Henry Ward Beecher

“ After eighteen hundred years of preaching of the faith under the inspiration of the living Spirit of God, how far has Christianity gone in the amelioration of the condition of the race? I think that one of the most humiliating things that can be contemplated, and one of the things most savory to the skeptical, and which seems the most likely to infuse a skeptical spirit into men, is to look at the pretensions of the men who boast of the progress of their work, and then to look at their performances. ”

“ Whatever it may be, therefore, of God that, by searching we can find out, all that we interpret, and all that we can bring, in its moral influence, to bear upon men, is in its study but a higher form of mental philosophy.
Now, let us see what government is. It is the science of managing men. What is moral government? It is moral science, or the theory upon which God manages men. What is the management of men, again, but a thing founded upon human nature? ”

“ Without undertaking to confirm or deny this, I say that the only part of the Divine nature that we can understand is that part which corresponds to ourselves, and that all which lies outside of what we can recognize is something that never can be interpreted by us. ”

“ Some men are so afraid that, in breaking away from the old systems and original forms and usages, Christianity will get the go-by! Christianity is too vital, too really divine in its innermost self, to fear any such results. There is no trouble about Christianity. You take care of yourselves and of men, and learn the truth as God shows it to you all the time, and you need not be afraid of Christianity—that will take care of itself. ”

“ There is no natural system that seems to correspond to human nature so nearly as phrenology does.
For example, you assume that a man's brain is the general organ of the spiritual and intellectual functions.
I see a man with a small brow and big in the lower part of his head, like a bull, and I know that that man is not likely to be a saint. All the reasoning in the world would not convince me of the contrary, but I would say of such a man, that he has very intense ideas, and will bellow and push like a bull of Bashan. ”

“ We must be more industrious in investigation, more honest in deduction, and more willing to take the truth in its new fulness; and we must be imbued with that simplicity in faith and truth which we inculcate in our people. ”

“ You cannot afford to shut your eyes to the truths of human nature. Every Christian minister is bound to fairly look at these things. Every scientific man who is studying human nature is bound to open his eyes and ears, and to study all its phenomena. ”

“ It is now generally conceded that there is an organization which we call the nervous system in the human body, to which belong the functions of emotion, intelligence, and sensation, and that—that is connected intimately with the whole circulation of the blood, with the condition of the blood as affected by the liver, and by aeration in the lungs; that the manufacture of the blood is dependent upon the stomach: so a man is what he is, not in one part or another, but all over; one part is intimately connected with the other, from the animal stomach to the throbbing brain ”

“ Consider, too, how a minister, teaching the moral government of God, the nature of God, and the condition of man and his necessities, is obliged to approach the human soul. Men are sluggish, or are so occupied and filled with what are to them important interests, that, ordinarily, when a preacher comes into a community, he finds it either slumbering, or averse to his message, or indifferent to it ”

“ Man's power comes from the generating forces that are in him, namely, the digestion of nutritious food into vitalized blood, made fine by oxygenation; an organization by which that blood has free course to flow and be glorified; a neck that will allow the blood to run up and down easily; a brain properly organized and balanced; the whole system so compounded as to have susceptibilities and recuperative force; immense energy to generate resources and facility to give them out—all these elements go to determine what a man's working power is. ”

“ It is a life-school in this respect, that it deals not with the facts of the past, except in so far as they can be made food for the present and factors of the life that now is; but rather studies to understand men, and to deal with them face to face and heart to heart—yea, even to mould them as an artist moulds his clay or carves his statue. And, in regard to such a school as that, while there has been a good deal done incidentally? the revised procedure of education yet awaits development and accomplishment ”

“ It seems to me that all Divine grace and Divine instruments honor God's laws everywhere; and that the best condition for grace in the mental system is that in which the human body is in a perfect state of health. ”

“ They are not going to hold the same generic ideas respecting men; and if ministers do not make their theological systems conform to facts as they are—if they do not recognize what men are studying, the time will not be far distant when the pulpit will be like the voice crying in the wilderness. ”

“ You must comprehend that on which God's moral government itself stands, which is human nature.
But, again, the fundamental doctrine on which our labors stand is the need of the transformation of man's nature by the Divine Spirit. This is altogether a question of psychology. The old theological way of stating man's sinfulness, namely, "Total Depravity," was so gross and so discriminating, and was so full of endless misapprehensions, that it has largely dropped out of use. Men no longer are accustomed, I think, to use that term as once they did. That all men are sinful, is taught ”

“ We need to study human nature, in the first place, because it is the Divine nature which we are to interpret to men. Divine attribute corresponds to our idea of human faculty. The terms are analogous. You cannot interpret the Divine nature except through some knowledge of human nature. There are those who believe that God transcends men, not simply in quality and magnitude, but in kind. ”

“ The study of human nature is not going to be left in the hands of the church or the ministry. It is going to be a part of every system of liberal education, and. will be pursued on a scientific basis. There is being now applied among scientists a greater amount of real, searching, discriminating thought, tentative and experimental, to the whole structure and functions of man and the method of the development of mental force, than ever has been expended upon it in the whole history of the world put together. ”

“ Again, you will see a man with a little bullet-head, having accomplished more than that big-headed man, who ought to have been a strong giant and a great genius. The bullet-headed man has outstripped the broad-browed man in every thing he undertook; and people say, "Where is your phrenology?" In reply, I say, "Look at that bullet-headed man, and see what he has to drive his bullet-head with!" His stomach gives evidence that he has natural forces to carry forward his purposes. Then look at the big-headed man. ”

“ You must know what men are in order to reach them, and that is a part of the science of preaching. If there is any profession in the world that can afford to be without this practical knowledge of human nature, it certainly is not the profession of a preacher.—Abridged from the Christian Union. ”

“ While studying mental philosophy for the sake of religious education, and studying both sides of it, you are doing one thing; but when the question comes up how to study mental philosophy, I do not know any thing that can compare in facility of usableness with Phrenology. I do not suppose that phrenology is a perfect system of mental philosophy. ”

“ If a person comes to me, with dark, coarse hair, I know he is tough and enduring, and I know, if it is necessary, that I can hit him a rap to arouse him; but, if I see a person who has fine, silky hair, and a light complexion, I know that he is of an excitable temperament, and must be dealt with soothingly. ”

“ Nevertheless, the direction he is moving in is a wise one, which is the study of human nature—of the totality of man.
It was believed once that man did not think by the brain. I believe that notion has gone by. Most men now admit that the brain is the organ of the mind. It is held that it cannot be partitioned off into provinces, and that there are no external indications of its various functions. ”

“ I mean that, taking our American clergy generally, in their practical relations with society, while on the one hand they have shown themselves to be shrewd, discreet, and sagacious—and if their separate functions had lain in the conduct of affairs, socially, there would be but little to be criticised on the whole—yet, as preachers, they stand off toward the bottom of the list among students of human nature. ”

“ MY impression is, that preachers are quite as well acquainted with human nature as the average of well-informed citizens, but far less than lawyers, or merchants, or teachers, or, especially, politicians. ”

“ There is no class of people upon earth who can less afford to let truth run ahead of them than Christian ministers. You cannot wrap yourselves in professional mystery, for the glory of the Lord is such that it is preached with power throughout all the length and breadth of the world, by these investigators of His wondrous creation. ”

“ We must arouse and stimulate men, and seek to bring them into new relations with truth, with ourselves, and with the community.
There is another consideration that we cannot blink, and that is, that we are in danger of having the intelligent part of society go past us. ”

“ You might as well be afraid that battles would rend the sky, or that something would stop the rising and setting of the sun. The power of Divine love and mercy is not going to be stopped, and will certainly not be stopped, by the things that are true. ”

“ Men are like open books, if looked at properly. Suppose I attempt to analyze a man's deeds; I can do it with comparative facility, because I have in my eye the general outline of the man's disposition and mental tendencies. A deed is like a letter stamped from a die. ”

“ But phenomena which are wrapping up millions of men, and vitally affecting their condition, are not to be disdained by scientific men, whose business it is to study phenomenology of all kinds. No scientific man can excuse himself from examining them. He may say that he has no time to do it, and that some other man must investigate them. That would be right. All men cannot do all things. But to speak of any thing of this kind with contempt is not wise. I am not afraid to look at this thing, or any thing. ”

“ And shall a man undertake to study human nature, every thing depending upon his knowledge of it, and he not study the prime conditions under which human nature must exist?
I have often seen young ministers sit at the table, and even those of sixty years of age, eating out of all proportion, beyond the necessities of their systems ”

“ A man who would minister to a diseased body must have an accurate knowledge of the organs, and of the whole structure of the body, in a sanitary condition. We oblige our physicians to know anatomy and physiology. ”

“ That is a question which every man can best settle for himself. Some men under-sleep and some over-sleep; some eat too much, and some too little. Some men use stimulants who do not need them, while others avoid them who need them and would be better for their use. There is a vast amount of truth relative to the individual that is not studied by the minister, though it ought to be, as to the incoming and the outflow of force. ”

“ On the other hand, if I see a man whose forehead is very high and large, but who is thin in the back of the head, and with a small neck and trunk, I say to myself, "That is a man, probably, whose friends are always talking about how much there is in him, but who never does any thing. He is a man who has great organs, but nothing to drive them with. ”

“ Now, practically, do you suppose I would commence to treat with such a man by flaunting a rag in his face? My first instinct in regard to him is what a man would have if he found himself in a field with a wild-bull, which would be to put himself on good manners, and use means of conciliation, if possible. ”

“ He can't make a spoonful of blood in twenty-four hours, and what he does make is poor and thin. Phrenology classifies the brain-regions well enough, but you must understand its relations to physiology, and the dependence of brain-work upon the quantity and quality of blood that the man's body makes. ”

“ Some clergymen prepare themselves to preach on Sunday by sitting up very late on Saturday night, and exhausting their vitality, thus compelling themselves to force their overtasked powers to extraordinary exertion to perform their Sabbath duties ”

“ More men are studying it, and they are coming to results, and these results are starting, directly or indirectly, a certain kind of public thought and feeling. In religion, the psychological school of mental philosophers are not going to run in the old grooves of Christian doctrine. ”