did not believe that there
was serious peril of war. The Union-savers had
cried " Wolf ! Wolf ! " so often when there was no
wolf that the anti-slavery reformers had come to
believe that the beast did not exist. They dis-
credited the courage of the South, as the South-
erners discredited the courage of the North ; they
thought the threat of disunion was uttered only for
political purposes, and had been uttered much too
often; that, to quote Charles Francis Adams's
summary of his father's opinion, " The South was
not in earnest, that its threats were mere brag-
gadocio, that its interests and safety combined to
keep it in the Union." Asked in March, 1860,
to speak on how to save the Union, Mr. Beecher
began his speech by saying, " It is somewhat em-
barrassing to speak on this subject, because I con-
sider that the Union is in no danger. . . . The
Union was never so firm as it is now." In Novem-
ber following the election of Mr. Lincoln he ex-
pressed again the same confidence in even stronger
terms : " It is absurd to suppose that the South
with all her interest in the Union will leave it, and
therefore I say the South will never leave the Union.
There is a man now at the helm of the ship of state
THE CIVIL WAR 231
who will guide her safely through the perils which
encompass her, a man who knows not what it is to
be scared." Mr. Beecher did not then realize the
far-reaching plan of the Confederate leaders, which
involved the establishment of a great semi-tropical
republic, founded on an African slave-trade, and
including Mexico, Central America, and the West
Indies, united with the slave-holding states of
North America ; nor did he realize the power
of popular passion, in a democratic community,
when inflamed, to disregard all considerations of
self-interest.
But, as time went on, and the peril of civil war
became more imminent, the result was to make Mr.
Beecher's insistence on uncompromising adherence
to principle more vigorous. On the 29th of Novem-
ber, 1860, he preached a Thanksgiving sermon, the
character of which is indicated by its title, " Against
a Compromise of Principle." In this sermon he said
that there were three courses possible : — (1) To
go over to the South. (2) To compromise principle.
(3) To maintain principle on just and constitutional
grounds, and abide the issue. The first was not to
be thought of. Compromise was made impossible
by the inherent nature of the issue. " To be of
any use compromise must make the slaves con-
tented, slavery economical, slave states as pros-
perous as free states. Compromise must shut the
mouth of free speech, . . . must cure the intol-
erance of the plantation, . . . must make evil as
prosperous as good, enforced slavery as fruitful
232 HENRY WARD BEECHER
as free labor." The North ought to have nothing
to do with halfway measures or halfway men. To
the demands of the Southern secession leaders this
should be its answer : —
The North loves liberty, and will have it. We will
not aggress on you. Keep your institutions within your
own bounds ; we will not hinder you. We will not take
advantage to destroy, or one whit to abate, your fair
political prerogatives. You have already gained advan-
tages of us. These we will allow you to hold. You
shall have the Constitution intact, and its full benefit.
The full might and power of public sentiment in the
North shall guarantee to you everything that history
and the Constitution give you. But if you ask us to
augment the area of slavery ; to cooperate with you in
cursing new territory ; if you ask us to make the air of
the North favorable for a slave's breath, we will not do
it ! We love liberty as much as you love slavery, and
we shall stand by our rights with all the vigor with
which we mean to stand by justice toward you.1
In reading these words the reader should remem-
ber that they were uttered when the Northern pul-
pits and Northern press were clamoring for some
impossible compromise, when Congress was debat-
ing halfway measures, when halfway men were
endeavoring to contrive some platform of conces-
sion to slavery and secession that would postpone
the inevitable conflict, when abolitionists were ad-
vising to let the erring sisters depart in peace.
Six weeks later, on a fast-day appointed by the
President, speaking on " Our Blameworthiness,' '
1 Patriotic Addresses, p. 242.
THE CIVIL WAR 233
Mr. Beecher again indicted slavery as " the most
alarming and most fertile cause of national sin.
. . . Not only a sin but a fountain from which
have flowed many sins." Commonplace as this
utterance may seem now, it did not seem so then.
On the same day on which Mr. Beecher was de-
claring that slavery was the great national sin, a
neighboring Brooklyn preacher was arguing that
slavery was indorsed by the Bible, and was urging
the then familiar argument that the blameworthi-
ness of the nation consisted in the fanaticism which
denounced slavery. I remember on that same fast-
day attending a union service in a Western city at
which several addresses urging to repentance were
made, and only one of the speakers referred to
slavery. By the others not the most distant allu-
sion was made to it, while every other sin in the
calendar, from Sabbath-breaking to covetousness,
came in for a safe and harmless denunciation.
As might be expected, when by the bombard-
ment of Fort Sumter the Confederacy threw down
the challenge of war to the federal government,
Mr. Beecher was prompt to respond. He was ab-
sent lecturing when the news of the bombardment
was flashed over the wires. Returning to his home,
he gave on Sunday morning his message for the
hour to his congregation. The commercial fears
which counseled a new attempt at compromise
he sought to counteract by arousing a passionate
enthusiasm for nationality, liberty, humanity. The
fire that even now, more than forty years after the
234 HENRY WARD BEECHER
delivery of the sermon, flashes from the printed
page, it is as impossible to reproduce, in an analy-
sis of the argument, as it is to reproduce in the
heaped up ashes from a camp-fire the pile of logs
aflame, its light illumining the darkness of the
night, and its glow warming the bystanders. The
spirit of his message was conveyed by its text,
" Speak unto the children of Israel that they go
forward." In this sermon Mr. Beecher presented
clearly the demand of the Republican party, the
demand of the South, and the impossibility of any
compromise between the demands. " We ask no
advantages, no new prerogatives, no privileges
whatsoever ; we merely say, Let there be no intes-
tine revolution in our institutions, but let them
stand as they were made and for the purposes for
which they were created." On the other hand, the
Confederates " have expunged the doctrine of uni-
versal liberty and put in its place the doctrine of
liberty for the strong and servitude for the weak."
The new constitution of the so-called Confederate
States " holds that there is appointed of God a
governing class and a class to be governed, —
a class that were born governors because they are
strong and smart and well-to-do, and a class that
were born servants because they are poor and weak
and unable to take care of themselves." Men in
the North were proposing to secure peace between
liberty and slavery by ignoring the distinction be-
tween them. These Northerners he scourged with
unsparing ridicule : —
THE CIVIL WAR 235
You can have your American eagle as you want it.
If, with the South, you will strike out his eyes, then you
shall stand well with Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens of
the Confederate States ; if, with the Christians of the
South, you will pluck off his wings, you shall stand
well with the Southern churches ; and if, with the new
peace-makers that have risen up in the North, you will
pull out his tail-feathers, you shall stand well with the
society for the promotion of national unity. But when
you have stricken out his eyes so that he can no longer
see, when you have plucked off his wings so that he can
no longer fly, and when you have pulled out his guiding
tail-feathers so that he can no longer steer himself, but
rolls in the dirt a mere buzzard, then will he be worth
preserving ? Such an eagle it is that they mean to de-
pict upon the banner of America !
But he did not merely ridicule ; he did not
merely denounce — he argued : On what conditions
could the North retreat from the war? on what
conditions have peace ? " On condition that two
thirds of the nation shall implicitly yield up to the
dictation of one third ; " on condition that " we will
legalize and establish the right of any discontented
community to rebel and set up intestine govern-
ments within the government of the United
States ; " on condition that " we will agree funda-
mentally to change our Constitution, and instead
of maintaining a charter of universal freedom, to
write it out as a deliberate charter of oppression ; n
on condition that we " become partners in slavery,
and consent, for the sake of peace, to ratify this
gigantic evil;" on condition that "we shall no
236 HENRY WARD BEECHER
longer have any right of discussion, of debate, of
criticism, — shall no longer have any right of agi-
tation, as it is called." Against these demands
of the South he placed the duties which the hour
devolved upon the North. " While the air of the
South is full of the pestilent doctrines of slavery,
accursed be our communities if we will not be as
zealous and enthusiastic for liberty as they are
against it." Every man should declare himself.
"We must draw the lines. A great many men
have been on both sides. A great many men have
been thrown backward and forward, like a shuttle,
from one side to the other. It is now time for
every man to choose one side or the other." Com-
mercial interests must not be permitted to inter-
fere. " We must not stop to measure costs — espe-
cially the cost of going forward — on any basis so
mean and narrow as that of pecuniary prosperity."
An ultimate and enduring settlement must be kept
ever in mind. " We must aim at a peace built on
foundations so solid of God's immutable truth, that
nothing can reach to unsettle it. Let this conflict
between liberty and slavery never come up again."
And the controversy must be entered into without
wrath or bitterness. "Let not our feeling be
savage or vengeful. We can go into this conflict
with a spirit just as truly Christian as any that ever
inspired us in the performance of a Christian duty.
. . . Let the spirit of fury be far from us ; but
the spirit of earnestness, of willingness to do, to
suffer, and to die, if need be, for our land and our
THE CIVIL WAR 237
principles, — that may be a religious spirit. We
may consecrate it with prayer."
In this sermon occurred an incident which illus-
trates both the quickness of the orator to seize the
advantage of the unexpected, and the wisdom of
the Christian to direct the sudden excitement of an
audience to a noble issue. I can best give this
incident by quoting it from the sermon itself : —
Since I came into this desk I have received a dis-
patch from one of our most illustrious citizens, saying
that Sumter is reinforced, and Moultrie is the fort that
has been destroyed. [Tremendous and prolonged ap-
plause, expressed by enthusiastic cheers, clapping of
hands, and waving of handkerchiefs.'] But what if the
rising of the sun to-morrow should reverse the message ?
What if the tidings that greet you in the morning should
be but the echo of the old tidings of disaster? You
live in hours in which you are to suffer suspense. Now
lifted up, you will be prematurely cheering, and now
cast down, you will be prematurely desponding. Look
forward, then, past the individual steps, the various vicis-
situdes of experience, to the glorious end that is coming !
Look beyond the present to that assured victory which
awaits us in the future.
The incident is characteristic of Mr. Beecher.
He often raised his audiences to the highest pitch
of excitement, but never for the mere pleasure of
exciting them. He always endeavored to utilize
the excitement which he had created by giving to
it a practical turn, and making it minister to a
higher life in future conduct.
238 HENRY WARD BEECHER
From the hour in which war began, Plymouth
Church became a centre in the war excitement, as
it had been an educational centre in the anti-slavery
campaign which had preceded. It was continuously
used as a means, not only for strengthening cour-
age and stimulating patriotic enthusiasm, but also
practically for raising and equipping soldiers. The
American flag floated from the roof of the building.
At times daily meetings were held for the purpose
of making up articles necessary for volunteers. A
news express was organized, called the " Plymouth
Mail," to forward papers to the enlisted repre-
sentatives in Plymouth Church. At one service
three thousand dollars were raised to aid in equip-
ping one of the regiments. At another a fine out-
fit of Colt's revolvers were presented by the young
men of Plymouth Church to a company. Mr.
Beecher equipped one regiment at his own expense.
One of his sons volunteered with the father's hearti-
est approval. Sermons were frequent to companies
of soldiers coming to Plymouth Church for the pur-
pose of receiving instruction and inspiration. One
of these sermons entitled " The National Flag," de-
livered to the Brooklyn Fourteenth in May, 1861,
was little more than an eloquent incitement to cour-
age and patriotism ; another, on " The Camp, Its
Dangers and Duties," pointed out the moral dan-
gers incident to camp life, and contained counsel to
soldiers how to avoid them, and to friends at home
how to strengthen the young men no longer safe-
guarded by the influences of the home.
THE CIVIL WAR 239
From the first Mr. Beecher believed that the
war would end in the emancipation of the slave.
" That we see," he said, " the beginning of na-
tional emancipation we firmly believe. And we
would have you firmly believe it, lest, fearing the
loss of such an opportunity, you should over-eagerly
grasp at accidental advantages, and seek to press
forward the consummation by methods and mea-
sures which, freeing you from one evil, shall open
the door for innumerable others and fill our future
with conflicts and immedicable trouble." But he
was not in haste to anticipate the course of events ;
he did not demand an emancipation proclamation
immediately. " How far our government, by a just
use of its legitimate powers under the Constitution,
can avail itself of this war to limit or even to bring
slavery to an end, is matter for the wisest deliber-
ation of the wisest men." Even emancipation could
not, in his opinion, justify a course which would so
centralize the national government as to destroy
the state governments. The nation must still
maintain " unimpaired in all its beneficence the
American doctrine of the sovereignty of local
government, except in those elements which have
been clearly and undeniably transferred to the
federal government." But when the President
issued, in September, 1862, the preliminary eman-
cipation proclamation Mr. Beecher heartily in-
dorsed it, while he commended the President for
not anticipating in his action the public sentiment
of the North. On December 28, four days before
240 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the final emancipation proclamation, lie took the
approaching event as text for a sermon on " Lib-
erty under Laws," which he defined to be "the
liberty [of every man] to use himself, in all his
powers, according to the laws which God has im-
posed on those powers ; " this he declared was the
divine prerogative of every man under the sun.
During all this time Mr. Beecher's work in the
pulpit and on the platform was supplemented, as
it had been in the previous years, by his work with
the pen. In December, 1861, he became editor-in-
chief of " The Independent," and for the brief
time during which he held that position, its edito-
rials were largely devoted to the one issue before
the nation ; not so much to the discussion of ques-
tions — for the time for discussion had passed —
as to the inflaming of zeal, the stimulating of patri-
otism, the encouraging of devotion, the strengthen-
ing of resolution.
When James M. Mason and John Slidell, repre-
sentatives from the Confederate States to the gov-
ernments of France and England, were taken from
an English mail steamer by Captain Wilkes, of
the United States Navy, and the whole country was
in a blaze of excitement, and war with England was
imminent, Mr. Beecher assumed no wisdom on the
question of international law involved and urged no
special policy on the administration ; he contented
himself with declaring, " If we have, to the width
of a hair, passed beyond the line of our own proper
duty and right, we shall, upon suitable showing,
THE CIVIL WAR 241
need no menace to make suitable reparation. . . .
But if we have done right, all the threatenings in
the world will not move this people from their
steadfastness." When the question of finance
pressed upon the government, he did not discuss
the proper method of raising revenue, but he urged
the fearless imposition of taxes sufficient for the
necessities of the country : " Every honest man in
America ought to send to Washington one message
in two words, Fight, Tax." When slaves began
to come into our lines, he did not discuss the legal
or military question raised as to their status, but
he insisted that they were to be treated as men, not
as slaves : " Let us forget that these blacks were
ever Slaves, and remember only that they are Men.
With this as our first principle we cannot go far
wrong." When McClellan was halting and hesi-
tating on the Potomac, Mr. Beecher did not, like
some of his contemporaries, propose military meth-
ods or suggest a form of military campaign ; but
he demanded of the army " courage and enterprise "
in an editorial bearing those two words as its title.
" Since war is upon us, let us have courage to make
war." Two months before President Lincoln's
first emancipation proclamation he began to urge
upon the nation emancipation as a necessity. Mr.
Beecher was a great friend of Edwin M. Stanton.
In these editorials of the summer of 1862 some-
thing of Mr. Stanton's impatience with McClellan's
military policy appears in criticism of Mr. Lin-
coln's administration. We now know better than
242 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Mr. Beecher then could know the difficulties which
surrounded Mr. Lincoln, and the necessities which
made him cautious not to move more rapidly than
he could move with the united force of the loyal
North supporting him. But the intensity of these
editorials helped to arouse the very public senti-
ment for which Mr. Lincoln was waiting, and
which made Mr. Lincoln's action, when it came,
practical and efficient.
We should misinterpret Mr. Beecher if we should
leave our readers with the impression that during
these exciting months he was simply or even chiefly
a reformer. His sermons on the one political sub-
ject which agitated the nation were frequent, but
they were the exception. As during the previous
anti-slavery campaign, his chief message was a per-
sonal gospel. On May 30, 1863, he sailed for
Europe for what was intended to be a well-earned
vacation — but came to be the occasion of the most
important single service he ever rendered to his
country. The Sunday evening before his depar-
ture he took for reaffirmation of the fundamental
purpose of his ministry. I think that all those who
were familiar with that ministry during the sixteen
critical years which he had spent in Brooklyn would
bear testimony that in this familiar discourse he
not inaptly described it.
Among the earliest, the deepest, and the strongest
purposes of my ministry was the determination that it
should be a ministry of Christ. Nothing could be further
from my heart than to make this pulpit the clustering
THE CIVIL WAR 243
point of a number of reforms. I never would have con-
sented to serve in a church that was merely what is
called a reformatory church. I felt in my soul that all
power in moral reforms must spring from a yet deeper
power ; and for that I struck. And I remember how,
in the very beginning, night and day without varying,
through all the early months of my ministry here, I had
but one feeling — to preach Christ for the awakening of
men, for their conversion. My desire was that this
should be a revival church — a church in which the
Gospel should be preached primarily and mainly for the
re-creation of man's moral nature, for the bringing of
Christ as a living power upon the living souls of men.
My profound conviction of the fruitlessness of man
without God was such that it seemed to me gardening
in the great Sahara to attempt to make moral reforma-
tion in a church which was not profoundly impressed
with the great spiritual truths of Christ Jesus. I have
no doubt that there are many in this land who would
think it an extravagant thing to hear it said that the
keynote of my ministry among you had been the evan-
gelization of the soul, or the awakening of men from
their sinfulness and their conversion to the Lord Jesus
Christ. It has been ; and if you had taken that out of
my thought and feelings you would have taken away
the very central principle of my ministry. By far the
largest number of my sermons and the most of my
preaching has been aimed at the conviction and the
conversion of men.
CHAPTER X
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND
When the secession movement first assumed seri-
ous proportions the sympathy of England was
with the secessionists. There were many reasons
for this. The political control of England was in
the hands of the English aristocracy. Feudal Eng-
land had always looked with both suspicion and
aversion on her democratic daughter. The strong-
est argument against feudalism was the unparal-
leled growth of democratic America. Commercial
England saw in the republic across the sea a rival
who would soon contest with the mother country
her claim to commercial supremacy, and she was
not unwilling to see that rival dismembered, and
her own commercial supremacy thus secured to her.
For more than a quarter of a century England had
seen the South aggressive and successful, the North
timid and retreating. It was not strange that she
believed the South brave, the North timid ; and
England admires pluck and despises cowardice.
During the four months between the election and
the inauguration of President Lincoln she had seen
the secessionists united, purposeful, aggressive ; she
had seen the North divided, vacillating, frightened.
Even Charles Sumner and Salmon P. Chase had
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 245
intimated willingness to allow the Southern States
to go out with slavery if they so desired it ; even
Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State in the new
administration, had repudiated both the right and
the desire to use armed force in subjugating the
Southern States against the will of a majority of
the people. No wonder that under these circum-
stances the English people, in increasing numbers,
shared in the conviction a little later expressed by
Mr. Gladstone : " We may anticipate with certainty
the success of the Southern States so far as regards
their separation from the North. I cannot but be-
lieve that that event is as certain as any event yet
future and contingent can be." In politics pre-
eminently is it true that " Nothing succeeds like
success ; " and the anticipated success of the Con-
federacy won for it many sympathizers in Great
Britain who might otherwise have hesitated. In
political circles in Great Britain Mr. Lincoln was
unknown, and Mr. Seward, his Secretary of State,
who was known, and who was erroneously supposed
to be the controlling spirit in the new administra-
tion, was viewed with great distrust. We now
know that this distrust was well grounded, and that
if Mr. Seward had been the controlling spirit in
the new administration he would have provoked a
war with Great Britain for the purpose of arousing
the national sentiment in South and North and
uniting both sections against a common foe. The
Southern States were the great cotton producing
states of the world ; England was the great cotton
246 HENRY WARD BEECHER
manufacturing community of the world : the pro-
sperity of England, almost the life of many of her
people, was dependent upon the cotton supply fur-
nished by the Southern States, and therefore depend-
ent upon breaking the blockade and opening the
Southern ports to commerce. As the result of the
Civil War the cotton supply had shrunk by May 1,
1862, from 1,500,000 bales to 500,000 bales, of
which less than 12,000 bales had been received
from America ; over one half of the spindles of
Lancashire were idle, and in two towns, Blackburn
and Preston, alone, over 20,000 persons were de-
pendent on parochial aid. On the pressure pro-
duced by this cotton famine, and anticipated by
the Confederate leaders, they had relied to compel
England's intervention in their behalf. Agents of
the Confederate States, official and unofficial, were
busy in England, quietly working through press
and public men to create public opinion favorable
to their cause. America has never fully realized
the debt it owes to the one brave, loyal, and lonely
American, Charles Francis Adams, our American
Minister to England during the period of the Civil
War, whose courage was equaled by his sagacity,
and to whose diplomacy we primarily owe the fact
that English intervention in behalf of the Confed-
erate States was prevented.
If the question between North and South had
been, in the early years of the war, clearly seen to
be the question whether slavery should dominate
the continent or be destroyed, the anti-slavery con-
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 247
science of Great Britain might have been relied
upon to counteract, to a considerable extent, the
forces in England working on behalf of the Con-
federate cause ; but even to Americans the issue
between the two sections was obscured, and it is
not strange that Englishmen did not correctly ap-
prehend it. Isolated men of prophetic nature, like
James Martineau, saw that if slavery was confined
within a limited territory it must perish through the
action of economic causes, but the great English pub-
lic saw nothing but the issue as it was defined by
public speech ; and repeated, and even official decla-
rations in America, in the early history of the war,
distinctly denied that slavery was other than inci-
dentally involved. Even as late as the summer of
1862, Mr. Lincoln had written to Mr. Greeley that
ever memorable letter in which he declared that
his paramount object in this struggle "is to save
the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy
slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
any slaves, I would do it ; and if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could
do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I
would also do that." It is not strange that the Eng-
lish public generally did not discriminate between
the object of public action and the effect of public
action ; did not see that, while the object of the
government must be simply the reestablishment
of the federal authority throughout the nation, the
effect of that reestablishment must inevitably be
the eventual overthrow of slavery. When at last, in
248 HENRY WARD BEECHER
January, 1863, the President's proclamation of
emancipation was issued, it did something, but not
much, to clear the atmosphere. It was regarded by
the English journals generally, not as history has
regarded it, the greatest blow ever struck for human
freedom by a single hand, but, to quote one Eng-
lish critic, " the most unparalleled last card ever
played by a reckless gambler." The English people
were invited to recognize it as either a futile bid
for negro support, or, if effective, as a summons to
an insurrection which would be accompanied by
" a carnage so bloody that even the horrors of the
Jacquerie and the massacres of Cawnpore would
wax pale in comparison."
America was not without friends in England,
chiefly to be found among the laboring-class, who
were without a vote, and for the most part without
a voice, yet curiously not wholly without political
influence. As in many another crisis in history,
their instincts were wiser than the sagacity of the
statesmen and the leader-writers; they felt what
they could not have defined — that the cause of free
labor the world over was being fought out on Ameri-
can soil. They could not answer the arguments
adduced on platform and in press on behalf of the
Confederate States, but their sympathies were with
the preservation of the republic, their hopes were
for the overthrow of slavery. The emancipation
proclamation gave a reasonable and historic basis
for those hopes. And in January, 1863, a public
meeting was held in Exeter Hall against interven-
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 249
tion in behalf of the Confederate States, the first
considerable expression of the before silent con-
science of the common people of the land.
Such, briefly described, was the public sentiment
in England, when, after " two or three months " of
rest upon the Continent, Mr. Beecher reached Lon-
don in the early fall of 1863.
Dr. John Kaymond, Mr. Beecher's friend and
companion in his European travels, had returned to
America when Mr. Beecher left the Continent of
Europe, and Mr. Beecher remained alone in Eng-
land.1 At first he refused the requests urged upon
him to speak. There were special reasons why he
should refuse. He was there simply as a private
citizen, without any connection with the govern-
ment or any authority to speak in its behalf.
The rumor, afterward circulated, that he had been
informally and unofficially deputed by the adminis-
tration to go to England, and endeavor to create
a sentiment favorable to the North, he explicitly
denied. He went wholly on his own responsibility,
with no supporter except his own church. Roving
1 The best history of this English episode in Mr. Beecher's
life, including Oliver Wendell Holmes's description of it in The
Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Beecher's autobiographical account, and
stenographic reports of the principal addresses, will be found in
Patriotic Addresses, edited by John R. Howard. The account of
his experiences as here given is largely based on Mr. Beecher's
own account, given to a group of about twenty friends in his par-
lors, sometime in the seventies. This account was taken down in
shorthand, and with some slight revision is printed in full in
Henry Ward Beecher : A Sketch of his Career, by Lyman Abbott
and S. B. Halliday.
250 HENRY WARD BEECHER
diplomats, sent to England from time to time by-
Mr. Seward, acted independently of Mr. Charles
Francis Adams, the American Minister, and thus
discredited Mr. Adams, and enhanced the difficul-
ties of a delicate position. Unappointed volunteers
were also complicating affairs by private intermed-
dling, and by their letter-writing to the London
"Times," were not conducing to the friendly
relations between Great Britain and the United
States. Mr. Beecher did not wish to be identified
in the public mind with either of these classes of
mischief-makers. Bitter feeling against America
was sedulously cultivated by some eminent jour-
nals and by not a few reputable men. To speak for
America was sure to invite every species of insult
and indignity from Confederate sympathizers, and
was not sure to receive encouragement or support
from the few sympathizers with the North. It was
not even certain that the speaker's efforts would not
be condemned by the administration as possibly well-
meaning but practically injurious efforts. Mr.
Beecher was unfamiliar with the conditions of the
public mind, and by no means confident of his abil-
ity to meet them. He was conscious that, added to
the prejudice against him as a representative Amer-
ican, there was personal prejudice, theological and
other, which had been diligently excited against
him as an individual. The strength of these com-
bined prejudices is illustrated by the defensatory
and almost apologetic character of the introduc-
tions with which, when he came to speak, he was
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 251
on more than one occasion presented to his audi-
ences.
But Mr. Beecher's friends urged him to recon-
sider his declination. They presented two grounds,
one private, one public, why he should accede to
their request. They pleaded with him that they had
defended the North, and suffered on its behalf, and
they affirmed that if he went home refusing his
help, his enemies and theirs would declare that the
North itself despised them. They assured him that
the commercial and aristocratic circles of Great
Britain were eager to have Great Britain intervene •
that it was of the utmost importance, in order to
prevent the danger of intervention, to arouse and
instruct the anti-slavery sentiment of England upon
the issues of the war; that a movement was on
foot to win to the Confederate cause the sympathies
of the non-voting English laborers by a series of
public meetings ; and that in their judgment Mr.
Beecher could do more than any other man to fore-
stall and counteract this movement. The recent
victories at Vicksburg and at Gettysburg had done
something to stem the current of popular feeling
in favor of the Confederate cause, and so to make
this time opportune for securing a hearing for a
representative of the North. The argument pre-
vailed ; Mr. Beecher's refusal was changed to con-
sent, and arrangements were made for success-
ive speeches at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Liverpool, and London.1
1 The success which attended these meetings led subsequently
252 HENRY WARD BEECHER
There seems to be a kind of unacknowledged
public sentiment in England, which an American
finds it difficult to comprehend, that it is perfectly
fair play to prevent a speaker from being heard if
his opponents can do so by vociferous interruption,
or to capture a meeting organized for one purpose
and turn it to a diametrically opposite purpose if
there is force enough in the opposition to accom-
plish the result. So long as physical violence is
not resorted to, this sort of tactics seems to be
treated in England as a legitimate part of the
game. It was quite in accordance with English
traditions, therefore, that no sooner were the ar-
rangements for giving Mr. Beecher a hearing
made and announced than counter arrangements
were made to prevent Mr. Beecher from being
heard. Blood-red placards were posted in the
streets of the cities where he was to speak. They
summoned the mob to prevent his speaking. The
audacity of the lies contained in these placards
almost surpasses belief. They charged him with
demanding that " the best blood of England must
flow for the outrage England had perpetrated in
America ; " with recommending that London be
sacked ; with calling for the extermination of the
people of the South and repeopling it from the
North ; and they called on Englishmen to see that
he gets "the welcome he deserves." The only
effect of these posters was to arouse in him the
to three farewell breakfasts at, respectively, London, Manches-
ter, and Liverpool.
[1st poster, in red and black ; eize, 22x34 inches ]
Specimens of Posters displayed, in Cities in England
where Mr. Beecher spoke in 1S63.
REV. H. W. RGFXHER'S
MISSION TO LIVERPOOL.
THE TRENT AFFAIR.
[Rev. H. W. Beecher in the New York Independent."]
" Should the President quietly yield to the present necessity (viz. : the de-
livering up of Messrs. Mason and Slidell) as the lesser of two evils and bide
our time with England, there will be a
SENSE of WRONG, of NATIONAL HUMILIATION
SO PROFOUND, AND A
HORROR OF THE UNFEELING SELFISHNESS
OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT
in the great emergency of our affairs, such as will inevitably break out by and
by in flames, and which will only be extinguished by a deluge of blood ! We
are not living the whole of our life to-day. There is a future to the United
States in which the nation will right any injustice of the present hour."
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at a meeting held in New York, at the time
when the Confederate Envoys, Messrs. Slidell and Mason, had been surrendered
by President Lincoln to the British Government, from whose vessel (the Royal
Hail Steamer Trent) they were taken, said
" That the Best Blood of England must flow
for the outrage England had per-
petrated on America."
This opinion of a Christian (?) minister, wishing to obtain a welcome in
Liverpool, whose operatives are suffering almost unprecedented hardships,
caused by the suicidal war raging in the States of North America, and urged
on by the fanatical Statesmen and Preachers of the North, is worthy of con-
sideration.
REV. H. W. BEECHER'S
IDEA OF SLAVERY.
In Plymouth Church, in Brooklyn, N.Y., January 25, 1860, the Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher announced his creed on Slavery in six Points :
1. That ft man may hold a slave and do no wrong.
2. That immediate Emancipation is impossible.
8. That a Slave-holder mav be a good Christian.
4. That the influence of Slavery is not always evil.
5. That some actual Slave-holders are doing more for the cause of Freedom than
AOme violent Reformers.
0 That Auti-eUvery Bigotry Is worse than the Papacy.
[2d poster ; lize, 20x29 inches.]
THE
WAE 0HBISTIAKS1
THEIR DOCTRINES.
At a Jubilee Demonstration in New York, in January last,
REV. JOHN J. RAYMOND,
The appointed Chaplain of the meeting, in his opening prayer, said: "We
thank thee, 0 God, that thou hast seen fit to raise up one, ABRAHAM, sur-
named Lincoln. . . . He is a man whom GOD SHOULD bless, and the
people delight to honor."
UNITED STATES SENATOR LANE,
In his Address to the Great Union Meeting at Washington, said : " I would like
to live long enough to see every white man now -in South Carolina in Hell."
REV. H. WARD BEECHER,
In his Address in Glasgow, last Monday, said : "They (alluding to the NORTH
rose like ONE MA.N, and with a voice that reverberated throughout the whole
world, cried — LET IT (alluding to the South), with all its attendant horrors,
GO TO HELL."
From the Manchester Guardian's Correspondence :
Is this the same Reverend Mr. Beecher who, at a meeting in America,
during the discussion of the ' ' Trent Affair," said : " That the best blood of Eng-
land must flow as atonement for the outrage England committed on America"?
[3d poster ; size, 25x38 inches.]
WHO IS
HY. WARD BEECHER?
He is the man who said the best blood of England must be shed to atone
for the Trent affair.
He is the man who advocates a War of Extermination with the South, —
says it is incapable of " re generation," but proposes to re-people it from the
North by " generation." — See " Times."
He is the friend of that inhuman monster, General BUTLER. He is the
friend of that so-called Gospel Preacher, CHEEVER, who said in one of his
sermons — "Fight against the South till Hell Freezes, and then continue the
battle on the ice."
He is the friend and supporter of a most debased Female, who uttered at a
public meeting in America the most indecent and cruel language that ever
polluted female lips.— See " Times."
MEN OP MANCHESTER, ENGLISHMEN!
What reception can yon give this wretch, save unmitigated disgust and con-
tempt ? His impudence in coming here is only equalled by his cruelty and im-
piety. Should he. however, venture to appear, it behooves all right-minded men
to render as futile as the first this second attempt to get up a public demonstra-
tion in favor of the North, which is now waging War against the South with a
vindictive and revengeful cruelty unparalleled in the history of any Christian land.
Cave & SenD Printers by Steam Power, 1 alatlne Building, Manchester.
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 253
resolve, " I won't leave England until I have been
heard." But as the time came near for his first
address, he began to doubt whether his first resolve
had not been wise. That strange foreboding which
sometimes comes upon an orator, that sense of in-
tellectual helplessness, that premonition of utter
failure, which is often really the precursor of great
success, settled upon him. Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie,
to whom he at one time narrated his experiences,
has kindly written out his recollection of the nar-
rative for me as follows : —
I remember very distinctly my talk with Mr. Beecher,
although some things may have become a little blurred
in the flight of time. He told me that nothing could de-
scribe the weight of antagonistic English opinion which
rested on his spirit the moment he arrived in England ;
he felt as if he were surrounded by an almost impene-
trable wall of prejudice and antagonism ; he seemed to
have the animosity of the entire country on his should-
ers. On the day on which he was to make his first
speech, he was in an agony of depression all the morn-
ing, feeling quite unable to bear up under the awful
burden of the concentrated animosity of a nation : he
felt something as he imagined Christ might have felt on
the road to Calvary ; he had never been so depressed
before, and was never again under such a burden. He
spent most of the morning on his knees, without any
help; but finally arrived at a point where his prayer
took the form of an offer to surrender everything and
even to fail if that was God's will. Gradually, the
depression wore off, and was succeeded by a great sense
of repose. When he finally drove to the hall his peace
was like that of a mountain lake, which nothing could
254 HENRY WARD BEECHER
have disturbed. When he entered the hall he found it
packed with an audience collected for the express pur-
pose of silencing him. Every time he opened his mouth
his voice was drowned by the clamor of the hostile
crowd. This went on so long that he began to fear that
he should not get a chance to say anything. In the
mean time he had studied his audience carefully, and it
had photographed itself on his mind. The green baize
doors reaching from the circle of chairs on the side,
which ran around the outside of what we should call
the orchestra, were fastened together. Seats had been
brought in and placed around the side walls, and in
some cases against these doors. In one of these seats a
large, burly, red-haired, red-whiskered man was sitting,
who was particularly vociferous, shouting, clapping his
hands, pounding his feet, and throwing himself back in
his. chair. After about twenty minutes of attempted
talk, in one of these paroxysms of racket, Mr. Beecher
happened to be looking at this man, when he threw him-
self back with great violence, broke the fastenings of
the door, and went head over heels in his chair down
the stairs on the outside. The whole thing was so in-
stantaneous and so funny that Mr. Beecher burst into a
roar of laughter. The audience were astonished ; turned
around, following his glance, took in what had hap-
pened, and began to laugh themselves. That moment of
relaxation he caught, made a witty remark which made
them laugh still more, then told them a story which
caught their attention, and from that moment held them
without a break, as long as he chose to speak.
This last sentence must be taken relatively. It
is evident from the published reports that to the
end Mr. Beecher had to contend against constant
interruption. His own account, as I heard it, con-
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 255
firms the accuracy of these reports. In that ac-
count he said : —
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 unparalleled scene of confusion and interrup-
tion occurred. No American that has not seen an Eng-
lish 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
English hostile audience. For in England the meeting
does not belong to the parties that call it, but to whoever
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 mea-
sure of the audience, and said to myself, " About one
fourth of this audience are opposed to me, and about one
fourth will be rather in sympathy, and my business now
is not to appeal to that portion that 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 ; some-
where else a group all yelling together at the top of
their voices. It was like talking to a storm at sea. But
there were the newspaper 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 connected by-and-by." I threw my notes away, and
256 HENRY WARD BEECHER
entered on a discussion of the value of freedom as op-
posed to slavery in the manufacturing interest, arguing
that freedom everywhere increases a man's 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 tem-
per ; and I never was more determined that my hearers
should feel the curb before I got through with them.
In Liverpool the conditions were even worse
than in Manchester. " Liverpool," says Mr.
Beecher, " was worse than all the rest put to-
gether. My life was threatened, and I had com-
munications to the effect that I had better not
venture there. The streets were placarded with
the most scurrilous and abusive cards." Here
there was threatening of actual violence ; but some
of Mr. Beecher's friends got warning of the dan-
ger, went armed to the meeting, and prevented
violence by being prepared for it. For an hour
and a half Mr. Beecher fought the mob before he
got control, and then spoke an hour and a half
afterwards; even then amid continual interrup-
tion. " I sometimes felt," he says, " like a ship-
master attempting to preach on board of a ship
through a speaking-trumpet, with a tornado on the
sea and a mutiny among the men."
As one' turns to these speeches, and endeavors in
imagination to reproduce the stormy scenes which
accompanied them, he is impressed with the quick-
ness of the speaker in turning every adverse inci-
dent to his own advantage, the emotional eloquence
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 257
of certain evidently extemporaneous passages, the
knowledge of history and of constitutional princi-
ples which underlies them, the philosophical unity
which makes of them all, to quote Oliver Wendell
Holmes, " a single speech . . . delivered piece-
meal in different places," and the peculiar adapta-
tion of each address to the special audience to
which it was delivered.
One or two examples may serve to illustrate the
first characteristic : —
Great Britain has thrown her arms of love around
the Southerners, and turns from the Northerners.
("No.") She don't? I have only to say that she
has been caught in very suspicious circumstances.
(Laughter.)
If the South should be rendered independent — (At
this juncture mingled cheering and hissing became im-
mense ; half the audience rose to their feet, waving hats
and handkerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there
was the greatest commotion and uproar.) You have
had your turn now ; let me have mine again. (Loud
applause and laughter.) If this present struggle shall
eventuate in the separation of America, and making the
South — [loud applause, hisses, hooting, and cries of
" Bravo ! "] — a slave territory exclusively — [Cries
of "No! No!" and laughter].
(Interruption and uproar.) My friends, I saw a
man once who was a little late at a railway station chase
an express train. He didn't catch it. (Laughter.)
If you are going to stop this meeting you have got to
stop it before I speak ; for after I have got the things
out you may chase as long as you please, you will not
catch them. (Laughter and interruption.)
258 HENRY WARD BEECHER
It is said that when Russia is now engaged in sup-
pressing the liberty of Poland it is an indecent thing for
America to flirt with her. I think so too. (Loud
cheers.) Now you know what we felt when you were
flirting with Mr. Mason at your Lord Mayor's banquet.
I am tempted to draw my pencil through these
sentences, conscious how utterly inadequate their
reproduction here is to suggest the alertness of the
speaker in the circumstances under which they
were first produced, — the quickness of resource,
the facility of expression, the imperturbable good
humor, the control of himself, and therefore the
control of his hostile audience. It would be quite
useless to take out of their connection the passages
of supreme eloquence, which are scattered through
these addresses, with their passionate patriotism,
their love of liberty, their courageous faith in the
power of divine principles, their perception of the
essential unity of the Anglo-Saxon race, their com-
prehensive and catholic inclusion of all struggling
humanity everywhere, whose battle the North was
engaged in fighting.
These more brilliant qualities in his English
speeches have concealed from the public their more
sterling and permanent value. I am surprised, in-
timate as my acquaintance with Mr. Beecher was,
at the accuracy of historical information, the sta-
tistical knowledge, the detailed acquaintance with
economic and industrial aspects of the slavery ques-
tion, which could not have been crammed up in
special preparation for these addresses, separated
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 259
as he was from his library, and from all access to
American sources of information. His clear appre-
hension of the constitutional issues involved does
not surprise me, for I knew him as a careful con-
stitutional student. But his ability to make our
complicated federal constitution clear to an Eng-
lish audience would have been remarkable, even if
he had been giving an academic lecture to a quiet
and note-taking class of Oxford students, instead
of a public address to popular and hostile audi-
ences, and subject to perpetual interruption. Could
these five speeches be denuded of all their dra-
matic incidents, — the quick repartee, the spark-
ling humor, the fervid eloquence, — and recon-
structed as one review article, discussing the issues
of the hour in their bearing on English people and
English politics, the article would be a notable
contribution for the clearness of its insight, the
breadth of its view, and the unanswerable logic of
its argument.
In Manchester, where the spirit of individualism
had its birth, where the freedom of labor was recog-
nized, and where the interests of the laboring-man
were predominant, Mr. Beecher traced the history
of the anti-slavery conflict, showed that it was a
conflict between free and slave labor, that the Civil
War had grown out of it, and that the result of
Northern victory would eventually be " the eman-
cipation of every living being on the continent
of America.' ' At Glasgow, the great labor city of
the border line between England and Scotland,
260 HENRY WARD BEECHER
emphasizing the same truth, he showed that slavery-
brings labor into contempt, that freedom honors
it ; that free labor promotes virtue and intelligence,
and that virtue and intelligence compel leniency
of government; that slave labor promotes igno-
rance and vice, and ignorance and vice compel
tyranny in government ; that thus " the American
question is the workingman's question all over the
world. The slave master's doctrine is that capital
should own labor — that the employer should own
the employed. This is Southern doctrine and South-
ern practice. Northern doctrine and Northern prac-
tice is that the laborer should be free, intelligent,
clothed with full citizen's rights, with a share of
the political duties and honors." In Edinburgh he
traced the rise and development of the American
Union, explained the nature of its Constitution,
traced the progress of the anti-slavery conflict, and
showed how the Civil War was the inevitable out-
come of that conflict, and how the victory of the
North inevitably involved the victory of represent-
ative government and universal liberty. In Liver-
pool, whose commercial interests were supposed to
be favorable to the recognition of the Southern
Confederacy and the breaking of the blockade, he
showed that slavery is hostile to commerce and to
manufactures ; that Great Britain wanted chiefly,
not cotton, but consumers ; that a slave nation must
be a poor customer, buying the fewest and the poor-
est goods ; that a free nation must be a good cus-
tomer, buying the largest and the best goods ; an
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 261
economic argument which he supported by vital
statistics, convincing and unanswerable. At Exe-
ter Hall, in London, he briefly rehearsed his pre-
vious speeches, showed their relation to each other
as parts of a consecutive series, and then proceeded
to give his audience the American point of view of
the issues involved. It was in this speech that he
explained so clearly the nature of the American
Constitution, which is to the Englishman ordinarily
so insoluble a problem. In this speech, too, occurs
as eloquent and genuine an expression of the love
of liberty, imperishable in the Anglo-Saxou heart,
as can be found in Anglo-Saxon literature.
Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, stand-
ing 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 successors of those renowned men that were our
ancestors as much as yours, and whose examples 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.
If by oratory we mean power to produce a real
and enduring effect on a great audience, and if the
greatest test of oratory is conquering a hostile audi-
262 HENRY WARD BEECHER
ence and producing a permanent effect upon the
hearers in spite of their hostility, then Mr. Beecher's
five orations in England take deserved place among
the great forensic triumphs of the world, — by the
side of the orations of Demosthenes against the
Crown, and Cicero's orations against Catiline. The
orators of the American Revolution spoke to sym-
pathizing audiences, those of the anti-slavery ora-
tors in the American anti-slavery campaign pro-
duced far less immediate effect, the orations of the
great orators in the British House of Commons —
Chatham, Fox, and Burke — rarely changed the
vote of the House, and the victories which Lord
Erskine won over juries, in spite of the threats of
the judges and the influence of the government,
were not won under circumstances so hostile, nor
were they so far-reaching in their effects. What
effect Mr. Beecher's speeches had on English pub-
lic sentiment, and on English and American his-
tory, it is not possible accurately to estimate. But
this much at least I believe it is safe to say : by
them he enlisted democratic England against feudal
England, the England of the Puritan against the
England of the Cavalier, the England of the plain
people against the England of the aristocracy ; by
them he did much to counteract the deliberate and
persistent efforts to misrepresent the American
problem and the American public ; did even more
to clear away unintentional and natural misunder-
standing ; made English intervention in the Amer-
ican conflict impossible ; aided to make possible the
THE CAMPAIGN IN ENGLAND 263
subsequent arbitration of the international, difficul-
ties between England and America, growing out of
the Alabama claims ; and foresaw, foretold, and
prepared for that impalpable and unofficial alliance
between England and America which promises in
the future to give justice, order, and stability to
the whole world.
CHAPTER XI
RECONSTRUCTION
In November, 1863, Mr. Beecher returned from
England, to find himself suddenly popular, in un-
expected quarters in his own land. He had fought
in Great Britain crowds hostile to America, he had
conquered for his native land at least a hearing,
and the pride and patriotism of Americans of all
classes were gratified and ready to express gratifi-
cation. In his own city of Brooklyn he was given
what was tantamount to an ovation lasting several
days. Three successive meetings of ■ welcome were
given to him : two by his church on Tuesday and
Wednesday evenings; another by the citizens of
Brooklyn on Thursday evening in the Academy of
Music ; on Friday evening an immense war meet-
ing, at the same place, gave him spontaneously
another ovation ; four days later, still another was
given to him at a public meeting in the city of New
York. From this time he was brought into more
direct personal relations with the administration.
And to his English service has been not unnaturally
attributed the fact that, when Charleston was sur-
rendered, Mr. Beecher was selected by the Presi-
dent to deliver the address on the occasion of the
raising of the flag over the recaptured Fort Sumter.
RECONSTRUCTION 265
It was characteristic of Mr. Beecher to turn his
own thoughts, and those of the audiences he was
privileged to address, from past victories to present
and future problems. The question of the recon-
struction of the South was already coming to the
front. President Lincoln's amnesty proclamation,
issued in December, 1863, provided a basis on
which government might be organized in any of
the Southern States. This proclamation provided
that in any states in which there were voters who
availed themselves of this proclamation, equal in
numbers to ten per cent, of the voters of 1860,
they might proceed to organize a state govern-
ment, and that any provision which might be
adopted by such state government in relation to
the freed people of such state, which should recog-
nize and declare their permanent freedom, provide
for their education, and yet be consistent as a tem-
porary arrangement with their present condition as
a laboring, landless, and homeless class, would not
be objected to by the national executive. On
January 4, 1864, a free-state convention was held
at New Orleans under this proclamation, and the
first steps were taken for the organization of a re-
constructed state government in accordance with
its terms. The President's proclamation, and the
prompt response of the state of Louisiana, acting
under that proclamation, brought the question of
reconstruction to the front, although the war was
not yet ended.
Mr. Beecher, in public addresses, at once fore-
266 HENRY WARD BEECHER
shadowed the general principles which he expected
to maintain, and which in fact he did maintain
during all the reconstruction period. On the 10th
of February, 1864, he introduced an ex-Confeder-
ate brigadier-general in Plymouth Church, who
spoke in favor of the complete abolition of slavery.
In introducing him Mr. Beecher said : "I wish to
say to the people of the South and Southwest,
through the speaker, that there never was a com-
munity so large which had so little animosity toward
the South — and if slavery were taken away there
would be nothing between us but the heart-beat."
A year later he declared himself in favor of grant-
ing suffrage to the negroes ; two months thereafter
he took the occasion furnished by the news of the
capture of Richmond, telegraphed to him from
Secretary Stanton, to rebuke the spirit of revenge
and the spirit of exultation over a fallen foe,
which was common throughout the North, and to
advocate the reestablishment of fraternal feeling
between the two sections which had been at war.
Three days later, at a public meeting for the
expression of gratulation over recent victories, he
repeated these remarks of peace and good will. And
to his own church, on the occasion of his departure
to deliver his memorable address at Fort Sumter,
he said, " I go down to say to them (the people of
the South) the day dawns and the darkness of the
night is past, and as brethren to brethren I come
to say to you, good tidings of great joy. The
day on which the old flag is to be raised is Good
Reconstruction 267
Friday ; and as Christ was raised to bring life and
liberty into the world, so will the flag carry renewed
life and liberty to the South. And as Plymouth
Church has been known as an anti-slavery church,
let your word be hereafter national fraternity and
national benevolence, as I know it will be." The
church officially indorsed these principles by a
minute passed, I believe, without a dissenting vote.
In this minute, the church, aiming to reflect the
better sentiment of the North, disavowed in explicit
terms all feeling of revenge, and all desire for
special privilege, and urged the Christian men of
the South " to hasten on the reconciliation which
we and all Christians at the North desire, and to
take the lead in restoring peace to a country which
can never be divided."
In all the mutations of public feeling and all
the strife of parties which followed, and which
made the reconstruction period one of such great
perplexity, because of such tangled policies and
vacillating purposes, Mr. Beecher maintained the
spirit of confidence in the South and of good will
toward it, expressed by him in this address and by
his church in its official response. He believed and
taught that a sound reconstruction policy involved
a very few fundamental principles, and he empha-
sized now one, now the other, as necessity seemed
to require, but he never departed from them or
modified them in any particular. It will therefore
be more convenient, in interpreting his attitude,
not to follow a strictly chronological order. For
268 HENRY WARD BEECHER
his principles remained the same under Andrew
Johnson as under Abraham Lincoln, in 1868 as in
1863.
The problem of reconstruction, as it presented
itself at the close of the Civil War to the people
of the North, was a very difficult and perplexing
one. It is not strange that the best minds differed
respecting the method of its solution. The great
majority of the best citizens in the South believed
as firmly as ever in the right of secession, and in
the political and industrial subordination of the
African race. The loyalty of the masses, and of
most of the leaders, consisted in submission to
necessity. Emancipation was endured because it
could not be avoided. Although the f reedman was
no longer considered the chattel of the individual
master, plans were rife to make him a serf attached
to the soil, or, if this were impracticable, to keep
him in industrial and political subjection in the
state. There was believed to be, not without
apparent reason, a real danger that if the South
were left free to frame its own institutions, it
would build up a new form of feudalism, scarcely
less oppugnant to the democratic idea than the old
form of f eudalism had been. General Grant, whose
generous sentiments toward the South are now
universally recognized, declared, as the result of a
tour of inspection in some of the Southern States
during the months of November and December,
1865, that it was not then safe to withdraw the
military from the South; that the whites and
RECONSTRUCTION 269
blacks each required the protection of the general
government. This was not wholly due to perils
from a turbulent white population. "The late
slave," he said, " seems to be imbued with the idea
that the property of his late master should by right
belong to him, or at least should have no protec-
tion from the colored soldier." He added that in
some instances " the freedman's mind does not
seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman
has the right to live without care or provision for
the future."
A great variety of plans for treating the states
lately in revolt were proposed. Some would regard
the whole Confederate territory as a conquered
province, and govern it under military law, read-
mitting states and territories from time to time,
as the conditions seemed favorable. Some would
readmit the states as they were, excluding from
the suffrage all those persons who had taken an
active part in the war of rebellion, thus leaving
the suffrage in the hands of the loyal whites, who
in all the states would have constituted a limited,
and in some of them a not very intelligent, minority.
Some would establish universal suffrage, except for
the exclusion of a small number of secession leaders,
but including the whole body of the negroes, re-
gardless of their intellectual or moral qualifica-
tions. Some, maintaining the somewhat doctrinaire
ground that the state had not been in revolt, but
that a mob had been in possession of the state,
proposed to consider the mob dissolved, and the
270 HENRY WARD BEECHER
state as of right entitled to its old place in the
Union and its old representation in Congress.
There were serious objections to each one of these
plans. To the military plan — because it would
create a centralized power in Washington which
might easily become despotic in the South, and
perilous to the whole nation. To the organization
of the states by giving all the political power to
the loyal whites — because it would create in all
the Southern States government by minority, and
in some of them by a minority very narrow and
not very intelligent. To the plan of universal suf-
frage — because it would place the prosperity of
the South in the hands of an ignorant democracy,
and would be liable to create a war between the
races. To the restoration of the Southern States
as they were before the war — because it would
reestablish the slave-holding oligarchy, unchanged
in spirit, though placed under new conditions.
The difficulty of the situation was enhanced by
the strife of parties. Many of the Republican
leaders desired universal suffrage, because they
counted on the negro vote to secure for the Repub-
lican party supremacy in the Southern States ;
many of the Democratic leaders desired the re-
establishment of the Southern States on the old
basis, because it would restore the Democratic
party to its old supremacy in national affairs. The
ineradicable distrust of the Southern leaders by the
North, and the passionate hate engendered by the
war, were enormously increased by the assassina-
RECONSTRUCTION 271
tion of Abraham Lincoln. Finally, the fact that
President Johnson, who succeeded Mr. Lincoln,
and was himself a Southerner, took, as time went
on, more and more of the Southern and Democratic
side of the question, developed a bitter hostility
between himself and the Republican majority in
Congress and throughout the North. All these
conditions combined to keep alive sectional feeling,
to create a solid North on one side, and a solid
South on the other, and to make impossible that
harmony of feeling which is essential to harmony
of political action. It is easy now to criticise the
reconstruction measures which the radical majority
in Congress finally adopted and the radical majority
in the North ratified, but it is not so easy to point
out any better policy which could have been taken.
The truth is, after three centuries of slavery, fol-
lowed by four years of terrible civil war, no policy
of reconstruction was possible which would not be
accompanied with many and great political, social,
and industrial evils. The nation has not yet paid
the full penalty of its violation of its fundamental
principles of justice and liberty.
Mr. Beecher's views on reconstruction are mainly
to be found in three documents : his address at the
raising of the Union flag over Fort Sumter, April
14, 1865 ; his sermon on the " Conditions of a
Restored Union,', preached in Plymouth Church,
October 29, 1865, during the early stages of the
debates over the reconstruction of the Southern
States ; and his two letters, written respectively
272 HENRY WARD BEECHER
August 30 and September 8, 1866, known as the
Cleveland letters.1
In the address at Fort Sumter, his formulation
of the conditions of reconstruction is very simple.
These conditions, as he states them, are three in
number : —
First. That these United States shall be one and
indivisible.
Second. That states are not absolute sovereigns,
and have no right to dismember the republic.
Third. That universal liberty is indispensable to
republican government, and that slavery shall be
utterly and forever abolished.
These conditions, which now seem axiomatic, did
not seem so then, not even to all the people of the
North, still less to the people of the South. To
the emphatic elucidation of these conditions he de-
votes the first part of this address. To an interpre-
tation of the benefits conferred alike upon North
and South by the war he devotes the second part
of it. A few sentences must suffice to indicate its
general spirit.
We exult, not for passion gratified, but for a senti-
ment victorious ; not for a temper, but for a conscience ;
not as we devoutly believe, that our will has been done,
but that God's will hath been done.
Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding
flag ! It says, " Government hath returned hither." —
It proclaims, in the name of vindicated government,
peace and protection to loyalty ; humiliation and pain
1 All three documents will he found in Patriotic Addresses.
RECONSTRUCTION 273
to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The Na-
tion, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to author-
ity this flag commands, not supplicates.
One Nation under one government, without slavery,
has been ordained and shall stand. There can be peace
on no other basis. On this basis reconstruction is easy,
and needs neither architect nor engineer. Without this
basis no engineer or architect shall ever reconstruct
these rebellious states.
Emerging from such a prolonged rebellion, he is
blind who tells you that the State, by a mere amnesty
and benevolence of Government, can be put again, by a
mere decree, in its old place. It would not be honest,
it would not be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that
the Southern revolution against the Union has not re-
acted, and wrought revolution in the Southern States
themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation. So-
ciety is like a broken loom, and the piece which rebel-
lion was weaving, has been cut, and every thread bro-
ken. You must put in new warp and new woof, — and
weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds, we shall
see in it no gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of
the old barbarism, but the figures of vines and golden
grains framing in the heads of Justice, Love and Lib-
erty!
Is it feared that the rights of the States will be with,
held ? The South is not more jealous of their state rights
than the North. State rights, from the earliest colonial
days have been the peculiar pride and jealousy of New
England. In every stage of national formation it was
peculiarly Northern, and not Southern, statesmen that
guarded State rights as we were forming the Constitu-
tion. But, once united, the loyal States gave up forever
that which had been delegated to the National Govern-
ment And now in the hour of victory, the loyal States
274 HENRY WARD BEECHER
do not mean to trench upon Southern States' rights.
They will not do it or suffer it to be done. There is
not to be one rule for high latitudes and another for
low. We take nothing from Southern States that has
not already been taken from Northern. The South shall
have just those rights that every Eastern, every Middle,
every Western State has, — no more, no less.
In this address Mr. Beecher did not discuss the
question of negro suffrage. In his sermon on the
" Conditions of a Restored Union " 1 he enters more
fully into the question what these conditions should
be. He urges that " the South should be restored
at the earliest practicable moment to a participa-
tion in our common government. It is best for us ;
it is best for them." The North should not wait
for their conversion from secession. " Let men say
that secession ought to have been allowed — if
they accept the fact that it is forever disallowed
by the people of this Continent." The North should
not wait for guarantees for the future. "What
guarantees ? How are we to secure them ? I think
that the best guarantee that can be given is the
utter destruction of slavery." The North should
not demand that the South be further humbled.
" I think it to be the great need of this Nation to
save the self-respect of the South." But certain
precedent conditions should be imposed. " It is
1 This sermon was preached in October, 1865, six months after
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and before the introduction
of the reconstruction measures into Congress, and the famous speech
of Thaddeus Stevens urging the measures which were subsequently
adopted.
RECONSTRUCTION 275
right that state conventions should be required to
abolish slavery, and to assist in the amendment of
the Constitution of the United States in that re-
gard, so that any state that might try to rejuvenate
slavery should under the Constitution be unable to
do it." " Before the States of the South are rein-
stated these conventions should have ascertained,
and presented, and established the condition of the
freedman. They should have established, first, his
right to labor, and to hold property, with all its
concomitants. They should have established his
right to labor as he pleases, where he pleases, and
for whom he pleases, and to have sole and undivided
the proceeds of his own earnings, with the liberty
to do with them as he pleases just as any other
citizen does. They should also have made him to
be the equal of all other men before the courts and
in the eye of the law. He should be just as much
qualified to be a witness as the man that assaults
him." Mr. Beecher's statement as to negro suf-
frage must be given more fully because it involves
an explanation of his radical view on the suffrage
question in its various aspects : —
I hold that it would have been wise, also, for these
conventions to have given him the right of suffrage —
for it is always inexpedient and foolish to deny a man
his natural rights. And I yet stand on the ground that
suffrage in our community is not a privilege, or a pre-
rogative, but a natural right. That is to say, if there
is any such thing as a natural right, a man has a natural
right to determine the laws that involve his life, and
276 HENRY WARD BEECHER
liberty, and property. He has a right to have a voice
in the election of those magistrates who have to do
with his whole civil prosperity. If the right to deter-
mine the laws and magistracies under which one exists
is not a natural right, I know not what a natural right
is. It is not giving the colored man a privilege to
allow him to vote : it is developing a long dormant
natural right.
It may be proper to say here that Mr. Beecher
accepted, with possibly one reservation, to be pre-
sently noted, all the logical deductions from his
premise that suffrage is a natural right.1 He de-
manded suffrage for the immigrant no less than
for the negro. In an address delivered February
20, 1860, he said : "lam for universal suffrage.
Would you allow the shiploads of foreigners
emptied on these shores to vote at once ? I would.
Don't you consider it a great evil ? I consider
it an evil, but less than not having them vote.
Although it may be a great inconvenience to teach
them, I hold that all foreigners should vote.
Then will you go a step farther and admit women
to vote ? Even so I would. It is my settled con-
viction, for opinion is not strong enough, that wo-
men are not in the way of duty when they do not
give consideration" to the duty which G6d in his
providence is waiting to put upon them ; for when
woman feels that she has a duty to perform in this
1 From both the premise and the deductions I dissent. The
practical effects of universal suffrage afford the final argument
against it. .
RECONSTRUCTION 277
matter and demands the ballot, she will have it."
A year later he reaffirms the same principle, apply-
ing it more fully to woman suffrage, and insisting
that " the individual is the unit of society, and not
the family. And there can be no greater blunder in
philosophical statement than to hold anything else
in our day." A year and a half later, in a speech
for General Grant, October 9, 1868, he consistently
puts voting before education. " It has been said
that a man has been educated to vote, but I declare
that voting educates a man. As to the blacks, how
long would it have been before any one would have
taken the trouble to explain to them about political
affairs if they had not the right of suffrage."
Mr. Beecher's consent that negro suffrage should
be limited in the first instance to negroes who bore
arms is hardly consistent, philosophically, with his
position that suffrage is a natural right : for it may
well be claimed that if government has the power to
protect the natural rights of its citizens, it has the
duty of protecting them. But Mr. Beecher was
never a doctrinaire. Idealist he was in the ends he
sought, but he was always practical in his choice of
the means to be employed. As in the preceding
decade he had kept steadily in view the ultimate
abolition of slavery, but had been ready to accom-
plish it by the restriction of slavery within pre-
scribed limits, so now he sought as the final result
universal suffrage, but was willing to accept a lim-
ited suffrage as the first step toward that result.
He believed in universal suffrage, but he did not
278 HENRY WARD BEECHER
believe in forcing his belief upon the South against
the opposition of the Southern whites. " The best
intentions of the government," he said, "will be
defeated, if the laws that are made touching this
matter [the general treatment of the negro] are
such as are calculated to excite the animosity and
hatred of the white people in the South toward the
black people there. I except the single decree of
emancipation. That must stand, though men dis-
like it." The reason why any coercive measures
would be unwise was that they would excite such
race animosity. " All measures," he said, " insti-
tuted under the act of emancipation for the blacks,
in order to be permanently useful must have the
cordial consent of the wise and good citizens of
the South. . . . These men [the negroes] are scat-
tered in fifteen States ; they are living contiguous
to their old masters ; the kindness of the white man
in the South is more important to them than all the
policies of the nation put together." He was there-
fore willing to let the claim for suffrage wait upon
processes of education. " I am satisfied that, while
we ought to claim for the colored man the right to
the elective franchise, you never will be able to
secure it and maintain it for him, except by making
him so intelligent that men cannot deny it to him.
You cannot long in this country deny to a man
any civil right for which he is manifestly qualified.
And if the colored man is industrious and accu-
mulates property, and makes a wise use of that
property, you cannot long withhold from him his
RECONSTRUCTION 279
civil rights. We ought to demand universal suf-
frage, which is the foundation element of our
American doctrine ; yet I demand many things in
theory which I do not at once expect to see real-
ized in practice. I do not expect to see universal
suffrage in the South ; but if the Southern peo-
ple will not agree to universal suffrage, let it
be understood that there shall be a property and
educational qualification. Let it be understood
that men who have acquired a certain amount of
property, and can read and write, shall be allowed
to vote. I do not think that the possession of
property is a true condition on which to found
the right to vote ; but as a transition step I will
accept it, when I would not accept it as a final
measure. It is a good initial, though not a good
final." 1
He was willing to accept even less than this, as
a compromise : —
We want a beginning ; and I would be willing, not as
a finality, but as a stepping-stone to what I hope to get
by and by, to take the suffrage for those colored men
who bore arms in our late war for the salvation of this
1 It is interesting to note that this conditional suffrage has now
been adopted (1902), though as a finality, by the voluntary action
of six of the Southern States, Virginia, North and South Carolina,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in all of which any negro
paying taxes on three hundred dollars' worth of property, and
able to read and write, is entitled by the recently amended consti-
tutions to register and vote. If Mr. Beecher's plan had been
adopted in 1865, a long and bitter experience of race antagonism
in the South, and sectional antagonism in the nation, would appar-
ently have been avoided.
280 HENRY WARD BEECHER
government.1 Now, I would like to see the man that
professes to be a Democrat, who is opposed to a soldier's
voting. Where is the man who can look in the face of
that black hero who has risked his life in the thunder
of battle to preserve this country, and say, You do not
deserve to vote ? The man who could do that is not
himself fit to vote. He lacks the very first element of
good citizenship.
Recognizing the fact that universal suffrage to
be safe must be accompanied with universal intelli-
gence, Mr. Beecher urged a vigorous prosecution
of education in the South.
We are to educate the negroes and to Christianly
educate them. We are to raise them in intelligence
more and more, until they shall be able to prove them-
selves worthy of citizenship. For I tell you all the laws
in the world cannot bolster a man up so as to place him
any higher than his own moral worth and natural forces
put him. You may pass laws declaring that black men
are men, and that they are our equals in social position ;
but unless you can make them thoughtful, industrious,
self-respecting, and intelligent ; unless, in short, you can
make them what you say they have a right to be, those
laws will be in vain.2
1 This was also Mr. Lincoln's suggestion, in his famous letter
to Governor Halm of Louisiana.
2 It is interesting to compare this declaration of principles hy
Mr. Beecher in 1865 with Dr. Booker T. Washington's declara-
tion in 1899 : " I believe the past and present teach but one les-
son,— to the Negro's friends and to the Negro himself, — that
there is but one hope of solution ; and that is for the Negro in
every part of America to resolve from henceforth that he will
throw aside every non-essential, and cling only to essential, —
that this pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day shall
be property, economy, education, and Christian character." —
The Future of the American Negro, p. 132.
RECONSTRUCTION 281
But this work of education in the Southern
States Mr. Beecher would not carry on exclusively
for the negro. He would ignore all distinctions of
race and color in benefactions, as he would ignore
them in the law. He would not treat the South as
a pagan land, to which missionaries must be sent,
but as a part of a common country to which aid
must be given by the richer and more prosperous
section. " We are," he said, " as far as in us lies,
to prepare the black man for his present condition
and for his future, in the same way that we prepare
the white man for his. And I think it should be a
joint work. I do not think it would be wise for
the North to pour ministers, colporters, and school-
masters into the South, making a too marked dis-
tinction between the black people and the white.
We ought to carry the Gospel and education to the
whites and blacks alike. Our heart should be set
toward our country and all its people, without dis-
tinction of caste, class, or color." It is safe to say
that if the North had been animated by this spirit,
and had acted in this temper, its missionary and
educational efforts among the negroes in the South
would have lessened instead of intensifying South-
ern race prejudices, as in many localities it has
done.
While Mr. Beecher insisted on a policy of pro-
tection for the colored race, he also insisted on a
policy of trust and confidence toward the Southern
whites. He believed that these two policies were
not only reconcilable, but that the protection for
282 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the negroes would best be secured by confidence
in the whites. He therefore agreed with President
Johnson and the Democratic party in desiring the
immediate admission of the Southern States to the
privileges and prerogatives of statehood ; while, at
the same time, he agreed with the Republican party
in desiring adequate protection for the rights and
adequate promotion of the education of the colored
people. It would not be correct to say that he
occupied a position midway between the two con-
tending forces. But he saw the truth, or what he
regarded as the truth, in the position of each of
them. It was this desire of his for the prompt re-
establishment of fraternal relations between North
and South, the quick cessation of military govern-
ment, the earliest possible reestablishment of civil
authority, that led him to write the once famous
Cleveland letter. A convention of soldiers and
sailors was called at Cleveland, Ohio. Its object
was to promote the policy of immediate restoration
of the Southern States. Mr. Beecher was invited
to act as its chaplain. He declined the invita-
tion, but in so doing he wrote giving his views at
length, the gist and purpose of his letter being
expressed in its opening sentence: "I heartily
wish it and all other conventions, of what party
soever, success, whose object is the restoration of
all the States late in rebellion to their Federal
relation."
It is difficult to understand now why this letter
should have subjected Mr. Beecher to the vehement
RECONSTRUCTION 283
and vituperative abuse to which he was subjected.
I suspect that the obnoxious element in the letter
was comprised in the phrase "all other conven-
tions, of what party soever." The party feeling
between President Johnson and the Republican
majority, which a year and a half later led to the
impeachment of President Johnson, was already
very intense. The Cleveland Convention was sup-
posed to be a convention in President Johnson's
interests. Mr. Beecher's letter was supposed to
separate the writer from the Republican party,
with which he had before cooperated, and to fur-
nish ammunition for the Democratic party, with
which President Johnson was beginning to cooper-
ate. It undoubtedly did separate him from the
radical wing of the Republican party.
In a letter, written nine days subsequently, to
a parishioner, explaining but not retracting his
Cleveland letter, he distinctly declares his separa-
tion from the radicals. And this frank declaration
was the more significant, and to a large section of
the Republican party the more obnoxious, because
uttered just as the autumn congressional elections
were coming on. In this letter he not only defines
his former letter, but interprets and reaffirms
the political speeches which for a year past he
had been delivering in various important cities.
" For a year past," he says, " I have been advocat-
ing the very principles of the Cleveland letter in
all the chief Eastern cities — in Boston, Portland,
Springfield, Albany, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo,
284 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburg, and Brook-
lyn." And what these principles are he makes
very clear : —
Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States
as necessary to their own health, as indirectly the best
policy for the freedmen, as peculiarly needful for the
safety of our Government, which, for the sake of accom-
plishing a good end, incautious men are in danger of
perverting, I favored, and do still favor, the election to
Congress of Republicans who will seek the early admis-
sion of the recusant states. Having urged it for a year
past, I was more than ready to urge it again upon the
Representatives to Congress this fall.
The hostility to Mr. Beecher was undoubtedly
enhanced by the fact that in previous discussions
he had strongly — too strongly as subsequent history
shows — indorsed Andrew Johnson, as a wise and
statesmanlike president. But for this very reason
it should have aroused the less excitement, cer-
tainly the less surprise. He was not a Johnson
man ; he distinctly and in terms disavowed being
a Johnson man. But he was not an anti-Johnson
man, and in the then state of public feeling in the
Republican party — a year and a half later culmi-
nating in the impeachment of President Johnson —
not to be a political enemy of President John-
son was, in the eyes of the radical faction of the
Republican party, nothing less than a capital
offense.
There are a great many people who cannot un-
derstand loyalty to principle, who do understand
RECONSTRUCTION 285
loyalty to party. Principle seems to them vague,
indefinite, intangible ; the party is a visible organ-
ism, and whoever leaves it seems to them a de-
serter. The party is their standard ; if the party
vacillates and the individual does not vacillate with
it, it is he, not the organization, which seems to be
unstable. Mr. Beecher adhered to the principles
enunciated by Abraham Lincoln in his amnesty
proclamation. President Johnson departed from
them in the one direction, the radicals in another,
and all the efforts of moderate men, of whom Mr.
Beecher was a distinguished representative, to
secure unity of counsels and of action proved in
vain. History looking back now clearly sees what
Mr. Beecher not less clearly foresaw. He thus
states it in his own words : —
Upon Mr. Johnson's accession I was supremely im-
pressed with the conviction that the whole problem of
reconstruction would pivot on the harmony of Mr. John-
son and Congress. With that we could have secured
every guaranty and every amendment of the Constitu-
tion. Had a united Government said to the South,
promptly backed up as it would have been by the united
North, " With slavery we must take out of the Consti-
tution whatever slavery put in, and put in whatever
slavery for its own support left out," there can scarcely
be a doubt that long before this the question would have
been settled, the basis of representation in the South
conformed to that in the North, and the principle, the
most fundamental and important of all, might have been
established in the Constitution, viz. that manhood and
full citizenship are identical.
286 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Mr. Beecher's independent refusal to follow the
leadership of the radical Republicans, more than
his maintenance of the policy of immediate restora-
tion of the Southern States, constituted the real
cause of objection to his position. At the same
time, the candid historian must doubt Mr. Beecher's
proposition that " refusing to admit loyal Senators
and Representatives from the South to Congress
will not help the f reedmen, it will not secure for
them the vote, it will not protect them, it will not
secure any amendment of our Constitution, how-
ever just and wise." In point of fact, the exclu-
sion of the Southern States from participation in
the government until they had ratified Article
xiv. of the Constitution, did secure that impor-
tant constitutional amendment, and prepared the
way for a still more important amendment in the
adoption of the Fifteenth Article. But this con-
sent to the necessary amendment of the Constitu-
tion was coerced from a reluctant South, when that
consent might certainly have been won from a
willing South if the promptness and unity of coun-
sel which Mr. Beecher urged could have been
secured. And that such willing assent to the in-
dustrial freedom of the negro and to a qualified
and limited suffrage would have saved the South
years of political disaster and industrial distress,
and the nation a long sectional strife, transferred
from the field of battle to the field of politics, is to
an increasing number of people both North and
South a demonstrated fact. Rereading in the light
RECONSTRUCTION 287
of subsequent history the account of the recon-
struction period, and in that period, Mr. Beecher's
speeches and letters, it appears even more clearly
than it did then that his counsels were as wise as
his spirit was fraternal, and that in the period of
reconstruction he showed the spirit of a statesman
as truly as in the period which preceded he had
shown the spirit of a prophet and a reformer.
CHAPTER Xn
UNDER ACCUSATION
In its immediate effect on national politics the
Cleveland letter was not of great importance.
Party strife was too high to permit either faction
to listen to counsels of conciliation and modera-
tion. But it led to an episode in the life of Mr.
Beecher, which for a time threatened permanently
to becloud his before unsullied reputation. To the
narrative of that episode it is now necessary to
turn.
For the first thirteen years of its existence " The
New York Independent " had been under the edi-
torial control of three editors, Doctors Leonard
Bacon, R. S. Storrs, and Joseph Thompson, all
Congregational ministers of national eminence.
At the expiration of that time, December, 1861,
they resigned, and Mr. Beecher, who had been a
frequent contributor, and whose sermons for the
three years preceding had been published in " The
Independent," became its sole editor. At his re-
quest, Mr. Theodore Tilton, a young protege of Mr.
Beecher and a member of Plymouth Church, for
whom he had almost the affection of a father, was
called in to be the assistant editor. The office work
of an editor was never congenial to Mr. Beecher.
UNDER ACCUSATION 289
He was in constant demand during the Civil War
for public addresses, in addition to his church work.
He was neither able nor inclined to give much
time to the editorial work beyond writing an occa-
sional " Star Paper " and editorials. When he went
to England, he left " The Independent " in the
charge of Mr. Tilton, and shortly after his return,
in the fall of 1863, he withdrew from the active
duties of editor, leaving his name for a time at the
head of the columns, although practically Mr. Til-
ton took his place. At the same time Mr. Beecher
entered into a contract with Mr. Bowen, the pro-
prietor of " The Independent," by which he agreed
to contribute to the paper and it agreed to publish
weekly his sermon or " Lecture-Room Talk." This
contract could be dissolved by either party On three
months' notice. This was in February, 1864 ; a
year later Mr. Tilton became editor in name as
well as in fact.
When in September, 1866, the Cleveland letter
appeared, there appeared simultaneously a caustic
criticism of it in the columns of " The Independ-
ent ; " and at the same time the publication of the
weekly sermon was suspended, without explanation
or notice to Mr. Beecher. He was forthwith de-
luged with protests from subscribers who assumed
that he had withdrawn his sermons from the paper
because the paper had criticised him. He endured
this misinterpretation for a little while ; then he
gave the notice required to close the contract be-
tween him and " The Independent " and when urged
290 HENRY WARD BEECHER
by the proprietor to reconsider his decision declined
to do so. Three years later, on the first of January,
1870, "The Christian Union" was started by J. B.
Ford & Co., and he became its editor-in-chief.
In twelve months thereafter the circulation of the
new journal had grown to 30,000, while that of
" The Independent " had sensibly decreased. For
Mr. Tilton had proved to be more brilliant as a
newspaper writer than sagacious as a newspaper
leader. His utterances on religious questions were
increasingly distasteful to the orthodox churches ;
and the orthodox churches were the constituency
to which in the past " The Independent " had ap-
pealed. His utterances on the subject of marriage
and divorce, though possibly no more radical in
theory than those of John Milton, whom he quoted
in support of them, were identified in the public
mind with American theories of socialism and free
love. The religious heresy might have been toler-
ated; the social heresy was far more obnoxious;
protests poured in upon Mr. Bowen from every
quarter ; he was finally forced to the conclusion, to
which he apparently came with reluctance, that a
change of editorial control was indispensable to the
future success of his journal ; and Mr. Tilton was
summarily dismissed from his editorial position.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tilton's domestic life was neither
peaceful nor pleasant. The change which had taken
place in his views was an occasion of great anxiety
and pain to his wife, and his mode of expressing
them would have given pain and anxiety to a
UNDER ACCUSATION 291
woman less sensitive than Mrs. Tilton. She was
anxious to know her duty with reference to the
religious education of her children, and consulted
her pastor. He advised patience. There were other
difficulties of a more personal nature, and at
length, her patience exhausted, she left her hus-
band, sought refuge at her mother's house, and
sent her pastor a request that he would advise her
as to her duty. He consulted with one of the dea-
cons of his church and with his wife, and the three
united in counseling a permanent separation, which,
however, did not at that time take place. Such,
briefly stated, were the causes which led Mr. Til-
ton to the resolve — I quote his own words — "to
strike Mr. Beecher to the heart ; " such the origin
of the charge preferred by Mr. Tilton, and forming
the basis of the persecution to which Mr. Beecher
was subjected for five years, which began with the
resolve of Mr. Tilton in December, 1870, and may
be said to have ended with the findings of the
advisory council in February, 1876.J
As to the charge itself, it is difficult for the
judicial historian to state it. First, Mr. Tilton
affirmed that Mr. Beecher had made improper pro-
posals to his wife, but accompanied the statement
with the most solemn declaration of his wife's
absolute innocence and purity, — " as pure as an
angel in heaven " were his words ; subsequently he
converted the charge into one of criminal conduct.
Mr. Beecher's Puritan conscience, New England
training, and great sensitiveness combined to make
292 HENRY WARD BEECHER
him a purist as regards all relations between
the sexes. On the trial that subsequently took
place, nothing of a suspicious character was proved
against him, except certain letters written by him.
Persuaded by a friend of Mr. Tilton that he had
acted upon misinformation in counseling the per-
manent separation between Mr. and Mrs. Tilton,
and that his counsel had directly aggravated Mr.
Tilton's domestic difficulties, and indirectly led to
his dismissal by Mr. Bowen, and so to his social
and financial ruin, Mr. Beecher gave both verbal
and written expression to the poignancy of his re-
gret, in language which was subsequently distorted
into a confession of crime. To one familiar with
Mr. Beecher's readiness to excuse his neighbor and
accuse himself, these letters were not ambiguous ;
to others they might have been so. That he kept
silence concerning these charges, until they were
given to the public in a form which made silence
no longer possible, was in accordance with Mr.
Beecher's lifelong principle, to pay no attention to
slanders against his name. If he had been more
suspicious and less unworldly, he would not have
accepted without questioning the assertions of
Mr. Tilton's friend, which led him groundlessly to
accuse himself. If he had early taken counsel of
other men more suspicious and less unworldly, he
would probably not have been caught in the net
which was spread for him. But much as his friends
may wish that he could have taken such counsel,
they must recognize the sentiment of honor which
UNDER ACCUSATION 293
forbade him both as a gentleman and as a minister
to disclose to any one secrets affecting the peace
and good name of a member of his own church.
That he kept silence so long will not be counted as
other than a fact to his honor by any one who con-
siders that the strong incentive to speak was only
counteracted by the stronger obligation of silence.
Not until June, 1874, did Mr. Tilton make any
public charge against Mr. ■ Beecher, and then in
terms wholly vague. Mr. Beecher instantly re-
plied to it by a demand for a full and thorough
investigation. Then ensued a curious conflict, Mr.
Tilton and his friend employing all their resources
to impede, thwart, and prevent an investigation,
Mr. Beecher insisting that it should be absolute,
thorough, and complete. It was not until after
this investigation was begun that the charge
against Mr. Beecher was altered from one of im-
proper proposals to one of criminal conduct. The
change was necessary in order to lay a foundation
for the proceedings at law which Mr. Tilton finally
brought.
I have here stated, though with necessary brevity,
all the facts essential to an understanding of this
case. It only remains to state with equal brevity
the results of the three investigations — one by
Plymouth Church, one by the civil courts, and
one by a council of Congregational churches.
The investigation on behalf of Plymouth Church
was conducted by a special committee of six gen-
tlemen well known in their community, and some
294 HENRY WARD BEECHER
possessing a more than local reputation. Among
them were Mr. Henry W. Sage, since known by his
benefactions to Cornell University and his services
as one of its trustees ; Horace B. Claflin, one of the
most prominent and influential of the great mer-
chants of New York City; and John Winslow, a
well-known Brooklyn lawyer, who brought to the
committee a recognized ability in the examination
and cross-examination of witnesses and the weighing
of evidence.) The committee were appointed on the
27th of June, 1874 ; they presented their report
on the 27th of August ; and after recounting their
endeavors to ascertain the facts, and exhaustively
reviewing the evidence which they had been able to
obtain, they reported that " we find nothing what-
ever in the evidence that should impair the per-
fect confidence of Plymouth Church or the world
in the Christian character and integrity of Henry
Ward Beecher." This report, with the evidence on
which it was based, was reviewed and unanimously
approved by the examining committee, and the
reports of both committees were laid before the
church, after full public notice, and unanimously
adopted by fifteen hundred members, substantially
the entire resident membership of the church.
This action of the church took place on the 28 th
of August, 1874.
The second investigation was the trial before a
civil court of an action brought by Mr. Tilton
against Mr. Beecher for alienating the affections
of his wife. PThe trial dragged on for six months
UNDER ACCUSATION 295
and ended in a disagreement of the jury, nine of
whom, comprising all who were men of Christian
belief, affirming their belief in Mr. Beecher's in-
nocence.] Before the trial ended, however, the chief
lawyer for the prosecution was with difficulty pre-
vented from abandoning the case, and subsequently
publicly avowed his belief in Mr. Beecher's inno-
cence ; and the judge who presided at the trial testi-
fied to his convictions, by presiding, eight years later,
at the meeting held in the Brooklyn Academy of
Music in honor of Mr. Beecher's seventieth birthday,
and joining in the resolutions declaring that " by the
integrity of his life and the purity of his character
he has vanquished misrepresentation and abuse." 1
A year and a half after this trial the largest
and most representative council of Congregational
churches ever known in the history of the denom-
ination was called by Plymouth Church to counsel
it respecting its action, which had been subjected
to severe criticism by the critics of Mr. Beecher.
The roll of members actually in attendance was
two hundred and forty-four ; they were summoned
from all parts of the country and from all schools
of thought in the Congregational denomination, and
included not a few whose political or theological
prepossessions would have made them naturally sus-
picious of Mr. Beecher. Its sessions were presided
over by the Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D., of New
Haven, as moderator,.and the Hon. Nelson Dingley,
Jr., of Maine, and General Erastus N. Bates of
1 See chapter xm. p. 326.
296 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Illinois as assistant moderators. At the opening of
this council Mr. Beecher appeared before it, declar-
ing on behalf of the church that the council was
desired to make whatever investigation it might
wish to make, by whatever plan of investigation it
deemed wise, and on his own behalf that an ade-
quate and just investigation of all the circumstances
in the case was what he most coveted. After the
investigation was completed, he reappeared before
the council, and was questioned at great length,
answering without reserve any question which any
delegate chose to ask; and among the delegates
were not only eminent clergymen, but laymen of
national reputation, and among the latter lawyers
skilled in the art of cross-examination, peing
without power to subpoena witnesses or administer
oaths, the council could not properly try the case
which had been already triedAbut it conducted a
public inquiry with a freedom which is impossible
in a court of law, and by its formal resolutions
declared that " we hold the pastor of this church,
as we and all others are bound to hold him, inno-
cent of the charges reported against him, until sub-
stantiated by proof." The closing addresses of
Dr. J. W. Wellman of Massachusetts, Dr. J. M.
Sturtevant, the president of Illinois College, and
Dr. Noah Porter, the president of Yale College,
assured him and the church of the unabated con-
fidence of the council, and of the churches which it
represented. This judgment has since been affirmed
by the spontaneous expressions of Mr. Beecher's
UNDER ACCUSATION 297
fellow citizens in the city which lie made his home
for forty years ; and by the verdict of the larger
community at home and abroad, to whose sponta-
neous expressions of confidence and esteem I shall
presently have occasion to refer.
To those who believe in Christ's declaration that
the religious teacher is to be known by the fruits
of his work, the spiritual results of Mr. Beecher's
ministry during the years in which his enemies were
continuing their frankly avowed endeavors to drive
him in disgrace from his pulpit, his city, and the
editorial chair, will serve as an even more conclu-
sive evidence of Mr. Beecher's character than the
judgment of his church, the churches of his de-
nomination, and the spontaneous and unofficial
verdict of his fellow citizens. The statistics of
Plymouth Church during this time show in the
number of dismissions no indication of suspicion,
distrust, or dissatisfaction in Plymouth Church ;
in the number of admissions by letter no indication
of lessened confidence on the part of other Chris-
tian churches ; and in the number of those received
on confession of their faith no diminution in the
number of those converted to Christ through the
ministry of the church and of its pastor.1 Num-
1 The following table shows admissions and dismissions for the
four years prior : —
Admissions
Tears
1872
By Letter
62
On Confession
136
Dismiss
60
1873
, 126
68
70
82
. 59
1874......
1876
121
106
34
49
298 HENRY WARD BEECHER
bers alone are not significant of spiritual values.
That during these four years, 1872-75, Mr. Beech-
er's congregation remained undiminished and the
membership of the church was sensibly increased,
might perhaps be attributed to his oratorical
gifts ; that his church sustained him with almost
absolute unanimity might be, and by his critics
was, attributed to his magnetic personality. But
neither Mr. Beecher's oratorical gifts nor his mag-
netic personality can account for the fact that
the entire work of the church proceeded with un-
abated spiritual vigor as witnessed by its Sunday-
schools, its prayer-meetings, its varied philan-
thropic and Christian work, the character and life
of its members, and the permanence and efficiency
of the church which survived him.
To this plain statement of the wholly uncontra-
dicted and unquestioned facts in this case, it may
not be improper for me to add an expression of my
own personal opinion. I had some special advan-
tages for forming one. I was intimately acquainted
with -both Mr. Tilton and Mr. Beecher. More than
a year before the Cleveland letter I had ventured
to warn Mr. Beecher that Mr. Tilton was not the
friend Mr. Beecher thought him to be. I was per-
sonally acquainted with the incidents which led to
his withdrawal from " The Independent " and his
subsequent founding of " The Christian Union."
My brother, Austin Abbott, was one of Mr.
Beecher's counsel in the trial, and I had special
facilities for a careful study of the evidence in the
UNDER ACCUSATION 299
case, and certain editorial duties made such study
a necessity. In the advisory council subsequently
held I was an active member, and my duties as
chairman of its business committee made my con-
stant attendance at all its sessions, both public and
private, my duty. There was no proof at any time
of any act of impropriety on Mr. Beecher's part
toward Mrs. Tilton or toward any other woman, —
nothing that could be called even an "indiscre-
tion." His only indiscretion was in allowing him-
self to be on terms of comparative intimacy with
men who were unworthy of his confidence, and in
accepting as true, without inquiry or investigation,
statements which a man of more practical wisdom
would certainly have doubted, if he did not in-
stantly recognize their falsehood. After no incon-
siderable hesitation I have given to this story
larger space than its real importance deserves,
only because I feared lest passing it by with mere
scant attention would be misconstrued by some
reader. Personally I believe that future history
will attach as little emphasis to this episode in the
life of Mr. Beecher as history now attaches to analo-
gous imputations, with far more to give them color,
brought against John Wesley in his lifetime.
CHAPTER Xin
LATER MINISTRY
In order to give a connected account of this epi-
sode in the life of Mr. Beecher, it has been neces-
sary to interrupt the historical continuity of the
narrative. To that narrative I now return.
The Cleveland letter written August 30, 1866,
recommended that middle way which was the path
alike of national honor and of national safety, but
in what was then the condition of the nation, nei-
ther of the two political parties was willing to take
this middle way. For the time being the counsels
of such men as Mr. Beecher — for he by no means
stood alone — were discarded. The nation could
learn only by experience the political lessons which
its men of prophetic mind perceived intuitively.
Mr. Beecher, therefore, wisely withdrew for a
time from the more active participation in public
affairs, and gave himself to other and more quiet
labors. During the decade 1866-76, he wrote both
"Norwood" and the first volume, with part of
the second volume, of the " Life of Christ." These
were the only volumes he ever wrote ; his other
books were composed of casual contributions writ-
ten originally for the periodicals. During these ten
years he founded " The Christian Union," and
LATER MINISTRY 301
in 1872-74 delivered the famous " Yale Lectures
on Preaching" at Yale Theological Seminary.1
This editorial and literary work was carried on
in addition to his regular preaching, his frequent
lecturing, and his addresses on various public
occasions.
In the fall of 1872 the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the organization of Plymouth Church and Mr.
Beecher's installation were recognized in a series
of meetings, lasting for five days, and known in
the history of the church as the " Silver Wedding."
These exercises were characterized by the sim-
plicity which under Mr. Beecher's administration
had become a second nature to Plymouth Church.
Flowers constituted the only decoration ; the music
was chiefly congregational ; only one address that
could be called an oration was delivered ; this was
the only eulogy ; the other speeches, if speeches
they could be called, were informal, conversational,
reminiscent, — nearly all of them by lay members
of the church. The week might be described in a
word as a home week.
Many absent members returned ; others sent
letters of affectionate remembrance ; others, who
had found inspiration in Plymouth Church, though
they had never belonged to it, came to testify their
affection and receive new gift of life. If the ad-
mission had not been rigidly confined to the holders
of tickets, even Plymouth Church could not have
1 See chapters xiv., " Mr. Beecher as Editor and Author,"
and xv., " The Yale Lectures on Preaching."
302 HENRY WARD BEECHER
contained the crowd which would have thronged it.
Except for a short storm on Thursday night, the
weather was fine. The keynote of the week was
struck at the first meeting by Mr. George A. Bell,
the successive superintendent of its three Sabbath-
schools, in the sentence, "I thank Mr. Beecher
because he has made me to know my God and my
Saviour." The programme of the week was so
arranged as to include the whole life of the church.
Monday night was given up to the children. Tues-
day was given to a reunion of all that had worked
in either of the Plymouth Sunday-schools from
their organization. Wednesday was the laymen's
day, when the founders of the church made state-
ments concerning its origin, its history, and its pro-
gress. Thursday evening the church was crowded
to its utmost capacity, to hear two addresses — one
of reminiscences and personal experience, by Mr.
Beecher, reciting the history of this church "as it
looks to me from my own standpoint ; " the second,
an address by Dr. R. S. Storrs on " Mr. Beecher
as a Preacher." The printed page preserves the
sympathetic insight, the wise analysis, the pictorial
imagination, the iridescent humor, and the finished
literary form of Dr. Storrs's eulogy ; but it cannot
indicate the powerful personality which stood be-
hind the words and uttered itself through them. Dr.
Storrs's simile illustrating Mr. Beecher 's oratory
is equally applicable to his own on this occasion :
" I do not know," said he, " very much about Mr.
Beecher's preaching, for I have only heard him
LATER MINISTRY 303
three or four times ; but I know enough to recog-
nize the difference between the sermon as he
preaches it, and the sermon as it is printed and
published to be read afterward : the one is like the
fireworks as they appear at night in all their bril-
liance and glory, the other is like the blackened,
smoking framework which the boys stare at the
next morning."
But more sacred and moving than any oratory
were the morning prayer-meetings, and the Friday
evening communion service, conducted as nearly
as possible in the spirit of a Friday evening
prayer-meeting. The church was thronged with com-
municants — the body, the side aisles, the galleries.
Throughout the week Mr. Beecher contended
against an inclination, which he feared rather than
perceived, toward hero-worship. His introduction
to the communion service emphasized his desire.
" In the presence," said he, " of these memorials, let
no name be mentioned except that one which is
above every name ; " and with a touch almost of
sadness, he enforced his request : " If I have taught
you to look to any other one, my teaching has been
worse than useless." Then followed brief words of
Christian experience from laymen, on whom he
called — generous, sincere, glowing; after which
the communion was administered to twenty-five
hundred communicants ; and by a few brief words
from Mr. Beecher the thoughts of the church were
turned from the past to the future, and the ser-
vices of the week were brought to a close.
304 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Despite the generous contribution of a hundred
thousand dollars by Plymouth Church, presented
in the form of an increase of salary during the year
of the trial, the enormous expenses involved left
Mr. Beecher indebted. Careless as he was in the
use of mouey, he was never careless about his pe-
cuniary obligations. As soon, therefore, as the trial
was over he set himself to work to raise the funds
necessary to meet obligations which he had in-
curred, and the easiest and simplest way to do this
was by lecturing throughout the country. Doubt-
less another cause combined to impel him to this
course. He believed that the best remedy for worry
was effective work ; he held with Dr. Chalmers to
" the expulsive power of a new affection." The
best possible way to erase from his own mind and
from that of the public, who had been fed for six
months with newspaper reports of the trial, was to
give himself to a national ministry through the lec-
ture platform. His lecture tours, under Major J. B.
Pond's direction, and for the most part in com-
panionship with him, extended as far west as the
Pacific coast and as far south as Memphis. These
annual lecture tours under Major Pond's direction
began April 18, 1875. From that time until Feb-
ruary, 1887, three weeks before his death, Mr.
Beecher is said by Major Pond to have traveled
with him nearly three hundred thousand miles, and
to have lectured under his supervision twelve hun-
dred and sixty-one times. On a single one of these
tours Mr. Beecher delivered seventy-five lectures,
LATER MINISTRY 305
preached sixteen sermons, and traveled seventeen
thousand miles. These lecture tours gave oppor-
tunity for the expression of public confidence in
him, and of this opportunity the public, East and
West, North and South, availed itself. He was
rarely in any town over Sunday that he was not
invited to preach, and he invariably accepted the
invitation, irrespective of the denomination which
invited him, and always without compensation. If
he was in a college town, he was customarily in-
vited to address the students, and, if other engage-
ments permitted, he accepted the invitation. The
warmth of the reception given to him was in some
places as unexpected as it was gratifying. In Mem-
phis he was received, when he arrived in the city,
with a salute of twenty-one guns, and, as there was
no lecture-room large enough to hold the people,
Agricultural Hall was taken, and four thousand
seats put into it.
It was not always so, however. Political, theo-
logical, and personal prejudices combined sometimes
in bitter opposition to him, — opposition which I
believe he never failed to overcome. One dramatic
instance illustrates both facts. On board the
sleeper at Baltimore en route to Richmond, a tele-
gram was put into Mr. Pond's hands which read
as follows : —
Richmond, Vam January 22, 1877.
To J. B. Pond, Baltimore, Md.
No use coming. Beecher will not be allowed to speak
in Richmond. No tickets sold.
306 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Mr. Pond put the telegram into his pocket and
said nothing to Mr. Beecher. On arriving in Rich-
mond the warning was repeated. The local agent
abandoned the lecture. Mr. Pond rented the the-
atre, and issued bills and dodgers announcing that
the lecture would be delivered. When the evening
came, the theatre was crowded with men ; no
women were present. Mr. Pond was advised that
" the gallery is full of eggs." When Mr. Beecher
rose to speak, he was greeted with yells from the
hostile audience. He met them with a good-
humored jest at the members of the Virginia legis-
lature, who were present in large numbers. The
rest of the audience joined in the laugh at the
legislature. In a few minutes Mr. Beecher had the
crowd under his control. At the close an informal
reception was given him in the hotel, and he was
earnestly urged to remain and lecture a second
night, that the women might come to hear him.
I rarely heard Mr. Beecher lecture ; I often
heard him preach. He was at his best in the pulpit,
next on the rostrum, last on the lecture platform.
He generally wrote his lectures, but rarely read
them, and never memorized them. Mr. Pond is my
authority for saying that he never delivered the
same lecture twice in the same way. The form and
structure of the lecture depended largely upon the
audience to which it was to be addressed, and while
the substance of it remained unchanged, the illus-
trations were frequently varied from evening to
evening. Local incidents and occasions inspired
LATER MINISTRY 307
sometimes his most eloquent passages, as in his
peroration in the Richmond lecture, — a tribute to
the Commonwealth of Virginia, the mother of
Presidents, and his forecast of the noble future
which lay before her. Mr. Beecher could not
speak without imparting some information, nor
without some flash of humor, but he never lec-
tured merely for the purpose of entertaining or
instructing his audience. His lectures were all
ethical discourses: any one of them might have
been a sermon ; some of them were. One of the
most famous of his lectures, that on " Evolution
and Religion," grew out of a sermon, and in turn
was elaborated into a course of eight sermons on
that subject, subsequently published in book form.
On the whole, it may be truly said that his lecture
tours constituted a form of religious ministry, ethi-
cal and social, rather than spiritual and individual.
Not less than his sermons, however, were his lec-
tures inspired by the purpose to interpret and apply
the principles and precepts of Jesus Christ, and in-
spire men with the Christian spirit. In popularity
Mr. Beecher as lecturer stood second only to John
B. Gough, in inspirational effect second to no one.
Though during this decade the political ques-
tions before the country did not compare in either
dramatic interest or public influence with those
growing out of slavery, Mr. Beecher continued,
though in lesser measure, to discuss before the
public the questions which from time to time arose.
He was a continuous student of social questions,
308 HENRY WARD BEECHER
and continued to speak upon them. He advocated
unsectarian public schools, and strenuously opposed
the division of the public funds between the Ro-
man Catholics and the Protestants, or any use of
public funds for sectarian schools of any descrip-
tion. He advocated the Irish cause, speaking on
the same platform with John Dillon and Charles
Stewart Parnell, and urging the policy, now at last
adopted by the English government, of making
the tenant population of Ireland land-owners. He
vigorously antagonized the exclusion of the Chinese
from our coasts, saying, whimsically, that when the
camel eats palm, the camel does not become palm,
but the palm becomes camel. He opposed prohibi-
tion as " an absolute impossibility," and advocated
high license. I do not know that either local option
or the dispensary system had become a public ques-
tion in his time, or, if so, that he ever expressed
himself definitely upon them. He urged civil-ser-
vice reform, and opposed the free coinage of silver.
He faced with his usual courage anti-Jewish preju-
dice, of which there was in 1881 a special ebulli-
tion, and preached a sermon on the subject of such
interest that the substance of it was cabled across
the Atlantic, and the " Pall Mall Gazette " declared
of it that it would excite, especially in Germany,
" much more interest than a presidential mes-
sage." He spoke and wrote, in presidential elec-
tions, for Grant, for Hayes, and for Cleveland ; and
on different occasions for the redemption of the
ballot-box, for the Sunday opening of libraries, for
LATER MINISTRY 309
woman suffrage, for popular amusements, for the
enforcement of excise legislation, at public dinners
to Professor Tyndall and to Herbert Spencer, and
in public tributes to Dr. Livingstone and to Mat-
thew Arnold.
His advocacy, by pen and on the forum, of the
election of President Cleveland caused a surprise
which the historian cannot but declare to have
been extraordinarily unreasonable. Mr. Beecher
was always and by nature an independent ; he be-
longed to no party, and was the advocate of none.
He spoke on abolition platforms against some of
the fundamental principles of the abolitionists ; he
spoke on Republican platforms against some of the
fundamental principles of the Republicans; he
preached an evangelical faith to Unitarian congre-
gations ; and he would have been glad to preach
a Christian faith in a Jewish pulpit, or a Protest-
ant faith in a Roman Catholic pulpit, if the op-
portunity had been offered to him. Politically, he
was an individualist, if not by inheritance, cer-
tainly by training. His ten years of anti-slavery
campaigning had emphasized his belief in the lib-
erty of the individual, his desire to promote that
liberty, and his belief that the individual should
be left unhandicapped, to pursue in his own way
his own chosen path in life. Economically, he be-
longed with the Manchester school, though, mor-
ally, he repudiated the idea that social order can
ever emerge from a mere conflict of selfish inter-
ests. Protection is essentially socialistic in its
310 HENRY WARD BEECHER
nature. It assumes that the nation is not merely
a collection of individuals ; that it has an interest
apart from the interests of the individuals who
compose it ; that it may rightfully adopt a policy
which will promote the interests of the whole,
although it may interfere with the liberties or im-
pair the interests of some. What measure of truth
there is in this socialistic philosophy, toward which
in many ways American society is now turning, it
is not necessary for me here to inquire. Mr. Beecher
did not believe in it. He was, therefore, necessarily
and on principle, a free-trader. He had avowed
himself so, explicitly and emphatically, in his Eng-
lish speeches ; he had repeated that avowal, again
and again, on Republican platforms ; he had re-
sisted within the Republican party the growth of
the high protective principle. When, as candidate
for governor of the state, Mr. Cleveland ran
against Governor Folger, Mr. Beecher supported
Mr. Cleveland. When, therefore, in 1884, the is-
sue was clearly and sharply made in the first Blaine
and Cleveland campaign, Mr. Beecher had no option
but either to keep silent or to advocate the election
of Mr. Cleveland. Mr. Cleveland stood for civil-
service reform, Mr. Blaine for machine politics ;
Mr. Cleveland stood for a tariff for revenue only,
Mr. Blaine for a high protective system. Any one
who knew Mr. Beecher should have known that, if
he had to choose between the party he had asso-
ciated with and the principles which he held sacred,
he would always leave the party for the sake of the
LATER MINISTRY 311
principles. This he did. His doing so cost him
some warm friendships. All this he foresaw. He
hesitated for weeks before he formed the final de-
cision. I speak in this matter of what I know, for
at his request I went up to Peekskill to counsel
with him on the subject. He made careful inqui-
ries respecting the rumors prejudicial to Mr. Cleve-
land's character before he espoused Mr. Cleve-
land's election, and he satisfied himself that, what-
ever color of truth they might have had in the past,
they were absolutely untrue as respected Mr. Cleve-
land's character in 1884. The unwise recommen-
dations of some friends, who ought to have known
him better, and who urged him not to become an
advocate of Mr. Cleveland's election because he
could not afford to do so, were perhaps the final
determining element in the formation of his de-
cision. Nothing was more likely to lead Mr.
Beecher into battle than such a warning, that it
would be perilous to himself. It is not necessary
here to rehearse the arguments which Mr. Beecher
presented in support of free trade ; it must suffice
to say that they were mainly moral, not economic.
He held that whatever seeming prosperity the pro-
tective tariff conferred on one class involved the
real detriment of another class, that it was essen-
tially a selfish policy, and he opposed it " as not
only impolitic, but unjust and morally wrong."
In the decade which we are considering Mr.
Beecher's first work was, as it had been in the
past, as a preacher and in his own church. But
312 HENRY WARD BEECHER
his preaching underwent a noticeable change. It
became more intellectual and philosophical. It was
addressed less to the will and more to the reason.
Mr. Beecher's preaching may be approximately
divided into three epochs. In the first it is largely
pictorial, imaginative, emotional. This preaching
is typified by the " Lectures to Young Men." In
the second epoch, the emotions and the imagina-
tion have been brought into subjection ; the style
is less exuberant ; the pictures are not less vivid,
but they are less numerous; they do not follow
one another in such kaleidoscopic succession ; the
emotion is spiritualized, — it is deeper, devouter,
stronger, — not less impassioned, but under better
control ; the whole sermon converges on one truth ;
preaching has become a battle, in which all the
resources of the commanding general are brought
to bear upon the one pivotal point in the field, and
reason, imagination, emotion combine to carry away
the hearer, capturing his will, and bringing him
into subjection to a new purpose, and obedient to a
new law of life. Of this epoch the Harpers' edi-
tion of sermons selected from those preached in
the years 1860-68 afford the best illustration.
In the third epoch Mr. Beecher is a teacher. The
sermons are expositions; he is an interpreter of
faith ; he is attempting to show men that the spir-
itual experience, into which he has before been
endeavoring to carry them by all the forces of his
nature, is an experience consistent with the highest
exercise of the reason ; he preaches less for con-
LATER MINISTRY 313
version, and more for instruction and edification.
Of this type of preaching his eight sermons on
" Evolution and Religion " are the most striking
illustration.1 The later change was intentioned ; it
was a deliberate adaptation of his preaching to
new conditions. In the second of his sermons on
"Evolution and Religion" he thus defines his
purpose : —
The last years of my life I dedicate to this work of
religion, to this purpose of God, to this development, on
a grander scale, of my Lord and Master Jesus Christ.
I believe in God. I believe in immortality. I believe in
Jesus Christ as the incarnated representative of the
spirit of God. I believe in all the essential truths that
go to make up morality and spiritual religion. I am nei-
ther an infidel, nor an agnostic, nor an atheist ; but if I
am anything, by the grace of God I am a lover of Jesus
Christ, as the manifestation of God under the limita-
tions of space and matter ; and in no part of my life
has my ministry seemed to me so solemn, so earnest, so
fruitful, as this last decade will seem, if I shall succeed
in uncovering to the faith of this people the great truths
of the two revelations — God's building revelation of
the material globe, and God's building revelation in the
unfolding of the human mind. May God direct me in
your instruction !
To understand the significance of this decision
1 Evolution and Religion : Part i. Eight sermons discussing-
the hearings of the evolutionary philosophy on the fundamental
doctrines of evangelical Christianity. Part ii. Eighteen sermons
discussing the application of the evolutionary principles and theo-
ries to the practical aspects of religious life. Fords, Howard
AHulbert. 1885.
314 HENRY WARD BEECHER
and the value of his service in its execution, the
reader must conceive the conditions out of which
it grew. Darwin's " Origin of Species " was pub-
lished in 1859, Herbert Spencer's " First Princi-
ples," in sections, in 1860-62. Translated into
common language for the common people, through
innumerable editorials and magazine articles, and
rapidly finding their way into academic instruction
in all the higher institutions of learning, they be-
gan to give currency to the notion of evolution in
many circles where its fundamental principle was
not in the least comprehended. From the first this
doctrine of evolution was generally regarded by the
churches as an attack on religion ; and not unnat-
urally, since it denied two fundamental articles of
the Puritan, if not of the Protestant creed, — the
Fall of Adam and the inerrancy of the Bible.
The whole Puritan system of theology had been
built upon the Fall of Adam. Its first article was
the Total Depravity of the human race. On this
was supposed to be founded the necessity for re-
velation, as a divine disclosure to fallen man of
truths required for his salvation, which, owing to
his Fall, he could not otherwise know ; for redemp-
tion by a sacrificial atonement, rendered necessary to
purge away his sins and succor him from the de-
served wrath of God, on account of the Fall ; and for
a new birth, necessary to recover man from the death
in which he was involved by the sin of Adam, and
from which he could be recovered only by a new
creative act. The doctrine of evolution affirmed
LATER MINISTRY 315
that man had come from a lower animal order ; it
denied that man was made perfect and had fallen
from a higher to a lower estate ; it therefore seemed
to deny the doctrines of revelation, redemption,
and regeneration. It was regarded by substantially
the whole Christian Church as subversive of the
entire system of evangelical faith. At the same
time, and as a necessary consequence, evolution
denied a second fundamental doctrine of the Puri-
tan and later Protestant creed, — that the Bible is
infallible and inerrant. Protestants, refusing the
authority of the Church, had, partly for polemical
reasons, substituted therefor the authority of the
Bible. Evolution treated the Genesis story of the
Fall as a fable ; it therefore denied the inerrancy
of the Bible, denied its absolute and binding
authority, and seemed to destroy the foundation
on which the whole Protestant superstructure was
reared. We can now see clearly, what our fathers
did not see, that evangelical faith is not depend-
ent on the doctrine of the Fall of Adam, and
that Protestantism is not dependent on the iner-
rancy of the Bible. The Fall of Adam is narrated
in the third chapter of Genesis. It is not again
referred to in the Old Testament, nor in the New
Testament, except parenthetically by the Apostle
Paul. In the one chapter where the Apostle Paul
treats of the nature and origin of sin, the seventh
chapter of Romans, he represents it as an emer-
gence of the flesh against the spirit, a representa-
tion quite in harmony with the scientific doctrine
316 HENRY WARD BEECHER
of evolution. The doctrine of Adam's Fall occupies
no such fundamental position in the Bible as it oc-
cupies in the Puritan creeds. It is equally clear
that the later Protestantism had claimed for the
Bible an authority which the Bible never claims for
itself and which the earlier Reformers did not claim
for it, much as Roman Catholicism had claimed
for the Church an authority which neither the Jew-
ish Church nor the primitive Christian Church
ever claimed for itself. We can see that the frank
recognition of the Bible as the record of a progress-
ive revelation — a book in its successive stages issu-
ing from the spiritual experience of the epoch and
adapted to that experience — recommends it to ra-
tional faith and removes insuperable difficulties pre-
sented by the conception of it as an inerrant and
infallible record of truth divinely dictated to hu-
man amanuenses. But it is not strange that, when
the doctrine of evolution was first expounded,
mainly by men of unecclesiastical, if not anti-eccle-
siastical sympathies, it was regarded as subversive
both of evangelical faith and of regard for the
Bible as a revelation of truth. It is not strange
that it should even now be so regarded by those
who have never studied evolution, and do not know
what it really means, and who have never gone be-
hind the creeds of Christendom to the Bible, from
which those creeds are supposed to have been
drawn, to ascertain whether the creeds state the
truths of religion as the Bible states them, and in
the relations in which the Bible states them.
LATER MINISTRY 317
Mr. Beecher was one of the first ministers in the
Christian Church, if not the very first in this coun-
try, to advocate the doctrine of evolution as a doc-
trine which, so far from being inimical to the cause
of Christ, was certain to prove its friend and sup-
porter. The first reference in Mr. Beecher' s pub-
lic teaching which I have been able to find, that
indicates an acceptance or an inclination to accept
the doctrine of evolution, was an incidental refer-
ence in a Sunday morning sermon, March 11,
1860 : " What word did Adam ever speak or what
manly thing did he ever perform, before or after
the Fall, that was thought worthy of record ? He
has a name in the Bible ; that is all. The world
has come uphill every single step from the day of
Adam to this." But it was not until nearly twenty
years after that he began the systematic advocacy
of evolution as an interpretation of the divine or-
der which is consistent with and helpful to evan-
gelical faith. To understand what this advocacy
meant, the reader must also understand what
evangelical faith, as Mr. Beecher apprehended it,
means.
All religion recognizes man's obligation to God.
It was a distinctive characteristic of the Hebrew
religion that it also recognized God's obligation to
man. The obligation was seen by the Prophets to
be mutual : that of subjects to their King, but also
that of the King to his subjects ; that of the chil-
dren to their Father, also that of the Father to his
children. God was therefore represented in the
318 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Old Testament as a covenant-keeping God. Cove-
nant is mutual and involves mutual obligations.
This doctrine of the obligation of God to men re-
appears in the New Testament as a gospel. Law
represents what men owe to God ; the Gospel re-
presents what God will do for men. The first de-
clares what he requires of them ; the second, what
service he will render to them. An evangelical
preacher is one who lays stress on this service
which God renders to man, and on man's conse-
quent hope in God. Mr. Beecher was throughout
his life, in this sense, an evangelical preacher. He
laid stress on duty and righteousness, but he laid
far more stress on faith and hope and love — faith
as a personal consciousness of God ; hope as an as-
surance of the future because of God ; and love as
an inspiration to life because of the soul's recogni-
tion of God's love. The object of Mr. Beecher in the
sermons on " Evolution and Religion," and largely
in the preaching of the later years of his life, of
which these sermons furnish an illustration, was to
show that evolution, as an interpretation of God's
way of working in the world, is not only consist-
ent with this gospel of God's helpfulness but gives
to it a richer and better interpretation.
Do you suppose that now, after fifty years in the
Christian ministry, I could attend the funeral of religion
cheerfully and joyfully, with every hereditary necessity
on me, with the whole education of my youth, with all
my associations, all the endearments of my past life in
my memory, and with vivid and living sympathy with
LATER MINISTRY 319
men, — do you suppose that I could stand here to advo-
cate any truth that would destroy the substance, or in
any degree materially injure even the forms of religion ?
I would die sooner ! Do you suppose, from my nature
and my whole example, I could go into the course of
sermons that T have preached, and into the course of
sermons that, God willing, I will preach yet, for any
other reason than that I believe that the new view is to
give to religion a power and a scope and a character
such as has never yet been taken and known in the
world at large? Better men than some have been, I
suppose, will never be born ; better lives than certain
single lives will never appear over the horizon of time ;
but that which I look for is the change of the human
race. I am not thinking of men, but of mankind. I am
not in sympathy alone with the Church, but with the
whole human family. And my longing, as it has been
for years, is for such teaching and such philosophies
as slmll lead the whole human race to a higher and a
nobler condition.
This paragraph interprets the object and illus-
trates the spirit of the entire series : that spirit
is a broader and profounder faith because Mr.
Beecher has come to understand evolution ; that
purpose is to give this broader and profounder
faith to others. He frankly admits that evolution
has " revolutionized my educational beliefs, but it
has revolutionized those beliefs only to make them
more spiritual, more hopeful, more full of the
divine life." He has no tendency to rationalism :
he reaffirms his belief in the miracles, and in the
doctrine of divine design and of a superintending
320 HENRY WARD BEECHER
and personal Providence. He is not a Universal-
ist : he repudiates with intense abhorrence the
doctrine of endless punishment, but he does not
affirm the doctrine of universal restoration ; u ana-
logy would suggest that unfit men have run their
career and perished." He is not a Unitarian : he
reaffirms his acceptance of the Trinity, as the best
hypothetical explanation to account for the teach-
ings of Christian Church history and human expe-
rience, and his undiminished faith in Christ as
M the one fit manifestation of God, so far as he
could be made known to human intelligence." He
repudiates the doctrine of the Fall, but reaffirms
in the strongest language his belief in the reality
and universality of sinfulness, and in the necessity
of repentance and that new birth which is the be-
ginning of the new spiritual life. In his lectures
on " Bible Studies," given on Sunday evenings
during the autumn, winter, and spring of 1878-
79, he had anticipated much of the modern criti-
cism, though he had done so, not in a scholastic
discussion of theories, but in a practical use of
the Old Testament narratives. In his sermons on
" Evolution and Religion " he repudiates the doc-
trine of the plenary and verbal inspiration of the
Bible, and with it the doctrine that the Bible is
inerrant and infallible, and substitutes therefor
the doctrine of the Bible as "the record of the
gradual and progressive unfolding of human know-
ledge in respect to social and spiritual things
through vast periods of time." At the same time
LATER MINISTRY 321
he declares his reverence for the Bible as "the
book which has reached the highest conception of
God yet attained by human consciousness ; " a book
which "gives the only grand ideal of manhood
known to literature;" a "living book" with
" power of inspiring men with the noblest desires ; "
a " book that creates life."
There is nothing in these views which to the
modern reader will seem radical or revolutionary.
In the score of years which have elapsed since
these sermons were preached, evolution has won
for itself universal recognition. Practically all
scientists are now evolutionists ; all collegiate in-
struction in every department is based on the
assumption of the fundamental truth of evolution
as the law of life and progress ; and the great ma-
jority of ministers and theologians either frankly
accept it or silently acquiesce in it. It is not neces-
sary here to revive the bitterness of those years
and repeat the vilification and abuse to which
Mr. Beecher was subjected for the crime of being
in advance of the churches of his time. This abuse,
however, led to one significant act on his part
which has sometimes been misinterpreted. Criti-
cism of his theological views, coming from some of
his brethren in the Congregational ministry, and
especially in the local association to which he be-
longed, led him in October, 1882, to withdraw
from its membership, solely because he did not wish
that other members should be embarrassed by any
supposition that they indorsed or were responsible
322 HENRY WARD BEECHER
for his at that time unpopular opinions. He did
not, however, become an independent. He re-
mained to the day of his death a Congregationalist
in good standing, always continuing his member-
ship in the state association, and always retain-
ing his fellowship with the ministers and churches
of the Congregational faith and order. He took
the occasion of his withdrawal from the local asso-
ciation to restate his evangelical faith. This state-
ment, made with his customary frankness, to his
own brethren in the ministry, was taken down by
a shorthand reporter.1 It is the fullest as it is the
latest statement of Mr. Beecher's theological views,
nor do I know any reason to think that he subse-
quently departed in any important respect from
these views.
Neither the Sunday evening lectures on the Old
Testament nor the Sunday morning sermons on
" Evolution and Religion " are a mere exposition
of critical and philosophical theories. In both series
Mr. Beecher is still a preacher, not a lecturer.
Other volumes of a later date by other authors will
give to the reader a better intellectual conception
of modern criticism as applied to the Old Testa-
ment, and of the philosophy of evolution as applied
in theological science ; but any preacher who de-
sires to know how to use the Old Testament for
spiritual ends, while holding it to be not an infalli-
ble standard, but the record of a progressive reve-
lation, will find few books more serviceable to his
1 See Appendix.
LATER MINISTRY 323
purpose than Mr. Beecher's " Bible Studies ; " and
any preacher who desires to know how to use the
doctrine of evolution, as an instrument for the un-
folding of spiritual truth in our time for practical
and spiritual ends, will find few if any volumes
more serviceable for his purpose than the one
containing Mr. Beecher's first eight sermons on
" Evolution and Religion."
If any one asks what was the spiritual effect of
this teaching as compared with that of the preced-
ing epoch, the answer must be twofold : First, that
Mr. Beecher did not suddenly become an evolu-
tionist. " Slowly," he says, " and through a whole
fifty years I have been under the influence, first
obscurely, indirectly, of the great doctrine of evolu-
tion." The doctrine that the kingdom of God is
a growth, and comes not with observation, under-
lay all his preaching ; and I do not know of any
pastor of the last half of the last century whose
preaching was accompanied with greater apparent
spiritual results in accessions to the church on pro-
fession of faith than that of Mr. Beecher. In the
second place, although in the later decade there
were no such great revivals as that of 1858, when
three hundred and sixty-nine were added to the
church on confession of their faith, most of them
at a single communion, the average additions to
the church on confession of faith were, with that
exception, about the same during the last decade
as during the earlier years, though they were un-
accompanied by any such emotional conditions as
324 HENRY WARD BEECHER
accompanied the two special revivals which occurred
during the first ten years of his ministry.
In 1881 Mr. Beecher severed his connection
with " The Christian Union." Writing had grown
increasingly distasteful to him. Confinement to
the desk he avoided. His editorial relations to
" The Christian Union " had been indeed through-
out all my connection with it, that is, since 1876,
somewhat slight and constantly lessening. I had
hoped, through the services of a shorthand writer,
to get from him, in conversation, material which
would serve for editorial purpose ; but I did not
to any considerable extent succeed. He was always
expecting to write editorials, but almost never did.
Occasionally he would send me a letter while on
his lecture tours, but they were infrequent. He
left the supervision of the paper wholly in my
hands, although on great questions I constantly
consulted with him. His ideas found their way
to its columns through the inspiration which he
afforded both to me and to others of the staff,
but not in the inimitable form in which he would
have put them. His name and mine stood at the
head of the paper as joint editors. He came to feel,
as I did, that this put both him and the paper in a
false position, giving the public an impression that
it was getting what really he was not furnishing.
So at length, in 1881, he sold his interest in the
paper, and laid down his editorial work.
His lecturing, public speaking, and preaching
he continued with unabated vigor to the end. Few
LATER MINISTRY 325
were the public occasions at which he was not an
honored guest. He was invited to speak at four of
the six New England dinners in the city of Brook-
lyn between 1880 and 1886, an honor accorded to
no other man. On the 25th of January, 1883, a
public meeting was tendered to him on the occa-
sion of his seventieth birthday. The Academy of
Music was crowded to its utmost capacity; and
half an hour before the exercises commenced the
doors had to be closed. A great throng remained
outside, to whom, before the exercises within began,
Mr. Beecher sj>oke briefly. Upon the stage within
were many of the most eminent clergymen of
Brooklyn and New York ; indeed, it would be
easier to make a list of those who were absent than
of those who were present, either in person or by
letter. The meeting was presided over by Judge
Joseph Neilson, who had presided at the trial of
Mr. Beecher in the same city eight years before.
Addresses of eulogy were delivered by Dr. Armi-
tage on " Mr. Beecher as a Man," Dr. Robert Coll-
yer on "Mr. Beecher's English Campaign," Dr.
Fulton on " Mr. Beecher as a Christian," and by
the Hon. Seth Low, then the mayor of Brooklyn,
on " Mr. Beecher as a Citizen ; " and letters ex-
pressive of confidence and esteem were read from
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John G. Whittier, George
William Curtis, Wendell Phillips, Andrew D.
White, Mark Hopkins, Senator Henry L. Dawes
of Massachusetts, General W. T. Sherman, White-
law Reid, Professor J. D. Dana, ex-President
326 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Hayes, and others. A resolution was passed by a
rising vote expressing the appreciation, by his fel-
low citizens of Brooklyn, of Mr. Beecher " as a
religious teacher, a public citizen, a generous neigh-
bor and friend, and a man who by the integrity of
his life and the purity of his character has van-
quished misrepresentation and abuse, corrected and
counteracted misunderstanding, and converted pub-
lic alienation into personal affection."
So passed his closing years. His campaigning
days were over. To the end there were those who
were alienated from him for various reasons : some,
because in the battles through which he had passed
he had dealt blows which left scars ; some, for
ecclesiastical reasons which will seem to posterity,
and indeed seem even now, wholly insignificant ;
some, because his theological positions subjected
him to undeserved religious suspicion ; some, be-
cause his political independence could not be under-
stood by those who can see no difference between
loyalty to party and loyalty to principles. But all
these combined made but an insignificant minor-
ity. He was in Brooklyn easily its most distin-
guished and its most honored citizen, respected by
all, revered by many, loved by those who knew
him best, his church devotedly attached to him.
To the end he retained his physical and his intel-
lectual force. His preaching was less imaginative
and less impassioned than in the earlier years, but
it was never more vigorous. Never did it appeal
so effectively to men of large minds. His winters
LATER MINISTRY 327
were given to work with a vigor which few men
who have passed seventy could parallel ; his sum-
mers were spent in the new home which he had
built in Peekskill, and in which, as he once said
to me, he had desired to express himself by show-
ing in material form what a country home should
be. Before, however, I come to speak of the last
scene in this great life, I must devote two chapters
to certain phases of his life work, necessarily passed
by in this history, in order to maintain unbroken
the continuity of the narrative.
CHAPTER XIV
EDITOR AND AUTHOR
In this chapter I propose to bring together some
facts illustrating Mr. Beecher's character and work
in the sphere of journalism and authorship, such
as could not well be inserted in their chronological
order, except in brief reference, without interfering
with the continuity of the historical narrative.
Mr. Beecher began editorial work before he was
ordained to the ministry. He acted for four or five
months as editor of " The Cincinnati Journal,"
while he was still a student in Lane Seminary.
His editorials produced such an impression that
they were copied with approval by " The Cincinnati
Gazette," at that time regarded as the ablest jour-
nal west of the Alleghanies. In Indianapolis he
edited an agricultural department in " The Indiana
Journal," as a sort of recreation from the more
serious labors of his ministry. During his editor-
ship " The Western Farmer and Gardener," under
which title the agricultural department of " The In-
diana Journal " was published in monthly numbers,
gained a national reputation.
This editing was recreative ; real writing as a
serious business of life, he did not enter upon to
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 329
any extent until after he came to Brooklyn in 1847.
" The Independent," which was started the follow-
ing year, was a Congregational newspaper, estab-
lished for the maintenance of Puritan doctrines and
principles and their fearless application to social
problems, especially that presented by slavery. Of
its three editors, the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, pas-
tor of the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City,
had especial administrative capacity,1 and was prac-
tically the managing editor of the journal. Mr.
Beecher's genius was soon recognized by his Congre-
gational associates, and he was engaged as a regular
contributor. He was too independent to work well
in harness ; his associates preferred that he should
alone be responsible for his utterances, and he pre-
ferred the freedom which such independence con-
ferred. His methods of preparation and composition
were peculiar, and were in striking contrast to those
of his associate, Dr. Thompson. Dr. Thompson had
his regular day at the office, was always punctual,
calculated the amount of matter required, rarely if
ever gave too much or too little, and his copy was
the delight of compositors. Mr. Beecher came into
the office about the time his manuscript was ex-
pected, sometimes boiling over with excitement,
sometimes bubbling over with humor, talked of
anything and everything but the business before
him, finally caught up his pen, turned to the near-
est desk, shut himself up in his shell, impenetrable
as if he were a turtle, drove his pen across the
1 See chapter xn. p. 288.
330 HENRY WARD BEECHER
paper as if it were a printing-machine and he an
electric battery, threw off the pages as he wrote
them, left them to be gathered up and carried by
the boy to the compositors' room, and trusted a
subordinate to read proof, correct errors, and sup-
ply omissions. But what he wrote was caught
up and quoted from one end of the land to the
other. In effectiveness of utterance Mr. Beecher's
leaders in " The Independent " have never been
surpassed in American journalism. Comparisons
are perilous, but I think it is safe to say that no
Northern journal, except perhaps " The New York
Tribune" and "The New York Evening Post,"
exerted so powerful an influence in creating and
guiding public opinion during the ten years which
preceded the Civil War as did " The New York
Independent."
At the close of this epoch, and just on the eve
of the outbreak of the Civil War, the Congrega-
tional triumvirate resigned and Mr. Beecher be-
came editor-in-chief of " The Independent." In the
issue of December 19, 1861, appears his salutatory.
It is brief. In it he declares that the change of
editorship does not involve any change in the prin-
ciples, purpose, or general spirit of the paper,
which will continue " firmly to hold and to teach
those great cardinal doctrines of religion that are
substantially held in common by the Congregational
orthodox churches of New England and by the
Presbyterian churches of our whole land. But as
heretofore, this will be done for the promotion of
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 331
vital godliness rather than for sectarianism," and
it " will not forget that there is an ethical as well
as an emotive life in true religion," and therefore
will assume " the liberty of meddling with every
question which agitates the civil or Christian com-
munity." During the brief term of Mr. Beecher's
active control as editor-in-chief of " The Independ-
ent " the influence of the paper was maintained, if
it was not enhanced. Its efficient service in sus-
taining the courage of the people, urging aggressive,
patient, and persistent heroism, chiding the delays
which McClellan's dilatory policy imposed upon the
administration, preparing the way for the emanci-
pation proclamation, and urging the issuing of one,
has already been referred to in a previous chapter.
What Mr. Beecher could have made of " The In-
dependent " if he had been adequately supported is
matter for surmise, not for history. He was not
adequately supported. Mr. Tilton was as lacking
in administrative ability as Mr. Beecher ; he was
not more systematic by temperament, he was not
steadied by great faith in great principles, and he
was always ambitious to be editor-in-chief himself ;
and at the end of two years Mr. Beecher resigned
the editorship, to leave his friend and protege in his
place.
In January, 1870, the publishing firm of J. B.
Ford & Company having bought a small and un-
1 The effect of this resignation and his ultimate entire with-
drawal from the paper, and the reasons that led to it, have been
stated in a preceding chapter. Chapter xn.
332 HENRY WARD BEECHER
successful religious weekly entitled "The Church
Union," started for the purpose of securing the or-
ganic unity of all Protestant Evangelical churches,
changed its name to "The Christian Union," and Mr.
Beecher assumed its editorship. At the same time
with its change of name, its character and purpose
were changed. Mr. Beecher signalized his advent
by insisting from the first that the paper which
preached religion should also practice it. " He
shut down at once and forever," says Mr. John R.
Howard, his publisher, " upon a large class of pro-
fitable business, in excluding medical advertise-
ments, and in ordering a strict censorship upon
whatever might offend the taste or impose upon the
credulity of readers." Those who remember the
class of advertising on which religious journals of
that period, with few exceptions, largely depended
for their income, will perhaps realize what so radi-
cal action involved in this starting of a new jour-
nal. Mr. Beecher's salutatory was much more elab-
orate than that issued when he took the editorial
charge of " The Independent," and indicates the
enlarged conception of religious journalism which
had grown out of his meditation on the enterprise
during the four or five preceding years. This salu-
tatory defines also his conception of religion. Sim-
ple as these definitions now seem, they subjected
him to severe criticism then. " Religion is but the
expression of man's deepest and noblest nature.
Although the development of religion has a rela-
tion to time and history, religion itself is a life and
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 333
not a philosophy, nor an organization. Its place is
in the human soul. Its elements existed before a
tenet was held or an act performed. Not until
human nature perishes will religion cease. It does
not depend for existence upon historic testimony.
Although illustrated by miracles, it may exist with-
out miracles ; although enforced by arguments, it
may exist without arguments, as the inevitable
outworking of a divine and constitutional element
in man." This is but saying in another form what
Sabatier has said in the epigrammatic expression,
u Man is incurably religious." To Mr. Beecher
the religious nature was u as much a part of crea-
tion as the globe itself and its physical properties,
and far more important." Religion is, therefore,
more than Christianity, but " Christianity is the
best exposition of that [religious] nature, its rela-
tions, duties, and aspirations." These aspirations
of the religious nature, fed by Christianity, are
common to all Christian denominations ; and it is to
the interpretation of these common elements in the
Christian life Mr. Beecher consecrated " The Chris-
tian Union." " This paper will not identify itself
with that which is special to the organization of any
of the great Christian denominations, but rather
with that interior religious life which in all sects
witnesses to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit." It
was therefore to be the purpose of the paper to repre-
sent, not Church union, but Christian union. " We
distinguish between oneness of Church and oneness
of Christian sympathy. Not only shall we not
334 HENRY WARD BEECHER
labor for an external and ecclesiastical unity, but
we should regard it as a step backward. . . .
There will never be moral unity among Christians
until the phantasy of Corporate Unity is expelled
from the imagination." For this reason " i The
Christian Union ' will devote no time to inveigh-
ing against sects, but it will spare no pains to
persuade Christians of every sect to treat one an-
other with Christian charity, love, and sympathy."
"Above all and hardest of all, it will be our
endeavor to breathe, through the columns of * The
Christian Union,' such Christian love, courage,
equity, and gentleness as shall exemplify the doc-
trine which it unfolds, and shall bring it into sym-
pathy with the mind and will of the Lord Jesus
Christ."
If the reader thinks these quotations are the
utterances of truisms, he might be induced to
change his mind if he were to turn over the pages
of the first issues of " The Christian Union," and
see how severely Mr. Beecher was assailed because
of them. He is attacked for recognizing the right
of denominations to exist, and not demanding a
union which shall obliterate them ; for proposing
to lay emphasis on the practical, rather than on the
ethical aspects of religion ; for affirming the inde-
structible religious nature of man, in the face of
Paul's declaration that none of the princes of this
world knew the wisdom of God ; and his ability
to act as a guide to Protestantism is denied be-
cause " he is too impulsive ; " " he is too senti-
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 335
mental ; " " he is too loose ; " " he is too ready to
surrender truth." To this latter accusation Mr.
Beecher replies : " We shall take it to heart, and
strive henceforth to be slower, drier, tighter, and
more obstinate."
At the time when " The Christian Union " was
organized, undenominational religious journalism
was unknown, if not unthought of. It was sup-
posed to be necessary to have a church constitu-
ency behind each church organ. The religious
journals were, I think without an exception, de-
nominational in their character ; most of them
were organs of an ecclesiastical system ; and it was
their primary function to represent, maintain, and
defend the ecclesiastical organization, its creeds, its
rituals, its methods, its personnel. These denomi-
national organs were ecclesiastical, theological, con-
troversial ; as partisan in the realm of religion as
the party press in the realm of public affairs. The
notion that, underlying all the sects, there is a
great indestructible religious sentiment, that this
indestructible religious sentiment is more than the
creeds which interpret it in dogmatic forms, more
than the rituals which interpret it in worship, and
more than the organizations which interpret it in
aggressive action, though it is the commonplace of
popular opinion to-day, was an incredible novelty
when Mr. Beecher propounded it as the basis of a
religious journal in 1870. He had always appealed
from the ecclesiastics to the people in his pulpit :
he now made the same appeal to a wider constitu-
336 HENRY WARD BEECHER
ency in the press. Along with this conception of
Christian life and this belief in a Christian con-
stituency, was a conception of religion as a vital-
izing force, to be applied to every department of
human activity. He determined to make a paper,
not for church people merely, but for the plain
people of every creed and no creed, and therefore
a paper which should " seek to interpret the Bible
rather as a religion of life than as a book of
doctrine." In my notebook is one sentence which
he threw out in a subsequent discussion concern-
ing the " Farm and Garden " department of the
paper : " It is the aim of * The Christian Union,' "
said he, "to gospelize all the industrial functions
of life."
But both these aims — to represent what is com-
mon rather than what is denominational, and to
represent what is practical rather than what is
scientific, in the religious life — were subordinate
to his purpose to maintain in the pages of " The
Christian Union " a Christian spirit, one in " sym-
pathy with the mind and will of the Lord Jesus
Christ." How fully he carried out this purpose no
one who was not with him in the times of great
trial and provocation can ever fully know. He often
reiterated this sentiment in our editorial conferences
after I became associated with him on the paper.
" If you are good-natured," he said once, " there is
nothing which you cannot say ; if you are not good-
natured, you cannot say anything." Never in the
five years in which we were associated do I recall a
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 337
single instance in which he manifested an acerb or
irritated spirit, a desire to hit back, a wish to get
even with an antagonist, or even an ambition for a
victory over him. He would not allow the journal
to be used in his own defense. He would defend
Plymouth Church, if the church were attacked ; he
would restate and explain his own statements of
doctrine, if they had been misinterpreted or misun-
derstood ; but he would never use the editorial
columns, as he never used his pulpit, for purposes
of personal defense. He waa quick and keen in re-
partee, but it was always good-natured repartee. He
never wrote, and rarely uttered, a sentence which
had a sting in it : not because he could not, but
because he would not. He would not even allow
himself to be defended in the columns of the paper
by his associates. After I became co-editor, it was
not my custom to send to him the proofs of the
editorial pages for his examination: he trusted
them to me absolutely from the first ; but on one
occasion a daily paper had attacked him so venom-
ously, and with such gross misrepresentation of
what he had said, that I resolved to depart from the
standing rule of our journal, and reply. I sent my
reply, in proof, to him, unwilling to set at naught,
without his consent, the rule which he had estab-
lished, and he returned the reply to me with the
request, which, of course, was tantamount to a
command, to suppress the editorial. I think now,
as I thought then, that he carried this principle too
far. The journal suffered from the silence which
338 HENRY WARD BEECHER
he imposed upon it, during the time in which he
was subjected to vituperation and abuse, because
there were many who could not understand the
chivalric cause for such silence, and counted it as
giving a quasi consent to the rumors which were
rife concerning him.
In my judgment Mr. Beecher was a great edi-
torial writer, and he would be universally counted
so were it not that his eminence as a writer .has been
dimmed by his greater eminence as an orator.
An editorial writer nnist be interested in current
events, acquainted with current opinion, have a
grasp of great fundamental principles, an accurate,
though not necessarily a detailed knowledge of
facts, must be able to concentrate on one theme,
in one article, all his powers, must have an imagina-
tion which presents principles in concrete forms,
an emotion which vivifies his teaching with life,
must write a vigorous, terse English, must waste
no words in rhetorical amplifications, and must
possess power to create, not merely reflect, public
opinion. All these powers Mr. Beecher had in an
eminent degree, and, superadded to them, an iri-
descent humor and a self-controlled emotion, which
prevented his editorials from ever being afflicted
with dullness : they now flashed fire and now were
rich with color, like his own favorite opal. Re-
reading the pages of the first volume of "The
Christian Union," to which he contributed more
largely than to any subsequent issues, I am impressed
with these qualities manifesting themselves in dif-
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 339
ferent proportions in different contributions, — now
in a strong discussion of some great public question ;
now in a succession of paragraphs, like an after-
dinner table-talk.
The phenomenal success into which " The Chris-
tian Union " leaped from its birth was due partly
to the conception which Mr. Beecher had of what
a religious journal should be, and to the spirit which
he infused into it through others. But it was not
less due to the loyal seconding and support of Mr.
George S. Merriam, Mr. Beecher's associate in the
editorship, and the boundless energy and sagac-
ity of the publishers, Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
What as editor Mr. Beecher did in those first years
of " The Christian Union," in it, and for it, and
through it, Mr. George S. Merriam, who was its
real editor from May, 1870, to December, 1875,
tells in the following letter, which, written to me,
at my request for information, he permits me to
incorporate here : —
I went to the paper in May, 1870, almost immediately
after it started, and remained, for the most part as man-
aging editor, until December, 1875, when I left on
account of a difference with Mr. Beecher over a business
question. During that period Mr. Beecher wrote very
little and edited still less. The exact amount of his
writing could be learned, if it were worth while, from
the record of all contributions to the paper which I kept
in the big editorial book, which I suppose is still in your
archives. He was so absorbed by other occupations,
and so distracted by cares, that we could get from him
little work and usually little attention — and I think the
340 HENRY WARD BEECHER
tongue rather than the pen was his natural weapon.
Brilliantly though he often wrote, it seemed to require
a special occasion and considerable pressure to induce
him to write. But talk, — why, when he was in good
mood, and that was much of the time, an audience of
two or three, and a congenial theme, would move him
to speech as eloquent as if he were in Plymouth pulpit.
He would sit on the table (if so it chanced in an office),
and hold forth so brilliantly that Edward Ford, most
enterprising of publishers, once had a scheme for keep-
ing a stenographer in ambush, and getting articles from
him unawares.
Of editing as a practical business he knew almost
nothing. But he had the great merit of giving his sub-
ordinates free rein, when he knew he could trust them.
He never interfered needlessly, never nagged, rarely
censured (he hated to give pain, in that as in all ways),
and, to say truth, seldom praised. He pretty much let
the paper run itself, making us glad once in a while by
a trenchant editorial on public affairs, or a charming
" Star Paper ; " hastily reading the editorial proofs at
his house Monday morning, curbing now and then his
too eager and outspoken lieutenant by blue pencil lines
through his effusions, but for the most part tolerant and
uncritical ; in emergencies selecting the business or edi-
torial conductors — not always with the soundest judg-
ment ; coming into the occasional stockholders' meetings,
sanguine and optimistic, and feeling when he had said
a thing as if he had done it.
Yet the paper was deeply indebted to him for its
character and for its life. It was begun, not at his initia-
tive, but by young men who devotedly believed in him,
and who aimed to gain for him a larger audience. The
best of its capital was the popularity of his name. Its
financial support came from business men who not only
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 337
single instance in which he manifested an acerb or
irritated spirit, a desire to hit back, a wish to get
even with an antagonist, or even an ambition for a
victory over him. He would not allow the journal
to be used in his own defense. He would defend
Plymouth Church, if the church were attacked ; he
would restate and explain his own statements of
doctrine, if they had been misinterpreted or misun-
derstood; but he would never use the editorial
columns, as he never used his pulpit, for purposes
of personal defense. He was quick and keen in re-
partee, but it was always good-natured repartee. He
never wrote, and rarely uttered, a sentence which
had a sting in it : not because he could not, but
because he would not. He would not even allow
himself to be defended in the columns of the paper
by his associates. After I became co-editor, it was
not my custom to send to him the proofs of the
editorial pages for his examination: he trusted
them to me absolutely from the first ; but on one
occasion a daily paper had attacked him so venom-
ously, and with such gross misrepresentation of
what he had said, that I resolved to depart from the
standing rule of our journal, and reply. I sent my
reply, in proof, to him, unwilling to set at naught,
without his consent, the rule which he had estab-
lished, and he returned the reply to me with the
request, which, of course, was tantamount to a
command, to suppress the editorial. I think now,
as I thought then, that he carried this principle too
far. The journal suffered from the silence which
338 HENRY WARD BEECHER
he imposed upon it, during the time in which he
was subjected to vituperation and abuse, because
there were many who could not understand the
chivalric cause for such silence, and counted it as
giving a quasi consent to the rumors which were
rife concerning him.
In my judgment Mr. Beecher was a great edi-
torial writer, and he would be universally counted
so were it not that his eminence as a writer has been
dimmed by his greater eminence as an orator.
An editorial writer must be interested in current
events, acquainted with current opinion, have a
grasp of great fundamental principles, an accurate,
though not necessarily a detailed knowledge of
facts, must be able to concentrate on one theme,
in one article, all his powers, must have an imagina-
tion which presents principles in concrete forms,
an emotion which vivifies his teaching with life,
must write a vigorous, terse English, must waste
no words in rhetorical amplifications, and must
possess power to create, not merely reflect, public
opinion. All these powers Mr. Beecher had in an
eminent degree, and, superadded to them, an iri-
descent humor and a self -controlled emotion, which
prevented his editorials from ever being afflicted
with dullness : they now flashed fire and now were
rich with color, like his own favorite opal. Re-
reading the pages of the first volume of "The
Christian Union," to which he contributed more
largely than to any subsequent issues, I am impressed
with these qualities manifesting themselves in dif-
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 339
ferent proportions in different contributions, — now
in a strong discussion of some great public question ;
now in a succession of paragraphs, like an after-
dinner table-talk.
The phenomenal success into which " The Chris-
tian Union " leaped from its birth was due partly
to the conception which Mr. Beecher had of what
a religious journal should be, and to the spirit which
he infused into it through others. But it was not
less due to the loyal seconding and support of Mr.
George S. Merriam, Mr. Beecher's associate in the
editorship, and the boundless energy and sagac-
ity of the publishers, Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
What as editor Mr. Beecher did in those first years
of " The Christian Union," in it, and for it, and
through it, Mr. George S. Merriam, who was its
real editor from May, 1870, to December, 1875,
tells in the following letter, which, written to me,
at my request for information, he permits me to
incorporate here : —
I went to the paper in May, 1870, almost immediately
after it started, and remained, for the most part as man-
aging editor, until December, 1875, when I left on
account of a difference with Mr. Beecher over a business
question. During that period Mr. Beecher wrote very
little and edited still less. The exact amount of his
writing could be learned, if it were worth while, from
the record of all contributions to the paper which I kept
in the big editorial book, which I suppose is still in your
archives. He was so absorbed by other occupations,
and so distracted by cares, that we could get from him
little work and usually little attention — and I think the
340 HENRY WARD BEECHER
tongue rather than the pen was his natural weapon.
Brilliantly though he often wrote, it seemed to require
a special occasion and considerable pressure to induce
him to write. But talk, — why, when he was in good
mood, and that was much of the time, an audience of
two or three, and a congenial theme, would move him
to speech as eloquent as if he were in Plymouth pulpit.
He would sit on the table (if so it chanced in an office),
and hold forth so brilliantly that Edward Ford, most
enterprising of publishers, once had a scheme for keep-
ing a stenographer in ambush, and getting articles from
him unawares.
Of editing as a practical business he knew almost
nothing. But he had the great merit of giving his sub-
ordinates free rein, when he knew he could trust them.
He never interfered needlessly, never nagged, rarely
censured (he hated to give pain, in that as in all ways),
and, to say truth, seldom praised. He pretty much let
the paper run itself, making us glad once in a while by
a trenchant editorial on public affairs, or a charming
" Star Paper ; " hastily reading the editorial proofs at
his house Monday morning, curbing now and then his
too eager and outspoken lieutenant by blue pencil lines
through his effusions, but for the most part tolerant and
uncritical ; in emergencies selecting the business or edi-
torial conductors — not always with the soundest judg-
ment ; coming into the occasional stockholders' meetings,
sanguine and optimistic, and feeling when he had said
a thing as if he had done it.
Yet the paper was deeply indebted to him for its
character and for its life. It was begun, not at his initia-
tive, but by young men who devotedly believed in him,
and who aimed to gain for him a larger audience. The
best of its capital was the popularity of his name. Its
financial support came from business men who not only
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 349
interprets its life. He enters into the character of
the central figure, and portrays a Christ who is at
once wholly human and wholly divine. The theo-
logy is as simple as that of the Apostles; the
faith as childlike and unquestioning ; the literary
pictures of scenes and events are as unecclesias-
tical, unconventional, naturally human as the best
water-colors in Tissot's remarkable collection ; the
insight into the character and the teaching of
Jesus is certainly unsurpassed, and to my thought
unequaled, by any analogous work. As an inter-
pretation of the life, character, and teachings of
Jesus Christ, it occupies a unique place in that
library of " Lives of Christ " which the nineteenth
century produced.
The writer is known by his style even more than
the wearer by his clothes. The defects and the
excellencies of Mr. Beecher are those of an extreme
naturalness : he wrote as he spoke — extempo-
raneously. His preparations were general, not
specific. He rarely revised or polished or perfected ;
still more rarely did he rewrite. He talked with
his pen, and writing was wearisome to him because
he could not drive his pen fast enough to keep pace
with his thinking. But he never learned to write
by dictation; even his letters were autographic.
By training and temperament a preacher, he car-
ried the didactic spirit into all his serious writing.
Artistic he certainly was, but not continuously,
and never did he write merely for art's sake. In
one of his sermons he says, " The figures of the
350 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Bible are not mere graceful ornaments — ara-
besques to grace a border, or fancy frescoes that
give mere beauty to a chamber or saloon. They
are language." In this sentence he interprets his
own use of the imagination. Sometimes in his
lighter writing it is an end ; he indulges in the
play of the imagination for the mere enjoyment
of so doing; but generally, his imagination is
illuminating ; it is called into the service of an
earnest purpose. His humor is instinctive and
irrepressible. He perceives incongruous relations,
and his perception of them flashes out on all
occasions, giving a spontaneous and unpremeditated
sparkle to his most serious discourses. His style is
very varied, depending more than in almost any
writer I am familiar with, upon the mood of the
moment ; but in all its variations, it preserves the
qualities of clearness, vigor, and sympathy. The
singleness of his purpose made his style clear, for
he never considered what was prudent to say, but
only how he could make his auditors or readers
understand him. His courage, the directness of his
aim, and the marshaling of his thoughts, which
often march in serried ranks, rank after rank, over-
whelming, not only by their number, but by their
disciplined array, combined to give to his style
great vigor. His sympathy gave to his style a
quality which I can compare only to timbre in the
voice, — penetrating, inviting, winning, subduing.
He was a student of many authors, — not only for
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 351
their ideas but for their style, — but he was an imita-
tor of none. He formed himself on no mould, —
indeed, I am inclined to think that he did not
consciously mould himself at all, — he grew. But
he lived in intellectual companionship with great
authors. Neither in public address nor in private
conversation did he indicate a lover's familiarity
with Shakespeare among the older authors, or with
Browning, Emerson, or Carlyle among the later
writers. But he had read and studied Buskin's
" Modern Painters," which he heartily commends
as an interpretation of nature ; he was familiar
with Milton, some of whose prose essays he had
read and reread many times ; and with Homer and
Dante, though only through translations.
Critics treat literature by different and even
inconsistent standards. To some literature is an
art, to be tested, as a picture, by its beauty of
form and color, or as music, by its rhythmic struc-
ture. To such Mr. Beecher's writings and addresses
will never take a high place in literature. They are
too uneven, pass too quickly from the written to
the spoken style, from the eloquence of the orator
to the effectiveness of the talker — are, in a word,
too unfinished. Some regard literature as an expres-
sion of life, and count that the best literature which
best expresses the highest and most varied life.
To such Mr. Beecher's writings will always take a
high place. For they express always with effective-
ness, generally with vigor, often with real eloquence,
352 HENRY WARD BEECHER
frequently with consummate artistic beauty, a life
of almost infinite variety.
Before taking up the closing days of Mr. Beech-
er's life, a chapter must be given to the work which
contains his own interpretation of himself as a
preacher — " The Yale Lectures on Preaching."
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 349
interprets its life. He enters into the character of
the central figure, and portrays a Christ who is at
once wholly human and wholly divine. The theo-
logy is as simple as that of the Apostles; the
faith as childlike and unquestioning ; the literary
pictures of scenes and events are as unecclesias-
tical, unconventional, naturally human as the best
water-colors in Tissot's remarkable collection ; the
insight into the character and the teaching of
Jesus is certainly unsurpassed, and to my thought
unequaled, by any analogous work. As an inter-
pretation of the life, character, and teachings of
Jesus Christ, it occupies a unique place in that
library of " Lives of Christ " which the nineteenth
century produced.
The writer is known by his style even more than
the wearer by his clothes. The defects and the
excellencies of Mr. Beecher are those of an extreme
naturalness: he wrote as he spoke — extempo-
raneously. His preparations were general, not
specific. He rarely revised or polished or perfected ;
still more rarely did he rewrite. He talked with
his pen, and writing was wearisome to him because
he could not drive his pen fast enough to keep pace
with his thinking. But he never learned to write
by dictation; even his letters were autographic.
By training and temperament a preacher, he car-
ried the didactic spirit into all his serious writing.
Artistic he certainly was, but not continuously,
and never did he write merely for art's sake. In
one of his sermons he says, " The figures of the
350 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Bible are not mere graceful ornaments — ara-
besques to grace a border, or fancy frescoes that
give mere beauty to a chamber or saloon. They
are language." In this sentence he interprets his
own use of the imagination. Sometimes in his
lighter writing it is an end ; he indulges in the
play of the imagination for the mere enjoyment
of so doing; but generally, his imagination is
illuminating; it is called into the service of an
earnest purpose. His humor is instinctive and
irrepressible. He perceives incongruous relations,
and his perception of them flashes out on all
occasions, giving a spontaneous and unpremeditated
sparkle to his most serious discourses. His style is
very varied, depending more than in almost any
writer I am familiar with, upon the mood of the
moment ; but in all its variations, it preserves the
qualities of clearness, vigor, and sympathy. The
singleness of his purpose made his style clear, for
he never considered what was prudent to say, but
only how he could make his auditors or readers
understand him. His courage, the directness of his
aim, and the marshaling of his thoughts, which
often march in serried ranks, rank after rank, over-
whelming, not only by their number, but by their
disciplined array, combined to give to his style
great vigor. His sympathy gave to his style a
quality which I can compare only to timbre in the
voice, — penetrating, inviting, winning, subduing.
He was a student of many authors, — not only for
EDITOR AND AUTHOR 351
their ideas but for their style, — but he was an imita-
tor of none. He formed himself on no mould, —
indeed, I am inclined to think that he did not
consciously mould himself at all, — he grew. But
he lived in intellectual companionship with great
authors. Neither in public address nor in private
conversation did he indicate a lover's familiarity
with Shakespeare among the older authors, or with
Browning, Emerson, or Carlyle among the later
writers. But he had read and studied Ruskin's
" Modern Painters," which he heartily commends
as an interpretation of nature; he was familiar
with Milton, some of whose prose essays he had
read and reread many times ; and with Homer and
Dante, though only through translations.
Critics treat literature by different and even
inconsistent standards. To some literature is an
art, to be tested, as a picture, by its beauty of
form and color, or as music, by its rhythmic struc-
ture. To such Mr. Beecher's writings and addresses
will never take a high pla/je in literature. They are
too uneven, pass too quickly from the written to
the spoken style, from the eloquence of the orator
to the effectiveness of the talker — are, in a word,
too unfinished. Some regard literature as an expres-
sion of life, and count that the best literature which
best expresses the highest and most varied life.
To such Mr. Beecher's writings will always take a
high place. For they express always with effective-
ness, generally with vigor, often with real eloquence,
352 HENRY WARD BEECHER
frequently with consummate artistic beauty, a life
of almost infinite variety.
Before taking up the closing days of Mr. Beech-
er's life, a chapter must be given to the work which
contains his own interpretation of himself as a
preacher — " The Yale Lectures on Preaching."
CHAPTER XV
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING
In 1871 Mr. Henry W. Sage, of Brooklyn, a pro-
minent member of Plymouth Church and a warm
friend of Henry Ward Beecher, contributed the
necessary funds for the establishment of a lecture-
ship on preaching in the Divinity School at Yale
College. In honor of Mr. Beecher's father it was
named the Lyman Beecher Lectureship on Preach-
ing ; its object was to secure for young men in the
seminary a course of lectures on the art of preach-
ing from those actively engaged in the practice of
it. It was generally understood that Mr. Sage
desired especially to secure such counsels for the
benefit of young ministers from his own pastor;
and accordingly the first three courses were given
by Henry Ward Beecher : the first specifically on
preaching, the second on church administration,
the third on the use of Christian doctrines, or what
might be called applied theology.
In his preface to the first series of these lectures
Mr. Beecher indicates what is both their strength
and their weakness*. " The discourses here given,"
he says, "were wholly unwritten and were famil-
iar conversational addresses, rather than elaborate
speeches. I have not been able to revise the report-
354 HENRY WARD BEECHER
er's notes, or to correct the proofs of the printer."
To such work of revision Mr. Beecher was always
averse. If he had undertaken it in this case the
lectures would probably have lost in familiarity of
tone more than they would have gained in homo-
geneity of structure. As usual in his spoken ad-
dresses, he had in mind the audience immediately
before him, not the larger audience he would sub-
sequently reach through the printed page. The lec-
tures are throughout autobiographical in spirit, and
often in form. They possess a literary character
analogous to that of the " Table-Talk " of Luther
or of Coleridge. They are not symmetrically philo-
sophical, but they are, what is better, personal
and vital. It is in this personality that their chief
charm and perhaps their chief value lie. They
not only state the philosophy which Mr. Beecher
had formulated as to the ministerial functions, but
they reveal the secret of his own power, and are
the product of his own life; a self -revelation of
his own inmost spirit, an interpretation of himself
to his audience. As through a window we look in
and see the intellectual and spiritual processes by
which the sermons and addresses which produced
such results were prepared. In here reporting the
substance of these conversational addresses it is
impossible to preserve this charm of personality.
The aphoristic wisdom, the genial humor, the ef-
fervescent spirits, the unconventional piety, the
warmth of human sympathy, the autobiographical
reminiscences, the personal self -revelation, cannot
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 355
be preserved, can scarcely be even intimated in such
an abstract as is here prescribed. Nor can the large-
ness of resource, the intellectual readiness, the human
sympathy, and the genial humor that characterized
his answers to the questions which the students
were incited to propound to him at the close of
each lecture, be portrayed.
"Pulpit dynamics" is the phrase which Mr.
Beecher, in personal conversation with me, used
to designate the first volume. It was a felicitous
designation. The entire volume is devoted to a con-
sideration of the secret of pulpit power. In it he
deals with the minister exclusively as a preacher.
" The preacher is a teacher ; but he is more." " He
looks beyond mere knowledge to a character which
that knowledge is to form. It is not enough that
men shall know. They must 6e." Therefore the
preacher must not merely know ; he must be. " The
truth must exist in him as a living experience,
a glowing enthusiasm, an intense reality." The
divine truth must be " a part of his own experience,
so that when he speaks to men it shall not be he
alone that speaks, but God in him." This living
force of the human soul brought to bear upon
the living souls for the sake of their transforma-
tion is the fundamental conception underlying all
successful preaching. This emphasis on the per-
sonal power of the preacher emphasizes the differ-
ence between the evangelical and the hierarchical
churches. " Both hold to the indispensableness of
divine power ; but one believes that power to work
356 HENRY WARD BEECHER
chiefly through church ordinances, the other be-
lieves that it works through living men." " The
man that preaches with power is an artist. He is
a living creature. But the man who merely comes
to administer ordinances on Sundays or Saints'
Days, who goes through a regular routine, is no-
thing but the engineer who runs the machine." He
also does good, but not the highest good. That is
wrought by the sermon ; and among sermons, that
which is highest is the one preached " for divine
power on men's minds and hearts ; " in which the
preacher has " a definite reason why he selected one
subject rather than another, and why he put it in
one form rather than another." " The highest con-
ception of a sermon is, that it is a prescription
which a man has made, either for a certain individ-
ual, or for a certain class, or for a certain state of
things that he knows to exist in the congregation."
Next to the character of the preacher and a
definite object in his sermon comes style, — the
avoidance of " scholastic, artificial style ; " the for-
mation of a natural style, such as a man in earnest
uses in conversation. In addition to these qualifica-
tions for the ministry are fruitf ulness in moral ideas,
a genius for them, such as a mathematician has for
mathematics, or a musician for musical ideas ; in-
terest in men, sympathy with them, power to move
them ; " living by faith, the sense of the infinite
and the invisible, the sense of something else be-
sides what we see with the physical eyes, the sense
of God, of eternity, of heaven ; " humility, willing-
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 357
ness to be the least of all God's servants and to
labor in the humblest sphere.
Entering into this ministry with these qualifica-
tions, the preacher must study how to bring his
personality to bear on all sorts and conditions
of men, by all varieties of approach. " If a man
can be saved by pure intellectual preaching, let
him have it. If others require a predominance of
emotion, provide that for them. If by others the
truth is taken more easily through the imagination,
give it to them by forms attractive to the imagina-
tion. If there are still others who demand it in the
form of facts and rules, see that they have it in
that form.'* "Preachers are too apt to set the
truth before their congregations in one way only,
. . . whereas, preaching should be directed to every
element of human nature that God has implanted
in us." If the preacher has not the necessary ver-
satility of character he must set himself to develop
it : he must learn to be all things to all men. To
succeed in such a ministry as this he must make
preaching his whole business. Or if he engage in
other pursuits, he must so do it that they shall add
to his force in preaching, not detract from it. Gar-
dening, lecturing, journeying, aesthetic studies, pub-
lic affairs, society recreations, may be taken just in
so far as they minister to the preacher's power,
and no farther. There are material hindrances to
this impartation of personality which the preacher
should endeavor to avoid or remove. Such a
hindrance is the separation of the pews from the
358 HENRY WARD BEECHER
pulpit by a great space between the two. Great
Gothic pillars are another, behind which "the
people can sit and look at the columns during
the whole of the sermon time." The barrel pulpit
is another. " I think the matter so important, that
I tell the truth and lie not, when I say that I
would not accept a settlement in a very advan-
tageous place, if I was obliged to preach out of one
of those old-fashioned swallows' nests on the wall."
In preparing for preaching a first condition is
the study of human nature. There are three schools
of preachers : the Ecclesiastical, the Dogmatic, and
the Life School. The first " regard the Church on
earth as something to be administered, and them-
selves as channels, in some sense, of Divine Grace,
to direct the flow of that divine institution." The
second are " those who have relied upon a preexist-
ing system of truth . . . and who apparently pro-
ceed upon the supposition that their whole duty is
discharged when they have made a regular and
repetitious statement of all the great points of
doctrine from time to time." The third proceeds
" upon the necessity for all teachers, first, to study
the strengths and weaknesses of human nature
minutely ; and then to make use of such portions
of the truth as are required by the special needs
of man, and for the development of the spiritual
nature over the animal or lower side — the prepara-
tion of man in his higher nature for a nobler exist-
ence hereafter." The live preacher must study
human nature. First, "because it illustrates the
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 359
divine nature, which we are to interpret to men."
" The only part of the divine nature which we can
understand is that part which corresponds to our-
selves." Therefore, practically, the study of God is
but a higher form of human mental philosophy.
Second, the minister is to cure men. Therefore he
must know what is the disease of which they are
to be cured, and what is normal or healthful hu-
man nature, from which sin is a departure. Third,
he must know man in order to know how to ap-
proach him, as a surgeon called to amputate a leg
must know anatomy as well as the surgeon's tools.
Every type of human nature, every phase of human
experience, is, therefore, a proper subject for the
preacher's study. He ought to know physiology,
and the psychology which is founded upon it. He
ought to study society and he ought to study the
individual. For such study phrenology is " a con-
venient basis." " Not only is its nomenclature con-
venient, but what it teaches concerning craniology
and physiology furnishes valuable indications of
individual character." " I see a man with a small
brow and big in the lower part of his head like a
bull, and I know that that man is not likely to be
a saint." " If I see a man whose forehead is very
high and large, but who is thin in the back of the
head, and with a small neck and trunk, I say to my-
self ... he is a man who has great organs, but
nothing to drive them with. He is like a splendid
locomotive without a boiler." And this study of
human nature should be conducted for the purpose
360 HENRY WARD BEECHER
of regenerating it. Therefore the minister must be
familiar with men, not merely generically with
human nature, but specifically with individuals. He
" should take kindly to individual men for the very
purpose of studying them." The minister " must be
a man among men. . . . Books alone are not enough.
Studying is not enough."
As to specific methods of preaching no universal
law can be laid down : the preacher must under-
stand his own temperament and adapt his preach-
ing to it. " That is the best cat that catches the
most rats. And in your case it will be the best
form of sermon that does the work of the sermon
the best. If you can do best by writing, write
your sermons ; and if you can do better by not
writing, do not write them." So as to length of
sermon : that must depend upon the community ;
upon the church ; upon its other services ; and
upon the previous habits of the people. There are
four psychological elements that enter into the suc-
cessful sermon, — imagination, emotion, enthusi-
asm, and conviction. Imagination is indispensable
to clearness. It is the true germ of faith. It in-
cludes " the power of the minister himself to real-
ize the invisible God as present, and to present him
to the people." Emotion is indispensable to power.
" A minister without feeling is no better than a
book. You might just as well put a book, printed
in large type, on the desk where all could read it,
and have a man turn over the leaves as you read,
as to have a man stand up, and clearly and coldly
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 361
recite the prosaic truth through which he has gone
by a logical course of reasoning. " To imagination
and emotion must be added enthusiasm and con-
viction : the first to give outburst and glow ; the
second to carry conviction to others. "Do not
prove things too much." " Preach truth to the
consciousness of men."
For the most effective work in preaching, physi-
cal equipment is necessary. This includes careful
drill in the use of the voice and of the whole body.
This drill must be so thorough that the right use
of both becomes a second nature. " No knowledge
is really knowledge until you can use it without
knowing it." This training should include ges-
ture and bodily carriage, as well as voice. It ought
to take place early and be incorporated in the char-
acter of the minister. Other training is not less
necessary. It should include thorough familiarity
with the Bible ; not so much a knowledge of philo-
sophy, as a habit of thinking philosophically, the
"habit of looking at truth, not in isolated and
fragmentary forms, but in all its relations ; " and
skill in the use of illustration, not for ornament,
but for producing conviction ; a use based on the
principle that " substantially the mode in which we
learn a new thing is by its being likened to some-
thing that we already know." Illustrations rightly
used assist argument, help the hearers to remember,
stimulate the imagination, rest the audience by
changing the faculties employed in listening, reach
through different avenues different hearers, and
362 HENRY WARD BEECHER
bridge difficult places by teaching parabolically
truth to which men would refuse to listen if pre-
sented directly. To be effective they must be va-
rious, often homely, accurate, and apt and prompt.
The minister ought to have health, and cultivate
health. " What I mean by « health ' is such a feel-
ing or tone in every part of a man's body that he
has a natural language of health." " It is buoyancy.
It is the insatiable desire of play and of exertion."
"A man in he,alth is a fountain, and he flows
over at the eye, the lip, and all the time, by every
species of action and demonstration." Health,
thus defined, is almost indispensable to oratorical
power. " The speakers that move a crowd . . . are
almost always men of very large physical develop-
ment, men of very strong digestive powers, and
whose lungs have great orating capacity. They
are men who, while they have a sufficient thought-
power to create all the material needed, have pre-
eminently the explosive power by which they can
thrust their material out at men." Preaching
" means the hardest kind of work," and therefore
requires health. Without health " it is impossible
to sustain a cheerful and hopeful ministry."
Health helps the preacher to give healthful views
of Christianity as that which " aims only at a
nobler style of manhood and at a better and hap-
pier style of living. Health is a sweetener of work
and gives a joyous relish for it. To have health one
must know how to eat, how to sleep, how to exer-
cise, and how to adjust his eating, his sleep, his exer-
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 363
cise, not according to hard and fast rules given to
him by another, but according to his own nature
and its needs. How Mr. Beecher regulated his own
habits he told the students, and from this lecture I
have drawn in an earlier chapter, in my description
of his personal habits.
In his ninth lecture Mr. Beecher discusses ser-
mon-making : the relative advantages of the writ-
ten and unwritten discourse, urging neither, only
urging that " the essential necessity is that every
preacher should be able to speak without notes,"
because there are many occasions in which nothing
will answer but the unwritten discourse. But ex-
temporaneous preaching does not mean extempo-
raneous preparation. " There must be incessant
work." Sermons should be variable in style and
quality. " If it be possible, never have two plans
alike." " If you have preached to-day to the heart
through the imagination, to-morrow you are to
preach to the heart through the reason." " When
you have finished your sermon, not a man of your
congregation should be unable to tell you what you
have done ; but when you begin a sermon, no man
in the congregation ought to be able to tell you
what you are going to do." The sermon should be
suggestive, not exhaustive. " That sermon has been
overwrought and overdone which leaves nothing for
the mind of the hearer to do." " A much larger
use should be made of expository preaching than
has been customary in our churches," because of
the wealth and diversity of topics which will come
364 HENRY WARD BEECHER
up for illustration by means of expository preach-
ing. The preacher should avoid the temptation to
preach " great sermons " — " Nebuchadnezzar ser-
mons, over which the vain preacher stands, saying,
4 Is not this great Babylon that I have builded for
the house of the kingdom, by the might of my
power and for the honor of my majesty.' " " Ser-
mons that are tridy great come of themselves.
They spring from sources deeper than vanity or
ambition." As to length of sermons, " that should
never be determined by the clock, but upon broader
considerations — short sermons for small subjects,
and long sermons for large subjects."
In all the preacher's ministry, love must be
the central element and the secret of power — to
the elucidation of this truth, the tenth and last
lecture of the first series is devoted. Love " is
not so much a faculty or power, as it is a certain
condition of the whole spirit, made up of the con-
tribution of several different elements of the mind,
having relations to things superior and to things
inferior." " It is the going-out of thought, of feel-
ing, and of sympathy towards others, and towards
whatever can receive benefit from us." " It is the
wish that whatever we are thinking of, or saying,
or doing, may make some one better and happier."
It is not lazy, smiling good nature. It has fire and
snap, and may be terribly angry. It is not the
absence of any power, but it gives quality and direc-
tion to all the powers. It is central and funda-
mental to the' minister ; it inspires in him joy in
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 365
his work, makes it spontaneous and healthful, gives
to it power and abundance, gives catholicity to sym-
pathy and therefore approach to all sorts of men,
sustains in discouragement, gives freedom and tact
and skill and courage. " You can discuss any topic
if you only love men enough ; your heart will tell
you how to approach."
Doubtless some of Mr. Beecher's positions in
this series of lectures will be criticised. I am
doubtful whether craniological and physiological
aspects are as sure indications of character as he
seems to think ; they did not, as we have seen,
prevent him from falling a prey to designing men.
He does not seem to me, in his criticism of cere-
monialism, to allow sufficiently for the power in the
people of the imagination which he lauds in the
preacher. Who has seen a Roman Catholic con-
gregation bowing at the elevation of the Host, and
not realized their imaginative power to clothe the
Host with an impalpable and invisible personality ?
"Who can doubt that worshipers, in their use of a
liturgy, are enabled, by their imagination, to see
in it the expression of the penitence, the petitions,
and the gratitude of those whose use of it through
centuries of devotion has impregnated it with a
spiritual life ? The administrator of such a liturgy
is more than an " engineer who runs the machine."
A part, too, of these counsels will possibly appear
to the modern reader commonplace. He will say
to them " of course." But they were not common-
366 HENRY WARD BEECHER
place thirty years ago. They were radical then. It
is illustrative of the power of Mr. Beecher's spirit
that the methods of the preacher and the spirit of
the pulpit have undergone so great a change in the
last half century. It is less ecclesiastical and more
practical ; it is less theological and more human ;
it is less devoted to building up a system and more
devoted to building up men ; there is, to use Mr.
Beecher's classification, less ecclesiastical and dog-
matic preaching, and more that is vital. And yet
there is certainly abundant occasion for still fur-
ther improvement. Whatever preachers may think,
most laymen will agree in the opinion that preach-
ing would receive a vast accession of power if
preachers generally realized that sermons are only
means to an end, that every sermon should be
aimed at a definite result, and that all use of doc-
trine, argument, and illustration, all questions con-
cerning rhetoric and style, and all employment of
voice and gesture should be determined by the
consideration how best to produce on the auditor
a definite ethical and spiritual result, carefully
planned beforehand by the preacher as the sole
object of his sermon, to which all is directed, and
by which all is shaped and patterned.
It is more difficult to give, by analysis, any con-
ception of the second series of lectures, because,
even more than the first, their value lies not so
much in principles expounded, or practical coun-
sels given, as in spiritual life imparted. A certain
unreserve was one of the elements of Mr. Beecher's
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 367
power. Like Paul, he gave frank and free expres-
sion to his own personal experiences, whenever he
believed their disclosure would be spiritually help-
ful to those who were looking to him for life. This
spiritual freedom is a marked characteristic of the
second series of his lectures on preaching. A single
quotation may serve at once to illustrate this char-
acteristic, and to indicate to the reader one of the
hidden sources, perhaps the chief source, of his
extraordinary power in the pulpit : —
I can bear this witness, that never in the study, in
the most absorbed moments ; never on the street, in
those chance inspirations that everybody is subject to,
when I am lifted up highest ; never in any company,
where friends are the sweetest and dearest, ^— never in
any circumstances in life is there anything that is to me
so touching as when I stand, in ordinary good health,
before my great congregation to pray for them. Hun-
dreds and hundreds of times, as I rose to pray and
glanced at the congregation, I could not keep back the
tears. There came to my mind such a sense of their
wants, there were so many hidden sorrows, there were
so many weights and burdens, there were so many
doubts, there were so many states of weakness, there
were so many dangers, so many perils, there were such
histories, — not world histories, but eternal world his-
tories, — I had such a sense of compassion for them, my
soul so longed for them, that it seemed to me as if I
could scarcely open my mouth to speak for them. And
when I take my people and carry them before God to
plead for them, I never plead for myself as I do for
them, — I never could. Indeed, I sometimes, as I have
said, hardly feel as if I had anything to ask ; but oh,
368 HENRY WARD BEECHER
when I know what is going on in the heart of my peo-
ple, and I am permitted to stand to lead them, to in-
spire their thought and feeling, and go into the presence
of God, there is no time that Jesus is so crowned with
glory as then ! There is no time that I ever get so far
into heaven. I can see my mother there ; I see again
my little children ; I walk again, arm in arm with those
who have been my companions and co-workers. I for-
get the body, I live in the spirit ; and it seems as if God
permitted me to lay my hand on the very Tree of Life,
and to shake down from it both leaves and fruit for the
healing of my people !
This personal experience, this combination of
spiritual vision and human sympathy, transfuses
in an eminent degree the second volume of Mr.
Beecher's lectures on preaching. It cannot be inter-
preted in an analysis ; and yet without it the ana-
lysis is to the original lectures what a pressed and
dried flower, its fragrance gone and its colors
dimmed, is to the original living flower as it grows
in the garden. The central principle of the volume,
from the application of which all its counsels pro-
ceed, is that the object of the ministry is the pro-
duction of Christlikeness of character in man. In
choosing the field, therefore, the minister is to go
where he is most needed. If there be no church,
he is to create one by bringing together men in
the religious life that they may help themselves,
and help one another spiritually through their
social relations. His work in the community is to
be primarily spiritual ; it is to bring upon them
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. If he is to do
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 369
this, his ministry must be a prayerful ministry. If
he is to lift others up into the presence of the In-
visible Father, he must walk in that presence him-
self : — and this is prayer. He must promote the
spirit of prayer in the church, and through this the
prayer-meeting, which is a family meeting of a spir-
itual household in spiritual fellowship. To the con-
duct of the prayer-meeting Mr. Beecher devotes
two lectures, urging its value and giving practical
counsels how to conduct it. The same spiritual
quality should inhere in the church music ; from
the opening voluntary to the end it should be
worshipful. In this music the whole church ought
to take part, because the whole church ought to
worship, and in the non-liturgical churches no other
congregational worship is provided but that through
music.
The same spirit should animate the preacher in
his pastoral work. " When people won't come to
hear you preach, do you go and talk to them ; and
when they do come to hear you, and you have
hardly anything to preach about, then go to them
all the more." But the object of this personal vis-
itation, of the social gatherings of the church, and
of all its social life, should not be mere social fellow-
ship ; it should be the development in men, by the
social life, of the spiritual qualities of faith and hope
and love. This spirit is to be carried into the Sun-
day-schools and missions, and is to inspire all the
various forms of lay activity. The world will never
be converted to Christ by ministers alone ; the
370 HENRY WARD BEECHER
whole church must become a working church. In
this work of the church revivals are not only to be
desired, but to be planned for. The highest ex-
periences rarely come to men singly. The reviving
of the entire community through the reviving of
the church is not only as legitimate as the reviving
of the individual, but often the best way of securing
the individual revival. Such revivals are subject to
law. The conditions necessary to it, the methods of
promoting it, the proper way to conduct it so as to
avoid incidental evils, all are to be matter of care-
ful study. For a consideration of Mr. Beecher's
specific counsels respecting the conduct of prayer-
meetings and the promotion of revivals, the reader
must be referred to the volume. Some of these
counsels are inapplicable to the pastors of liturgical
churches ; some of them would be difficult to apply
in our time. I think Mr. Beecher himself would
have laid, in his later life, more stress on the pro-
motion of normal and unconscious spiritual develop-
ment and less on specific methods for arousing the
spiritual nature through social cooperation. But
the fundamental principles elucidated in this vol-
ume, and still more the spiritual life which pervades
it, are valuable in all churches, in all times, and in
all communities.
The third series in the " Yale Lectures on Preach-
ing " deals with Christian doctrine, or what may
be called applied theology. This volume seems
to me the least distinctive and characteristic of
the three. It deals less with the methods of the
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 371
preacher; it is less personal and vital; there is
much less autobiographical element in it. He hints
at, without expounding, the modern evolutionary
conception of the Bible as a progressive revelation
through spiritual experience. He bases its author-
ity upon the fact that " it has been so long in the
world, and so much taught, that it is an authority
now among the common people, certainly through-
out Christendom." He lays stress on the fact that
the object of the preacher is to bring man into per-
sonal relations with God ; for this purpose he must
first establish God's personality, second, illustrate
his disposition, third, develop a sense of his pre-
sence. He shows how this is to be done — psycho-
logically through the use of the spiritual imagina-
tion, historically through the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ. His analysis of Jesus Christ as
" the Divine Life in human conditions " is suggest-
ive, inspiring, and in places full of spiritual beauty,
but does not compare for completeness of analysis
with Dr. BushnelTs famous chapter in " Nature
and the Supernatural " on the character of Jesus.
He lays stress on the reality of sinfulness, as
something more than a mere multitude of individ-
ual sins, and on Christian life as a growth embody-
ing three stages, — repentance, conversion, and
sanctification ; and he sums up the whole teaching
of the three courses in one sentence : " Our high
mission, our noble calling, is to build up souls, to
perfect the Christian life, and to make manhood
acceptable to God, and radiant in the sight of all
372 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Of all the volumes which Mr. Beecher has left as
his bequest to the world, I regard the " Yale Lec-
tures on Preaching " as the most important, and
likely to be the most permanent in their direct influ-
ence upon the Church of Christ. He left no political
writings save the editorials in " The Independent."
The admirable collection of addresses on political
subjects, gathered by Mr. J. R. Howard, are chiefly
valuable as a contribution to the history of a great
moral reform, to the accomplishment of which Mr.
Beecher contributed so largely. His " Life of
Christ " he did not complete. It is beautiful in its
expression, and spiritually suggestive in its thoughts,
but Mr. Beecher will not be known to the future
as a great historian. " Norwood " contains graphic,
vivid pictures of New England life, but no one
would think of calling Mr. Beecher a great novelist.
His " Lectures to Young Men " belong to the ear-
lier epoch in his ministry, and though wonderfully
effective then, would not be equally effective now.
His sermons, preached for immediate effect, are, as
he intended they should be, sermons, not literature,
still less theology. His " Star Papers " and his
" Pleasant Talks about Fruits, Flowers, and Farm-
ing " are literary recreations. Not as an author,
historian, or reformer will he be known to history,
but as the great preacher of the nineteenth century,
— certainly without a superior, if not without a
peer. In the " Yale Lectures on Preaching " he
formulates the principles which guided him in his
ministry, and, what is more important, reveals with
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 373
modest, unconscious candor the spirit which ani-
mated him. Some of his counsels may have be-
come inapplicable, with the change of conditions ;
his unconventionalism will repel those who are sen-
sitive to conventional proprieties ; and I cannot but
wish that it had been consistent with his tempera-
ment to give to these volumes, before his death, a
thorough and painstaking revision ; but I do not
know in the whole range of homiletical literature
any other volumes as well worth careful study by
any man of our time who wishes to understand the
secret of pulpit power, and who is sufficiently cath-
olic in his disposition, whatever his denomination
may be, to take that secret from one whom history
will regard as perhaps the most powerful preacher
in American history, if not also in the history of
the Anglo-Saxon people.
CHAPTER XVI
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE
In the spring of 1886 Mr. Beecher yielded to the
urgency of Major Pond, and consented to revisit
England on a lecture tour. The twenty-three
years which had elapsed since his first campaign
had converted distrust into confidence and aversion
into enthusiasm. When the steamer reached
Queenstown, the mail brought hosts of requests from
all parts of the country for sermons and lectures.
When Mr. Beecher landed at Liverpool delegates
from Bradford, Leeds, York, Carnarvon, Manches-
ter, Edinburgh, Belfast, and Dublin were there to
welcome the speaker who had found so much
difficulty in winning a hearing in 1863. In the
fifteen and a half weeks between the 24th of
July and the 1st of October Mr. Beecher preached
seventeen times, delivered fifty-eight lectures and
nine public addresses : his entire visit was a series
of public ovations. Of his addresses probably the
most important were, one delivered in the City
Temple on Friday morning, October 15, to the
theological students in the city of London, about
six hundred students and about as many clergy-
men of different denominations being present, in
which he declared his convictions concerning the
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 375
secret of pulpit power ; one delivered before the
Freedman's Aid Society Mission at Westminster
Chapel on October 16, in which he presented with
characteristic hopefulness his views concerning the
character, progress, and future of the negroes ; and
one delivered on October 18 before the Congrega-
tionalists at Liverpool, which was largely a con-
fession of his religious faith, in which he reaffirmed,
in the strongest terms, his faith in the divinity of
Jesus Christ as the central truth in his theology.
From this European trip Mr. Beecher returned
in the fall of 1886, refreshed and reinvigorated by
his summer's experience of lecturing, preaching,
and visiting. Landing on Sunday morning too
late to preach, he visited, in the afternoon, each one
of the three Sunday-schools connected with Ply-
mouth Church. Early in December his wife was
taken seriously ill, and for six weeks he sedulously
tended her as nurse, accepting from other members
of the family only such assistance as was indis-
pensable. With her returning health, he began to
make preparations for completing the unfinished
"Life of Christ," and promised when this was
done to undertake his autobiography. To Dr.
Joseph Parker, of London, he wrote : " I have my
snug room upstairs, and am working cosily and
every day on my 'Life of Christ,' which, like
the buds of spring, is beginning to swell, like
the returning birds, is beginning to sing, like the
grass, is beginning to grow, and is already very
green ! But I am hopeful." He refused all lecture
376 HENRY WARD BEECHER
engagements, that he might devote himself to the
completion of this literary task. But it was not
to be completed.
Sunday evening, February 27, 1887, was the
last service Mr. Beecher ever attended in Ply-
mouth Church. It was remembered afterwards that
he lingered for a few moments at the close of
the service listening to the choir as they prac-
ticed a new musical setting by Mr. H. R. Shelley,
the organist of the church, to Faber's " Hark,
hark, my soul, angelic songs are swelling," and
that as he started to go out he remarked, " That
will do to die on." " Will it not do to live
on, Mr. Beecher ? " asked a friend at his side.
" That is the way to die," said he quickly. As he
passed out he saw standing by the furnace register,
to warm themselves, a little girl about ten years
old and her brother, only five years old, who had
for some weeks been in the habit of going alone to
the church on Sunday evenings. Putting his hand
on the little boy's head, he stooped and kissed him,
saying, " It is a cold night for such little tots to
be out." The children, attracted by his kindness,
walked out on either side of him to the door. " It
was," said Dr. Charles H. Hall, in the funeral
sermon, " a fitting close to a grand life, — the old
man of genius and fame shielding the little wan-
derers, — great in breasting tradition always and
prejudices, great also in the gesture, so like him,
that recognized, as did the Master, that the hum-
blest and the poorest were his brethren, the great
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 377
preacher led out into the night by little nameless
waifs."
On Wednesday evening, March 2, after a full
day of shopping with his wife, for some refurnish-
ing of the parlors of the church, and a short even-
ing of recreation with the family, he retired earlier
than usual, and when a little later Mrs. Beecher
went upstairs she found him already apparently
soundly sleeping. Early the next morning she was
awakened from her sleep by an unusual sound in
her husband's room, ran to his side, and found him
suffering from nausea. To her inquiry as to the
matter, he replied, " Nothing but a sick headache,"
and dropped almost instantly to sleep again. He
slept through the following day. Not until four
o'clock in the afternoon was the physician sent for.
An effort was made to arouse Mr. Beecher from
his sleep ; the response was brief and broken ; and
the doctor's conclusion was soon reached: Mr.
Beecher was dying of apoplexy. The end came on
Tuesday morning, at half-past nine o'clock, the
8th of March, 1887.
The first Sunday in the month was the one on
which the Lord's Supper was always administered
in Plymouth Church. The service was held ; but
the sermon was omitted, and the hour was de-
voted to the administration of the communion, the
great congregation breaking in upon the hush of
this solemn service with many sobs. On Sun-
day, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings
prayer-meetings were held in the lecture-room,
378 HENRY WARD BEECHER
participated in by various members of the church.
It was afterwards noted as a significant fact that no
one prayed, even in the earlier meetings, for the pas-
tor's recovery ; it was accepted by all as a fact unal-
terable, that the time of his going home had come ;
and not one of those who loved him would have
called him back. During Thursday the coffin lay
in Plymouth Church, and all day long from half-
past eleven in the morning until ten at night the
citizens of Brooklyn moved in quiet and orderly
procession by the coffin, to look upon his face for
the last time, while simple music was furnished,
sometimes by the organ, sometimes by the voices
of singers. Members of the church and personal
friends sat scattered through the edifice, engaged in
silent prayer or in sacred meditation, or, in subdued
tones, exchanging reminiscences. There had long
been an understanding between Mr. Beecher and
the Rev. Charles H. Hall, rector of Trinity Church,
that, whoever should die first, the other should
officiate at the funeral. In accordance with this
understanding, the public services, held on Friday,
were conducted by Dr. Hall. The public offices
in Brooklyn were closed, by direction of the city
government; the public and private schools were
dismissed ; and business was very generally sus-
pended during the funeral services. Not only
Plymouth Church itself, but four other churches in
the vicinity, were crowded with mourners.
It is doubtful whether any death ever produced
more widespread expressions of sorrow throughout
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 379
the country — certain that the death of no private
citizen was ever made occasion for so many and so
varied memorial services, addresses, and editorials.
In churches representing every phase of religious
faith, Mr. Beecher's death was mentioned in prayer
or sermon ; by associations of every description,
secular and religious, resolutions to his memory
were passed ; in every type of journal, from that
devoted to recreation or agriculture to that voicing
the sentiment of the most conservative of the re-
ligious schools, some recognition of his service to
his age and nation was to be found. The New
York Legislature adjourned that its members
might attend the funeral service, and both the
Senate and the Assembly passed resolutions of
respect to his memory. Similar resolutions were
passed by the Board of Aldermen of the city of
Brooklyn, who directed that appropriate emblems
of mourning should be displayed on the City Hall
until after the funeral. A type and symbol of this
universal appreciation was furnished by the me-
morial service held in Plymouth Church the Sab-
bath evening after his death, participated in by
representative speakers from the Unitarian, the
Presbyterian, the Lutheran, the New Jerusalem,
the Universalist, the Methodist, the Baptist, the
Reformed, the Episcopal, and the Congregational
churches, and a Jewish synagogue, and by a letter
from a Roman Catholic priest. Two weeks later
a union memorial service of the African churches
of Brooklyn was held in the African Methodist
380 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Episcopal Church of the city. Nor were these
memorials confined to Brooklyn. From churches
and synagogues all over the country, North and
South, East and West, from abroad also, from
churches in London and Liverpool, from white
and colored, from Americans and foreigners, from
ministerial gatherings, political bodies, both Re-
publican and Democratic, college associations, mil-
itary organizations, and social clubs, came to Ply-
mouth Church formal expressions of respect for
Mr. Beecher and of sympathy for his church in
its sorrow. One of the most touching of these was
a resolution spontaneously adopted by the news-
boys of Brooklyn at their services in the Newsboys'
Home.
These expressions of affection were not confined
to the time of his death. While the multitude
were still filing past the dead in Plymouth Church,
the suggestion was made that a statue should be
erected by citizens of Brooklyn to his memory. In
less than two weeks after his death, a meeting of
citizens was held to forward this movement, and it
was so largely attended that many were unable to
gain admittance to the room. The money for the
purpose was easily obtained, — rather it should be
said, was spontaneously offered, — and in June,
1891, the statue, designed by J. Q. A. Ward, was
erected in City Hall Square, facing the building
where he had been put on trial as for his life, and
remaining there a perpetual witness to the judgment
of the citizens of Brooklyn between him and his
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 381
accusers. Shortly after Mr. Beecher's death, the
Rev. S. B. Halliday, who for seventeen years had
been Mr. Beecher's assistant, and to whose loyal
service, taking from the great preacher's mind
the administrative details of the great church, Mr.
Beecher's freedom for the larger public service was
not inconsiderably due, resigned his position to take
charge of a small Congregational church in the out-
skirts of Brooklyn, the services of which were held
in a vacant store on Fulton Street, small, ill-venti-
lated, and poorly lighted. He gave to this church
its new name, " The Beecher Memorial Church,"
and in 1891 an adequate structure had been raised
at a cost of twenty-six thousand dollars, which on
the 18th of October of that year was dedicated. It
was more than in name a memorial to Henry Ward
Beecher. Means for its construction had been
given by Presbyterians, Universalists, Orthodox,
Liberals, and Jews. Contributions had been re-
ceived from every state and territory in the coun-
try and also from Canada, England, Scotland,
Wales, Sweden, Denmark, South America, China,
and India, almost all of them in small amounts.
Eight months after the dedication the last dollar
of debt upon the building was paid, and the
church, still in successful operation, is a monument
alike to the fidelity of Mr. Beecher's life-long
friend, Mr. Halliday, and to the spontaneous in-
terest throughout the world which men of moder-
ate means felt in doing something to perpetuate
the name of one who had rendered them spiritual
382 HENRY WARD BEECHER
service. Nor is this the only church which at least
indirectly perpetuates the memory of the great
preacher. The Congregational Yearbook records
fifty-two churches bearing the name Plymouth
Church, — the name borrowed from the church
which Mr. Beecher founded, the churches, let us
hope, having imbibed something of its spirit. In
that church itself his name is commemorated by a
remarkable portrait of life size, in the lecture-room,
placed as nearly as possible on the spot where he
used to sit in giving his " Lecture-Room Talks,' '
and by a tablet in the vestibule of the church con-
taining his portrait in bas-relief, with the simple in-
scription, " In Memoriam. Henry Ward Beecher,
First Pastor of Plymouth Church, 1847-1887. I
have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy
truth from the great congregation." At the pre-
sent writing, the summer of 1903, a further move-
ment has been initiated by the present pastor of
Plymouth Church, the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis,
D. D., for a larger memorial to the great preacher.
The Henry Ward Beecher Memorial Association
of Brooklyn has been organized and incorporated ;
ground has been purchased in the immediate vicin-
ity of Plymouth Church ; and it is proposed to
erect thereon a memorial hall for the preservation
of material relating to the life of Henry Ward
Beecher and other members of the Beecher family,
and to provide in connection therewith a library,
reading-room, music-room, and amusement-room.
For this purpose over fifty thousand dollars have
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 383
already been subscribed, a large portion of it by-
citizens having no connection with Plymouth
Church.
But next to that impalpable influence which
goes on through eternity with infinite increase, the
most vital memorial to Mr. Beecher is the church
which he founded and inspired with his life. Those
who imagined that Plymouth Church was gathered
around and held together by the eloquence of a
great orator, naturally surmised that the congrega-
tion would disappear and the church dissolve when
the orator died. They little understood the nature
of its work and the permanency of his influence.
When, in the fall of 1887, I was called to supply
the pulpit left vacant by Mr. Beecher's death, I
found a greatly diminished congregation. Strangers
no longer flocked to the edifice. The audience,
which under Mr. Beecher's preaching had num-
bered from twenty-five hundred to three thousand,
was reduced to something like half that number.
But it was only the strangers who had ceased to
come. Not a single eminent member of the church
had withdrawn. The pewholders, with few excep-
tions, pledged to the church a renewal of their
pew-rents at the old rate for the succeeding year.
The Sunday-schools were officered as efficiently as
they had been the fall before with Mr. Beecher
living. Some members who had never felt that
the church had need of them had emerged from
their retirement and assumed active service in the
prayer-meeting or the Sunday-schools. A new
384 HENRY WARD BEECHER
organization had been formed within the church for
the purpose of enlisting the active cooperation of
all the members, and had efficiently entered upon
its varied activities. It was apparent that the pews
could no longer be sold at auction, apparent that
there would no longer be premiums paid for the
pews on which the trustees could draw, as they
had done during Mr. Beecher's lifetime, for the
support of the missions. But the church had no
thought of abandoning or even lessening its work.
It assumed the expense which the trustees had
hitherto borne. It organized an envelope fund,
and by means of this envelope fund, to which every
member was invited to contribute, and by means
of a system of plate collections which had never
before been instituted, enough money was raised
to carry on and considerably enlarge the parish
work in which Plymouth Church had been en-
gaged. Nor was this the result of a mere transient
enthusiasm. The last report of the committee
which has this work in charge shows a receipt
from the envelope fund and the plate collections
of over ten thousand dollars for this mission work
of Plymouth Church in the city of Brooklyn. Nor
is it only these financial results which testify to
the continued efficiency of the church. During the
ten years which elapsed between the death of Mr.
Beecher and the semi-centennial of Plymouth
Church in 1897, the additions on confession of
faith were but little less annually than they had
been during Mr. Beecher's pastorate. A conclusive
HE FINISHES HIS COURSE 385
answer to the charge sometimes brought, once
through jealousy, now through ignorance, that Mr.
Beecher's preaching promoted hero-worship, not
the worship of God, the following of a preacher,
not the following of Christ, an ephemeral emotion-
alism, not a life-enduring principle, is furnished
by the church which he gathered by his influence
and inspired with his spirit, — a church through
the doors of which in fifty years thirty-six hundred
and thirty-three came into the kingdom of God, —
a church in which, fifteen years after its great
preacher's death, a congregation of nearly or quite
two thousand worshipers gathers every Sunday
morning, — a church in the three Sunday-schools of
which are still gathered every Sunday afternoon
a thousand scholars studying the Bible, — a church
which, ten years after Mr. Beecher's death, on the
fiftieth anniversary day of its organization, had
every class in its three Sunday-schools supplied
with teachers, and there was in addition a waiting-
list of volunteers ready to respond to any call for
additional service.
CHAPTER XVII
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS
From 1855 to the time of Mr. Beecher's death in
1887, except for the five years which included the
Civil War, I was in constant communication, and
much of the time in intimate association with him.
In this chapter I propose to give some personal esti-
mates, the result of that fellowship, and illustrated
by some reminiscent incidents.
During most of his life Mr. Beecher was engaged
in warfare of one sort or another. He was con-
stantly attacking what he regarded as abuses, —
social, political, religious ; and he was constantly
under attack for what others regarded as social,
political, and religious errors in his teaching. The
natural consequence was that in his lifetime many
false estimates of his character and few correct
ones were made. His enemies exaggerated his
faults and depreciated, if they did not absolutely
deny, his virtues. As an almost necessary conse-
quence, his friends were inclined to exaggerate his
excellences and to ignore, if not to deny, his de-
fects. In battle no loyal soldier criticises his general ;
loyalty prevented Mr. Beecher's friends and sup-
porters from criticising their leader. In such a case
the errors on the one side are not corrected by the
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 387
errors on the other. On the contrary, the estimates of
both friends and foes are apt to agree in statement,
although antagonistic in their animus and spirit.
Thus it had been said by both critics and ad-
mirers, though with a very different meaning,' that
Mr. Beecher would have made a great actor, a great
lawyer, a great politician, a great author, a great
editor. What education might have made of him
no man can tell ; but take him for what he was, he
would not have made a great actor, because he could
not deliberately assume a part ; nor a great lawyer,
because he could not advocate any convictions not
independently his own ; nor a great politician, be-
cause he did not read character correctly, being too
much possessed by the spirit which " thinketh no
evil ; " nor a great author, because he was not inter-
ested in art for art's sake ; in what sense he was a
great editor I have already considered.1
It is true that Mr. Beecher's interests were ex-
traordinarily varied, and his knowledge multiform.
He was an expert in horticulture, arboriculture,
precious stones, Turkish and Persian rugs, — and
in how many other things I know not. He was a
judge of horses, and was very fond of a good one.
When I was starting out in search of a parish he
gave me this advice : " Look at the horses in every
town you go to. If the men drive good horses, you
may expect that there is progress, or at least life
in the town ; if they drive poor ones, the people
are probably inert and lazy." The remark indi-
1 See chapter xvi. pp. 338, 342, 344.
388 HENRY WARD BEECHER
cates the nature of his interest. Whatever the
subject, it invariably led him somehow to men,
their character, their life, and the best way of
reaching them with the offer of the higher life.
This fact was not always recognized by undiscrim-
inating admirers, who, from the variety of his in-
terests, drew the conclusion that he would have
excelled in all departments. But though interest
is necessary to excellence, excellence is not created
alone by interest. I found Mr. Beecher once,
shortly after the close of the Civil War, deep in
Sherman's " March to the Sea." To my expression
of surprise, — for he was not merely reading, he
was studying it in detail with war-maps, — he re-
plied, " Do you know, if I were not a preacher, I
would choose to be a general above anything else."
But I did not take the expression seriously, and
I do not think he did — except for the moment. I
am certain he would have made a poor general.
The jeweler who, apropos of Mr. Beecher's love
for precious stones, said that he would have made
a splendid salesman, was mistaken. True, he loved
and understood precious stones, but he would never
have cared to sell them. His interest in farming
did not make him a successful farmer. When
some critic attempted to arouse prejudice against
him as a wealthy preacher who owned and carried
on a farm of ten acres on the Hudson, he replied
that if an enemy should give him ten more acres
he would be bankrupted.
Varied as were his talents, kaleidoscopic as was
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 389
his mind, universal as were his interests, he gave
himself to one work with a singleness of aim which
I have never seen paralleled in any man of my
acquaintance except Phillips Brooks. Their aims
were different : Mr. Beecher's broader and more
comprehensive ; Phillips Brooks's more exclusively
individual and spiritual. Phillips Brooks was purely
a preacher. His one aim in life was to impart life.
He believed correctly that he could do this best by
the free use of his own personality in the pulpit.
When he spoke on the platform or after a public
dinner, he made the platform or the table a pulpit ;
his address was a sermon ; his audience a congre-
gation. For a little time in Philadelphia he took
an active part in public questions, but after he
went to Boston he was not active as a public
teacher on social or political problems. This was
not because he had lost his interest in them, or his
acquaintance with them, but because he believed
lie could render his best service to the age by
preaching : to preaching accordingly he gave him-
self with entire singleness of purpose. That he
could write true poetry was proved by " O Little
Town of Bethlehem." That he had a large know-
ledge of architecture and a remarkably creative
as well as appreciative taste, is proved by Trinity
Church, into which he put himself as truly as he
put himself into his sermons. That he would have
made valuable contributions to periodical litera-
ture, if he could have been persuaded to accept the
numerous and urgent invitations which poured in
390 HENRY WARD BEKCHER
upon him, that as a lecturer he would have been
in great demand, had he consented to go upon the
lyceum platform, no one who knew him doubts.
He refused because he was resolved to devote him-
self wholly to preaching. Even as bishop his great
work was as an itinerant preacher.
Mr. Beecher's estimate of his own function was
a broader one, but it was not less clearly conceived,
nor followed with less single-heartedness. That
function was to impart spiritual life, but it was
also to instruct in the application of the principles
of spiritual life to all the various problems, both of
personal experience and of social order. His great-
ness consisted in his instinctive perception of moral
principles, in his practical common sense in the
application of those principles to current questions
of human experience, and in his varied literary and
oratorical ability in so presenting those principles
as not only to win for them the assent of all sorts
of men, but also to inspire in all sorts of men a
genuine loyalty to those principles. He understood
himself better than some of his friends and his
eulogists understood him. To this one work of so
inspiring, guiding, and dominating the lives of men
as to direct them in the way of righteousness, he
gave himself with absolute singleness of aim, and,
after he had fairly got an understanding of him-
self and his work, with undeviating purpose. He
preached, he lectured, he spoke on political plat-
forms ; he wrote, and on all subjects, social and
individual, grave and gay, secular and religious.
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 391
But always back of his work, inspiring it, con-
trolling it, determining his choice between different
phases of it, was the ambition, — if anything so
unegoistic can be called an ambition, — the pur-
pose, — if anything so unconscious can be called a
purpose, — to help men to a happier, a better,
a diviner life. And in his estimate divineness of
spirit was of transcendently greater importance
than conformity to ethical standards, and both
were superior to mere happiness. His intuitive
nature would have made it impossible for him to
accept the utilitarian philosophy. Preaching, there-
fore, in the narrower sense of that term, as a her-
alding of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of
man, always took the first place, though not the
sole place, in his relative estimate of opportunities.
I can best illustrate his comparative estimate of
lecturing and preaching by quoting one of half a
dozen similar letters sent by him to Major J. B.
Pond : —
Brooklyn, N. Y., 124 Columbia Heights,
February 22, 1883.
My dear Pond : — I am sorry that Suffield should
suffer, — but it can't be helped. All the cities on the
continent are not to me of as much value as my church
and its work, and when a deepening religious feeling is
evident, to go off lecturing and leave it would be too
outrageous to be thought of. No — No. Never — now
or hereafter — will I let lecturing infringe on home
work! The next week is already arranged. Several
neighboring clergymen are engaged to aid, and from
Sunday to Saturday every night is allotted. I take two,
392 HENRY WARD BEECHER
— Monday and Tuesday, — and cannot be altered. I
do not know how it will be in March. If things in the
church should prosper, I will not go out, at least till
May, but I cannot tell.
Yours,
Henry Ward Beecher.
It is difficult and perhaps hazardous to speculate
on the motives which inspire men, and yet such a
character-study as this would be inadequate with-
out a consideration of the motives which dominated
Mr. Beecher. He was almost absolutely indiffer-
ent to money. He did not care for it himself ; he
did not reverence it in others. When in a widely
misquoted address he said, apropos of certain phases
of the labor problem, that he could live on bread
and water, he spoke the simple truth. This was
not because he was an ascetic. He enjoyed the
comforts and even the luxuries of life. We had
an editorial dinner at Delmonico's one spring day
in 1879 ; Mr. Lawson Valentine, then one of the
largest stockholders in " The Christian Union," tele-
graphed the office : " I like your Delmonico. Keep
at work on this line all summer ; " and got from
Mr. Beecher a reply equally laconic : " You are
not the only fellow that likes Delmonico. We are
willing to patronize him all summer if you will pay
the bill." He enjoyed good living, though rather
for the social pleasures such occasions afforded than
for any mere epicurean enjoyment. Much more
than sensuous luxuries he enjoyed beauty in form
and color. But he was not dependent upon either.
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 393
And for money apart from what it could buy he
cared not a jot. My first acquaintance with him
illustrates his singular carelessness in money mat-
ters. I was a boy of nineteen in my brother's law
office ; I had been an attendant on Plymouth
Church for but a few months ; he knew me only
as a younger brother of one of the members of his
church when he asked me one Sunday after service
to call at his house the next morning. When I
called he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a
package of bills, gave them to me, and asked me to
go to an address in the upper part of New York City
to pay off a mortgage and get a satisfaction-piece.
My recollection is that the amount was ten thousand
dollars. I know that until I got the money out of my
pocket and the satisfaction-piece in its place, I was
in a dread lest my pocket should be picked and his
money and my reputation should go together. He
rarely came out on the right side of a bargain
when the bargaining was left to him. His ser-
mons any one was welcome to publish who wished
to do so. In his later life he earned thousands of
dollars by his lecturing ; but this was because he
had the wisdom to put himself in Major J. B.
Pond's hands, and to refer all applications for lec-
tures to him. He was generous to a fault with his
money ; many were the unworthy beggars, large
and small, who made off with contributions from
him ; not till late in life did he learn any financial
wisdom, and then not too much.
He was as indifferent to fame as he was to
394 HENRY WARD BEECHER
money. He counseled young ministers to beware
of falling into the weakness of considering how
they could conserve their reputation, and satirized
those who were habitually considering what would
be the effect of their words or actions upon their
" influence." He resented counsel to himself based
on the idea that his influence would be injured by
some proposed action. Partly owing to this indif-
ference to his reputation, partly to the orator's
instinct to use at the time not only that form of
expression, but also that phase of truth which will
produce the effect he wishes to produce, Mr. Beecher
was careless of consistency, which, with Emerson,
he regarded as the vice of small minds. Once
called to account for the inconsistency of some-
thing he had just said with a previous utterance
of his on the same subject, he replied, " Oh, yes !
Well, that was last week." Yet these inconsist-
encies were more apparent than real. Thus he
preached one Sunday a sermon on the text, " Train
up a child in the way he should go, and when he is
old he will not depart from it ; " and began by say-
ing, " This is not God's policy of insurance on
children ; this is the statement of a natural law."
About a year later he took the same text and be-
gan his sermon by saying, " This is God's policy
of insurance on children," and proceeded to treat
it as a divine promise. Yet the two utterances are
really consistent, since God's promises are fulfilled
through natural law.
But if he cared very little what the great public
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 395
thought about him, he cared a great deal about
how those who knew him felt toward him. The
expression uttered by him on his seventieth birth-
day represents his habitual mood : "I love men so
much, that I like above all other things in the
world to be loved. And yet I can do without it
when it is necessary. I love love, but I love truth
more, and God more yet." For great as was his
love for his fellow men and his desire for their
love, the dominating motives of his life were his
love for God, or his love for Christ, — and in his
experience the two phrases were synonymous, —
and his desire for God's love. No one who knew
him intimately could doubt the simplicity and sin-
cerity of his piety. Christ was a very real and a
very present Person to him. His disbelief in theo-
logy never involved in doubt his experience of vital
fellowship with the living God. I do not mean that
this experience was not more real at some times
than at others ; nor that he did not have at times
the experience which in Jesus Christ found utter-
ance in the bitter cry, " My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me!" But if so, these expe-
riences were rare. His prevailing mood was one of
the conscious presence of Christ, to whom he would
at times refer as simply and as naturally as to any
other friend and companion. Yet he never, if I
may so speak, traded on this experience. He never
assumed it as an authority. He never said that
Christ had told him to do this or that. His ex-
perience accorded with and interprets practically
396 HENRY WARD BEECHER
the philosophy of Professor William James, that
mystical states are authdrity to the persons to
whom they come, but are not to be quoted as an
authority to those to whom they do not come.
I make no attempt here to analyze Mr. Beecher's
power as an orator, to indicate the various elements
which entered into it, or to explain its secret, fur-
ther than to say that far more important than
were his voice and face and gesture, his skillful
though inartificial rhetoric, his opalescent imagina-
tion, his illuminating humor, his unconscious art
of dramatization, his perfervid and contagious emo-
tion — far more important than all of these were
the sane judgment, the dominating conscience, and
the spiritual faith which used these gifts as instru-
ments, never in the service of self, always in the
service of a great cause, or, to speak more accu-
rately, in the service of his fellow men and his God.
Here I make no attempt to compare Mr. Beecher
with the famous orators of history. I attempt
merely to record the impression which his oratory
produced on me and on others as I had occasion to
observe its impression on them. In so doing I
instinctively compare him with other contemporary
orators whom I have heard, — Daniel Webster,
Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, George William
Curtis, John B. Gough, William E. Gladstone,
Charles G. Finney, R. S. Storrs, and Phillips
Brooks. In particular qualities each of these men
may have excelled him, some of them certainly did ;
in combination of qualities to my thinking no one
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 397
of them equaled him. As I do not analyze Mr.
Beecher, so I do not analyze these, his contempo-
raries. In respect to them all I speak only of im-
pressions produced upon myself.
Daniel Webster impressed me by the weight of
his words ; Wendell Phillips by the edge of his
small sword and the dexterity of his thrust ; Charles
Sumner by his skillful marshaling of facts ; George
William Curtis by the perfect finish of his art in
language, tone, and gesture ; John B. Gough by the
combination of abandon and good sense, of dra-
matic impersonation, and real apprehension of the
actualities of life ; William E. Gladstone by the
persuasiveness which captivated first your inclina-
tion and afterward your judgment ; Charles G.
Finney by the flawless logic which compelled
your sometimes reluctant assent to his conclusion ;
R. S. Storrs by the more than Oriental glory of his
embroidered fabric ; Phillips Brooks by the sense
of a divine presence and power possessing him and
speaking through him, as through a prophet of
the olden time. Mr. Beecher was less weighty
than Daniel Webster ; one was a glacier, the other
an avalanche ; one was a battery of artillery, the
other was a regiment of horse charging with the
impetuosity of a Ney. Mr. Beecher could be as
clear-cut and crystalline at times as Wendell Phil-
lips was at all times, but he was never malignant
as Wendell Phillips sometimes was, and never
took the delight, which Wendell Phillips often
took, in the skill with which he could transfix an
398 HENRY WARD BEECHER
opponent. Mr. Beecher could, and sometimes did,
marshal facts with a military skill scarcely inferior
to that of Charles Sumner, as witness some pas-
sages in his English speeches, but he was never
overloaded and overborne by them. He summoned
facts as witnesses to confirm a truth, and when
their testimony was given dismissed them, while
he, with dramatic imagination and emotional power,
pressed home upon his audience the truth to which
they bore witness. He had not the grace either of
diction or of address which characterized George
William Curtis. Mr. Curtis never violated the
canons of a perfect taste ; Mr. Beecher often did.
But Mr. Curtis spoke only to the cultivated, Mr.
Beecher to all sorts and conditions of men ; Mr.
Curtis spoke from manuscript ; his oration com-
bined all the perfection of the written with some
of the vigor of the spoken address. Mr. Beecher
never spoke from manuscript. He sometimes read
manuscript; he sometimes spoke without manu-
script ; he sometimes alternated the two methods
in the one address; but he could not, or at least
he did not, maintain at one and the same time an
unbroken connection with the page upon the desk
and with auditors in the seat. But if he lacked the
grace and perfect art of George William Curtis,
he possessed an inflaming, convincing, coercing
power which Mr. Curtis did not even remotely
approach. It is difficult to compare Mr. Beecher's
dramatic power with that of John B. Gough. Con-
sidered simply as dramatic artists, Mr. Beecher
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 399
was far more impassioned and moving, Mr. Gough
more versatile. Mr. Gough was always dramatic.
His lectures were continuous impersonations. He
was the best story-teller I ever heard. He once
told me that he was thinking of preparing a lecture
to be entitled " That Reminds Me," which should
consist of a succession of dramatic stories so con-
trived that each one should suggest its successor.
He never did prepare such a lecture, but he could
readily have done it. Mr. Beecher could hardly
have conceived, and certainly could not have ac-
complished, such a lecture. Mr. Gough was a skill-
ful ventriloquist. Once, when I was driving with
him in a closed carriage in the country, he greatly
excited a little girl, who was our companion, by
the mewing of a cat, for which she searched every-
where in vain. Mr. Gough would have made a
brilliant success as an actor in either farce or light
comedy ; Mr. Beecher would not. I never heard
him tell a story on the platform, unless the narra-
tive of personal incidents in his own experience
might be so regarded, and rarely in the social
circle. I do not think he used his dramatic art for
purposes of amusement. I doubt whether he was
ever conscious in his imitations ; he certainly was
not so ordinarily. A purpose to be achieved in the
life of his audience always dominated him, and he
was dramatic only incidentally and unconsciously,
because in describing any incident, whether real or
imaginary, his face and tone and gesture came
naturally into play. He stopped at the office of
400 HENRY WARD BEECHER
44 The Christian Union " once on his way from the
dog-show, and he described the dogs to me. " There
was the bulldog," he said, " with his retreating
forehead, and his big neck, and his protruding jaw,
like the highwayman who might meet you with his
demand for your money or your life ; " and his
forehead seemed to retreat, and his jaw protruded,
and he looked the character he portrayed, so that
I should have instinctively crossed the street had I
met after dark a man looking as he looked. " And
there was the English mastiff," he continued,
u with a face and brow like Daniel Webster's ; "
and his whole face and even the very form and
structure of his head seemed to change in an un-
conscious impersonation of the noble brute he was
describing. For Mr. Beecher was as dramatic off
the platform as on it ; imitation was not with him
a studied art, it was an unconscious identification
of himself with the character he was for the
moment portraying. I heard Mr. Gladstone but
once ; it was in the English House of Commons ;
his object was to commend and carry his motion
for the use of the closure, before unknown in Par-
liament. It would be absurd to attempt an esti-
mate of Mr. Gladstone's oratory from this one
address. But comparing that one address with the
many I have heard from Mr. Beecher, it was more
persuasive, but less eloquent. As he spoke, it
seemed as though his conclusions needed no argu-
ment to sustain them ; I found myself saying in
response to all he said, " Of course." But of the
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 401
dramatic portrayal, the pictorial imagination, the
warm feeling, the brilliant color, the iridescent hu-
mor, the varied play of life, catching now one hearer
by one method, now another hearer by another
method, converting hostility into enthusiasm, and
indifference into interest, which characterized Mr.
Beecher's greatest addresses, there was in this one
speech of Mr. Gladstone scarcely a trace. Charles
G. Finney corralled his audience ; he drove them be-
fore him, penned them in, coerced them by his logic,
— though it was a logic aflame, — convinced their
reason, convicted their conscience, compelled them
to accept his conclusions despite their resistance.
His sermons are essentially syllogistic. Syllogisms
are as rare in the sermons of Mr. Beecher as in
the sermons of Phillips Brooks. He was not log-
ical, but analogical. He did not coerce men ; he
either enticed them, or he swept them before him
by the impetuosity of his nature. He sought to
convince men of sin chiefly by putting before them
an ideal, and leaving them to compare themselves
with it. He spoke to conscience through ideality.
There were frequent opportunities for comparing
Dr. Storrs and Mr. Beecher, since they often spoke
on the same platform, and for forty years they
ministered side by side in the same city. Dr. Storrs
drew his illustrations from books, Mr. Beecher
from life; Dr. Storrs was more rhetorical, Mr.
Beecher more colloquial ; Dr. Storrs more artistic,
but sometimes artificial, Mr. Beecher more spon-
taneous, but also more uneven ; after hearing Dr.
402 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Storrs, the people went away admiring the address ;
after hearing Mr. Beecher, they went away discuss-
ing the theme. Comparing Henry Ward Beecher
and Phillips Brooks, I should describe Phillips
Brooks as the greater preacher, but Mr. Beecher
as the greater orator. The distinctive function of
the preacher is to bring home to the consciousness
of men the eternal and the invisible. He may teach
ethics, or philosophy ; he may move men by argu-
ment, by imagination, by emotion, to some form of
action, or some phase of thinking, or some emo-
tional life ; this he does in common with the orator.
But the unveiling of the invisible world, looking
himself, and enabling others also to look upon the
things which are unseen and are eternal — this is
the preacher's distinctive and exclusive function.
It is this which makes him, what the Old Testa-
ment calls him, a prophet — a forth-teller, speaking
by a spirit within, of a world seen only from within.
This Mr. Beecher did to a remarkable degree ; but
he did much more and other than this — though
nothing higher, for there is nothing higher that
any man can do for his fellow men. This is to
open the eyes of the blind and enable them to see.
This was the exclusive mission of Phillips Brooks.
He might have said of himself, without irrever-
ence, " I have come that they might have life, and
might have it more abundantly." Mr. Beecher was
also a life-giver; but he was besides a guide, a
counselor, a teacher. He moved men by his imme-
diate spiritual power, awaking in them a power to
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 403
perceive and receive spiritual life; but he also
moved them indirectly and mediately through ar-
gument, humor, imagination, imitation, human sym-
pathy, the contagious power of a passionate enthu-
siasm. It was his spiritual life which made Phillips
Brooks the orator ; Mr. Beecher would have been
a great orator though he had lacked spiritual life.
To sum up in a sentence the impression on my
own mind of Mr. Beecher's oratory as compared
with that of other contemporary orators : in par-
ticular elements of charm or power he was surpassed
by some of them; in combination of charm and
power by none ; but his power was greater than his
charm, and his charm was subsidiary to power, and
its instrument. If the test of the oration is its
perfection, whether of structure or of expression,
other orators have surpassed Mr. Beecher ; if the
test of oratory is the power of the speaker to im-
part to his audience his life, to impress on them
his conviction, animate them with his purpose, and
direct their action to the accomplishment of his
end, then Mr. Beecher was the greatest orator I
have ever heard ; and in my judgment, whether
measured by the immediate or by the permanent
effects of his addresses, takes his place in the rank
of the great orators of the world. I doubt wliether
in history greater immediate or more enduring
effects have ever been produced by any orations
than were produced on English sentiment and
English national life by his speeches in England.
A remarkable illustration of charm and power
404 HENRY WARD BEECHER
combined was furnished by his speech delivered at
the testimonial dinner given in New York City to
Herbert Spencer, on the eve of the latter' s return
to England. The dinner was a long and elaborate
one. The diners were with few exceptions scientific
men of eminence. There were very few who were
known as active in the Christian Church or in the
religious world. Mr. William M. Evarts presided,
and lightened an otherwise heavy series of speeches
with occasional sallies of wit. But there had been
no humor, and no emotion, and little of literary
charm in the speeches. The last two speakers were
John Fiske and Mr. Beecher ; their theme Science
and Religion. Mr. Fiske read an essay, clear, crys-
talline, coldly intellectual; he dealt with theology,
not with religion. It was n earing midnight when
Mr. Beecher rose to make the last address. The
room was filled with tobacco-smoke. The auditors
were weary and ready to go home. Not a vibrat-
ing note had been struck throughout the evening.
It seemed to me as Mr. Beecher rose that all he could
do was to apologize for not speaking at that late
hour and dismiss his audience. By some jest he
won a laugh; caught the momentary attention of
his audience; seemed about to lose it; caught it
again ;« again saw it escaping, and again captured
it. In five minutes the more distant auditors had
moved their chairs forward, the French waiters,
who had paid no attention to any one else, straight-
ened themselves up against the walls to listen ;
Herbert Spencer on one side of him and Mr.
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 405
Evarts on the other were looking up into his face
to catch the utterance of his speaking countenance
as of his words. And then he preached as evangel-
ical a sermon as I have ever heard from any min-
ister's lips. He claimed Paul as an evolutionist;
he read or quoted from the seventh chapter of Ro-
mans in support of the claim; he declared that
man is an animal, and has ascended from an animal,
but is more than animal, has in him a conscience, a
reason, a faith, a hope, a love, which are divine in
nature and in origin ; he appealed to the experience
of his auditors to confirm his analysis ; he evoked
cries of " That 's so ! That 's so ! " like Methodist
amens from all over the room ; and when he ended,
in what was, in all but its form, a prayer that God
would convey Herbert Spencer across that broader
and deeper sea which flows between these shores and
the unknown world beyond, and that there the two
might meet to understand better the life which is
so truly a mystery and the God who is so much to
us the Unknown here, the whole audience rose by
a common impulse to their feet, as if to make the
prayer their own, cheering, clapping their hands, and
waving their handkerchiefs. I can see the critic
smiling with amused contempt at this paragraph,
if he deigns to read it. None the less, he is shallow
in his perceptions, as well as wrong in his judg-
ments, if he is not able to recognize both the
charm and the power of the orator who can win
such a response, at such a time, from such an
audience.
406 HENRY WARD BEECHER
Thus far I have spoken chiefly of the impressions
which Mr. Beecher's public character and conduct
made upon me. What impression was left by his
private life? It is somewhat difficult to answer
that question, because he was a man of various
moods as well as of versatile talents, and produced
different impressions at different times. Every
man is a bundle of contradictions ; in general the
greater the man the greater the contradictions.
They were certainly great in Mr. Beecher.
He was most intense in his activity; the story
of his life shows that. One who saw him only in
his work would imagine that he was never at rest.
On the contrary, in his hours of rest he was abso-
lutely relaxed in mind and body. He was fond of
horses, as I have said, and both rode and drove
well ; he talked eloquently of fishing and hunting ;
he advocated athletic sports — for others ; he be-
lieved in the healthf ulness of billiards and bowling ;
yet except croquet, he had no favorite recreation.
But he loved to lie under the trees and follow his
own counsel by " considering " the flowers, the
clouds, the trees ; in the city he would go to the
house of a familiar friend, throw himself upon
the sofa, and listen to the conversation of others,
perhaps joining in it, perhaps not ; or he would
rest both mind and body by joining in a frolic
with children, of whom he was very fond. His
work was strenuous, but his rest was absolute.
Of his combination of courage and caution, cour-
age in determining what to do, caution in deter-
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 407
mining how to do it, I have already spoken.1 The
fact that the front seats of the gallery in a theatre
at Richmond are occupied by men prepared with
eggs to throw at him does not daunt him in the
least ; he faces the hostile audience without a tremor.
But he disarms them by a compliment to their state
pride before he begins to give them some economic
lessons sorely needed at that time, especially in the
Southern States.
He was at once outspoken and reserved. Those
who knew him only by his public speech thought
he wore his heart upon his sleeve, because he used
his own most sacred experiences without hesitation,
if he thought they would serve his fellow men.
What father, and mother, and home, and children,
and Bible, and prayer, and Christ, and God were
to him he told again and again in public discourses,
and he urged others to make equally free use of
their experiences. Yet in private he rarely talked
of himself except as he thought the self-revelation
would help some struggling and perplexed soul into
light and freedom. Nothing in his experience was
too sacred to be used for that purpose. He was
not otherwise given to indulgence in reminiscence,
and never to narrating his achievements. He could
be as reticent and Sphinx-like as General Grant,
and could preserve a silence as impenetrable, as he
proved by being unmoved by all the misconstruc-
tion to which his silence subjected him, when speech
would have disclosed the secret of the household
1 Chapter vn. pp. 156, 157.
408 HENRY WARD BEECHER
whose unity and good name he was determined if
possible to preserve, at whatever cost to himself.
He had a way at times of abstracting himself from
all around him, and becoming in appearance, and
I rather think in reality, deaf and blind to every-
thing external. When he was about to deliver his
address in Burton's Theatre, by which time he knew
me well, and I had done that financial errand for
him of which I have already spoken, finding it diffi-
cult to get tolerable accommodation at the front,
I went to the stage-door, and waited, hoping that I
might get in when he entered. He brushed against
me as he passed, but with that far-away look in his
eyes, which seemed to say, " whether in the body or
out of the body I know not ; " so my device failed.
He often walked as abstracted and unobservant on
the street, oblivious of all about him. Yet at other
times he would pass immediately into the pulpit
from what serious-minded folk would regard as
unseemly frivolity. The last Sunday morning of
his ministry, as he entered the church, he greeted
the usher at the door, an old familiar friend, with a
request for a seat. The usher caught his mood, and
replied, " If you will wait here till the pewholders
are seated, I will try to accommodate you." " Could
I get a seat in the gallery?" said Mr. Beecher.
" You might try in the upper gallery." " But I
am a little hard of hearing," said Mr. Beecher,
putting his hand to his ear, " and want a seat near
the pulpit." All this was done without a sugges-
tion of a smile ; the next moment he was in his
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 409
pulpit-chair turning over the leaves of his hymn-
book for his hymns. Men to whom reverence and
merriment are incongruous can be pardoned for
not comprehending the apparent inconsistency in
such a change of moods.
Quite as marked a characteristic, and to many
as inexplicable, was his singular combination of
self-confidence and self -depreciation. No doubt he
was conscious of his power ; otherwise he could not
have used it. A great meeting, my recollection is
on behalf of the freedmen, was gathered in the
Brooklyn Academy of Music one evening during
Andrew Johnson's presidency. The feeling in the
Republican party against the President was already
growing into bitterness. Mr. Beecher still defended
him. The Academy was crowded. " They say," he
whispered to me as I joined him on the platform,
" that is going to attack the President to-
night ; if he does there will be music here before
we get through." The attack was not made, and
I did not hear the music — shall I confess it ? — to
my regret. Yet despite his self-confidence before
speaking, he was never self-satisfied after speaking.
On one occasion, when he had preached a sermon
which involved a vigorous attack on Calvinism,
and we were about to publish it in " The Christian
Union," I went with him to his house after prayer-
meeting on Friday evening, determined that he
should revise the sermon. " There are expressions
here," said I to him, " which were well enough when
interpreted by your intonation, but they will have
410 HENRY WARD BEECHER
a very different meaning in cold print. You must
revise this proof." He began ; cut out here ; inter-
polated there ; again and again threw down the
proof in impatience ; again and again I took it up
and insisted on his continuing the task. At last,
sticking the pencil through the proof with a vicious
stab, and throwing both upon the table before him,
he said, "Abbott, the thing I wanted to say, I
did n't say, and the thing I did n't want to say,
I did say, and I don't know how to preach anyhow."
Nor do I doubt he expressed the mood of the mo-
ment. He never wanted to read his own writings ;
he rarely had enough patience with them to revise
them. It was not that he shirked the labor ; it was
because the product so dissatisfied him.
But with all these contradictions he possessed
certain qualities which were always present and
potent, and which never changed with changing
moods. Among these were the spontaneity of his
humor, his love of beauty, the strength of his con-
science, his chivalry toward women and children,
and his transparent sincerity.
He was humorous in the pulpit because he in-
stinctively saw things in their incongruous rela-
tions, and described them as he saw them. He did
not crack a joke for the sake of making a laugh,
either in public or in private. But he could scarcely
write a letter, or carry on a conversation, without
that play of imagination, often breaking into
humor, which characterized his work in the press
and on the platform. He was at Peekskill ; I was
Cx<
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 411
carrying through the press an edition of his ser-
mons ; this is the letter he wrote me to tell me that
he was going to Brooklyn, and that I should there-
after address him at that city : —
Peekskhx, October 24, 1867.
My dear Mr. Abbott, — Norwood is done — sum-
mer is done — autumn is most done. The birds are
flown, leaves are flying, and I fly too — so hereafter
send to Brooklyn.
Truly yours,
H. W. Beecher.
He sent a check to a jeweler to pay for two rings,
and this is the letter which went with the check : —
Brooklyn, February 8, 1884.
Jno. A. Remiok.
Dear Sir, — Please find check for amount of the
opal ring and the moon-stone ring. They suited the
respective parties.
The opal goes to my son's mother-in-law, who puts to
shame the world-wide slander on mothers-in-law.
I think old maids and mothers-in-law are, in general,
the very saints of the earth.
I looked to see you after the lecture, and to have a
shake of the hand with Mrs. Remick. But you neither
of you regarded the ceremony as " any great shakes,"
and decamped hastily.
Yours in the bonds of rainbows, opals, etc.,
Henry Ward Beecher.
The Brooklyn postmaster sent him formal notice
that a letter had been returned to him from the
Dead Letter Office, and got this in reply : —
412 HENRY WARD BEECHER
October 28, 1880.
Colonel McLeer.
Dear Sir, — Your notice that a letter of mine was
dead and subject to my order is before me.
We must all die ! And though the premature decease
of my poor letter should excite a proper sympathy (and
I hope it does), yet I am greatly sustained under the
affliction.
What was the date of its death ? Of what did it die ?
Had it in its last hours proper attention and such con-
solation as befits the melancholy occasion ? Did it have
any effects ?
Will you kindly see to its funeral ? I am strongly
inclined to cremation.
May I ask if any other letters of mine are sick —
dangerously sick ? If any depart this life hereafter,
don't notify me until after the funeral.
Affectionately yours,
Henry Ward Beecher.
On April 1 lie found in his morning mail a letter
containing only the words " April Fool." " Well !
well ! " he said, " I have received many a letter
where a man forgot to sign his name ; this is the
first time I ever knew of a writer signing his name
and forgetting to write a letter." After I took the
editorship of " The Christian Union " I urged him
to give his views on public questions through its
columns. "As it is now," I said, "any inter-
viewer who comes to you gets a column from you ;
and the public is as apt to get your views in any
other paper as in your own." " Yes," he said, " I
am like the town pump ; any one who will come
and work the handle can carry off a pail full of
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 413
water." On one occasion I argued for Calvinism
that it had produced splendid characters in Scot-
land and in New England. "Yes," he replied,
" Calvinism makes a few good men and destroys
many mediocre men. It is like a churn ; it makes
good butter, but it throws away a lot of butter-
milk." Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thad-
deus Stevens in the House were pressing forward
the reconstruction measures based on forcing uni-
versal suffrage in the South. In conversation with
me Mr. Beecher thus diagnosed the situation:
" The radicals are trying to drive the wedge into
the log butt-end foremost; they will only split
their beetle." They did ; they solidified the South
and divided the Republican party. If he had been
preaching on reconstruction, the figure would have
flashed on him then, and he woidd have given it to
his congregation from the pulpit as he did a like
humorous figure in the following instance. He was
denouncing the inconsistency of church members ;
stopped ; imagined an interlocutor calling him to
account for exposing the sins of church members
before the world, and thus replied to him : " Do
you not suppose the world knows them better than
I do ? The world sees this church member in Wall
Street, as greedy, as rapacious, as eager, as un-
scrupulous as his companions. He says to himself,
1 Is that Christianity ? I will go to church next
Sunday and see what the minister says about this.'
He goes; and what is the minister saying?"
Then, instantly, Mr. Beecher folded one arm
414 HENRY WARD BEECHER
across his breast, held an imaginary cat pnrring
comfortably there, as he stroked it with the other
hand, and continued : " The minister is saying,
4 Poor pussy, poor pussy, poor pussy.' " Mr. Beecher
made his congregation laugh not of set purpose and
never for the sake of the laugh, but because he saw
himself, and made them see, those incongruities
which are the essence of humor and often the most
powerful of arguments. And they flashed in his
conversation as frequently and as brilliantly as in
his public addresses.
^Esthetically Mr. Beecher was self-made. When
he came to Brooklyn from life in the West, in what
was essentially a border community, he brought
with him both the unconventionality and the lack
of cultivation which such life tends to develop. He
never possessed that kind of taste which only in-
heritance and early training can impart. But he
trained himself. His love of form and color, in
flowers, in precious stones, in rugs, in household
decorations, and in painting, was such as to make
him no mean critic respecting them all. He built
his house in Peekskill, as he once said to me, be-
cause he wanted to express himself in a home ; he
selected all the woods, the papers, the rugs, the
various decorations ; to that extent he was his own
architect. While in church life I rather think that
music always seemed to him the best which was
the most effective vehicle for the expression of the
emotional life of the congregation, he became a
lover of the best music, and an habitual and thor-
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 415
oughly appreciative attendant on the Philharmonic
Concerts in Brooklyn.
But doubtless righteousness, and not beauty, was
his standard; ethics, not aesthetics, afforded the law of
his life. He would have taken the Latin virtus, not
the Greek to koAov, — valor, not beauty, — to express
his ideal of character. The Puritan is distinguished
by two characteristics : the strength of his con-
science, and the will to impose it as a standard upon
others. Mr. Beecher had the Puritan conscience,
but he had no inclination to impose it on others.
He loved righteousness ; but he also loved liberty ;
and he believed that righteousness could never be
imposed from without, but must be wrought from
within. Nevertheless, though advocating liberty of
choice for others, the Puritan habits remained with
him to the end. He was a purist as regards all re-
lations between the sexes. He did not play cards,
he did not smoke, and he was an habitual though
not strictly a total abstainer. In his later life he
occasionally took a glass of beer to induce sleep.
He went on rare occasions to the theatre, but, I
judge, rather seriously. In one of his letters he
speaks of studying " Hamlet " as a preparation for
seeing Irving. The theatre did not appeal to him, for
the same reason that it did not appeal to his friend
John H. Raymond, — because he had too much
imagination. The crude interpretation of character
and the cruder scenery offended and obstructed his
understanding of the play.
This Puritan conscience was mated to a spirit of
416 HENRY WARD BEECHER
chivalry, and both were aroused and inflamed by
the treatment to which slavery subjected a poor
and ignorant race. He always sympathized with
the unfortunate. And this was not the professional
sympathy of the reformer. Traveling one day, he
came to a station where the passengers were to
change cars. All his fellow passengers were hast-
ening to get good seats in the adjoining train. A,
woman with three children, and packages to corre-
spond, was helplessly waiting for her chance. Mr.
Beecher, standing on the station platform, took
hold of both railings of the car, braced himself
against the crowd, and said, "Is no gentleman go-
ing to help this poor woman to a seat ? " The word
was enough ; the crowd responded ; and the woman
found half a dozen willing hands to help her. Mr.
Beecher's old-fashioned courtesy to his wife, and
his chivalric attitude toward women in general, was
not less noteworthy, though it has been less noted,
than his love for little children.
No one, I think, who knew Mr. Beecher at all
intimately ever doubted his sincerity. He never
pretended ; I do not think he had the capacity to
carry a pretense out to a successful issue. He
practiced what he preached ; and he was powerful
as a preacher primarily because his preaching was
the sincere and simple expression of himself. His
literal interpretation of Christ's teaching concerning
the forgiveness of enemies has been often ridiculed
as impossible. To many men I doubt not that it is
impossible; to him it was natural. Some year or two
ESTIMATES AND IMPRESSIONS 417
after his public trial, Mr. Moulton, whose treach-
ery had first deceived him as to the facts, and then
betrayed him into writing those letters which were
the only ground on which any suspicion against
him was based, became involved in financial diffi-
culties. With moistened eyes, Mr. Beecher said to
me, " I wish I could help him ; I would gladly loan
him the money to extricate himself, but I suppose
I could not. He would not understand it, — no
one would understand it." And he was right. No
one would have understood it. The humor, the im-
agination, the righteous indignation, the pleading,
forgiving love of Mr. Beecher, were none of them
assumed or excited for a purpose ; none of them
belonged to the platform or the pulpit. They were
his very self.
I lean back in my chair. I close my eyes. The
years that have elapsed are erased. I am sitting in
the gallery pew. It is 1858. A Southern slave-
holder is at my side. The preacher has declared,
as he often did, that he has no will to interfere
with slavery in the states ; no wish to stir up in-
surrection and discontent in the slave. Thereupon
he pictures the discontented slave escaping ; por-
trays him stealthily creeping out from his log cabin
at night ; seeking a shelter in the swamp ; feeding
on its roots and berries ; pursued by baying blood-
hounds ; making his way toward liberty, the North
Star his only guide; reaching the banks of the
Ohio River ; crossing it to find the Fugitive-Slave
Law spread like a net to catch him. And I see the
418 HENRY WARD BEECHER
fugitive, and hear the hounds, and my own heart
beats with his hopes and fears; and then the
preacher cries, " Has he a right to flee ? If he were
my son and did not seek liberty I would write
across his name, Disowned," and he writes it with
his finger as he speaks, and I see the letters of
flaming fire ; and the slaveholder at my side catches
his breath while he nods an involuntary assent ;
and as we walk out together, he says, " I could not
agree with all he said, but it was great, and he is
a good man."
Yes. He was a good man and a great one. Not
without errors. Not without faults. But in his
love for God and his love for his fellow men a good
man ; in his interpretation of the nature of God
and the duty of man to God and to his fellow men
a great man, with a clearness of vision and a cour-
age in application which not many of us attain.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
The analysis of Paul's Seventh Chapter of Romans is
taken from "The Christian Union," in which it was
printed in March, 1887, at the time of Mr. Beecher's
death, from the original manuscript in my possession.
The statement of Mr. Beecher's theological views as
given by him to his brethren in the ministry at the time
of his withdrawal from the New York and Brooklyn As-
sociation, is here reprinted from the " Life of Henry
Ward Beecher," by Lyman Abbott and S. B. Halliday.
The Bibliography has been prepared by the Rev. William
E. Davenport, of Brooklyn, to whom I am also indebted
for other valuable information. I also acknowledge my
indebtedness to the Rev. Horace Porter, of Montclair,
New Jersey, for reading this volume in manuscript,
verifying dates and incidents, and preparing the Index ;
and to the Rev. Ernest Hamlin Abbott for seeing the
book through the press.
LYMAN ABBOTT.
PAUL'S THEOLOGY
AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT ON ROMANS, CHAP. VII
By Henry Ward Beecher
[The following notes are here printed from " The
Christian Union Supplement," March 17, 1887, both as
an illustration of the thoroughness of Mr. Beecher's
study of the Bible and the method of his preparation for
certain forms of public discourse. They formed the
basis of an address before a clerical association ; the
date of this address I am not able to give.]
I AM to discuss verses 17, 20, and 25, in the seventh
chapter of Romans (quote). Here are three distinct
statements on one and the same personal experience.
Is the chapter to be taken literally ?
Is it the experience of Paul ?
Is it a universal experience of all Christians ?
What is the theory of sin and responsibility ?
What is Paul's theory of relief from a sense of guilt,
in Christ ?
Paul and Paul's countrymen must be understood, or
we cannot interpret Romans.
Paul was a poet and a dramatist. The substance of
his writing was fact, the form dramatic and in places
poetic. He was not a conscious artist. As the meteoric
elements, when they meet the rush of this world's atmo-
sphere, fuse and burn, so whatever touched the soul of
Paul became incandescent. The whole Book of Romans
is an argument in a kind of intermitting drama, and no
APPENDIX 423
one can follow its course with only dictionary, grammar,
and logic. To these must be added sympathy with an
impetuous moral nature, whose mind acted by intuition
— a mind that, rushing toward a goal, saw and often
was detained by side-lights ; whose thoughts were opal-
escent, flashing, full of heavenly color.
The Book of Romans was not Paul's exposition of
religion at large, only of so much of Christ's religion as
was needful to his purposes. Romans is a grand special
plea ! His audience, his countrymen ! His aim, to per-
suade them to new and higher methods of righteousness
than they possessed. He never denies that they were
seeking the right ends, but only by methods which could
never insure it Instead of a ritual, he proposed a per-
son. Instead of conformity to a system of rules, he
presented the inspiration of love. Instead of Moses
dead, he presented Christ alive. His was a spiritual
psychology, producing morality, not a morality hoping
to blossom into spirituality.
But, Romans derives its structure full as much from
what the Jews were as from what Paul was. It was an
argument of persuasion aimed at the peculiarities of his
countrymen. Abstract thought, in which order follows
logical association, was not his method. He followed
the minds of the men to whom he wrote. Like a sur-
geon, he watched the face and pulse of the patient at
every motion of the knife.
Romans is not Christianity relative to its own self, i. e.
in a complete scientific analysis ; but Christianity rela-
tive to the state of high-minded and conscientious Jews.
It assumes that Mosaic Jews and Christian Jews had
a common ground, viz. personal righteousness.
The argument, then, is to demonstrate the superiority
of Christ's method over that of Moses, and only so much
of Christian philosophy is used as is needful for that.
424 APPENDIX
The peculiarity of Jews.
1. He had before him the best men. He wrote to
serve high purpose, deep moral conviction, sincere and
earnest proofs.
2. But they were utterly blinded by spiritual conceit.
1. They believed they had fulfilled every condition
of legal obedience.
That God was bound by His covenant to bestow cer-
tain great advantages upon them.
That these promises or honors He was precluded
from bestowing on others, except they entered the
nation through the door of proselytizing.
Romans is an argument addressed to profoundly
earnest and conscientious men to convince them that
they were not as good as they thought, nor possessed of
the privileges they supposed, nor superior to other na-
tions; to persuade them to try another and superior
method. It was a tremendous task ; it is a magnificent
oration. It leaves Demosthenes far behind in grandeur
of its subject, in profound materials, in grasp, and scope,
and the fine finish of Cicero compares with it as the
Chinese dwarf oaks with the live-oak of Carolina.
If the seventh of Romans is a logical and scientific
statement we must accept the following statement : —
1. That there is a flesh-man and a spirit-man — an
actual dual-man.
2. That these are distinctly at war with each other ;
and that through life it is an unsettled conflict.
3. That the two men, one under different laws, have
separate and different characters ; are so different, that
the one may sin and the other be pure and blameless.
In other words, that sin does not run through, or sin
in one part of a man does not involve in guilt the whole
man.
4. That the " I " can retreat from the lower man and
APPENDIX 425
sit apart and above, and rejoice, while the under man is
sorrowing.
5. That sin is a substance, like soot in a chimney, or
fungus on a plant, or a tapeworm in the stomach, a
burglar in a man's house. Vs. 17 : " Now it is no more
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."
6. Yet in 25th verse, it is stated that the flesh is part
of the " I," and that the personality serves the law of
sin.
7. The seventh of Romans is no more dramatic than
the two preceding chapters, or the eighth of Romans.
They are a remarkable mixture of the abstract and con-
crete ; of feeling, imagination and fact ; as simple state-
ment and as metaphor. To interpret them by a scientific
method would be as preposterous as to apply logarithm
to Milton's Allegro, or H Penseroso. We must go out
into life, we must go within, to others' and our own ex-
perience, for a quick and real comprehension.
Especially one must have the sensibility to poetry.
8. Sin becomes a power, a conspirator and tempter.
9. A petite drama is flashed forth. A man is alive
and walking in security. The commandant lying in
ambush attacks him, Sin springs up as [he] passes a
covert. He is slain !
10. A kind of Greek chorus comes in, a didactic
statement of the purpose of the law. But, in an instant
Sin becomes a person, a bandit springs up behind the
law, and slays him !
12. Another chorus.
13. A strain of quasi argument.
14. Ditto.
15-19. A battle in Civil War, in which the various
parts of the soul must face in conflict.
20-22. Chorus and recitation which suddenly flows
forth again in vs. 23, 24 into poetic vision !
426 APPENDIX
25. In a burst of feeling, he anticipates and overleaps
the argument, snatches, as it were, a verse from the 8th,
and yet with the cry of victory on his lips, he resumes
the statement, and a wonderful statement it is (vs. 25).
Two departments in one man ! Obedience reigns in
one and disobedience in the other.
Under this opalescent and shifting scene, what may
be regarded as Paul's psychology, if he could be kept
cool long enough to make a scientific statement.
1. What is the scope of meaning in sarx.
It is used by Paul (1 Cor. xv. 39) to signify flesh —
meat.
2. The body, organized physical frame, as distin-
guished from the spirit — 1 Cor. v. 5 ; Rom. ix. 8.
3. The appetites and passions which strictly pertain
to physical functions.
It is in this sense that Paul uses the phrase in his
argument respecting sin and guilt.
We have, in Gal. v. 19-21, first, group of four, ama-
tory sin ; second, sins of combativeness and destructive-
ness ; third group, sins of eating and drinking — appe-
tite; heresies, i. e., factions, witchcraft and emulations,
only two not directly for passions, but they are in life
so profoundly associated with the appetites and passions,
that they may well be classed with them.
It is inconceivable that Paul should have meant to
say that in his flesh he could serve the law of sin in
this overt and fruitful way, while at the same time his
nobler self was serving God ! Nay, in Gal. v. 24, he
expressly says : " They that are Christ's have crucified
the flesh with the affections and lusts."
But, it is conceivable, and it stands to nature, that a
man's reason, conscience, and choice may be united and
fixed ; that they may overawe and restrain the bodily
appetites and passions, and may direct the whole being
APPENDIX 427
toward things pure and right, and yet not to be able to
withdraw from the passions, the powers of suggestion
and impulse ; or even, at unwatchful moments, out-
break. The soul is kept in fear and trembling, knowing
that conspirators are concealed in him. At any hour
insurrection may break forth. The rebellious province
is subdued, but not pacified nor won over to allegiance.
What then ? When one has given his love and con-
science over to a living friend, and honestly, earnestly,
and intensely, seeks to fulfill his wishes, these motives of
the passions, their involuntary impulses, their momentary
outbreak, are not to be counted as unsettling the char-
acter, not as changing the direction from evil to good,
from the flesh to the spirit, from self to Christ, and in
the judicatory of love, they are testimonies rather of the
fealty and fidelity of the soul. The instant restraint, the
condemnation poured upon the evil, is a stronger proof
of faithful love than would be an easy, even love, that
had no tasks, no self-denial. In all this it must be borne
in mind, that the question in debate is not the abstract
question, whether the casual and restricted passions
and impulses are not violations of law — but, whether
the existence of such an experience is inconsistent with
peace of mind.
The Apostle argues — that under the Mosaic system,
as held by the best of his contemporaries with a percep-
tion of the spiritually felt law, a system of external obedi-
ence, there could never be a sense of perfect obedience.
The ideal law will always leave actual life in the
vocative.
But, under a reign of love, the whole flow and tend-
ency of life is counted, and the incidental defections
are thrown out and not counted. So that as a child with
many faults, yet seeking to obey his parents, may be
made very happy at home, so when we become sons of
428 APPENDIX
God in a faith that works by love, disallowed sins do
not count.
In view of this exposition :
1. Is this Paul's personal experience ?
1. He doubtless has had similar.
2. But, he personifies a struggle of thousands.
2. Is it a universal experience ?
1. The substance matter, the elementary experi-
ences, belong to all who seek the godly life.
2. But they are not collected, unbattled, and brought
into conscious conflict.
3. Only in cases where the man seeks peace, from
obedience and not from trust in love. It is the
distinctive experience of Conscience and Intel-
lect dealing with real or ideal law.
THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT
[The theological statement here printed was given by-
Mr. Beecher at a regular meeting of the New York and
Brooklyn Association of Congregational Ministers, held
October 11, 1882. It was extemporaneous, was taken
down in shorthand, and was published from the short-
hand writer's report, except that portion relating to the
Atonement. For the occasion of this address, see pages
321, 322. After some autobiographic reminiscences re-
specting the spiritual experiences out of which his theo-
logy had grown, Mr. Beecher proceeded as follows.]
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 fundamental
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 theology in the world is the Calvinistic —
the higher you go the better it is, as a purely metaphy-
sical 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 rejects many of the
doctrines of Calvinism. Then, secondly, you may look
at fundamental doctrines from the standpoint of eccle-
siastical organization. There are a great many things
430 APPENDIX
that are indispensable to the existence of a church that
are not necessary to the piety of the individual member
of that church. You take the Roman system. Fundamen-
talism there means not so much systematic theology as
it does the truth necessary to the maintenance and in-
fluence 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 special importance, viz. What doctrines are fun-
damental to the formation of Christian character and to
its complete development ? There are many things that
are necessary to a system of theology that are not neces-
sary 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 building 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 distin-
guished from a pantheistic God, whether it is the coarser
Pantheism of materialism, 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
APPENDIX 431
personal in such a sense as that those that know person-
ality 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 men 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 Being 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 as to the
controversy as to the knowable and unknowable ; I
believe on both sides. It is not usual that I am on both
sides of any question at the same time ; but I am here.
I 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 He 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 con-
tinent, but he did not know its contents, what the moun-
tain 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 whisper
432 APPENDIX
to Him, I believe that He imparts thoughts to me and
feelings, and yet 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 unknowable. People say,
" Some may believe this, but can you prove it ? " Sup-
pose 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, " Be
kind enough to demonstrate that, will you ? " She would
not have been my wife if she had. Are not the finest
feelings that you know those that are unsusceptible of
demonstration ? Certainly by analysis, description, lan-
guage. 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 all of
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 evidence within myself that
is unspeakably more convincing to me than eye, or hand,
or ear can be, that there is a God and that He is my
God!
THE TRINITY
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 difficul-
ties in it ? I should like to know if there are any great
questions of the structure of the universe, of the nature
of mind, that do not run you into difficulties when you
APPENDIX 433
go a little way in them. But I hold that while I cannot
analyze and localize into distinct elements, as it were,
the three Persons of the Trinity, I hold them — the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The theories, such
as, for instance, in part are hinted in the Nicene Creed
and outspun with amazing ignorance of knowledge 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 de-
claration 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 con-
trary 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, — com-
plexity of functions, of organs, of powers and faculties,
— and when we reach the higher animals the complex-
ity 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 mul-
titudes of parts, but of groups, so that unity is made up
by whole families of faculties. I can conceive that in a
higher range of being unity may be comprised of per-
sons, 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 predisposes 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 department, and the
Holy Ghost to yet another function, — leave it to those
who are better informed than I am.
434 APPENDIX
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 man-
ifest 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 His 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 limita-
tions 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 conscious-
ness 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 substance
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.
APPENDIX 435
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 feel-
ing, 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 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 apprehension, it makes no dif-
ference 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, stimulating influence of the
mind of God proceeds from the Holy Ghost, and that
it is universal, constant, immanent. 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 reaches toward
holiness — aspiration, love of truth, justice, purity — that
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 he 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 working of the
436 APPENDIX
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 providence 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 nat-
ural 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 current of things. God stands behind
the whole system of natural laws and can produce special
results in men whenever He pleases. Such a doctrine of
the special influence of the Spirit of God makes prayer
of benefit to man. I 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 deal
more by direct answer from God. I believe, then, in
Divine Providence ; 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
APPENDIX 437
possible, but were real in the times gone by, — especially
the two great miracles that began and ended the Chris-
tian dispensation — the miraculous conception of Christ
and His resurrection from the dead. When I give 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 natr
ural 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 development. I believe him to be sinful, — univer-
sally man is sinful, — but I 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 nat-
ural state into a higher and spiritual state. He needs to
be born again. If 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 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
438 APPENDIX
influence. The circumstances that surround men by
their influence lift some very high and leave others
comparatively 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 regenerated for anything beside his per-
sonal 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 sec-
ondary or reflected light of Christianity upon the morals,
customs, 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 it is for a person
to come suddenly to education, to knowledge, simply by
a volition. No man can ever lift himself up so. It is not
within human power ; it is within the power of a man
to put himself under instructors and grow up into educa-
tion, but 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
surrender to God and entrance into the spiritual king-
dom are the joint act of the man willing and wishing
and the cooperative 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
APPENDIX 439
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 crea-
tion and Providence do so far manifest the goodness,
wisdom, and power 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 sun-
dry 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 better 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 generation to generation. [Reading] "The au-
thority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be
440 APPENDIX
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] u We may be
moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a
high and reverend esteem for the Holy Scripture ; and
the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doc-
trine, 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 excel-
lences, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments
whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the
word of God ; yet, notwithstanding our full persuasion
and assurance of the infallible truth and divine au-
thority 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 concerning 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 salva-
tion, faith and life, "is either expressly set down in
Scripture or by good and necessary consequence 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 ac-
knowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God
to be necessary for the saving understanding of such
APPENDIX 441
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 translate the Bible or construct the doc-
trines of the Bible except by the Bible itself," then I
will turn and catechize that man, saying, " 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 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 to the man himself and his own
individual experience ? A man says, " You must not
undertake to dictate to the word of God what conver-
sion is." I 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
442 APPENDIX
man can interpret it without a knowledge of what lies
outside of it. That is the very medium through which
any man comes to understand 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 under-
standing of what the Bible teaches. Well, I shall not
have time to say much more; but, in the main, with
such modifications as will be clearly understood now by
what I have said, I accept the first chapter in the Con-
fession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church as being a
very wise and very full and very admirable 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 re-
porter to reduce it to writing both because he had be-
come 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 Atone-
ment,— the word is but once used in the New Testa-
ment, — confines itself to the setting forth of Christ, His
nature, power, relations, and commands. We hear no-
thing of a " plan,"of an "arrangement," of a " scheme of
salvation," of any " atonement," but everything of Christ's
work. I am accustomed to say that Christ is in Himself
APPENDIX 443
the Atonement, that He is set forth in His life, teaching,
suffering, death, resurrection, and heavenly glory, as em-
powered 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 em-
powered to save men, to remit the penalty of past sins,
and to save them from the dominion of sin. It is not ne-
cessary to salvation that men should know how Christ was
prepared to be a Saviour. It is He Himself that is to be
accepted, and not the philosophy of His nature or work.
I employ the term Christ for that which systematic
writers call the Atonement. 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 ac-
tivity 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 heavenly dispositions as shall reorganize our char-
acter 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 decla-
ration 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
understanding) a love that is patient, forgiving, self-sac-
rificing, sorrowing and suffering not for its own but for
others' sins and sinful 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
444 APPENDIX
to open, both by His person, presence, actions, words, and
fidelity, the spiritual kingdom of God to men's under-
standings — in short, it is the moral nature of God man-
ifest 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 righteous-
ness 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 receiv-
ing Christ.
I do not teach that this heart of Christ presented to
men " gives them power to become the sons of God ; "
that the ordinary human understanding could of itself
develop 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, inspiring spirit
of God — the Holy Ghost — and that this view of Christ,
when set home upon men by the Holy Spirit, this devel-
opment 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 emergence
from heaven of such a being as Christ, upon such a mis-
sion, 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 unexplained in
the Word of God. If alluded to, as I am inclined to think
it is, it is left without expansion or solution. The Scrip-
APPENDIX 445
tures declare that the suffering of Christ secured the re-
mission 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 an-
nounce remission of sins by reason of Christ's work.
But nowhere do I see any attempt to reach those ques-
tions of modern theology, — Why was it necessary ? How
did his suffering open a way for sinners ? I regard the
statement in Romans iii. 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 Christ 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 justi-
fied freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jetfus : whom God hath set forth to be a pro-
pitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His right-
eousness for the remission of sins that are past, through
the forbearance of God ; To declare, I say, at this time
his righteousness : that He might be just, and the justi-
fier 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 Testament, and which can be un-
derstood, is that moral power which it exerts and those
effects which, through the Holy Spirit, are produced
by it
[At this point the report is resumed.]
446 APPENDIX
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 con-
sequences 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 founda-
tion of urgent motives and appeal on the side of fear,
holding men back from sin, or inspiring them with the
desire of righteousness. That far I hold that the Scrip-
tures teach explicitly. Beyond that I do not go, on the
authority of the Scriptures. I have my own philosoph-
ical theories about the future life ; but what is revealed
to my mind is simply this : The results of u man's con-
duct reach over into the other world on those that are
persistently and inexcusably wicked, and man's punish-
ment 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 ordinarily
employ that term. So much for that, and that is the
extent of my authoritative teaching on that subject.
FAREWELL
Now, Christian brethren, allow me to say that these
views which I have opened to you, and which of course,
APPENDIX 447
in preaching in the pulpit, take on a thousand various
forms, under differing illustrations, and for the different
purposes for which I 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 direc-
tion 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 fullness 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 : reverence for the past lies deep
in my nature. It has not been from any desire to sepa-
rate 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 mat-
ter what the consequences may be. I have endeavored,
through stormy times, through all forms of excitement,
to make known what was the nature of God and what
He 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 dis-
448 APPENDIX
approval, and that many even in the association to which
I belong feel as though they could not bear the burden
of responsibility of being supposed to tolerate the views
I have held and taught, and as a man of honor and
a Christian gentleman I cannot afford to lay on any-
body the responsibility 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 re-
sponsible in any way, and therefore, I now here, and
in the greatest love and sympathy, lay down my mem-
bership 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. I will devote my whole life to the
Congregational 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 dis-
gust. I never was in warmer personal sympathy 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 perfectly
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 Congre-
gational 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.
APPENDIX 449
At the close of Mr. Beecher's address, after some in-
formal 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 carried without a dissenting voice. It was as
follows : —
Resolved, That the members of the New York and
Brooklyn Association receive the Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher'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 indi-
rectly 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 Evan-
gelical 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.
Beecher, 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 depressing sense of the loss we are to suffer,
and unitedly pledge the hearts of the Association to him,
and express the hope that the day for his return may
soon come.
INDEX
Abolitionists, Beecher not one
of, 155.
Adams, Charles Francis, quoted,
230, 246.
Adams, John Qnincy, on slavery
and the Constitution, 151.
Adams, Sarah, 90.
Alford, 5.
America, size and population in
1834,39.
American Board, when organ-
ized, 7, 9.
American Home Missionary So-
ciety, 9.
American Tract Society, silence
on slavery, 191.
Amherst College, 34, 36, 39, 156.
Anglo-Romanism, 4.
Anti-slavery, issue in 1847, 133 ;
Convention, 136 ; cause es-
poused, 156 ; Society, 186, 193 ;
campaign, 195-223.
Armitage, Rev. Dr., on " Beecher
as a Man," 325.
Arnold, Matthew, 111.
Arnold, Thomas, 5.
An iot . William, quoted, 117.
Bacon, Leonard, an editor of
" The Independent," 158, 288 ;
presides over Council, 295.
Barnes, Albert, why put on
trial, 9.
Harmnn. P. T., 214.
Bates, Erastus N., vice-modera-
tor of Council, 295.
Beecher, Catharine, sister of
Henry Ward, educator, 25 ;
quoted, 29.
Beecher, Charles, musical col-
laborator of his brother, 26.
Beecher, Dr. Edward, college
president and pastor, 25, 110.
Beecher, Harriet, sister of
Henry Ward, 25. See also
Stowe.
Beecher, Harriet E., daughter
of Henry Ward, 48.
Beecher, Henry Barton, son of
Henry Ward, 48.
Beecher, Henry Ward, real life
begins as spiritual experience
in Ohio woods, 1 ; .pjjmhet of
JarevlO; his views ofCnrlst,
13, 14 ; birth of, 16 ; his boy-
hood, 29-34; enters Amherst
College, 34 ; graduates from,
39 ; at Lane Theological Semi-
nary, 42, 46; goes to Law-
renceburg, Indiana, 46 ; mar-
riage and children, 48 ; ordina-
tion, 48, 49 ; preaching at Law-
renceburg, 50 ; goes to Indian-
apolis, 55, 67 ; his study of
men, 61, 109 ; his preaching,
63, 118, 124 ; hjs^j.ieetmraa to
¥^""C Mp^," Jrf-r^: called
to Park Street, Boston, and to
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn,
71 ; accepts the latter, 74 ; let-
ter quoted on his purpose in
the ministry, 74 ; first sermon
in Plymouth Church, 75 (first
evening sermon, 158) ; as pas-
tor of Plymouth Church, 100-
132 ; personal appearance, 100 ;
his elocutionary power, 104-
106 ; his rhetoric, 107 ; as a
INDEX
scholar, 110 ; student of the
Bible, 115; specially of the
New Testament, 116, 117 ; his
method of preaching, 119 ;
why a Congregationalist, 123 ;
an emotional preacher, 127 ; a
mysticj_128 ; his imagination,
129; his prayers, 130 ; his atti-
tude toward the abolitionists,
153-155 ; his attitude toward
slavery, 156-194 ; auction of
slave girls, 160-162 ; editorial
in "Independent," on "Shall
We Compromise ? " 167 ;
American slavery and Hebrew
slavery contrasted, 172-174 ;
free system of North and
slave system of South con-
trasted, 175, 176; duty of
North, 177-179 ; duty of North
toward Fugitive-Slave Law in
' particular, 180, 189 ; duty of
the Church to slavery, 189-
194 ; the Anti-Slavery Cam-
paign, 195-222 ; Kansas-Ne-
braska Bill, 202 ; in the Fre-
mont campaign, 205 ; on
the Free Soilers, 210-212 ;
" Against a Compromise of
Principle," 231 ; on Sumter,
237 ; preaches on " The Na-
tional Flag," 238; editor of
"The Independent," 240;
urges emancipation, 241 ; goes
to Europe, 242; his English
speeches, 253-263; his recep-
tion home, 264; Sumter flag-
raising, 264-266 ; on recon-
struction, 271 ; the Cleveland
letters, 272, 282-287 ; for uni-
versal suffrage, 276 ; trial of,
288, 289; his "Yale Lectures
on Preaching," 301, 353-373;
" Silver Wedding " of his pas-
torate, 301 ; his lecture tours,
304 ; his Richmond experience,
305, 306; on public schools,
308 ; on the Irish cause, 308 ;
on the Chinese question, 308 ;
prohibition, 308 ; on the Jews,
308 ; campaigns for Grant,
Hayes, and Cleveland, 308,
309 ; a free-trader, 310 ; three
epochs in his preaching, 312 ;
an evolutionist, 313-323 ; not
a Universalist or Unitarian,
320 ; later views of the Bible,
320; withdraws from Congre-
gational Association, 321 ; his
" Bible Studies " and " Esolu-
tionanjLRehgion," 323; severs
connection with l ' The Christian
Union," 324 ; at the Brooklyn
New England dinners, 325
seventieth birthday, 325 ; as
editor and author, 328-352
a great editorial writer, 338
" Life of Christ," 344 ; " Star
Papers," 344; his style, 349
student of Ruskin, Homer,
Milton, and Dante, 351 ; rank
of his writings, 351 ; his " Yale
Lectures on Preaching," 353-
373 ; on prayer, 367 ; compara-
tive value of his books, 372 ;
revisits England, 374 ; returns
to America, 375 ; resumes work
on his " Life of Christ," 375 ;
his last service in Plymouth
Church, 376 ; his illness and
death, 377; the funeral, 378-
380; his statue in City Hall
Park, 380; portrait in bas-
relief in Plymouth Church,
380; estimates and impres-
sions, 386-417 ; variety of his
interests, 387 ; his oratory
compared with that of the
other great orators of his day,
396 ; author's impressions of
Beecher's oratory, 403; of
his private life, 406; some
letters, 411, 412 ; his sincerity,
416; effect of his preaching
on a slave-holder, 417.
Beecher, Lyman, restatement of
INDEX
453
orthodox doctrine, 9 ; sermon
on "The Bible a Code of
Laws," quoted, 13 ; autobio-
graphy referred to, 16 ; as a
preacher, 17-22 ; accepts call
to Lane Theological Seminary,
42 ; lectureship named for him
at Yale College, 353.
Beecher, Mrs. Henry Ward, 48,
377.
Beecher Memorial Association,
382.
Beecher Memorial Church, 381.
Beecher, Roxanna Foote, mo-
ther of Henry Ward, 16;
character of, 22-24.
Beecher, Thomas K., his work,
26.
Beecher, William C, son of
Henry Ward, 48.
Bell, Geo. A., quoted, 302.
Bentham, 4.
Bible, 11, 13 ; Beecher's use of,
115, 117; modern views of,
315, 316.
Birney, James G., 146, 155.
Blackwell, Lucy Stone, 216.
Bonner, 345.
Bowen, Henry C, 158, 289.
Broad Church Movement, 5.
Broadway Tabernacle, 159.
" Brooklyn Eagle " quoted, 91.
Brooklyn in 1847, 72.
Brooks, Phillips, 5, 389, 396M02.
Brown, John, 147, 213.
Browning, Mrs., 90.
Bryant, Wm. C, 90.
Buchanan, President, his presi-
dency at time of great na-
tional crisis, 223.
Bullard, Miss Eunice, becomes
Mrs. Beecher, 48.
Burke, 37.
Burns, Robert, Mr. Beecher
quoted on, 215.
Bushnell, Horace, prophet of
faith, 10; philosophy he
taught, 11, 34, 371.
Calhoun, John C, remark
about Beecher, 170, 177.
Calvin, John, 6.
Calvinists, 12.
Carlyle, 129.
Chalmers, Dr., 304.
Channing, 89.
Chase, Salmon P., 155, 204.
Cheever, Geo. B., 214.
Christ, 1-3, 13, 15, 18 ; Beecher
a preacher of, 118, 123, 126,
128, 193, 242, 243 ; and non-
resistance, 210 ; " Life " of, by
Beecher, 300, 344, 346-349;
various " Lives " of, 347, 348.
Christlieb, 124.
11 Christian Union, The," Beech-
er's analysis of seventh of Ro-
mans, printed in, 117; his
prayers in, 131 ; founded,
290, 300 ; Mr. Be&her with-
draws from, 324 ; his purpose
in, 333-336, 338; success of,
339.
"Church Union, The," pur-
chased for founding " The
Christian Union," 332.
Church, amusements in, 215 ; of
England at beginning of nine-
teenth century, 4; Congrega-
tional, 81-83 ; Institutional,
261 ; Methodist, aggressive
piety of, 4, 6, 136 ; Plymouth,
see Plymouth Church ; Pres-
byterian, 136 ; Puritan, 4.
Church, the, and slavery, 75,
136, 146, 189-195.
Cincinnati, 40, 41.
" Cincinnati Gazette," 328.
44 Cincinnati Journal, The,"
Beecher writes for, 328.
Civil War, 223-243 ; Buchan-
an's administration and, 223-
226; Lincoln's earliest atti-
tude toward, 228; Mr.
Beecher's final declarations
against compromise, 231-
237 ; Plymouth Church and the
454
INDEX
Civil War, 238 ; England and,
244-248 ; Beecher's presenta-
tion of the war issues in Eng-
land, 230-263.
Claflin, Horace B., 294.
Clarkson, 136.
Clay, Henry, his compromise
measures, and his character,
162.
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 198.
"Cleveland Letters," as con-
taining Beecher's views on re-
construction, 272 ; the letters
discussed, 282-287.
Collyer, Robert, on "Mr.
Beecher as a Man," 325.
Conant, Thomas J., 110.
Congregationalism, principle of,
82.
Constitution, Beecher student
of, 110, 151-153, 164-169, 177,
180-183.
Conybeare, 5.
Cotton-gin, 137.
Council, the great Congrega-
tional, held in Plymouth
Church, 295, 296.
Curtis, George William, his ora-
tory, 396-398.
Cutter, William T., secures in-
vitation to Mr. Beecher to
come East, 73.
Cuyler, Theodore F., 214.
D'Alembert, 8.
Dana, Professor J. D., 325.
Dante, 111.
Darwin, "Origin of Species,"
314.
Dawes, Senator Henry L., 325.
Declaration of Independence,
136.
Dingley, Nelson, vice-moderator
of Council, 295.
Dog Noble, Anecdote of, 206,
207.
Douglas, Stephen A., 199.
Douglass, Frederick, 145.
Dunn's " Indiana," 52.
Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 7; his
restatement of doctrine, 9.
Edersheim, " Life of Christ,"
348.
Edmonson girls, purchase of,
from slavery, 162.
Eggleston, Edward, quoted, 114.
EUicott, 5.
Emancipation, Beecher on, 241.
Emigrant Aid Company, 208.
Emmons, last of merely logical
preachers, 10.
Erskine, 5.
Evolution, 314.
" Evolution and Religion," 307,
313.
Faber, F. W., 90.
Farrar, F. W., 5.
Fillmore, President, quoted, 197,
204.
Finney, Charles G., his faith in
a new theology, 9; the pro-
phet of hope, 10 ; power of, 12,
117, 397, 401.
Fiske, John, 404.
Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 331,
339.
Foreign Missionary Society,
timid on slavery, 191 .
Fowler, the phrenologist, quot-
ed, 100.
Fremont, John C, 205.
Fulton, Rev. Dr., on "Beecher
as a Man," 325.
Garrison, William Lloyd, and
"The Liberator," 143-148,
155, 196.
Geikie's " Life of Christ," 348.
Gladstone, 245 ; his oratory, 396,
397.
God, 1, 3 ; no mere hypothesis,
11 ; Puritan conception of, 13,
15, 129; sermon on "The
Gentleness of," 195.
INDEX
455
Gough, John B., his oratory,
396-399.
Grant, General, 229, 268.
Greeley, Horace, 196, 247.
Guion, Madame, 90.
Hall, Dr. Chas. H., quoted, 376,
378.
Halla way '8 " Indianapolis," 52 ;
quoted, 54, 62.
Halliday, Rev. S. B., 103, 381.
Harper Brothers' edition of
Beeeher's sermons, 120.
Harper, Mr. Fletcher, 342.
Hayes, President, 325.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth,
209.
Higher criticism, 116.
Hilliard, George S., 196.
Hillis, Newell Dwight, 382.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 325.
Home Missionary Society, 9,
note ; and slavery, 191.
Hopkins, Mark, 325.
" How to Become a Chris-
tian?" quoted, 97.
Howard, John R., quoted, 172,
332.
Howson, 5.
Hunt, Seth B., 158.
Huxley, Thomas H., 111.
" Independent, The," 158, 178,
202 ; Beecher, editor of, 240,
288, 329, 332.
Indiana, 52, 135.
"Indiana Journal, The," 60,
328.
Indianapolis, 50, 59, 67.
Ingersoll, Robert G., 7.
Intemperance, 7, 75.
James, Professor William, 124.
Jewett, Dr., of Terre Haute,
59.
Johnson, President, 283.
Johnson, Oliver, quoted on Gar-
143.
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 199.
Keble, John, 4.
Kingsley, 5.
Kossuth, 198; in Plymouth
Church, 214.
Lane Theological Seminary,
Lyman Beecher goes to, 41 ;
Henry Ward Beecher student
in, 42, 46.
Lawrenceburg, 46, 49.
"Lectures to Young Men," 63,
118.
" Liberator, The," 143, 148, 209.
" Life of Christ," 300, 344, 346-
349.
Lincoln, Abraham, 136, 155,
171; at Cooper Union, 222,
223; letter to Washburn,
quoted, 228 ; was Beecher ad-
viser of ? 229 ; letter to
Greeley, 247 ; amnesty procla-
mation, 265.
Litchfield, Conn., birthplace of
Beecher, 16 ; society of, 28.
Locke, philosophy of, in Eng-
land, 4.
Longfellow, H. W., 90
Low, Hon. Seth, 325.
Lowell, James Russell, 90.
Luther, 5.
Lutherans, disavow Luther's
theory of secret counsel, 12.
Mabie, Hamilton W., quoted,
253.
Marshall. John, his slight legal
training, 45.
Martineau, Miss, 90.
Mart in. ■an. James, 247.
Mason and Dixon's Line, 137-
141.
Mason and Slidell, capture of,
240.
Matthew, Father, 214.
Maudsley, utilitarianism of, 4.
Maurice, 5.
May, Samuel J., 196.
456
INDEX
Mill, utilitarianism of, 4.
Miliuan, Dean, 116.
Milton, 111 ; Beecher student of
his political essays, 351.
Merriam, Geo. S., quoted, 339.
Missouri Compromise, 200.
Moody, Dwight L., his proposi-
tion to Mr. Beecher, 190.
Mulford, Elisha, 5.
Munger, T. T., 5.
Neilson, Judge Joseph, presides
at seventieth birthday cele-
bration of Mr. Beecher, 225.
Nettleton, 9, 104.
Newman, John Henry, 4.
New Testament, Beecher's chief
study, 116.
"Norwood," novel by Beecher,
300.
Ordinance of 1787 and slavery,
53.
Oxford Movement, 4.
Paine, Thomas, popularity of, in
his time, 7.
Park, Dr. Edwards A., quoted,
107.
Parker, Joseph, Beecher writes
to, 375.
Parker, Theodore, Mr. Beecher
on views of, 14, 196.
" Patriotic Addresses," volume
referred to, 172.
Payson, Edward, sermon on
" Jehovah a King," quoted,
13.
Pettigrew, James L., quoted,
225.
Phillips, Wendell, 155 ; quoted,
209, 214, 325; his oratory,
396, 397.
Phrenology, 61.
Pierce, President Franklin, 198,
204.
Pierpont, John, 90.
Plymouth Church, sketch of,
72-99 ; orthodox theological
position of, 83 ; music of, 89 ;
Mr. Beecher's purpose for, 91 ;
revivals in, 92-99 ; by whom
organized, 158 ; growth of,
160; rifles pledged in, 211;
notabilities there, 218-220 ;
threatened by mob, 221 ; in-
vestigation of Tilton charges,
293 ; council called by, 295 ;
membership of Plymouth
Church during the trial, 297 ;
twenty-fifth anniversary of,
301 ; churches named after,
382 ; Mr. Beecher's portrait in
bas-relief in, 382 ; Plymouth
Church the most vital memo-
rial to Beecher, 383 ; Sunday-
schools of, 385.
Plymouth collection of hymns,
90.
Polk, President, 204.
Pond, Major J. B., 304, 374,
391, 392.
Porter, Harriet F., stepmother
of Henry Ward Beecher, her
character, 24, 25.
Porter, President Noah, 296.
" Preaching, Yale lectures on,"
353-373.
Reconstruction, 268-287 ; the
Fort Sumter address on, 272-
276 ; the Cleveland letters on,
282-287. '
Reformation, the, 5.
Reid, Whitelaw, 325.
Rhodes, James Ford, quoted on
slavery, 138, note, 199.
Robertson, F. W., 5.
Rousseau, 8.
Sabatier, quoted, 332.
Sage, Henry W., 294; founds
Lyman Beecher lectureship at
Yale College, 353.
Scott, Winfield, 198.
Scoville, Rev. Samuel, 48.
INDEX
457
Seward, William HM 136, 155,
241.
Slavery, 75 ; origin and growth
of, 135-142, 148; Beecher's
first participation in question,
156 ; compromise measures,
163 ; Fugitive-Slave Law, 181-
197.
Spencer, Herbert, agnosticism
of, 4, 111 ; his M First Princi-
ples," 314; Beecher at dinner
to, 404, 405.
Spurgeon, Rev. Charles H., 120.
Stanley, A. P., 5.
44 Star Papers," 344.
Storrs, Richard S., 158, 288 ; at
Beecher's twenty-fifth anni-
versary, 302 ; his oratory, 396-
401.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 25, 26 ;
quoted, 29, 32.
Stringfellow, 210.
Sturtevant, Rev. J. M., 296.
Suffrage, woman, 216, 276, 277 ;
negro, 275-277 ; note on, 279 ;
universal, 276.
Sumner, Charles, 204 ; struck
down by Brooks, 213 ; his ora-
tory, 398.
Sumter, Beecher's address at,
272.
Tappan, Arthur, gift to Lane
Seminary, 42.
Thackeray, 111.
Thompson, Joseph P., 158, 288,
329.
Tilton, Theodore, 288 ff.
Tissot, 349.
Toombs, Senator, 179.
44 Tribune," N. Y., quoted, 226.
Trinity Church, Boston, 79.
Tyndall, John, 111.
Tyng, the elder, reference to
sermon of, 17.
Unitarian revolt, 8.
Vail, Rev. F. Y., 41.
Valentine, Lawson, 392.
Voltaire, 8.
Wade, 204.
Washington, Booker T., 145;
note on, 280.
Watts, 90.
Webster, Daniel, 17 ; argument
for slavery compromise, 163-
167; Hulsemann letter, 197;
his oratory, 396, 397.
Weed, Thurlow, 196.
Wellman, Dr. J. W., 296.
Wesley, Charles, 90.
44 Western Farmer and Gar-
dener," 60, 328.
White, Andrew D., 325.
Whittier, John G., 90, 325.
Wilberforce, 136.
Wordsworth, 5.
Xavier, 90.
Yale College, 7.
44 Yale Lectures on Preaching,"
114, 120 ; when delivered, 301 ;
special study of, 353-373, 391.
Zundel, John, 88
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MAP ?, 1 1990
AUTODISCAPR 05r9l
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1 /83 BERKELEY, CA 94720
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U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
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C0228D3150
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Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11