sv, i • •"■ ■ '<:>i,-;v'-> :>'-'.•'.''':>.:■"■..>■■ "WaarJ) JBeecber where he loved to visit, in his journeys to other lands, in the circle of his intimate friends, and in his solicitous care for young men. The indescribable power of his oratory can be appre- hended only by those who have heard it. In childhood and manhood we, listening to him, have felt the electric thrill passing through crowded audiences as they responded to the spontaneous outflow of his great mind and heart keyed to such exquisite harmony of human sympathy that voice and words and action and thought made a grand diapason which seemed to gather spirit, mind and body up into an elysium of exultant faith and courage. The power of Mr. Beecher's personality cannot be reproduced. But it is a satisfaction to find that after the personality has become only a fading memory, Mr. Beecher abides with us as a prophet of the first order, whose insight into truth is more clearly recognized now than when he was living. His wisdom has survived his personal magnetism, and the generation which succeeds his accepts what he taught with greater confidence than the generation which heard him. He thought it advisable to withdraw as a minister from official fellowship with his brethren in order that they might not bear the responsibility for what he said. But the Beecher of twenty years ago would be received into full fellowship to-day with little question and abundant honor. The twenty-nine names inscribed in our National Hall of Fame include three clergymen, all Congregationalists. Their widely diverging teachings and types may, we trust, prophesy as varied service of our historic denomination in the future as it has rendered in the past. Jonathan Edwards, William Ellery Channing, and Henry Ward Beecher were as far apart in theology as the East is from the West. But in their insight into the character of God and experience of personal communion with him they stand close to one another. In sympathy with men and in interpreting to them a foreword 5 God, whom he beheld and knew, the greatest of these three was Beecher. The pictures presented are not less notable than the contributors. Never has there been such a complete photo- graphic reproduction of Mr. Beecher himself and of persons and places associated with him. The first portrait is said to be the last one of Mr. Beecher, taken by Elliot and Frye, in London, in 1886. The photographer stopped Mr. Beecher as he and Major Pond were going out of the gallery, saying: "Stop right where you are, Mr. Beecher. Don't move a muscle." It was issued for the first time in this country in the volume entitled, "Best Thoughts of Henry Ward Beecher," published by H. S. Goodspeed, of New York, to whom we are indebted for the opportunity of reproducing it. The photograph on page i o, by Rockwood, of New York, is also a late one, and appears as the frontispiece in Lyman Abbott's biography of Beecher, recently issued by Houghton, Mififlin and Company. Earlier pictures of Mr. Beecher have been gathered from many sources, and we are particularly indebted to Mrs. Frances L. Pratt, of Brooklyn, a long-time member of Plymouth Church, for suggestions and for the loan of rare photographs. SALIENT DATES IN BEECHER'S LIFE 1 8 13, June 24. Henry Ward Beecher born in Litchfield, Connecticut. 1834. Graduated from Amherst College. 1837, Graduated from Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1838, November 9. Ordained at Presbyterian church, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, having supplied the church from May, 1837. 1839, July 31. Installed at Indianapolis, Indiana. 1847, September 19. Dismissed from Indianapolis. 1847, October 10. Installed at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, New York. 1878-1887. Chaplain of the Thirteenth New York Regiment. 1887, March 8. Died at Brooklyn, New York. TABLE OF CONTENTS Estimates of Beecher As a Citizen, by Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D 1 1 Ruling Ideas of his Sermons, by Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D. 23 As an Orator, by Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus, D.D 37 An English Estimate, by Rev. W. J. Dawson, D.D 47 As Author and Editor, by John R. Howard 57 His Contribution to Literature, by Rev. Alford B. Penniman . . 71 Abridged Bibliography 75 Incidents and Personal Memories Mr. Beecher in Private Life, by Rossiter W. Raymond .... 81 The Henry Ward Beecher of My Childhood, by Rev. R. DeW. Mallary 91 Undergraduate Days, by Walter A. Dyer 95 Mr. Beecher and Two Plymouth Boys, by Edward Bok . . . .103 The Beecher Rifles Church, by C. M. Harger 105 Mr. Beecher's Yale Lectures, by Prof. George P. Fisher . . .111 A Young Theologue's Impressions, by Rev. Hugh Pedley . -115 An Evening Hour at Beecher's Home, by Rev. A. S. Walker, D.D. 1 17 An Ex-Slave's Impressions, by Maggie Porter Cole 120 Appreciations of Mr. Beecher by Rev. Amory H. Bradford, D.D 125 Fred W. Hinrichs 127 George W. Cable 130 Oliver Otis Howard 131 John White Chadwick 131 Julia Ward Howe 133 George William Curtis 135 Oliver Wendell Holmes 135 \[b^ Church in Indianapolis in luhich J\f>-. BcccJicr preached Church in La7urencehirg, Tnd., 7vhere Mr. Beecher first preached ESTIMATES OF BEECHER From a photof^raph by Rockivood. Believed to be his latest portrait HENRY WARD BEECHER AS A CITIZEN By Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D. Henry Ward Beecher was primarily a preacher of the gospel. He reiteratedly declared that his pur- pose in life was to bring men to a knowledge of God and a likeness with God, through Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men. He was a political reformer only because he believed that the gospel was social as well as individual ; that the object of Christ was the recon- struction of society through the reconstruction of the individual ; that to preach the gospel meant to pro- claim the redemption of society, as well as the redemp- tion of the individual, by an application to all social as to all individual problems of the principles and precepts inculcated by Jesus Christ. Mr. Beecher is known as a brilliant orator, who employed the resources of wide reading, broad sym- pathy with men, vivid imagination and a devout emotional nature, coupled with extraordinary rhetor- ical and elocutionary gifts, in arousing the consciences and the affections of popular audiences, and directing them in channels for the promotion of nobler living. But the study of his political life shows also states- manlike qualities : a clear understanding of current issues, a grasp of great political principles, and a prophet's perception of the direction in which lay the way to future peace and prosperity. These qual- ities are especially illustrated by his action in the 11 12 mcm^ MarD 36eecber three great epochs of the national life in which he took a notable part — the antislavery campaign, the Civil War, the reconstruction period. Within the limits of this article I can but hint at certain mani- festations of these qualities in these several epochs. I. THE ANTISLAVERY CAMPAIGN Mr. Beecher is often called an Abolitionist. If by Abolitionist is meant one who desired the abolition of slavery, the appellation is deserved ; if by Abolitionist is meant one who agreed with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, in the program which the former kept at the head of The Liberator, he was not an Aboli- tionist. He did not advocate "immediate unconditional emancipation" ; he did not believe that "slaveholders, slave-traders and slave-drivers are to be placed on the same level of infamy and in the same fiendish category as kidnappers and manstealers " ; he did not believe that "the existing Constitution of the United States is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell " ; he did not believe in •' no union with slaveholders." His antislavery principles had their first clear enunciation in an editorial published in The New York Independent in the winter of 1850. The occa- sion of this editorial was the compromise measure introduced into Congress in January of that year for the settlement of the slave question ; the principles of the editorial were those incorporated in the plat- form of the Republican party, six years later, on which, four years after that, Abraham Lincoln was elected. In this editorial Mr. Beecher declared, some years before Abraham Lincoln and some weeks before Be a ClU3cn 13 William H. Seward, the irreconcilable conflict between slavery and liberty, but he declared also his adherence to the Constitution, his loyalty to the Union, his belief that slavery was to be overturned, not by withdrawing from the Union, but by remaining in the Union and resisting the further extension of slavery. The Garrisonian Abolitionists were the first seces- sionists ; they sought to dissolve the Union in the interest of abolition. The Southern secessionists, ten years later, sought to dissolve the Union in the inter- est of slavery. Mr. Beecher believed that the forces in the Union for liberty would prove stronger than the forces for slavery, and to the awakening of those forces he addressed himself through the ten years of antislavery campaign — 1850-60. It is true that he invited Wendell Phillips to lec- ture in Plymouth Church ; it is true that he spoke on the same platform with William Lloyd Garrison. But he made it perfectly clear in speech, sermon and edi- torial that he believed that the North shared with the South in responsibility for slavery ; that it could not escape that responsibility by withdrawing from the Union ; that, despite some imperfections, the Consti- tution was a noble document, framed in the interest of freedom, not of slavery ; and that, in the Union and under the Constitution, slavery could be so cir- cumscribed that eventually it would die of inanition. When, therefore, John Brown attempted his disastrous raid into Virginia, Mr. Beecher was not among those who applauded him. "I protest," he said, "against any counsels that lead to insurrection, servile war and bloodshed. It is bad for the master and bad for the 14 Mem>8 MarD JBeecbet slave, bad for all that are neighbors to them, bad for the whole land — bad from beginnhig to end." On the other hand, when the experiment of " squat- ter sovereignty" was instigated by Mr. Douglas, and the question whether Kansas should be a free or a slave state was made dependent on the character of its population, Mr. Beecher took an active part in promoting emigration to Kansas of a quality of citi- zens who would carry with them a free school, free labor, free press, and so a free constitution. He did this at the time when the Abolitionists, with whom public opinion has so often associated him, were de- nouncing the Emigrant Aid Company as "a. great hindrance to the cause of freedom and a mighty curse to the territory," and maintaining that "the fate of Nebraska and Kansas was sealed the first hour Stephen Arnold Douglas consented to play his perfidious part." History has so conclusively demonstrated that the Abolitionists were wrong and the Kansas emigrants were right, that the country has almost forgotten that there was any issue between the two ; history has so conclusively proved that if the Abolition secessionists could have had their way and induced the Northern states to withdraw from the Union, they would simply have played into the hands of those who were endeav- oring to form a great slavocracy, extending west to the Pacific Ocean and south into the Central American States, that we have almost forgotten that such a policy was ever seriously urged upon the people of the North. Mr. Beecher as a young man From a fainting now ozuned by Mrs. Tenny, of Lexington 16 Menri5 TKAarJ) ascccber II. THE CIVIL WAR In a similar fashion the nation has gladly forgotten the spirit of compromise, not to say cowardice, which threatened the North after the election of Mr. Lincohi ; we have forgotten that time of confusion, contradict- ory counsels, conflicting currents, in which even so eminent an antislavery man as Mr. Seward hoped to find some way out by compromise, so influential a journal as The New York Tribune said that "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," and so clear-headed and loyal a statesman as Charles Francis Adams advocated the summoning of a conference and the shaping of a compromise for the purpose of preventing the Border States from casting in their lot with the Confederacy. In all this time of confusion and contradiction, there were two men who never for a moment lost sight of the one guiding principle, that concession should nevermore be made to the slave power under any pretext whatever, be the consequences what they might. These were the silent man at Springfield and the eloquent man in Brooklyn, neither of whom for an instant hesitated. In his sermon preached November 29, i860, "Against a Compromise of Principle," Mr. Beecher vigorously condemned all such concessions. Speaking, as to the South, from his pulpit, he said : — 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 aug- 2ls a C(t(3en 17 ment the area of slavery, to cooperate with you in curs- ing new territory ; if you ask us to make the air of the North favorable for a slave to breathe, 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. These words sound like commonplaces now, but they were uttered when Northern pulpits and Northern presses were clamoring for some impossible compro- mise, when Congress was debating half-way measures, when timid men were endeavoring to contrive some platform of concession to slavery and secession that would postpone the inevitable conflict, when the radi- cal Abolitionists were advising to let the erring sisters depart in peace. Of his eloquence in the later epoch, stirring the heart and sustaining the courage of the North, undaunted under disaster and defeat, I need not speak here, for I am speaking of Mr. Beecher's wisdom as a counselor, not of his eloquence as an orator. For the same reason I need not speak of those marvelous addresses in England, which contributed so largely to prevent English interference and did so much both to arouse and to express the public senti- ment of the common and unrepresented workingmen of England, and so much to prepare the way for that unofficial Anglo-American alliance which has grown up within the last few years, to the satisfaction of all right-thinking men on both sides of the water. III. THE PERIOD OF RECONSTRUCTION In the third epoch, that of reconstruction, Mr. Beecher exhibited the same prophetic and statesman- like quality. The problem of reconstruction, as it 18 ?Henrg mar& 3i6eecber presented itself to the people of the North at the close of the Civil War, was a very difficult and per- plexing one. It is not strange that the best minds differed respecting the best method of its solution ; even to-day men are not agreed what course should have been pursued. That great evils grew out of the course that was pursued does not prove that it might not have been the best. The nation was like a man in the middle of a swamp ; turn which way he will he cannot get out without muddy and perhaps torn clothes, perhaps scratched and bleeding face and hands. But the fundamental principles which Mr. Beecher laid down seem clearer now in the light of history than they did when he first propounded them. While still the question was open in the country whether the war for secession should be regarded as anything else than gigantic acts of mob violence, which left the states unimpaired to return under their old constitutions when the mob had been quelled, he took in his Fort Sumter address the ground that the United States are one and indivisible, that the states are not absolute sovereigns, that liberty is indispensa- ble to republican government, and that slavery must be utterly and forever abolished. These principles will seem to Northern readers al- phabetic, but not so alphabetic as some other principles which he laid down almost simultaneously: that the North should do nothing to impair the self-respect of the South ; that it should not demand conversion from secession as a matter of political opinion, but only consent that secession is forever disallowed as matter of practical result ; that it should not wait for any 20 Menr^ 'WHar& JBeecbcr further guarantees for the future, the utter destruction of slavery being all the guarantee necessary ; that the negro should have all civil rights, but as to suffrage, that might be confined to a few, as, for example, to "those colored men who bore arms in our late war for the salvation of this Government " ; that universal suffrage might well wait upon the processes of educa- tion ; that the South should not be treated as a pagan land to which missionaries must be sent, but as part of a common country to which aid must be sent by the richer and more prosperous section ; that in all philan- thropic and educational work in the South "our heart should be set toward our country and all its people without distinction of caste, class, or color." The maintenance of these principles then subjected Mr. Beecher to suspicion and rancor in the North, just as he had been subjected to suspicion and rancor by his vigorous antislavery sentiments ten years before. Even to-day a radical remnant condemns the same sentiments, now grown more widespread and popular. To me it appears that his counsels were as wise as his spirit was fraternal, and that in the period of recon- struction he showed the spirit of a statesman as truly as in the period which preceded he showed the spirit of a prophet and a reformer. Mr. Beecher's greatness conceals his greatness. His wit and humor, his imagination, his emotional power, dazzle and sway men. While they are under the charm of his personality they do not stop to con- sider whither he is carrying them ; when they look back they do not know who has carried them, and so unconscious has been the transference that often they B0 a Citisen 21 are unaware that it has even taken place. But I believe that if the speeches of Mr. Beecher could be denuded of the elements which made them powerful as orations, if the great fundamental political princi- ples which they embody could be epitomized in these as unemotive and unimaginative as those of Martin Luther, they would show that their author possessed statesmanlike qualities which give him rank among the eminent political counselors and leaders of the epoch in which he lived. W^/ ^S years of a^e. (^) Aijo. (3) At 40. {4) At ^o. (^) At 6s. THE RULING IDEAS OF HENRY WARD BEECHER'S SERMONS By Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D. D. Mr. Beecher published approximately seven hun- dred sermons, representing fourteen out of fifty preach- ing years. He published two volumes when he was fifty, gathering up forty-eight fugitive sermons that had been printed in pamphlets and newspapers ; two volumes when he was fifty-two, sermons illustrating his various moods and methods. At fifty-five he began to publish one sermon each week, a publica- tion that was continued until he was sixty-two ; in his seventieth year he founded The New Plymouth Pulpit, and continued it for two years ; at seventy- three his sermons preached during his summer's visit to England were printed ; and he also left some twenty-five sermons published in The Christian Union but never put in book form. His output, therefore, includes some twenty-four volumes of sermons — sermons biographical, doctrinal, philosophical, narrative, imaginative, and expositional ; sermons written sometimes from the viewpoint of reason, sometimes from the viewpoint of persuasion and argument, sometimes from the viewpoint of in- spiration and hope, but always with the purpose of convincing men of sin, persuading men from sin, the development of faith in God and love for Christ, and the building up of a Christlike character. From 23 24 Menry marD JBcecbec twenty-five to forty years of age he wrote with great care one sermon a week. During this time, he tells us, he was an apprentice, learning his trade. Very early he decided that the only way to learn how to preach was by preaching. Having, therefore, written his Sunday morning sermon for his own people in Indianapolis, on Monday he started out, and repeated that sermon every night in as many different school- houses in the country round about. In 1844 he preached once every day for ten months in rural dis- tricts and little villages, and a few sermons of that epoch have on the first page the names of from ten to thirty schoolhouses and churches where they were preached. At seventy-three I heard him say: "What if the great orators and lawyers and statesmen were to try to learn to speak by speaking on one day of the week.^ What if a great singer should attempt to develop a voice by singing one hour on Sunday and then never opening the mouth until the next Sunday.'' The only way for young men to learn how to preach is to preach. I question whether God himself could make a preacher out of a man who opens his mouth one day and then keeps his mouth closed during the next six days." But Mr. Beecher was not simply a preacher who mas- tered his art by practising it ; he was also a tireless and accurate student, reading along the line of the theme on which he was going to preach, and he continued to do this until he was about fifty, at which time he had accumulated between five and six thousand volumes. Contrary to the usual opinion, also, few men in the American pulpit have been better grounded in the- / " \ The fnan of 771 any moods ' 26 ?Henr\> "MatO JBeccbet ology, philosophy and the apologetics of his era. To the very end his library was singularly rich in theology, philosophy and the relations between the new science and religion. Until he was thirty years of age he was under the influence of his father, Lyman Beecher, and his inter- est in theological problems was kept at white heat through the discussions of his brothers, who were preachers. He tells us that for four years his father, Professor Stowe, his brother Edward, and the other three brothers, not to mention his sisters, who were passionately fond of theology, gathered around the dinner-table, and there continued, sometimes for two and three hours, forgetting to eat, because they could remember nothing but theology, the problems of Cal- vinism, and the discussions that were on between the Old and New School Presbyterians. For thirty years Mr. Beecher breathed no air but the air of theology. Theology was the bread that he ate, theology was the water that he drank, theology was the very blood in his veins. He tells us that he knew the arguments of the Puritan theologians, like John Owen, of all the New England theologians, and of the Old School the- ology taught at Princeton and the New School of Cal- vinism taught in Lane — knew them so that he could recite them forward and backward. He could play with the arguments as a juggler keeps nine balls in the air. In 1875 a friend spoke to him about a certain preacher who prided himself on his theological posi- tions, and had said that Mr. Beecher knew nothing about theology. Mr. Beecher replied, " When he has IRultng IFDeas of Mie Sermons 27 preached theology for twenty years, as once I did, he will through preaching master it, instead of being mas- tered by his knowledge, as a big pile of green wood masters the fire that smolders beneath." The fact is, Mr. Beecher rejected the theology of his era, not be- cause he knew so little about theology, but because he knew so much about it. After fifty-five he ceased to read closely, turned all his theological and philosophical books over to his brother Edward, went to Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond for a condensed statement of what was going on in the realm of science and philosophy, asked his old friend, Thomas G. Shearman, to do his eco- nomic reading for him, and during the last fifteen years of his life read but few books, and these very slowly. He left ten thousand volumes, and multitudes of them never had more than the first fifty leaves cut. But he was not under the delusion that most of us are under — that a man has read a book because he owns it. Some years ago I analyzed Mr. Beecher's published sermons, and recently I have gone through a large number of his manuscripts, representing the earlier period of his ministry. I find that once in three years he made the round of Christian truth and experience, preaching on the great epochs of the spiritual life, and on the great themes, the Scriptures, God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, man, his dignity, his need, his ignorance and sinfulness, the nature and number and order of the spiritual faculties, the method of quickening in men a sense of sin, the nurture of faith, the devel- opment of love, the feeding the hope of the life of man. But if the themes were many, the ideas that controlled them were few. No matter what the sub- 28 Wenr^ imarD 3Beccber ject of the sermon is, during the last thirty years of his preaching four great thoughts dwell in every ser- mon, as if he had squeezed four clusters of grapes, that the purple flood might run down through all his statements. The first ruling idea is his conception of the suffer- ing God. For him, God is no " sheaf of thunder- storms." God loves, he pities, he recovers, he sym- pathizes, he suffers. The very heart of his message is that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, by reason of the emotions of love that suffer and make him the burden-bearer of all his children. As Paul met his Master on the way to Damascus ; as Luther, climbing the steps of the church in Rome, received the revela- tion that he could enter immediately into the presence of God and be saved, so Mr. Beecher, kneeling in the edge of the forest in Indiana, discovered in his vision hour the suffering love of God. For the next forty years that was his one message, and with ever-increas- ing joy he preached it to the very last hour of his life. From the old pagan notion that was still taught when I was in the seminary, that God was not sus- ceptible to pain, that God dwells at a far remove from this earth, impassive and with marble heart, that God is eternally young and eternally happy, lifted up above all possibility of tears, or anxiety, or solicitude — from all these Grecian and heathen and former ultra-Presby- terian and medieval conceptions he utterly revolted. Denying that God suffers through any weakness or sin of his own, as man suffers, Mr. Beecher believed that God, as a Father, takes upon himself the sorrows, sufferimrs and sins of his children. Because he is IRullng IFOeas of Mis Sermons 29 a Father, because nothing that concerns his children is foreign to him, he suffers with his children's sor- rows, and sympathizes in their griefs, and pities those who fear him. Jesus was filled with compassion when he saw the publican, the prodigal and sinner. His whole being went out in tides of sympathy toward those who through error or sin had blotted out all the hopes and prophecies of their youth ; and if Christ suffered with men through thirty years, God suffers through all the ages and for all the multitudes. Look- ing out upon the great pilgrim band journeying across the desert, and blundering as they journeyed, a band struggling, wandering from the way, oft falling in the desert, full oft stricken down by the beasts of passion, sometimes left weltering in their own blood, it seemed to Mr. Beecher impossible for any Christian man to believe that God from his throne in the sky beheld this pilgrim host with any save emotions of sympathy and sorrow and suffering and medicinal love. About 1870 the scientists began to name God force, and explained the universe by spelling force with a capital **F." They made God control the world through tides and rivers and winds, so that he had no more personal relation to his universe than the mill stream has to the wheel that grinds the flour. Others represented God as a kind of householder, who built a house, cared for the roof, saw that it was well lighted through the windows, well provisioned as to root cellar and pantry, but who never permitted any one of his children living in the house to know the Father, and himself had no interest in the welfare of his children. Over against these views Mr. Beecher 30 IHenrg marO JBeecbcr unveiled God as the God of suffering love, whose solicitude for his children burns day and night ; God who cares for all created things, who loves birds, and cares for the insect in the grass, who loves things Dr. Lyman Beecher, H. IV. Beecher atid Harriet Beecher Stowe empty and crude, things unlovely and seminal, who loves men who are unlovely and ignorant and sinful, and who loves, expecting nothing in return. This all-suffering and all-helpful God is abroad upon a mis- sion of recovery. As the suffering God, he has set IRulfng IfDcas ot Mie Sermons 31 before himself the task of bringing the lowest and weakest and worst from littleness to largeness, from ignorance to wisdom, from crudeness and hate to ripeness and love. The image of his impartial, all- including, disinterested love is the sun that shines for the evil and the good. To the last, the sun was Mr. Beecher's favorite image of the great suffering God, whose mighty and majestic heart pulsates through all the universe the tides of his all-cleansing, all- medicinal, all-forgiving and all-healing love. In scores of sermons Mr. Beecher never mentions this thought of the suffering God, and yet, no matter what the theme is, this thought dwells within and above the sermon, as the sky overarches the meadows and orchards with their various grains and fruits. The second ruling idea of Mr. Beecher was his conception of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Here he was an open and self-confessed heretic. In the strict- est sense he was Sabellian. He did not believe that Christ had a human intellect or a human will. He believed that that sacred and divine form that walked over the hills of Palestine was the luminous point where God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, manifested himself. He does indeed manifest himself through storms that reveal his omnipotence, through harvests that reveal his goodness, but he also reveals his love and suffering heart in that human face — the face of Jesus Christ. It was this conception of Jesus that in turn gave him his conception of God as the suffering God of love. Out of this conception, also, grew his sermon on the Trinity, in which he argued against the unitary 32 IHcnrs "WnarO Mcccbcx God, and proclaimed the social nature of God, and spoke of the assembling of faculties and affections, as many organs are assembled in one body, and many faculties in one mind. The Jesus that he preached was to him the God that he loved. In the same prayer, therefore, he addresses Jesus and God, his Father. His one passion was this passion for Jesus Christ. No one who ever heard Mr. Beecher pray in the closing years of his life but was impressed with the way in which he pronounced the words "Jesus" and "Christ" — for him they were love-words, per- fumed with the most sacred memories. This concep- tion of Jesus colored all his sermons, even when he did not refer to it, and was stamped upon even his philosophical discussions and national themes, as the king's image is stamped upon gold. Two other ideas ruled, permeated and colored Mr. Beecher's sermons, and once a man has found out what they are he has the key that, with the other two words, unlocks all the mystery of his discourses ; these two words are the sanctity of the individual and the certainty of the soul's immortality. Mr. Beecher held that he was to give an account unto God for him- self. Therefore he stood on his own feet, thought his own thoughts, reached his own conclusions and pub- lished them. But he insisted just as earnestly upon the sacred rights of others. The one striking charac- teristic of Plymouth Church is the outstanding strength of its individual men. I can tell a Beecher-grown man as I can tell a pasture-grown oak. Nothing pleased Mr. Beecher more than to have his men stand up in the Friday evening meeting and combat him. He Ply7ii07ith C/ii/rc/t, Broo/c/yn ^ Menrg MarD 36cccbcr found therein the proof of his ministry. For that reason he fed the life of the church spiritually, but he would not choose its officials. He insisted that the spiritual life of the church should express itself by governing itself. His favorite sentence was that "the poorest government of a church that is self- government is better than the best government that I as pastor impose upon them." But to this overruling idea of the sacredness of the individual we must add Mr. Beecher's idea of man's immortality. Looking out upon his vast con- gregation that crowded aisles and walls, to the number of nearly three thousand, he saw them all clothed, not simply with imperfection and knowledge, with mingled passions and virtues, with hopes and fears and loves, not simply as pilgrims famished and hungry, but he also saw them as the children of God, big with destiny and immortality. This thought of the immortal life filled him with solemnity. It lent exhilaration to his reason. It fell like golden sun- light upon the heads of his congregation. It seemed like the wistful smile of God. It overflowed his eyes with tears and his heart with s}mpathy. It filled his words with the sweetness of love. He saw that im- mortal life overarching men as the sky overhangs the flowers, filling them with rain and dew. For him what value did this lend to man's soul ! What im- portance did it lend to his sermon ! Indeed, the hour and the sermon, in view of this immortal life, seemed for the time to Mr. Beecher the only things worth while. Among his hundreds of sermons, therefore, with their many messages and their diverse meanings. IRullng IFDcas of Mis Sermons 35 there are four all-controlling ideas — the suffering love of God, the divine Christ, the sacredness of the indi- vidual soul, and the certainty of the life immortal. Having chosen his theme, Mr. Beecher poured the meanings of these four truths through whatsoever sermon in such a way as to " convince the man of his sin, to convert him from his sin and develop in him the faith of God and the love of Christ, and build up in him a character after Christ's divine pattern." Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beechet Stowe HENRY WARD BEECHER AS AN ORATOR By Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus, D.D. No one ever spent a day with Mr. Beecher who did not discern the reason why he was never spoken of by his acquaintances as either a silver- or golden- tongued orator. It is not to disparage Guthrie or Chrysostom that each bears one of these appellations ; but it is to indicate the wholeness and integral char- acter of Beecher that his eloquence must be spoken of as an eflfluence of his entire nature rather than the superb activity of some particular power. PHYSICAL BASIS OF HIS ORATORY My study of him as both an organism and an organ commenced shortly after I had read a stimulating and thoughtful production on "The Physical Basis of Ora- tory." In later years I called up the sagacious re- marks in that essay when I saw Gladstone under nearly similar circumstances. In both of these cases one was tempted to ask which had the most influence upon the other, body or mind ? Certainly, in the full glow of his creative activity and its expression, each of these men could not have appeared in more character- istic and obedient physical form, Mr. Gladstone's body gave one the conviction that there was more of character in him vertically; Mr. Bcecher's that there was more of character in him laterally. Mr. Beecher 37 38 Menrg mait> JSeccbcr swept things with a breadth of mental vision and con- quest before whose advance an unparalleled variety of wrongs went down and an equal variety of rights rejoiced in the fresh revelation of their strength ; Mr. Gladstone illuminated and commanded things by a height of outlook and insistence under which every- thing base made a deeper shadow and everything essentially true rose into sublimer proportions. This, indeed, is one of the things which the great orator must do, either through his body or in spite of his body — he must create an atmosphere in which justice seems awfully grand and in which injustice seems as despicable. It would not be adequate to say that Bcecher's body, at the incandescent moment of his supreme utterance, was "the organ of his mind." The whole being called Beecher was organism ; he was it and it was he. If there had not been such integrity, physical and spiritual, in the fact called Beecher, there would have been too much of his somewhat too short body. In Gladstone's case, as I heard him at Liverpool, I thought if he had spoken with less loftiness and had avoided what a friend near me called his ingrained moral narrowness, he would have been just a little too tall. Such is the miracle of the relationship of mind and body in the case of the great orator. Of all ora- tors I have ever studied, these men most illustrated the difference between mind embodied and mind incarnate. How much of the effect for brotherly winning and uplifting toward the apparently cold heights of right- eousness lay in Beecher's indubitable physical vitality as an ©cator 39 and his making it a radiation of his spiritual self, I never was quite able to make out. This is prob- ably not oratory but it is of oratory, and without Mr. Beecher's phenomenal power in this respect he could not have won men. Preaching once in Chica2:o and urging men to climb up by the grace of God from the animal toward the angel, he stood for a moment so excellent an animal as he pronounced the word "basilar" that a base man sitting next to a refined gentleman said : " That man can make me feel that I can be as noble as he looks, when he looks his best, because he gets hold of me physically. He is the real thing in both cases." This is character rather than oratory obeying what is called " the first principles of address in starting from the level of ordinary thought and feeling." Nevertheless it is oratory, too. If he had not opened his mouth, the impression would have been that made by an orator, the orator being, as Fox said, "one who can give immediate instantaneous utterance to his thoughts." Eloquence is always more than one says ; it is the communication of what one is at his best. John Bright and Henry Ward Beecher had massive proportions to the eye, like Burke and Fox, Webster and Chalmers, but the study of all these will not disclose such an interesting likeness as that which abides between Beecher and Mirabeau. Every man has his rhythm, just as every man has his body; the rhythm and the stout, elastic frame of either of these men, differing startlingly as they do, might be taken for those of the other. 40 Bcnr^ llflarD JBcecber HIS SERENITY Mr. Beecher's incandescence was not less impress- ive because he was not always incandescent. He could literally withdraw himself from the front door or windows of his house and be somnolent, or go into one of the chambers of himself and take a nap men- tally. I have seen him doing this with his eyes wide open ; others were suffering from the irritating prose of a would-be poet-speaker ; he was simply withdrawn into the cushioned serenity of himself. It was on the occasion of the Herbert Spencer banquet ; and emi- nent but very heavy were some of the speakers. Spencer looked at times as if he wished he had not written the books which they praised. More than one distinguished man looked tired and bored. Shortly before Beecher was called upon, the re- freshed soul which had now forsaken its couch, where it had been safe from the irritation of illustrious dull- ness, came forth and looked out through the windows — those eyes of unforgetable lucidity and depth. All of him spoke from the instant he found his feet be- neath him. Mentally alert and entirely furnished with knowledge, he was more distinguished in that speech through the luminosity of his moral attributes. It was the most courageous speech I had heard from Mr. Beecher. HIS FEARLESSNESS My father had repeated to my childhood passages from addresses which he had heard Mr. Beecher deliver when mobs were howling about him and he confronted the horrible visage of Civil War ; and 42 mcnx^ TlClac& JScccber he always told me that Mr. Beecher impressed him as fearful, yea, decidedly afraid of two things — the possibility of being wrong mentally with respect to the subject he was talking about, and the moral peril of being unwilling to stand by the truth as he saw it and be its champion to the end. His whole soul was so intent with this wholesome fear that he had no other. He was like Lord Lawrence, who "feared God so much that he feared not man at all." On that occasion he was not delighting Herbert Spencer with his discriminating and warm eulogy ; he was courageously paying a debt of gratitude and discharg- ing an obligation with utmost freedom, but every attitude uttered Paul's words, " With a great sum have I obtained this freedom." Such eloquence as Mr. Beecher's is impossible without that courage which invigorates the brain and makes the will resistless. It may be born and nursed in the heart and enswathed in the emotions, as the term suggests, but it alone rescues a man from frag- mentariness and makes him whole and holy as a leader of men through public speech. Intellect, sensibilities and will are not separate compartments, but constitute one overflowing cup of power in all eloquence. Doubtless those of us who were too young to have beheld the monarch when he was a war-horse "and his neck was clothed with thunder," received the some- what similar impression of the vivifying and unifying influence of his courage as an oratorical force when we heard him in the times of his severest trial. Was it a lecture on preaching which had taken shape as the bitter cup was pressed to his lips, or a lecture given Bs an ©rator 43 in a strange town after a throng of hoodlums had be- fouled the air with their vile hooting, or a sermon to college young men such as I heard within an hour after he had been made aware of the dreadful ava- lanche which was approaching him, he was the same fervent, human unit throughout the illuminating hour. In those times the effect upon a discriminating hearer was that of a total character — a character totalized by fiery courage, making his eloquence opalescent because its fire was revealed everywhere. HIS SELF-CONTROL If Mr. Beecher had not possessed a magnetic centralness of character which forbade easily sepa- rable powers and interests from straying out the field, he would have been simply the most multitudinous collection of forces which ever failed in public life. He had wit and humor; almost always they did noi have him. To change the figure, he would strike a vein which, if followed up, would have made him a clown tossing grotesque chunks of ore as no Grimaldi might have done ; but suddenly the swirling fires of his persistent purpose in speech would melt the ore and the fine gold would be coined into noble thoughts. His humor would often bubble forth with a hint that the hearer might soon be overwhelmed, but inimitably the master of himself was its master, and a cup full of sparkling water would be handed to one whose throat had been a little dry and whose appetite now was ready for wisdom. With an art for epigram he surprised his audience, but never lost them or left them standing at the quick 44 Kenrs *WIlar5 mcccbev turn in the roadway where so unexpectedly came the brief and brilliant vision. The temptation to let the wheels of the mind go round, because the machinery was noiseless, had its death at birth in the fact that anything like conceit over such a happy state of things Chair used by Mr. Beecher in Plymouth Pulpit was lost in the serious purpose of his address, which was to make others think and feel and will as he did. As much might be said of his boundless sympathy. Those eyes were roguish with laughter no more often than they were wet with tears. At the old Soldiers' as an ©rator 45 Home in Dayton, Ohio, I saw him touch a flag and heard him utter a sentence with the result that every- body was weeping and he himself was almost un- manned with emotion. Instantly the disorganized man was reorganized by that centralizing life purpose which permitted no waste of such precious energies. He saw his relationship to future problems, and real- ized that only a stern devotion to duty and the highest wisdom could meet those issues. It is this forceful manhood, per-meated with loyalty to God and man, which must ever be regarded as the energizing and saving secret of Beecher the orator. HIS VOICE So far as the art of the orator is concerned, Mr. Beecher's voice, which is but the string upon the instrument, was the organ of the organism most apparently in evidence. Like a violinist of the high- est power, when he touched it his total self touched it. He could play an excellent tune, like Paganini, on one string, but any such consideration of the stringed instrument overestimates the string ; it must not leave out the instrument especially. No elocutionary training could have saved him from ministerial sore throat, or his audience from min- isterial sore ears, which is a consequential and not less distressing malady. His justness of emphasis came from his fine perception ; his painter-like sympathy for rightness of color, and his will to express him- self in perfect draughtsmanship — simply to transfer his character into another character, was the supreme and easy task to which he called his voice. To tell the 46 IHenrs "WllarJ) 3Beecber truth as he saw it required an instrument unabused by vociferation and free from the sharpness which comes from saying sharp things too frequently, which often cuts the thread of truth. It must indeed be entirely melodious as truth itself is. There was spiritual good breeding in Beecher's tones. Such a voice cannot be made in one generation. It was as variable as the portraits of the man, yet from thunder to whisper it was Beecher's voice. This artistic passion was allied with almost un- erring artistic wisdom. Like George Inness, whose paintings are a revelation of the gradual evolution of a soul Mr. Beecher was one of the first to understand, the great preacher himself advanced from an almost pharisaic legalism to an almost unparalleled liberty. He knew the secret of elimination. "Thou canst if thou wilt" — so the devil always says to a big, brainy and capable man. Animated and ardent, the orator always feels as Webster did when, after talking a few moments in reply to Hayne, everything that he had ever thought or heard or read was within his grasp, and he had only " to seize a thunderbolt as it went smoking by and hurl it at him," More than thunderbolts came into the field of Beecher's vision, urging themselves on his attention and pleading to enter into his picture, but he had the ability to leave this pretty flower and that noble tree out of his canvas. "This one thing I do " — that was the intensely wrought law, self-imposed and radiant, to which he gave obedience. So will the artist live for- ever in his art, as Raphael in his Sistine Madonna and Richard Warner in Parsifal. AN ENGLISH ESTIMATE OF BEECHER By Rev. W. J. Dawson, D.D. The Minister of Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church, London. Henry Ward Beecher is for many of us in Eng- land the greatest preacher of the last decades of the nineteenth century. Spurgeon surpassed him in evan- gelical force, Liddon in the elaboration of his rhet- oric, Parker in brilliancy of phrase, but none of these equaled him in general mass of intellect, in philosophic grasp, in native genius. It is hard to say what genius is ; we endeavor to define it by such terms as charm, magnetism, and a peculiar lambency of mind, "a light that never was on sea or land " ; but whatever it is, no one could be in Beecher's company for half an hour without knowing that he possessed it. He had in a supreme degree the "genius to be loved." He captivated men without an effort. He never attempted to do anything that could be called great, and yet he was always great. He appeared absolutely simple, and yet his simplicity was the last equation of pro- fundity. He was a preacher by vocation, but he made one feel that he could as easily have been a states- man, a prime minister, or the president of a republic. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that while Beecher lived no other American bulked very large in English eyes. He was the typical American of his generation. He rose so high, he cast so large a shadow, he held the gaze so completely, that when we English folk 47 48 Menr^ 'QUlar& JScecber thought of America we always thought of Beecher. To us he seemed the incarnation of the national genius. The salient quality which impressed me most in Beecher was the supreme ease with which he did his work. I had not the good fortune to meet him on his historic visit to England in the sixties ; that was before my time. During his last visit to England, however, I heard him often ; I sat beside him on the platform ; I had ample opportunity of studying his methods of address ; and this supreme ease with which he did his work filled me with astonishment. He never seemed agitated, nervous, or conscious of the least strain, however vast the congregation he addressed. 'His audiences were not always quite friendly. There was an undercurrent of suspicion which he was much too sensitive not to perceive. But he moved before these vast crowds always like a man at ease. He knew his own integrity and he knew his own power. The moment he began to speak the spell of his personality began to work. PECULIARITY OF HIS ORATORY At first his speaking created a sense of disappoint- ment ; it was so quiet, so colloquial, so free from the usual artifice of the orator. He seemed to be stand- ing at a height, aloof from his audience, talking to himself of things which were of moment to himself alone. He did not even try to make himself heard, and many amusing contests of wit between himself and his hearers arose on this matter. "Can't hear," shouted out a man in a raucous voice in Exeter Hall Mrs. Bet'clic, 50 SHenrs imarO JBeecbet one night. "I never meant you to hear that," Beecher retorted, and calmly pursued the course of his argument. Men looked at one another and mutely asked what they had come out for to see. Where were the brilliant paradox, the flash of epigram, the sono- rous declamation which English audiences had learned to expect from their popular orators .-' Where were the passion and intensity which lift an audience to its feet .'' Men remembered John B. Gough, and won- dered at Beecher's reputation. They remembered the full roll of Brlght's and Gladstone's eloquence, stately, impressive, full of magnificent modulations, an eloquence' like the sound of many waters. This quiet man went on talking with himself. It seemed to him of no importance whether his audience thought well or ill of him. Then, suddenly, he emitted a spark of flame that ran kindling through the crowd. He said something so daring or so piquant that men began to sit up stiff upon their seats and lean forward in anxious listening. There came a flash of humor, a touch of pathos, and the audience quivered ; a moment later frantic excitement seized upon the con- gregation. And still he was talking with the utmost quietness, complete master of himself as well as of his hearers. It was a new kind of oratory. Nothing had been heard like it in England, and nothing has been heard since. So Coleridge might have talked out of the depth of an experience and wisdom that seemed more than finite — the old man eloquent. It was a kind of oratory almost too rare to be called oratory. It was in truth much more than oratory ; it was the speech of the soul finding by unerring instinct Bn Bngllsb JEstlmate 51 its way to the deepest springs of life and thought in his hearers. GREATER THAN HIS WORK There is a useful distinction which I have often had occasion to draw between writers and speakers who seem more than their works and those who seem less. In reading some books and listening to some men I am conscious that the best, and even more than the best, that is in them has found adequate expres- sion. They have gained a height, but it has been at the expenditure of the last ounce of strength. With Beecher I felt precisely the reverse. There were reserves in him which he never called into action. He drew upon a mind so full, a nature so rich that he had no need to husband his resources. His per- sonality exceeded by far his finest effort to express it. He could afford to be lavish ; he could always have done better than his best if he had so willed it. Very few men produce this impression. George Meredith impresses me and all who know him as being much greater than his works. Coleridge impressed his contemporaries as greater than his poetry. There is a kind of divine carelessness in Shakespeare; he is a giant who never used his strength to the full. Beecher, also, I think, stands in this rare category. Nothing that he did was so great as himself. No sermon he preached and no book which he has left behind him gives us anything like an adequate measurement of his genius. There was a kind of primeval depth and freshness in him ; he was inexhaustible as nature herself. In this re- 52 "Hem^ MarO aseecbcr [3d poster ; size, 25x38 inches.l TVHO IS H Y.WARD BEECHER? He is the man who said the best blood of England must be shed to atoue for the Trent affair. He is the man who advocates a War of Extermination with the South, — saya 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 evev polluted female lips. — See " Times." MEN OF MANCHESTER, ENGLISHMEN! What reception can you give this wretch, save unmitigated disgust and con- tempt ? His impudence in coming here is only efjualled by his cruelty and im- piety Should he, however, venture to appear, it behooves all right-minded men to render as futile as the hrst thi-s 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. English Poster of i86j spect Bcecher is unique, I have heard many sermons and addresses more brilliant than anything which I heard from him ; I have never met a man who gave me such a sense of inexhaustible depth of nature. FAREWELL MEETING AT CITY TEMPLE The most triumphant display of ability which I have ever known was Beecher's farewell meeting at the City Temple, on his last visit. He spoke all to- gether for about two hours and a half. I sat beside him, and was amazed to find that the entire notes for his address did not fill half a sheet of note-paper. Never was his humor fresher, never was he more tender and wise than in that address. But remark- Bn Engllsb Estimate 53 able as the address was, it was insignificant beside what followed. He offered to answer questions on any subjects which the audience might select. The subjects selected were as wide as human thought. They ranged from the nature of the Trinity to the ethics of socialism. They included anxious questions about eternal punishment and absurd questions about Anglican orders. Never once did Beecher falter. His adroitness, his nimbleness of mind, his wit, his keen penetration into the characters of his questioners, were simply astounding. It was only sheer hunger and exigency of time that broke up the meeting. The people would have remained for hours longer, and Beecher showed no trace of weariness. Indeed, he humorously com- plained, when Dr. Parker closed the meeting, that he was beginning to enjoy himself. Those who heard Beecher on that memorable morning knew how true it was that the man was infinitely greater than his works. They witnessed the free, untrammeled display of a supreme genius using every means of expression with equal ease, capable of rising to any demands made upon it, moving with a kind of effortless felicity through the loftiest realms of human thought ; and great and admirable as were some of the men ranged round Beecher that day, they and the audience alike felt that no one of them approached that solitary greatness which distinguished Beecher. MORE THAN A RHETORICIAN Beecher taught the preachers of England many great lessons, and their debt to him is incalculable. 54 Menrs IClarO JBcecbcr He taught us naturalness. He taught us the value of speech as distinguished from mere oratory. He showed us how great was the power of the man who could think upon his feet. He taught us that neither claptrap nor highly-wrought artificial rhetoric, nor even a popular theme, was needed to win the ear of the listening multitude. Given the man who thought clearly, who felt deeply, who spoke out of his heart in good, honest vernacular, and there was no theme, however philosophic, that could not engage the deepest interest of an audience. We needed those lessons, for the traditions of pulpit eloquence when Beecher began his ministry were mostly of a quite different kind. I do not wish to speak a single disparaging word of such genuine pulpit orators as Parsons, of York, or Morley Punshon, but we know that their eloquence was artificial in form, the result of laborious elaboration, built up upon deliberate an- tithesis and climax and crowned with glittering perora- tions. Spurgeon had already struck a hard blow at this method of preaching, but it needed a Beecher to demolish it. It needed some one to show us that the freedom of plain speech was not only suited to simple evangelical appeals, but also to the widest ranges of philosophic thought. To have heard Beecher was an era in the life of many a young preacher. He went home to prepare himself instead of his sermons. He saw that the secret of pulpit force was in direct talk, as between man and man. He saw that to be himself was a better aim than to imitate any one else, however worthy of imitation. He discovered that the full Bn :englf8b Hstlmate 55 mind, the big heart, the intense soul, made the suc- cessful preacher — these, and these alone. That was a great lesson to learn. It revolutionized the pulpit, and to this day the English pulpit bears the mark of Beecher, and has cause to thank him. REV. H. \V. BEECHER'!^ 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 HORKOR 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 Mail 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. Poster displayed in Englatid when Mr. Beecher spoke there in i,S6j 56 mem^ •BiflarD JBeecbei INFLUENCE ON THEOLOGY And Beecher did even more to revolutionize our theology. He would probably have disowned the claim to be a theologian ; he was rather a humanist than a theologian, yet his influence on theology was great. He helped to deliver us from barbaric formu- lae ; he made us conscious of the magnanimity of God. For myself, I bless his memory. He was one of the greatest and one of the best of men. The further we remove from him in time the more clearly do we see the dimension of his genius. I believe that America has produced no greater man, that the pulpit has boasted no more fruitful force. No homage done to his memory can be extravagant, and I rejoice, in the name of multitudes of my countrymen, to lay this humble wreath of praise upon his honored grave. MR. BEECHER AS AUTHOR AND EDITOR By John R. Howard In December, 1867, Mr. Beecher entered into contract with the publishing firm of J. B. Ford and Company to write "The Life of Jesus, the Christ"; and the undertaking was an intimate part of his life until he died, in 1887. Indeed, it was about the latest subject of his thought ; the day before his fatal attack he asked me to meet him the next evening with refer- ence to the renewal of his work upon it. From the outset it meant much to him : it formed the basis of his studies ; it gave fresh inspiration to his pulpit effort and enrichment to his thought, and was at once the stimulus and the conservative check in his use of the new evolutionary philosophy, which was grad- ually changing his views of things human and divine. This and the other publications that rapidly en- sued — Plymouth Pulpit, The Christian Union, and the issue of volumes of sermons, lectures, and other matters new and renewed (altogether about forty vol- umes) — entailed upon the members of the firm a familiarity with his ways of working. One can hardly speak of his "methods," since the exigencies of his life precluded him from system — except as to sermon- making and preaching, always his main business. Yet he worked on general principles, too. " Read- ing maketh a full man ; " and this man's habit of reading — not in preparation for specific productions 57 58 Mcnrs marCi 3Bcecbcr so much as for broad comprehension of departments and phases of thought — furnished his mind and stim- ulated its powers. Witness in early manhood his Indianapolis experiences. When at one time he had continued daily preaching during eighteen consecutive months, for relaxation after preaching he took up the Loudon encyclopaedias — of horticulture, agriculture and architecture; also Lindley's "Horticulture" and Gray's "Structural Botany"; all of which he says he read, "not only every line, but much of it many times over." Thus he confirmed his original love of nature and acquired an understanding of it, so that his much-praised work, when shortly after he edited The Western Farmer and Gardener, was out of well-earned knowledge. Most of Mr. Beecher's books were but the print- ing of his spoken words; "Norwood," and "The Life of Jesus, the Christ," together with sundry volumes of "Star Papers," etc., are exceptions. The first is a charming series of chapters on New England scenery and life, with enough of a story to hold it together, and more wit, wisdom, philosophy and religion than often get into a "novel." This required no study of material, but was a weary labor of pen-work to his unaccustomed hand. The " Life " is a most luminous and suggestive exposition of the deeds and words of the Master. The work on the Life of Christ was begun in a fashion like his early horticultural studies. He had already kept well abreast with the orthodox and the skeptical schools of England, France and Germany, while maintaining interest in the new lines of the 210 Butbor anC> BMtor 59 evolutionary writers, but now undertook to familiarize himself thoroughly with them. He welcomed these varied lights of criticism and philosophy ; yet he recognized what he called "the chill mist of doubt" arising from them, while his spiritual nature craved and held to the truths of the other world ; so that he took the materials of the Gospels as his final and unquestioned basis. Moreover, he felt that too many of the attempts to write the Life of Christ had been dialectical and critical in spirit, and, as he wrote, "while they may lead scholars from doubt into cer- tainty, they are likely to lead plain people from certainty into doubt, and to leave them there. I have, therefore," he continued, "studiously avoided a polemic spirit, seeking to produce conviction with- out controversy." While carefully considering the works of critical objectors, then, he did not argue against them, but endeavored, as far as possible, so to state the facts as to take away the grounds from which the objections were aimed ; in brief, to depict not the modern sub- ject of discussions, but the Jesus of the four Evan- gelists, in his disposition, his social relations, his deeds and his doctrines. But all this laying out of the ground took time, and he wrote but little for a year or two. The first volume, however, was published in June, 1871, and in 1872-3 he had written about two-thirds of the second; after that, nothing. In discussing Mr. Beecher as author and editor some drawbacks to his performance of pen-duties must be noted. First, there was his great church. 60 Wenrs marD JBeecbcr Such cares as this entailed, together with his preach- ing and lecture-room services, were his chief interest at all times. Besides this, there were the incessant demands upon him from the public to be the voice on all important occasions ; there were interviews with reporters, and such a multiplicity of applications for sympathy and aid from citizens beyond his parish and from strangers as probably few men have ever been subject to. There were other — at first subtle, and afterwards outbreaking and volcanic — obstructions to the equabil- ity of mind needed for such work. These are familiar, and need not be rehearsed, but enough has been sug- gested to show how impossible it was for Mr. Beecher to have regular methods of literary labor. He had to work as he could, and, lacking the habit of system, he was obliged to await the mood. When it came, his quill flew over the paper with impatient leaps and dashes, and he produced very rapidly. Perhaps a reminiscence, which I find in an old journal of mine kept at that time, will give a clear idea of his way of working as author. After the completion of Volume I of this book, in June, 1871, he meant, after the summer's rest, to go right on into Volume II ; but in January, 1872, he commenced the first of his three series of " Lectures on Preaching" before the Yale Divinity School, so that he did very little writing — on the book, none. He was reading, however. One day I went in and found him deep in a book, before the fire. " I'm reading up on miracles," he cried, with a kind of glee ; " I feel the swellings of new buds ; I shall have to begin again soon ! " Bs Butbor anD B<ot 61 But he did not. On April 29 I said to him, "Do you know that March ist is gone, and April ist is gone, and May ist is at hand, and that new writing is not even begimf "I do, to my sorrow," he an- swered. "And to-morrow, unless the Lord hates me, I shall begin upon it." So the next morning, when I called in, he was up in his study. He had his "Volume I" before him. The Hicks Street house in lohi, h Mr. /,V,v/<7 died his "Consolidated Gospels," and a clean lot of paper. "The next thing," said he, "is the Gadarenes and the pigs," and he gave a funny snuffle. " I don't know exactly how to treat that episode. If I come at it from the critical and explanatory side, I invite attack from all quarters — for I can't agree with everybody, and as to fighting in this book, I zvont ! There is a graphic and dramatic way of treating all these strange and miraculous elements, as Shakes- peare treated the supernatural — using it for his pur- 62 Wenrs MarD 3Beecber pose, but leaving it without an attempt to explain or make it intelligibly real. In fact, these things occur in the New Testament history in much that way. They come quietly into view, like a cloud — which looms up, casts its shadow on the landscape for a time, and passes away without effort or commotion. Treated thus, they offend no darling theory ; no critic is agitated to attack the view, and the moral and spiritual effect aimed at is achieved. I don't know what the critics zvo2ild have done with my book with- out that chapter on ' The Doctrinal Basis.' That seems their only hold ; to all the rest they are mild as milk. After all, this attempting to theologize on God and his manifestation in Jesus is but the meager- est and poorest way of getting at him. The theory — any theory of that problem — never made a man a Christian yet ; but the simple statement that God so loved the world that he sent his own Son to die for it, that is intelligible to the heart of man. It is at once a force, a motive. The attempt to commute a moral impulse into an intellectual idea is about like changing grapes into wine. The wine is good for some purposes, undoubtedly, but it isn't grapes — the form is changed and it becomes an entirely different thing." And, in fact, that single chapter was the only portion objected to by anybody ; it was theological, and that was enough to invite dissent. The volume stands to-day a fit memorial of the intellectual and spiritual nature of the man ; a treasury of noble thoughts, of delicate imaginings, of stimulating sug- gestions, shrewd readings of human nature, a pro- Me Butbor anD SMtor 63 found insight into the character of Jesus. It is a great example of Mr. Beecher's wonderfully combined common sense and lofty spirituality. After some more talking about the topic in hand, he said, " Well, now you shall see me begin Volume Second," and with his spattering quill he dashed off the title of the next chapter. He had two "good days," and when I saw him on the evening of the second, he said, "I had expected to have a severe tussle with those maniacs and devils among the Gadarenes, but I think I've finished them ; another such day and I'll have finished my chapter." I mentioned a certain book we had been discuss- ing previously, and asked if he found it of any special use. "No," he replied, "I find no single book help- ful when I am actively at work. I do not generally like to read studiously any one book when I am writing. I am very sensitive to books, and do not wish to get myself impressed in any given direction. I prefer to take up one after another, especially books of original investigation, and get the general effect of their views. Thus I am able to form my own opinion under the cross-lights of all these others, and the re- sult is that my way of stating it, when completed, is more likely to be true and less likely to be offensive to any. I try to find the elements of truth in each, and so to get a many-sided view." I find among my fragmentary memoranda of those days one dated "Christmas, 1874," which gives one of his suggestive ways of looking at the familiar gospel story, which I do not believe he ever put upon paper. He said ; 64 Kcnri2 MarJ) JBcccber "I have just been planning out a new chapter." With the publisher's instinct, I asked, " Did you jot it down?" "No; it is a very clear line of thought. It is the development of contrast between the appar- ent literalness and the real mysticism of Christ's teachings. All through his life and sayings ran a double line. He, himself, knew it and avowed it. He taught them in parables, that hearing they might not understand ; and they felt it, too, for they came to him and asked, ' How long makest thou us to doubt ? ' Now, in view of this, look back at the Sermon on the Mount. There was proclaimed a line of ethics in regard to personal morality, to honesty, to self-defense, etc., that if taken literally would be utterly subversive of society. See how it comes out in John's Gospel and grows more and more strong to the very end ! How he plays with the figures of the vine, the life, the light, bread, wine, mansions, etc., flashing them here and there like illusions ! He was the most mystical and figurative of teachers. In face of this, when people come to some single point, like the finality of punishment, see how they pin you down to the literal words given in translation as the words of Jesus — * He said so and so' — as if he were usu- ally given to saying the exact, literal thing that he meant ! " During 1872-3 Mr. Beecher wrote seven or eight chapters of the Second Volume ; then other matters broke in, the building process was stopped, and al- though he several times tried to start it again — notably in the last year of his life — the grand work stands uncompleted, except as it was pieced out, in 66 Menrg IliaarO aseecber most interesting fashion, from his sermons, by his son, William C. Beecher, and his son-in-law. Rev. Samuel Scoville. And the possibility of that, by the way, shows how his interests and studies kept him upon the line of the Master's words and works through many years. Despite the fact that Mr. Beecher did a vast amount of writing, the mechanical effort of putting pen to paper so lagged behind his thought that it was a perpetual hindrance and annoyance to him. In proof-reading, too, he suffered the disadvantage of having his words come back to him as something not altogether his own. At the time of utterance, his thinking pressed for outlet so that he gave little heed to form. Although the general matter was pre- pared beforehand, and long habit had given him com- mand of a noble vocabulary and a forceful style, his plan often changed while he was preaching ; its pres- entation was incited by the moment, and its mode was in all details a matter of "unconscious cerebra- tion." It was somewhat so, too, in writing, for he wrote as he spoke, in heat ; and when the material came before him in cold printer's ink it was, in a manner, strange to him ; so that instead of merely "correcting," he found stimulus to fresh thinking, and was apt to make havoc with the printer's work. All these things hindered him, both in authorship and in journalistic work. His sermons he rarely saw until they came to him in the Plymouth Pulpit pamphlet ; he left to others their correcting, a certain rough edit- ing of obvious tongue-slips, and the giving of titles. Yet, that his discourses were thoroughly planned 68 IHenrg TWlarO aseecber was made evident when the manuscript report of one of his "Yale Lectures on Preaching" had been lost, and the stenographer had by some fatality mislaid or destroyed his notes. Mr. Beecher sat patiently and reproduced the lecture — of course, not in the original words, but in the distinct line of thought — • while it was stenographically taken over again for publication. His ideas were clear to his own mind ; when he changed dtiring preaching, it was because he came upon something that he considered more important than his original preparation. In writing, he did less of this than most men. His manuscripts and proofs of the Life of Christ show many changes of expression, but not many alterations in the idea he had chosen to put forward. One of Mr. Beecher's editorial labors should be at least mentioned — the " Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes," the pioneer of Congregational singing in America, with a word as to its courageous inclusion, greatly to the enrichment of worship, of hymns from Catholic, Unitarian and other sources, then unusual to the orthodox Protestant. Mr, Beecher's editing of The Christian Union de- serves more than a final sentence or two. He had had experience in journalism. While a theological student he had for some months edited The Cincinnati Journal, in Indianapolis The Western Farmer and Gardener, and both with noticeable ability. He had written much for The New York Independent, with national effect, and was for some time its ed'tor. He had his own ideas about a religious paper, and infused them into The Christian Union. He made it purely unsectarian, Bs Butbor and JE&itor 69 although he himself was a sturdy Congregationalist, with firm belief in the independence and the fellowship of the churches. As he announced, he did " breathe, through the columns of The Christian Union, Christian love, courage, equity, and gentleness." He aimed to abolish the "sacred" and "secular" discrimination, and to bring the spirit of Christ to bear upon all the interests of man. During the first year (1870) he wrote much for the paper (and none on the book) ; after that he kept his eye, his mind and his heart on the former — and his hand, too — influencing its workers much as he did Plymouth Church. His spirit informed and guided it, and, no less than his name, was the power that swept it to its great success, although ably supplemented by the clear-eyed management and admirable editorial writing of Mr. George S. Merriam, the working editor for five and a half years, who furnished, of course, an indispensable element. There is no space to detail Mr. Beecher's many peculiarities — of rapid and forceful writing, of either reluctant or destructive and reconstructive proof-read- ing, the alternations of despair and exaltation among his coworkers at getting nothing from him, or being rejoiced by an article or inspired by an hour of elo- quent talk at the office. The field is wide, but this corner of it is fenced in by the limits of a brief article. And here we must leave it. The memory of the man, in the consciousness of one who knew him intimately for forty years and worked beside him for twenty, is one of boundless mental resource, perennial humor and sunniness of 70 mcnrg MarO JSeecber temper, a profound spirituality, and an amazingly prac- tical embodiment of the spirit of Christ in living good- ness. Here was a sweet-souled, great-hearted. Chris- tian, manly man, a life employed with rare singleness of purpose in bringing Christ to men and men to Christ. THE CONTRIBUTION OF MR. BEECHER TO LITERATURE By Rev. Alford B. Penniman, Chicago Looking over my large Beecher library I am at a loss to tell what to omit in a relative estimate. Mr. Beecher himself disclaimed rank among men of letters as he disclaimed place among professional theologians. We cannot imagine Mr. Beecher hang- ing around a country churchyard seven years to pro- duce one poem, as did Gray. He wrote spontaneously out of his mood and vision, as Burns wrote much of "Tarn O'Shanter" during a few moments when Jean Armour stole along quietly behind him in the broom- corn on the bank of the Nith. He was a prose poet, endowed for work of the first order. Like his Master, he wrote on the popular heart rather than on parch- ment. He spoke in parables to the whole man instead of risking content with more limited influence. Lit- erature as the incarnation rather than the dress of thought, he held in high esteem. From this point of view his literary work has been vastly underesti- mated. His humanism is so unique that his books will abide. The odiuui thcologicuin, not above bring- ing to its aid false witness and scandal, has only a little delayed a more just estimate of his literary work. Even in the chance fragments culled from his sermons he was great. He rose in spite of the 71 72 Kenr^ marD JBeccber " periodical misreports of the reporters." Many well- arranged anthologies have appeared. One extensive selection of five hundred indexed pages was compiled by Rev. G. D. Evans, of London (1870), and entitled, "One Thousand Gems," veritable "apples of gold in pictures of silver," The English publishers have often been more diligent to gather Mr. Beecher's sermons and scatter them over the world than have our own. Mr. Dickinson, of Farringdon Street, Lon- don, sold me two volumes entitled, " Forty-eight Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher, Preached Previous to 1867." Up to that time, on this side of the sea, no enterprise corresponds to that period save the elephantiasis issues of The Independent and some old- time journals. About 1867 Dr. Lyman Abbott began a better selection. From five hundred sermons he, with the aid of Mr. Beecher, chose forty-six, representing much variety of theme, construction and treatment. The next series of sermons is now published in ten vol- umes under five covers, containing two hundred and sixty-three sermons. This treasure mine is so much of it pure gold that no one has proposed to smelt it over, certainly not into forty-six sermons for this period between 1869-73. If a theological student can get only one series of Mr. Beecher's sermons, his choice should fall upon the series from 1873-75, being one hundred and four sermons in four volumes, representing the height of his personality and pulpit power. From 1875 on, the authorized publication of his sermons continued in unabated power, as found in the Mie dontrlbutfon to Xiterature 73 weekly issue of Plymouth Pulpit. Special note should be made of the anticipation of the newer Bible study in his "Bible Studies," or the publication of certain Sunday evening lectures. The volume, " Evolution and Religion," dealt with nature, revelation and the background of mystery, and other related themes. It was his last great message to a generation of youth trained in scientific studies or indirectly affected by them. It was the message of a teacher calmly unfold- ing the results of the long brooding and practical years ; a teacher who taught what he termed a " semi- nal theory of development" long before the publication of the "Origin of Species." The best work of Mr. Beecher's life, before, during, or after the war, was done under fire. The " Life of Christ " was written during his trouble of the seven- ties. Asked why he did not write about the later scenes as well as the earlier in the life of our Lord he replied, " Perhaps God has a Gethsemane for me to pass through as a preparation for that work." Another book indispensable for the young man entering the ministry is the "Yale Lectures on Preaching," delivered in three series from 1872 to 1874. Comparing them with each other, the third series is the best, the first series ranks next and the second series, though valuable, is third in relative importance. Let us not fail to note how unbiased men, for example, in Great Britain, who knew him almost entirely by his books, regarded him. For this testi- mony read "A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher" (1886), compiled by the late Major James B. '74 THenrs "WllarJ) JBeecber Pond. There are passages in this book, quoted from Mr. Beecher, which represent a very apotheosis of friendship, heart power and benediction. Nothing in the classic memoirs of Charles Kingsley, F. D. Maurice or Norman Macleod equals them. The volume entitled "Patriotic Addresses" is his one book appealing to all sorts of civilized and un- civilized men. It is an octavo of eight hundred and fifty-seven pages. Here lives again the victorious reformer, prophet-statesman and orator, glowing in cold type, converting the public sentiment of Britain from hate to neutrality, and finally to friendship with enthusiasm; raising the flag at Sumter, "without the loss of a single star"; making himself almost a necessity to the salvation of this whole brave nation ; affording material for an American epic by an American Homer, perchance some untrammeled Burns, whose poetic genius, more likely than not, will find him in the wilderness, as Lincoln and Beecher were found. As the light of day fades on his honest toil his words ring the angchis of a new church catholic, and chime the chant of faith and hope and love ; words matchless, home-stained, radiant, condensed, sunbeams burning and beautiful ; words of our great friend and commoner, the minister of racial brotherhood and divine love, Henry Ward Beecher. AN ABRIDGED BEECHER BIBLIOGRAPHY Supplementary to Books Mentioned in Foregoing Article. — A. B. P. 1. The Set^en Lectures fo Young Men delivered at Indianapolis is the "eldest born" of Mr. Beecher's books (1844). To this volume were added five more lectures of the same period. D. Appleton and Company, 1879, is the copyright mark of my copy. This is written in his early tropical style, but not overdrawn for life in the West at that time. When Dr. James Brand, of Oberlin, applied in a sermon the personification of the " corrupter of youth " (page 187) to one Thad. Rowland, reputed as a masked saloon-keeper of a drug-store in Oberlin, there was enough ginger left in the lecture on Popular Amusements to result in Dr. Brand being sued for two thousand dollars, and costing quite a little trouble. Mr. Beecher remarked at the time (during the early eighties) that his lecture was what now seemed to him like " ripping and roaring." 2. Star Papers, or Experietices of Art and Nature, 1855. Reappeared 1873 with additional articles selected from more recent writings. These papers contain the glow of the enthusiasm of his first trip to Europe, articles on Ride to Kenilworth, Stratford, Shottery, Oxford, Luxem- bourg, National Gallery, etc., also his vacation experiences in America. 3. Life Thoughts, 1858. Compiled by Edna Dean Proctor. These were gathered from notes taken from the Sabbath sermons and Wednesday evening lectures. " Leaves " which happened to fall into the hands of one or two persons from a " full-boughed tree " " during two successive seasons." — Preface. ^5 76 IHcnrs liflarO JBeccbcr 4. Views and Experiences on Religious Subjects, or New Star Papers, 1859. "These articles were taken for the most part from The New York Independent. If un- worthy of a book form the public has itself to blame, in part, for encouraging a like collection of Star Papers some years ago." — H. W. B. They are heart talks, including a famous sermon at Burton's Old Theater on " How to Become a Christian," quoted in full by Dr. Abbott in his first book on Mr. Beecher, prepared with the help of Mr. Halliaday. 5. Eyes and Ears, 1862. About one hundred wide- awake articles which appeared first in The New York Ledger under the title, " Thoughts as They Occur to One Who Keeps His Eyes and Ears Open." They are written in happy moods, and " inspire a love for nature." It is the most miscellaneous in the topics of its chapters of all his works. It is written in an easy, offhand style, breezy and wholesome, unstudied, unpretentious, and very characteristic. 6. Nor2vood, 1867. Mr. Beecher 's only attempt at fiction, being an interesting tale of New England life, written as a serial for The New York Ledger at the request of Robert Bonner. 7. Pleasant Talks about Emits, Elowers and Earming. Mr. Beecher prepared for these talks by reading Loudon's ponderous tomes, as a let-down from excitement of public speech at Indianapolis. They are very dry reading for most people, but the "talks" are anything but dry. 8. Prayers. Several volumes, {a) Prayers from Plym- outh Pulpit. A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1895. (U) Prayers in the Congregation, selected by Rev. J. R. Brown. James Clarke and Company, London, 1886. {c) A Book of Prayer. Fords, Howard and Hulbert, 1892. (<'/) Aids to Prayer. Beecher, Anson D. F. Randolph and Company, New York. (No date.) 9. Beecher as a Humorist, Eleanor Kirk. Fords, Bn BbriDgeO :t61bUograpbg 77 Howard and Hulbert, 1887. Extracts from his public utterances, Mr, Beecher owed much to the spontaneity of humor, and this is the only volume set apart for this phase of his power, 10. Lecture jRoom Talks, 1870. Pages 378, I, B. Ford and Company. The very best book by which to get close A little known picture of Mr. Beecher to Mr, Beecher as he appeared at the week-night prayer meetings of Plymouth Church, This contains his parting words on the occasion of his second trip to Europe in 1863. 11, A Summer Parish, 1875, I. B, Ford and Com- pany. Sermons at the Twin Mountain House, New Hamp- shire. 1874, Very interesting, but out of print. 12. Religion and Duty. James Clarke and Company, London, 1887, "Sunday" readings from Henry Ward 78 Menrs MacD JScecbcr Beecher, selected and arranged by Rev. J. Reeves Brown. We have here, not the ordinary short selections, but fifty-two chapters. 13. Royal Truths, "reported from the spoken words of Mr. Beecher." This has passed through very many editions, from 1866 to 1887. An anthology. 14. Henry Ward Beecher 's Last Sermons, preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, after his return from England, October, 1886. London, James Clarke and Company, 1887. INCIDENTS AND PERSONAL MEMORIES OF BEECHER MR. BEECHER IN PRIVATE LIFE By Rossiter W. Raymond Mr. Beecher's private life was at all times domi- nated by a consciousness of his public functions as a minister, and especially his work as a preacher, with which he allowed nothing to interfere. Diet, rest, study, recreation, conversation — all were regulated with reference to this. He gave up attending the Philharmonic concerts, then given on Saturday nights, because his keen enjoyment of them excited and exhausted him, whereas his rule was to rest before his work rather than afterwards. P'or the same reason he avoided hearty meals, and would not even talk much, if he could avoid it, on Saturday nights or other occasions immediately preceding the discharge of his duty in the pulpit. As I have elsewhere more fully explained, Mr. Beecher's mental life had three characteristic and recurrent phases. First, and longest enduring, was his habitual actively inquiring and receptive mood, in which he accumulated facts, hints, impressions and conclusions as intellectual food. In this mood he studied, watched, talked and pondered. It was the atmosphere in which his sermons grew until they were ripe, from the seeds planted in his little pocket note-book or in separate compartments of his memory. Then came his creative mood, in which his facul- ties were intensely and harmoniously cooperative, so 81 62 menrg MarO JBeecber that he could flash forth, in a complete, comprehensive, pictorial whole, the result of the long accumulation of materials and of many meditations thereon. This rarely lasted more than one or two hours, and was followed by the third phase, a reaction, in which rea- son and memory seemed to be resting in sleep while the mind recovered its normal tone and strength.* * After this long lapse of time I may, without impropriety, relate the following incident, hitherto untold. During the first public excite- ment over the slanderous personal charges brought against Mr. Beecher, and the investigation of them by a committee of Plymouth Church, it was, of course, necessary that he should prepare a complete statement of facts. For this he had to rely upon memory. His adversaries had carefully preserved all documents ; he had none. To facilitate his preparation of this statement a stenographer was employed to take his oral narrative, for his subsequent correction and approval. But we found that, after talking for an hour or two to the stenographer, he could go no further that day. To the question, " What happened next ? " he would say only, " I don't remember." And at the following session it would sometimes be dititicult to revive the train of thought or recollection thus suspended. This was annoying enough, in view of the continual public clamor for Mr. Beecher's personal statement and the use made by his accusers of every day's delay. But the statement was at last finished and pub- lished; and nothing which it contained was ever successfully impugned, for his memory, when active, was as accurate as a photograph. But the eminent lawyers who represented him in the subsequent lawsuit were overwhelmed with anxiety, amounting to consternation, by the thought that, upon the witness stand, their client might exhibit such relapses in mental activity. " Good heavens ! " said one of them, " what if Mr. Beecher, under cross-examination, should begin to say, ' I don't remember ? ' " I think this was the most serious fear attending the conduct of his case, in which, as a young layman, I assisted the legal counsel and was admitted to their private consultations. Mr. Beecher alone seemed to be free from anxiety. He felt sure of divine protection ; and the rest of us could only pray that such protection might be manifested in the particular way which seemed best to 21s — which is, I fancy, the fashion of most of our prayers 1 At all events, our gratitude and joy may easily be imagined when Mr. Beecher went through several days of direct and cross-examination without a single lapse of memory, proving himself at all points superior to the art of the eminent lawyer who had been spe- cially engaged to cross-examine him, and maintaining intact his simple, truthful story. To us, who knew the critical nature of this test and the mental habits which handicapped him, this seemed indeed a "special" providence. He took it as an ordinary one. fn Private Xfte 83 Probably all intellectual workers know these three phases, but I have never met another man who so thoroughly understood, obeyed and managed them. Those of us who are not bound to be "in the Spirit" at a given hour on a given day, may wait idly until the Spirit moves us. But Mr, Beecher took care to make himself ready for the needed inspiration, and to receive it into a brain refreshed, informed and alert. It was very frequently in his mood of reaction that he came into the homes of such old friends as could understand and respect it, and therefore it was seldom that he became in such circles the brilliant center of conversation. Many exceptions there were — notable ones — ^when, roused by some question, he would pour out upon two or three entranced listeners rhapsodies of eloquence or thunders of argument almost surpass- ing, as it seemed, his public utterances. Sometimes, after such an outburst, he would suddenly depart, say- ing with affected indignation, "There, now you've got a good sermon that was getting ready to come, and it won't come again ! " (In more than one instance it never did come again ; the powder had been burned.) On the other hand, I have known him to enter my house without a word, pass through to the library, seat himself there alone, take from his pocket a handful of unset precious stones,* spread them on a sheet of white paper before him, study them, arranging and rearranging them on the paper, and, after half an hour, gather them up and depart as silently as he had come. * Amethysts, topazes, opals, etc. (not diamonds ; he did not love diamonds, and thought the " white stone " of the Apocalypse was an opal), many of them his own, but more of them lent him by friendly lapidaries. J 84 Menr^ MarD aSeecber But ordinarily he was not as tired as that. He would be ready for light, cheerful gossip about family matters, and, above all, for the children and their play, in which he loved to share, letting them climb upon his knees or ride upon his back. If strangers were present, before whom he might be expected to "show off," he was very likely to excuse himself after a short call. But if there was nobody to spoil the game there was no telling how long it might last. I remember one evening when Mr. Beecher was telling stories to children and grown folks alike, and bedtime came for the smallest little boy. Climbing reluctantly up the stairs the child turned and shouted down into the parlor, " O, Mr. Beecher, please don't say anything after I am gone ! " "Not one word ! " was the reply ; and Mr. Beecher immediately arose and (after the usual hunt for his hat) bade us all good-night, and went out, slamming the front door, so that his little friend might know he had kept his promise ! Curiously enough, Mr. Beecher, so bold in any public or representative capacity, was, in private, shy and bashful. In moments of strong personal feeling he took refuge in silence. He told me once (when he was past sixty) that he never entered without em- barrassment a room in which he expected to find strangers. "But," he added, "on the platform I am another man. There I am not afraid of anything or anybody. I have a consciousness of command. If there should be an alarm of fire I knoiv that I could make the crowd obey me and sit still, or go out quietly." (He was right as to that ; I have seen him do it.) fln Private Xlfe 85 Dr. Lyman Abbott, in his recent admirable book on Mr. Beecher, speaks of him as going rapidly through books and getting the heart out of them. But that was only his way of testing books before deciding whether to read them. For he was a slow reader, even of light literature. Books on science, philosophy, history, etc., he read and reread, often turning back to passages which had been to him, upon first perusal, impressive or suggestive. In such books (lent to me after he had read them) I often found heavy marginal pencil marks, evidently intended simply to help him in finding certain paragraphs again. I do not remember (with one exception) any which implied approval or disapproval. Knowing his mental attitude and method in particular lines of study, I have recognized, among the passages thus marked, some which he doubted, some which admirably stated his own views, and some which he doubtless deemed funda- mentally wrong and logically weak. But most of the marked paragraphs were simply points in the author's arofument. For it was characteristic of him that he read such a book to get the author's standpoint, method and message. In one instance within my knowledge (of course there may have been others) Mr. Beecher wrote in a volume his opinion of it. It was " Lorna Doone," which he had borrowed of me, and on the title-page of which I found, when he returned it, these penciled words : This book is like a capital fowl, somewhat overstuffed, and a trifle too long in the oven ; otherwise, a dish fit for a king. H. w. b. 86 Kcnr\: TMarD JBeecbcr But it should be noted that Mr. Beecher read dif- ferent books for different purposes. Some simply in- structed him ; some stimulated him, suggesting more than they said ; some refreshed and soothed him ; 5ome could put him to sleep. And he kept examples of each sort always at hand, to be used according to his mood or need. One day, finding him absorbed in a "gorgeous" novel by Ouida, I expressed my surprise that, being so slow a reader, he should waste time upon such a story. His reply was, " She has a wonderful vocab- ulary, and I am reading for tliaty It was the ora- torical element (in itself a blemish) in Ouida's style that attracted him. His own writing was as impulsive, fluent and abundant as his speech. Accustomed for so rrfany years to throw off hasty "copy" for the printer, and to write out or leave unwritten, as the mood seized him, passages in his sermons, he had come, apparently, to regard the pen as a simple alternative of the tongue ; and he wrote letters, sometimes without date, sometimes without signature, sometimes without ad- dress, sometimes forgetting to finish them or mail them, and always, I think, without retaining copies of them. The following hitherto unpublished letter may serve as an illustration. It was found, after Mr. Beecher's death, among his papers. Nobody knows to whom it was addressed, or whether it was ever sent. Brooklvn, May 8th, 1867. Dear Sir : I do not think Science, as it ivill be, is with- out its Calvary. But, as it noiv is, in the hands of Mill, ITn Private Xlfe gt Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall and, I may add, Charles Darwin, it has gone only so far as to have lost the cross, and not far enough to have found it again. I am entirely confident that the truths of the New Testa- ment are perfectly at one with the truth of nature. Both are divine. They will never collide in any such sense as to be interchangeably destructive. We are in a transition. Such periods are apt to be barrens and deserts for religious feeling. I am anxious to maintain the religious sentiment and fervor of men during these changes, and that recasting of philosophy which impends. Yours truly, Henry Ward Beecher. If this letter was never sent, it may be that Mr. Beecher was not entirely satisfied with its phrase- ology. But from my knowledge of him I am inclined to think that he meant, and simply forgot, to mail it. At all events, it expresses substantially his own solemn personal injunction to me, which I here pub- licly repeat, I think for the first time (though I have repeated it in conversation heretofore) : When I am gone, do not let it be forgotten that my one aim was the winning of the souls of men for Jesus Christ ; that I have restated old doctrines in new language for this purpose — to make them acceptable to living men — and not out of desire for destruction or innovation. My busi- ness has always been, and will always be, not to make theology, but to save men by bringing them to Christ. This was his habitual consciousness and attitude. He was a congenial associate in all sorts of company ; but he never "let himself down," morally, for any company ; and all who met him, however informally, were made to feel that behind and above his cordial fellowship there was an ever-present sacred mission and purpose. This, at least, was my experience. I ^ Menrs imaxt) meecbcv knew Mr. Beecher as intimately as most, and in some respects more intimately than any of his friends out- side of his own family; and I bear witness that no degree of familiarity ever impaired the affectionate reverence with which I regarded him. THE HENRY WARD BEECHER OF MY CHILDHOOD By Rev. R. DeW. Mallary, Housatonic, Mass. As I look back upon my boyhood days in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, the first picture to come before me is the Sunday morning congregation. Pewholders had to be in their seats ten minutes before the opening of service, and we used to make our way to our pew through ranks of waiting strangers. And what a vast, expectant assemblage it was when John Zundel started in on the voluntary ; a congregation never quite the same, perhaps twenty-five per cent, being "strangers within the gates." Pulpit stairs, aisles, second gallery, all chock-full and crowds standing about the doors. The central figure in it all, Mr. Beecher, seemed perfectly self-possessed, and surveyed the assemblage with a quiet dignity. He had no assistant minister then to take the devotional part of the worship, and in this part he was, indeed, unique. Unconventional, he possessed a beautiful sense of pulpit proprieties. He caught the ear of all at the start by low tones, almost inaudible. How deliberately, reverently, im- pressively he read the Scripture ! And how fond he was of reading the thirteenth chapter of First Cor- inthians ! How comprehensively, unctuously, directly he prayed! — his prayers were litanies, communions. And such singing from that immense congregation ! Will I ever hear its like again .? 91 92 Mcnv^ IClarD JBcecbcr In sermon-time, often lasting over an hour, my attention flagged or wandered. I fear I counted the bald heads in a given row of seats, and noted the rapidly-flying stenographer's pencil, but all the same I heard a good deal. Mr. Beecher's sermons were canvases ; he preached in pictures, and I often was a rapt little hearer. The congregation now clapped and then cried, swayed absolutely by the great mind and soul that throbbed aloud a message of truth and love and duty ! I have many detached memories of Mr. Beecher and Plymouth Church during those early days. Mr. Beecher's illustrious father sometimes moved up and down our Sunday-school aisles, stopping here and there for a kindly word. There were no Sunday horse-cars in Brooklyn then, and Mr. Beecher advo- cated this " new departure," bringing to an end a Sabbatic quiet that had hitherto reigned on the first day of the week and incidentally covering himself with an avalanche of criticism. His leading opponent in this matter thereafter, it was said, patronized the livery stables when he had occasion to travel on the Sabbath. War memories, too, group themselves about those early days. I was too young to comprehend all I saw and heard, but my father, who was a stanch Democrat, came home from church one day in high dudgeon. Mr. Beecher had had that morning in the service a slave in the pulpit with him, and had kissed her before the entire congregation. That was too much for my father, and for a year he went alone to the Congregational church across the street, where William Alvin Bartlett was then trying his pulpit ©t itsn Cbi[Oboo& 93 powers. Needless to say he came back, and was to the last day of his long life one of Mr. Beecher's warmest admirers and defenders. During the mobs in New York a missile came whizzing through a pane of glass one evening while Plymouth Church was at service, and we read the next morning of the cordon of police that escorted Mr. Beecher home that night, while the mob wreaked its vengeance on the "abo- litionist " by painting his brownstone front with lamp- black. We boys went down a few days after to see the almost indelible smut which remained there for many a year. I cannot speak at any length of other "events" which made an impression on my boy mind : the New Years' receptions at Mr. Beecher's house to which my father always took me ; the return of Mr. Beecher from Europe and Palestine in 1863, and the disappear- ance of an old rampart sort of a pulpit to make way for the simple furniture made of olive-wood selected by Mr. Beecher in the Holy Land ; the deeply im- pressive baptismal services when Mr. Beecher used to immerse those candidates preferring that method of administering the rite. I cannot remember that Mr. Beecher often came into our Sunday-school. He certainly had no class. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose he took no in- terest in this part of the church work. His hand was felt in all the departments of the parish life. All the world knows his fondness for flowers, birds and nature. Our Sunday-school had a fountain in the center of the room. One end of my quadrant-shaped bench abutted on the aisle next to that musical Jet d'eau, and I used 94 Kenrg Mar& JBeecber to watch, between the questions, the gold and silver fish swimming around among the moss-covered rocks. Around three sides of the room were galleries for primary scholars, Bible classes and "visitors." The visitors' gallery was always filled. Underneath these galleries were hanging flower baskets and bird-cages, so that Sunday was the best day of the week and Sunday-school the eager anticipation of my week- days. Mr. Beecher came to our sessions seldom, but when he came he was in his happiest mood, and cer- tainly his was the moving spirit behind those happy Sunday-school hours. They are among the most precious of childhood's memories. They taught me by the inspirations they gave me — sometimes op- pressive inspirations — to have confidence in the sus- ceptibility of every boy's and girl's soul to God. Only a few more days and we shall be on our way to Peekskill where I will roll on the grass, frolic with the dogs, rejoice in the flowers, sit under the big pine tree and superintend laying out the road, and we will all have a good time generally. But having had it I shall return to my church, ready, happy and eager to resume my labors, and with a heart all the richer in love for it and my people, for these few weeks of rest. — From a letter of Mr. Beecher' s. THE UNDERGRADUATE DAYS OF HENRY WARD BEECHER By Walter A. Dyer The story of the college days of Henry Ward Beecher and the tale of his wooing and his winning are one. It was during his life at Amherst College, with its many interests and its vast influences on his sub- sequent career, that he met, wooed and won the woman who was to be his companion through all the remark- able events of his after life. To Amherst, the Village Beautiful, redolent with Indian traditions and tales of colonial strife, came Henry Ward Beecher, three-quarters of a century ago, in search of learning. He was at that time boyish- looking and a trifle diffident, with that awkwardness which comes with rapid growth. Honest eyes and a frank, open face, now serious, now all mirth, bespoke a great soul which even then stirred within him, and which never lost its youthful freshness. Breathing in the scholarly atmosphere of the old institution with the sweet, wholesome air of the Hadley meadows and the Pelham hills, Beecher grew from boyhood to man- hood. Years afterward he said, " I owe more to what God has done for Amherst than anything he ever did for me." Beecher fitted at the Mt. Pleasant Classical Insti- tute in Amherst, and entered college in 1830. There were forty students in his class. The college was 95 96 Mcnr^ IdarO JBeecbcr then but nine years old, small and poorly endowed, but the chairs of instruction were filled by scholars and men of strong personality. Rev. Dr. Heman Humphrey, a renowned theologian, was president. Beecher's academic career at Amherst was a pecul- iar one, and his attitude toward the prescribed course of study has given rise to some controversy. There is a tradition current among the undergraduates which certain professors, and among them the late Prof. W. S. Tyler, in his " History of Amherst College," have in vain endeavored to explain away, that throughout his course Beecher stood at the foot of his class. As direct evidence on this point. Rev. S. Hopkins Emery, of Taunton, Massachusetts, one of Beecher's class- mates at Amherst College, said, in a letter to the present chronicler : Beecher, I am sorry to say, paid little attention to the prescribed course of study in college, so that he might about as well have been elsewhere so far as study in the regular course was concerned. I think he regretted it afterward. Of course he had brain enough to have easily led the class, if his ambition and taste had so dictated ; but the fact that he was one of the few who failed of any Commencement appointment proves what I have said about it. Of course he was not idle. He thought and read much. Beecher himself said that he stood next the head of his class only once in his course, on a day when the class was arranged in a circle. Beecher was, however, the leading debater in col- lege, and his devotion to this exercise proved invalu- able training for his life-work. It was in the prepara- tion for one of his debates on the question of African colonization that the conviction of the human rie:hts of Mis *QlnJ)ergraDuate ©a^s 9? the Southern slaves first came to him. Lewis Tappan, a classmate, said of him : " In logic and class debates no one could approach him. I listened to his flow of impassioned eloquence in those my youthful days with wonder and admiration." Rev. Mr. Emery remem- bered that Henry Clay visited Amherst once during those days, and some of the students presented him with a Bible. Beecher made the presentation speech, for no one else was considered so well fitted to do it, and the smooth-faced young fellow won the great statesman's praise. Beecher's written essays also attracted consider- able attention, chiefly because of their originality of thought ; but his chief study was nature and her moods, and frequently in his sermons afterward he referred to incidents which occurred and impressions which he received while on long, solitary tramps among the hills and woods which lie about the beautiful New England town. Still, he was always appreciative of the advantages of his college. He once said, long afterward, in public reference to those days of endeavor, that he owed his inspiration for manly living to three persons — his dead mother, whose spirit seemed ever near him as a guardian angel ; a negro servant who chopped wood and sang hymns in his father's shed ; and the professor of mathematics in Amherst College. Beecher at one time took up the study of phre- nology, and, in company with a classmate, Orson S. Fowler, went about among the neighboring towns lecturing. This interest, however, soon gave place to that in the cause of temperance, for which he became an active worker and an eloquent lecturer. 98 Kenrg IdarJ) 36eec ber He was a contributor to The Shrine, the under- graduate publication, was a prominent member of the Athenian debating society, and was interested in several departments of college activity. Soon after his graduation, in 1837, he became one of the honor- ary charter members of the Amherst chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, Beecher's love of fun was irresistible, and the few anecdotes which are told of him are characteristic. They are most of them too well known to need repetition here. His poverty, his queer room, with its round table, and other circumstances of his college life have often been recounted. At one time he be- came the champion of his class in an interclass dis- pute, and so won the enmity of a Junior who after- wards became a famous lawyer and voluntarily took active part in the case against Beecher at the time of the scandal in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and well-nigh had his revenge. And so the days flitted by in beautiful Amherst. A letter written by Beecher to his sister during his Junior year, which is one of the few of this period which have been preserved, is to be found among the memorabilia in the college library at Amherst. It gives an insight into many of his thoughts and senti- ments. He was a young man of moods, and highly susceptible to religious excitement and depression. At one time the reaction from a religious revival in the college threw him into a period of spiritual gloom. He found plenty of precept, but not the sympathy which he sought. He was left for a long time to fight it out almost alone, with but one companion who was tHls TllndergraOuate Wa^s 99 able to understand, one Moody Harrington, whom he remembered long afterward with affectionate gratitude. Then came the love of a good woman, and the skies cleared. Beecher's most intimate friend in college was E. W. Bullard, who roomed with him for several terms. He was the son of Rev. Artemus Bullard, and his home was in West Sutton, Massachusetts.' He had two brothers who were afterwards eminent in their profession : Rev. Artemus Bullard, Jr., long a leading Presbyterian clergyman in St. Louis, who met a sad death in a dreadful railroad disaster near that city ; and Rev. Asa Bullard, in his day one of the best-known Congregational ministers in New Eng- land. Young Bullard and Henry Beecher formed one of those close college friendships which never wear out. The two were just out of their Freshman year when, together with another classmate, they walked from Amherst to West Sutton, fifty miles, to spend their spring vacation at Dr. Bullard's. Mrs. Bullard was on the porch to greet them, and with her was her daughter Eunice, a pretty, red-cheeked country girl, affectionate and modest. As she stood there, with the afternoon sun gilding her hair, she presented a picture which remained in Beecher's heart for many a day. He was lonely and troubled, and nothing could have been more welcome than that quiet New Eng- land home and the sympathy of a gentle maiden. Beecher was only a boy, and Eunice, though ten months his senior, was an unsophisticated country 100 Menrs MarO JBeecber girl. Yet they talked of grave matters, and Beecher did his best to appear favorably in her eyes. When, one evening, he made a slip, it worried him out of all proportion to the fault. They were talking, the three classmates, about a friend whose recent engagement they did not approve. "She can't sing a note," said Beecher, "and who would want a girl that couldn't sing .-* " Later in the evening some one asked Eunice to sing and she declined, saying that it was not one of her accomplishments. That night Henry Ward Beecher went to bed very unhappy. But the days drifted quickly by, and Beecher went back to college with a newer purpose and a lighter heart. And when at last he spoke of love it was all very quaint and very awkward, but beautiful in its sincerity. During the summer and fall after their first meeting Eunice taught school in Clappville, Massachusetts. Henry secured a position in North- bridge soon afterward, and was able to see her some- times. During his winter vacation he went to live with her aunt in Whiting's Village, where she was staying, ostensibly to help her in Latin, though she knew more of the classics than he. Then Eunice said, quietly, " Why, I can't sing, and only a short time since you said you would never marry a woman who could not sing." Henry laughed. "Oh, that was six months ago, and I have changed my mind." " And in six months more you may change it again," said she. Mis TllnOcrgraOuatc Da^s loi " No, I changed it the minute you said you never sang," he answered. "There is no fear of my chang- ing it again." And her heart told her that he spoke true. That was January 2, 1832. Henry was not a youth to delay matters. The next Saturday he went to West Sutton and told Dr. and Mrs. Bullard what had happened. The father was angry and the mother grieved. "Why, you are a couple of babes," said Dr. Bullard, and Henry could only blush and stammer. But at last the parents were won over by his earnest appeal. The course of love ran not wholly smooth, even then. Beecher had no money, and he longed to show his young fiancee some material token of his love. He worked hard teaching school at West Sutton and delivering temperance lectures. For one of these he received five dollars. With this he purchased a copy of Baxter's "Saints' Rest" for Eunice — a gift some- what uncommon in these days of violets and bonbons. During one vacation he walked all the way to Brattle- boro, Vermont, where he received the enormous sum of ten dollars for a lecture. A ring was bought with this, which served both as an engagement and a wedding gift. Life had now a new meaning for Beecher, and when he became one of the great names in American history he loved to look back to those early, hard, sweet days when he was an undergraduate at Amherst — and in love. Statue of Henry IVard Beec/ier, m Brooklyn, by /. Q. A. Ward MR. BEECHER AND THE TWO PLYMOUTH BOYS By Edward Bok It is a popular impression that Henry Ward Beecher had little idea of the value of money — that he let it slip through his fingers. This was true, in a sense. And yet I remember an instance that will, perhaps, illustrate that money did have a meaning to him under certain conditions. A friend of mine and I had induced Mr. Beecher to write a weekly article dealing with current events, which we were to publish simultaneously in a number of newspapers — a "syndicate," in other words. He was very skeptical of the result. " No one has ever yet succeeded in making money out of my supposed literary work," he said, "and you won't." But we persisted. We had all the confidence of youth. We agreed to pay Mr. Beecher a sum of three figures per week. We were two of his boys — his "Plymouth boys" — and, of course, he knew that the amount we agreed to pay him was considerable — for us. When the first article had been written we broue:ht him our first check. He looked at it quizzically and then at us. Finally he said, "Thank you." He took a pin and pinned the check to his desk. There it remained. The following week he wrote another arti- cle, and we gave him another check. He pinned that up over the other. 103 104 "Hcm^ MarD J6cecber " I like to look at them, you know," was his only explanation as he saw my look of curiosity. The third check was treated in the same way, and when we handed him the fourth one morning, and he was pinning it up over the others, he asked, " When do you get your money from the news- papers We told him we were sending out bills that morn- ing for the four letters constituting a month's service. A fortnight passed, and one day Mr. Beecher asked, " Well, how are the checks coming in ? " "Very well," we assured him. " Suppose you let me see how much you've got in," he suggested one morning, and we brought the accounts to him. "You do not get quite so much out of it as I do," was his comment. We told him we didn't expect to ; that it would pay us well if we got half as much, and that we would get more as the service grew. "That's very interesting," he said. "How much have you in the bank.''" We told him our balance less the checks we gave to him. " But I haven't turned them in yet," he explained. "Anyhow, you have gotten in enough to meet the checks you have given me and a profit besides, haven't you .'' " We assured him we had. Then taking his bank-book from a drawer, he took down the six checks pinned on his desk, wrote a deposit slip, and handing the book to me said, Zbe :SSeecbcr IRifles Cburcb 105 "Just hand that in at the bank as you go by, will you ? " I was very young then, and Mr. Beecher's methods of financiering seemed to me quite in line with current notions of his lack of business knowledge. But as the years rolled on the incident took on a new phase — such a strong, magnificent phase ! It seemed so inexplicable then ; it is so beautifully considerate now. I did not thank him then ; I wish I could now. THE BEECHER RIFLES CHURCH By C. M. Harger, Abilene, Kansas Out on the Kansas prairie, at Wabaunsee, not many miles from the geological center of the United States, stands a stone church that is a memorial to the patriotism of one of the world's greatest preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, and his congregation, and to a devotion to the cause of freedom that makes the place twice hallowed. It is also a monument to the bravery of Christian pioneers in a sense possessed by no other structure in the West. Each spring the people of the little prairie com- munity celebrate the anniversary of the building of the church, and with singing, prayer and addresses recall the story of its beginning, a story as romantic as many famous in history. It has an inspiration, too, for the believer, in that it tells of the triumph of a strong, brave faith and the upbuilding of a sturdy, patriotic Christianity. A Letter of Mr. Bcecher's '^r/^c^ c^>i^^ ^o./'sy'/. 108 Menrs THIlarD 36eecbcr In 1856, when the interest in the Nebraska-Kansas Bill was at its height and the New England States were more than usually awake to the importance of the new territory being a free state, a meeting was held at New Haven to enroll men to go to the new country to live and to fight. Henry Ward Beecher made a stirring address. At the close it was an- nounced that one hundred men had joined the party, but that, while they were well prepared to dig and plow, they were not in shape to fight. Professor Silliman, of Yale College, rose and sub- scribed twenty-five dollars to buy one rifle, and urged that the colonists be fully armed before they set out. A thrilling scene followed. Beecher, then at the zenith of his power and with all the eloquence of his best days, took the rostrum and promised to see that half the rifles were furnished from his own cono;reo:a- tion. He blessed the new plans and bade the men Godspeed. In a few days he sent guns for every man, over six hundred dollars having been subscribed by his church for the purpose. Along with the guns were a Bible and a hymn-book for each colonist. On the last day of March they took their way toward the setting sun, going down the streets of New Haven watched by thousands. It was as fine a body of men as ever started for the new lands — doctors, lawyers, merchants, teachers and preachers — and every one carried on his shoulder a rifle, in his pocket a hymn-book and a Bible, and in his heart a firm determination to wield a power for freedom in the wilderness, no matter what the cost. The journey was long and dangerous, but they tlbe JSeecber IRlftes Cburcb 109 took their way across the Mississippi, on into the prairies and up the valley of the Kaw. On the way they formed a cooperative organization and bought shovels, axes and other tools with which to fit themselves and their families, who were to come after, with homes. Each Sabbath the preacher who was chosen as their pastor read the inspiring words given them with the rifles by Mr. Beecher when they started West : Let these arms hang above your doors as the old Revolutionary muskets do in many New England homes. May your children in another generation look upon them with pride and say, "Our fathers' courage saved this fair land from slavery and blood." Every morning's breeze shall catch the blessings of our prayers and roll them westward to your prairie homes. May your sons be large-hearted as the heavens above your heads ; may your daughters fill the land as the flowers do the prairies, only sweeter and fairer than they. You will not need to use arms when it is known that you have them. It is the essence of slavery to be arrogant before the weak and cowardly before the strong. These words are also read at the annual meeting:s in commemoration of the coming of the brave pioneers to the plains. The Beecher Rifles colony, as it was called, had able men in it. More than a score of Yale Collee-e diplomas went along with the rifles and Bibles. RevS- Harvey Brown, the first pastor, held meetings in a grove and later in a tent. Once there was an alarm of Indians during a service. Hastily the hymn-books were exchanged for rifles, and away the congregation went to defend the homes and families. The raid was stopped and the colony saved. Then there was a meetins: of thankfulness. 110 Menr^ MarD JScecbcr In 1862 they built the church that yet stands a monument to the devotion of the early days. It is rude in architecture and plain in all its belongings. But it is the incarnation of the pioneer spirit, and in it are still held meetings where attend many of the original pioneers, now getting well along the pathway of life. Rev. F. D. Jackson is the present pastor. Beecher Rifles Church, IValiauiisdc, Kan. The fate of the colony was of constant interest to Beecher, and he sent many messages to the toilers on the prairie. The spirit that animated the colonists spread over New England, and the emigrant aid soci- eties and the colonies that took their westward way were to some extent followers of this movement. The anti-slavery movement was typified by the bravery of this company, and the high character of the colonists ?H(s lL>ale lectures ill that led in the struggle of the West for freedom was shown by the men who went into the peril of the long journey bearing rifles and Bibles. The West has many such examples of religious earnestness that won honor and position when the need of the new lands was great. It was because of such sentiments then that there is now so firm a foundation for the schools and churches of the plains. It was a right beginning, and, while there was often a possibility of avoiding use of the rifles, the fact that vigor could be used if needed made the respect for the colonists the greater. The little stone church standing out on the prairies teaches a lesson of faith and courage. Of such ma- terial as its builders was the foundation of freedom laid. MR. BEECHER'S YALE LECTURES By Prof. George P. Fisher Mr. Beecher lectured on "Preaching" in the Divinity School at Yale for three consecutive years, on the foundation established by his parishioner and close friend, Mr. Henry W. Sage. No doubt it was Mr. Sage's admiration of Mr. Beecher's gifts as a preacher, and wish that young men looking forward to the ministry might acquaint themselves with his characteristic methods and peculiar charm, that led to the endowment of the Lyman Beecher Lectureship. The prolonged task was fulfilled by Mr. Beecher with not the smallest sign of weariness on his part, or the least waning of interest on the part of the audiences 112 Menrs 1Ular& JBeecbcr that flocked to the Marquand Chapel to listen to him. He spoke with no other written aid than brief notes jotted on pieces of paper hardly larger than the palm of his hand. All who heard him — the younger theo- logues and the older professors and pastors — felt that the speaker combined in himself, with the talents, seldom surpassed, of an orator, the genius of a poet — albeit he did not compose verses — and of a humorist, and was a speaker whom it cost no effort to move his auditors to tears or to laughter. Mr. Beecher's lectures, not being written, were taken down shorthand in the delivery of them, and owing to the pressure of his occupations they were given to the press without revision. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, they are, as printed, characterized by lucid arrangement of the contents, and they are marked by luminous statement and careful discrimi- nation. He told the young men that the ideal of a true Christian preacher is " to take the great truths of the Lord Jesus Christ's teachings, and the love of God to the human race, and make them a part of his own personal experience, so that when he speaks to men it shall not be he alone that speaks, but God in him." Fitly mated with this saying is the most excel- lent opening discourse of Phillips Brooks in Jiis Yale lectures. Mr. Beecher pointed out to the theological pupils before him another prime necessity in their calling : " A part of your preparation for the Christian ministry consists in such a ripening of your disposition that you yourselves shall be exemplars of what you preach." They must live by faith — "the sense of the infinite and the invisible." He declared that me 13alc Xccturcs lis power to be of priceless value which he said that he had derived by inheritance from his mother — the power "to see the unseeable," "to realize things" not present to the senses. This reference to his mother brings to mind the habit of Mr. Beecher to interweave not so very in- frequently, in lectures and sermons, allusions to his kinsfolk — incidents relating to his father, to a brother, or some other near kinsman. These anecdotes some- times bordered on the jocose, and might pass the limits of a reserve as to domestic concerns which is generally considered becoming. There was a deep well of tenderness and pathos in the great preacher's heart. But this precious endowment is not always coincident with faultless refinement. Of this fact there are numerous examples ; Martin Luther is one signal instance. The oratory of Mr. Beecher, with its fulness of energy and warmth, was thought by not over-fastidious critics to touch at times the fringfe, at least, of vulgarity. Matthew Arnold, who at least learned to estimate his merit justly, was tempted to style him "a heated barbarian." He was led in his ardor, at times, to intermingle with his oratory the extraneous leaven of mimicry, failing thus to keep apart the provinces of the orator and the actor. Mr. Beecher in his Yale lectures gave sufficient evidence of that ability to distinguish between things that differ, and to deal with the distinctions and problems of philosophy, which proved that he was no stranger to culture in the region of abstract thought. He showed a facility in putting to a homi- letic use his acquisitions there. His exaggerated 114 1Hcnr\> IXHarS JBeccber valuation of phrenology carried with it the custom of availing himself of its not inconvenient classifica- tion of mental qualities and functions. Undeniably it would have been a source of increased power had Mr. Beecher, with the actual development of his native faculties, his fertility in thought and imagination, and the knowledge that he gathered from varied sources, blended a more complete and rigorous discipline dur- ing the years of study and preparation for his career — very brilliant and successful in many direcftions though it was. Certainly in the pretty long list of the lecturers on the Lyman Beecher foundation, comprising so many eminent names, American and foreign, none — not even Brooks, or Dale, or Taylor — were heard with more eagerness, none whose teachings gave more satisfaction when they were uttered, or have been longer retained in memory. The robust figure of the captivating orator, as he stood on the platform at the side of the desk and poured out of a heart and mind overflowing with thought and feeling — all seem- ing to be the inspiration of the moment — a stream of wisdom and wit — that image, one may be sure, never perished from the recollections of the successive generations of students who prized so highly the privi- lege of hearing him and of proposing to him on the spot questions to be instantly answered in pertinent replies, seasoned with pleasantry. A YOUNG THEOLOGUE'S IMPRESSIONS OF BEECHER By Rev. Hugh Pedley, Montreal Mv first memory of the name of Beecher goes back to my boyhood in Newfoundland, when we caught echoes of the war of the secession and heard men speak in the same breath of Lincohi, Grant and Beecher. My first sight of the great preacher was in 1873, when he gave an address in old Zion Church, Montreal, on the occasion of the opening of the ses- sion of the Congregational college. Our little band of students was there in the front pews and he spoke to us, unconscious of the rest of the audience. We felt the power of the man's personality and the mag- nificence of his sorrow, for it was the time when his o-ood name was under menace, as he said : " Young men, I have seen much of life, I have known men who have achieved success as bankers, statesmen, warriors, actors, but I am here to tell you that had I my life to live over again I would choose no other path than the one along which I have come, that of a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ." My next contact was during the Christmas vaca- tion of 1876. Sunday morning found me one of the great and expectant throng of worshipers in Plymouth Church. As the service in Trinity Church, Boston, under the leadership of Phillips Brooks, was the acme of that solemnity, reverence and splendor of which a 115 116 Mcncs TlfilarD JBcccber liturgical worship is capable, so this service in Plym- outh Church, conducted by Mr. Beecher, was the highest expression of the dignified freedom, joyous- ness and direct touch of the human upon the divine which may be found in a worship that dispenses with formal ritual. The prayers were the speech of a child to its father, the plea of a friend for his friends, the supplication of a patriot for his country. The sermon lasted hardly more than an hour. It was an argument to prove that in human life the joyous element predominates ; but the argument, which in the hands of some men would have been bare and hard as a train track in a Pennsylvania colliery, was, under his treatment, a pathway bordered with flowers, glistening with dew, and opening up glimpses of the vastness of the ocean and the sub- limity of mountain crests. It was my somewhat unique experience to hear Mr. Beecher make use of a quotation, and this, too, as an introduction to his sermon. This was the quotation : Lord, what a wretched land is this That yields us no supply, No cheering fruits, no wholesome trees Nor streams of living joy 1 And then the comment. "The man that wrote that didn't deserve to have any." A gentle ripple of smiles passed over the faces of the people, and by the time that had vanished the preacher was fully under way in the great optimistic argument which formed the backbone of his sermon. A day or so before I left Montreal, the pastor of Zion Church had suddenly lost his young wife. As I sat in Plymouth Bn Evening IHour at "Hie 'Home ai7 Church that Sunday morning and shared in the warmth and uplift of the service, the wish suddenly arose in my heart that the stricken man might be within these walls. And whom should I see the next Sunday morn- ing, at the close of the service, but the bereaved young pastor in one of the side seats, and Mr. Beecher with his arm affectionately thrown around him and speak- ing such words of sympathy as only he could speak. It was my privilege one Sunday morning to have a few minutes' conversation with Mr. Beecher. I was a theological student full of doubts. What I said I do not remember, but my listener at once took in the situation. "You may have your doubts," he said, "about inspiration, the atonement and future punish- ment, but there is one thing you cannot doubt, and it is this, that men need building up in spiritual man- hood, and the New Testament is of all books the one best fitted for that work." When I said that I envied him his faith, his vivid consciousness of the Unseen, he answered me very quietly and gravely. "That," he said, "is a thing that grows." AN EVENING HOUR AT HENRY WARD BEECHER'S HOME By Rev. A. S. Walker, D.D. While a student at Union Theological Seminary, as often as possible I attended the mid-week lecture at Plymouth Church. It so happened one evening that the topic was one with which I had had considerable difficulty, nor did Mr. Beecher's presentation of it 118 Kenrs mHar& JBeccbcr leave the matter quite clear. This I frankl}'- stated to him at the close of the service, and in his very informal and friendly way he took my arm in his and said — as cordially as if I had been his own younger brother — "Come home with me and we will talk the matter over by ourselves." Of course I availed myself of his friendly offer; and after a conference in his study the difificulty, under the illumination of his wonderful mind, seemed wholly to vanish. His father at that time was living with him ; and after our talk he said, " Now I want you to come into the parlor and meet my father." I hardly need say that I required no urging, and I now look back upon that social hour as one of the brightest spots in my student life. Both father and son were in their happi- est mood, and there passed between them the merriest banter imaginable. One of his stories at his father's expense was as follows. Turning to me he said : " Do you see that painting on the wall yonder .'' Well, I had always thought that my father's one failing was a lack of appreciation for fine art. His mind was so given up to preaching and theology that there seemed little liking for anything else. But when I brought that painting home it attracted his attention immediately. He would stand before it a quarter of an hour at a time. I felt very greatly encouraged. I was so glad that a taste for the fine arts was really developing, even though so late in life. One day as he was stand- ing before it I observed that he was talking to himself. I drew near very quietly, being curious. It seems that an Bvenfng Hour at me Home 119 the artist had endeavored to put a little life into the landscape by introducing in one corner a hunter who had just fired into a flock of ducks. And my father was saying to himself, 'Well, that fellow has dropped two of his ducks anyway, and there is that third that won't manage to get far away ! ' Then," said Henry Ward, "I gave my father up so far as fine art was concerned. I found that his interest in the painting was not at all in the art, but simply in the hunter, the picture reminding him of his own fondness for hunting." "Well," said the father, turning the joke, "I have always found that a minister who could take good aim with his gun was likely to take all the better aim with his sermon. And I want to say, for the benefit of this young man here, that I have often thought that if Henry would only take a little better aim in some of his sermons and not scatter round quite so much, he would bring down more birds ! " Then turning to me more directly he continued : "And there is another thing that I think I will just speak of for the benefit of this young man. I have noticed that theological students usually get married as soon as they are through with their seminary course. Somehow the people expect it and the students them- selves don't need any special urging. Now it will be well to be a little careful as to whom you shall marry. When I was a young man I made up my mind to two things. First, that I would never marry a woman that wasn't better looking than I. And I didn't, did I, Henry ? And secondly, that I never would marry a woman that was worth any more money than I. For 120 Mcm\> "MarO 3Beecbcc I remember a couple down in Connecticut who got married and the man was worth two shillings and the woman two and six ; and the man used to say that his wife was forever twitting him on that odd sixpence ! " And so with mirthful story and pleasant banter the evening passed, and I left Brooklyn Heights feel- ing that wealth of genius may be so combined with warmth of heart that even those who stand highest may yet be sympathetic and accessible to the very humblest, and that a true piety and mirth make admi- rable companions alike in the oldest as in the youngest heart. AN EX-SLAVE'S IMPRESSIONS OF HENRY WARD BEECHER By Maggie Porter Cole 0>ie of the Orighial Fisk Jjibilee Singers I WAS a child, a freed slave fresh from the South and slavery, one of the eleven students selected from Fisk University to come North and try by our voices to pay off a debt on the institution. After many and varied experiences we arrived in New York City, with permission from Mr. Beecher to sing at one of his Friday evening meetings. I had heard of Henry Ward Beecher as a friend of the negro, as a brother of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and knew that these two had played a wonder- ful part in the emancipation of the slave, but in my wildest dreams I had not imagined myself permitted to sit at his feet with others and listen to wonderful words of love and truth. So that when, with my Bn Bx=Slavc'0 IFmpreesions 121 associates, I was ushered in and seated in Plymouth Church, I do not remember which moved me most, the sight of the great, kindly-faced man who sat and beamed upon us, or the thought that we ivJio but yesterday zvcre slaves were in such a place of worship, under such conditions, and were to be allowed to sing some of our Southern songs here before this great man. However, Mr. Beecher's call to come upon the platform and his reception set us at our ease and reminded me of the charge Mr. White (our leader) had given us, "to remember that everything hinged upon the success of that night." I watched the emotions play upon Mr. Beecher's face — and there never was a more expressive face -—- as he listened to our songs, and I knew the battle was won. We sang twenty minutes, and as we were leaving the platform Mr. Beecher jumped before us with pocketbook in hand and told those present he wished they would let their pockets as well as their hearts be touched. The victory was ours. We had won to our cause the great-hearted Henry Ward Beecher. The New York Herald thereafter called us " Mr. Beecher's nigger minstrels," which served us well as an advertisement. Later on we met Mr. Beecher in New Haven, where he and we were billed for the same evening, he to lecture and we, of course, to sing. We did not know of his lecture in time, or we should never have dared to go. But luck was with us, for so few tickets were sold for the lecture that it was called off, and 122 •Mcmsi mar^ JBcecber we were given a new proof of the greatness of this man. He attended our concert, made a speech and was delighted to have these ex-slave children outdraw him in that university town. I thought him that night the grandest man in the world. A GROUP OF APPRECIATIONS OF MR. BEECHER APPRECIATIONS OF MR. BEECHER It was my privilege to know Mr. Beecher well, and to be associated with him as only a few others were in some of the most critical periods of his life. He spoke in my church, and often graciously invited me to supply his pulpit, both in his presence and in his absence. Nearly if not quite the last lecture that he ever delivered was in the Montclair church. I shall never forget the walk to the train after that lecture. He said, " Let the carriage go, I would rather walk," and throwing his arm around my neck he walked and soliloquized. The shadow of his approach- ing departure already seemed to have touched him. He said, " Just think of it ! I have been pastor of Plymouth Church nearly forty years, but I shall not be much longer." And then he talked about its future and his love for it, and seemed to be like one whose spirit was in some far- distant land. One day when we were talking about his difficulties and consequent labors, he said, " I will take care of the work if you will take care of the worry." In a conference concerning the composition of his great council an objection was raised to the inviting of one well- known man because he was supposed to have prejudged the case; Mr. Beecher quickly said, "No! he is a fair man, and I will trust him, whatever his prejudgments." I heard him preach in the midst of his trial. There was not the faintest reference to what he was passing through. He seemed to be living in another world. His text was, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God," etc. Major Pond once told me of an afternoon ride with Mr. Beecher over the prairies. For an hour or two he was silent and absorbed, when, just 12-5 126 menrg 'WIlar& JBeecbcr as the sun was setting, he turned toward the Major, put his hand on his knees, and said, with tears in his eyes, " Pond, just think of it ; in a little while I shall see Jesus ! " Major Pond could not tell that story with an undimmed eye. I was too near to Mr. Beecher in my early manhood to be impartial now. He was more than any other like a father in the ministry, often doing me thoughtful and un- sought favors, and he was the same to a host of other young ministers. He never forgot that he was young once, and the less that any of us were able to do in return the more ungrudging his service to us. As I think of him now the qualities of his character which most impress me were his generosity, his fairness, his love for his enemies, and, strange as it may seem, his self-control. His own charity surpassed any that he preached. As an orator he was unapproach- able, I have heard most of the great pulpit orators of our time and language — Punshon, Simpson, Spurgeon, Liddon, Brooks, Parker — and not one could be compared with him, I have seen great audiences bow before his eloquence as a field of wheat goes down before the west wind. As a preacher, in his combination of philosophic insight, spiritual vision and power of persuasion, he was without a peer, I do not think he was an original thinker; he had no time for original work. But he absorbed that which was best and most vital in the works of the original thinkers, and in a true and noble sense became their interpreter, and also an inspirer of thought as well as a molder of life. I do not compare him with any other man whom our country has produced, because he belongs in a class by himself. The years are already driving away the clouds from his memory. As an orator, a preacher, a patriot and a Chris- tian, I believe that his name will endure as one of the most precious possessions of the American people. Amory H. Bradford. Montiiair, New Jersey. Bpprccfatlona 127 I KNEW Mr. Beecher as a preacher and as an orator, espe- cially upon political and economic subjects. I was reared in the Episcopal Church and amongst old-time Democratic surroundings. Before I had heard or seen Mr. Beecher I was rather prejudiced against him. Curiosity first prompted me, as a very young man, to visit Plymouth Church. I entered with doubt and misgiving. I left, a disciple and a follower. The crowds which went to hear him, notably during the period of excitement attendant upon the dark days of the great trial, often made it difficult to secure a seat or even to gain access to the building. I frequently sat upon the steps leading to the platform upon which he stood. Though inconvenient, my seat gave me the opportunity of hearing every word and of observing every change of expression in his wonderfully mobile countenance. Mr. Beecher was as much an actor as a preacher. Unconsciously every spoken sentence was reflected in action. His mouth was singularly expressive, and his full eye lighted with joy, flashed with indignation, or became suffused with tears, according to the varying moods of his marvelous oratory. I do not believe that there ever was another man possessing so large a share of originality as a speaker. Furthermore, if there ever was an impromptu orator Beecher was that man. But the man himself was much more than his genius in moving audiences. Every one can trace much of his mental and moral make-up to original impulses derived from contact with great souls, in his family, his school, or col- lege — amongst his teachers or even amongst strangers. Thus Mr. Beecher, years before I knew him, moved me in many ways. He was one of the few men whom I have met whose reputation of greatness did not suffer by personal contact. He carried about him the atmosphere of a great man — something which cannot be defined, but only felt. He 1^8 mennj WarO .fGcecbcr taught me to throw off the bonds of traditional or conven- tional thinking, and to think as a free man. Then how new and beautiful appeared to me the gospel of Jesus Christ! He had the courage of his convictions in religion, eco- nomics and in politics — and he made other men as brave as himself. In the prime of life, he fought the battle for free men. When the shadows were lengthening, with the resilience of youth, he began a battle for free trade — to restore to commerce the conditions designed by the Creator. When asked as to whether he would like to live his long life over again, he answered that he would not, but added, in substance, " I should like to live long enough to induce the American people to favor the unshackling of intercourse between nation and nation." It was my privilege to be the first secretary of the Reve- nue Reform Club of Brooklyn, of which Mr. Beecher was first president, and which, under his leadership, soon gained a national reputation. I came in frequent contact with him then, and many a time heard him speak after such masters of accurate and logical statement as David A. Wells and Prof. William G. Sumner, using largely their material. But how different it all seemed when transmuted into humor and satire, into fancy and imagery ! Mr. Beecher never could handle figures correctly, but he nevertheless saw the philosophy and poetry which un- derlay mathematics, and even the dryest statistics. Men like Mr. Wells instructed — but Beecher awakened the emo- tions which led to action. I owe no man a larger debt of gratitude, mainly, as I have intimated, because he taught me to stand for what I believe to be right, and having done all, still to stand. It was my pleasure to suggest and to contribute to the raising of the statue of Mr. Beecher which stands in the busiest center of Brooklyn. When Dr. Hillis, on New Year's Day last, suggested a further memorial to his dis- Bcccncr ^UUU' ., City Ildll, /.''v..:.V'V, -V. ]' Beecher Memorial Church, Brooklyn, N. v., toward the construction of luhich 7noney was received from every state and territory in this country, from Canada, Scotland, England, Wales, Sweden, Den- mark, South America, China and India. 130 Henry marO JBeccber tinguished predecessor — I felt it a pleasure to cooperate. All who owe a debt to one of the greatest men of our time should, by their generous contributions, see to it that the Memorial worthily calls to mind the life-work of Henry Ward Beecher. Fred W. Hinrichs. Brooklyn, Netu York. I AM hardly to be counted among those who are entitled to speak from a personal knowledge of Mr. Beecher. I knew him with an affectionate admiration, but can only claim that intimacy of acquaintance with him which is due to the fact that all contact with him was intimate. So much I ought to say if I venture to comment at all upon his character. I would not undertake to pronounce an opin- ion upon the weight and scope of his intellectual powers; I was always too eager a learner from him to think of measur- ing his spiritual dimensions. I can only testify that my contact with him — without the slightest knowledge of the fact on his part, I feel sure — reshaped my life when I had reached years where not many lives are reshaped. I think those who knew him best will testify that he unconsciously exercised this influence upon an amazing number of men. Whatever his genius was, I shall presume no further than to name three obvious characteristics which combined to give that genius its fullest potency upon the vast numbers of men whom he reached by his voice or with his pen : First, his faultless and splendid courage, a three-fold cour- age of body, mind and heart, always perfectly balanced with a spontaneous and absolutely unostentatious magna- nimity ; next, the great dignity of his inmost spirit, joined with a mirthful — a boyish — carelessness for outward sem- blances ; and last, the yearning tenderness, the profundity and the catholicity of his affections. G. W. Cable. NortJia mpton , Massach ti setts. appreciations 131 I ALWAYS loved Mr. Beecher. Once when I was in great need of sympathy Mr. Beecher met me in Brooklyn on the street. He stopped, took my hand in both of his and expressed his warm regard for me, and encouraged me more than I can express by an inspiration not only from his words, but from the soul that appeared in his face and in all his framework. I never went to hear him speak — and I went many times — that I did not come away with the expression, " What a manly man ! " One of the first sermons that I heard from his lips after graduating from West Point, when I was on my way to an active campaign in Florida, was delivered in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. Just before its close he brought his hand down upon the large Bible and said in substance, " I believe the teachings of that Book with all my heart." His attitude, his gesture and the tones of his voice impressed me in a way I could not forget. Of course I am but one of the multitude who were influenced by him to treasure up the words of eternal life. In deed and in truth Henry Ward Beecher was a man like David, inspired by the Spirit of the Lord, and a man fearless in the proclamation of truth, but always in accordance with the great Master's own spirit. Oliver Otis Howard. Burlington , Vennont. It was my privilege to see Mr. Beecher many times, to have much pleasant talk with him, to hear him many times and on some great occasions ; but I heard him preach only a few times. One of these puts out the light of all the others with its supreme magnificence. I think it must have been the best sermon that he ever preached. It was on the " Voice of God." It was as transcendental as Emerson. The doctrine was that the perpetual revelation is independent of all special revela- 132 Menn^ ^UlarS JSeecber tions; that without Bible, Christ or Church the voice of God would have made itself heard in all lands and times. This doctrine was quite other than that of the deliberate agnosticism of his famous, " Can Theodore Parker Worship My God ? " with the answer that he (Beecher) knew no God but Christ. It was the deliberate agnosticism of this doc- trine that made Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknow- able so attractive to him. But a happy inconsistency saved him from the habitual expression of his deliberate theology. His heart was wiser than his head, and the language of that was the language of his sermon on the " Voice of God," not that of his theological contention that, except for Christ, we are without God in the world. The poetry and humor of the man were for me his most remarkable traits. A good judge of these things once said to me, " Beecher has said more Shakespearean things than any one since Shakespeare." I think not, yet I should hardly know where to turn for one exceeding him. It is because these things do not inhere in a meditated body of thought that he is not now more widely read. He had the fatal gift of spontaneity — fatal to his literary perma- nence. He exerts his influence not through the medium of his writings, but through thousands of men and women who do not generally know whence they derive their help. He is " the sweet presence of a good diffused," by those who caught their inspiration from his living lips and from his writings when they were hot with the pulsation of his mighty heart. His preaching was a dissolving agent, acting with im- mense force on the Calvinism which was dominant when he began to preach. I think he did not so much see " the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " as he saw the humanity of Jesus in the face of God. Perhaps this was not sound theology, but it presented a human ideal of en- trancing beauty, and the ideals men honor are dynamic Appreciations 133 forces in their lives. Henry Ward Beecher's Jesus was a great improvement upon Calvin's God, much more con- straining to all noble things. John White Chadwick. Brooklvn, New York. I REMEMBER in Mr. Beecher's preaching a wonderful vitality which made the truths of religion in his handling to be felt as matters of near and immediate interest. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writing of her husband's earlier volume, " Bells and Pomegranates," says : Or of Browning, some pomegranate which, if cut deep down the middle. Shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity. These lines express for me the impression of Mr. Beecher's personality which I derived from his sermons. I had heard him from time to time before the Civil War, always with great pleasure and interest, but I must think that the inspiration of that great contest brought out in him a new power and fervor. Preachers often impress us with their remoteness from our common human life. In their sermons we seem to smell the very leather of the volumes which are their daily and hourly companions. Mr. Beecher spoke to us from the heart of the life of his own time, interpreting to us its duties and its lessons. Never shall I forget one occasion early in the Civil War when I found a seat in one of the crowded pews of a con- gregation waiting and eager to hear him. His discourse was so uplifting and inspiring in its character that it seemed to find a fit culmination in the hymn that followed its close : We are living, we are dwelling, In a strange and awful time, In an age on ages telling, — To be living is sublime. I recall another Sunday in the days in which an out- 134 Kcnrg marD JBeecber rageous scandal which assailed Mr, Beecher was at its height. I happened to be visiting at the house of a friend who did not feel the assurance which I felt of the infamous falsehood of the charges preferred against the great teacher. In spite of her earnest persuasion I took my way to Plym- outh Church to attend its morning service. I must confess that I did this with some trouble of mind, saying to myself, " If there is any truth in these charges, I shall feel it in the insincerity which will naturally show itself in the utterances of the preacher." As I entered the church a heavenly calm seemed to rest upon the congregation. The splendid choir began Mendelssohn's beautiful chorus : He, watching over Israel, Slumbers not, nor sleeps. I waited with some anxiety for the first words of the pastor's prayer. In them I found the same calm, the same uplifting trust in the divine Guardian. My thought was, "This man stands in the innermost refuge of the Just; the citadel of a conscience -void of ofifense against God or man." I remember a word of Mr. Beecher's which I chanced to hear in what were to me rather heedless days. It was to the following effect: "Do not suppose that at a time when you may keenly feel the need of religious comfort and help you will be able to command them as one orders a suit of clothes from a tailor." This homely simile so impressed me that I have carried it with me ever since. Not very long after my hearing it a severe family affliction brought it vividly to my mind, from which the lesson in- tended has never vanished. From time to time Mr. Beecher used to come to Boston in order to fulfill some lecture engagement. On one of these occasions a lady friend, meeting me in the street, said : " Mr. Beecher has come to town to-day, and I cannot well entertain him. Do you think of any one who would like to invite him to dinner ? " — the hour of which in those appreciations 135 days was two o'clock. I replied that I should be most happy to receive him at my house. Hastening to invite a friend to meet him, I prefaced my invitation with these words, " The sun is going to rise in my parlor to-day — Henry Ward Beecher is coming to dine with me." This friend was Mary Booth, the charming wife of the great trage- dian, Edwin Booth. When, not long afterwards, Mrs. Booth was stricken with sudden and fatal disease, Mr. Beecher wrote to her husband a very kind and consoling letter. What I have here written only seems to me to show that words can but partially express the charm and power of those unique personalities which illuminate the world of their time, and, passing, leave behind them a track of light which bears witness to what they did, but cannot recall what they were. Julia Ward Howe. Boston, Massachusetts. The charm of Channing was profound and indescribable. But Henry Ward Beecher recalls Whitefield more than any other renowned preacher. Like Whitefield, he was what is known as a man of the people; a man of strong virility, of exuberant vitality, of quick sympathy, of an abounding humor, of a rapid play of poetic imagination, of great fluency of speech; an emotional nature overflowing in ardent expression, of strong convictions, of complete self- confidence ; but also not sensitive, nor critical, nor judicial ; a hearty, joyous nature, touching ordinary human life at every point, and responsive to every generous moral impulse. George William Curtis. Mr. Beecher was as genuine an American as ever walked through a field of Indian corn. He had not the fine fiber of the scholastic thoroughbred, but he had the hearty manhood of Lincoln. Oliver Wendell Holmes. ^