Henry Ward Beecher

“ HENRY WARD BEECHER. Perhaps no American minister has ever become so well known to the whole body of the people as Henry Ward Beecher. He has been bitterly criticised and opposed even by members of his own denomination, but has triumphed over every attack, and won a proud place among preachers. He has even become a power in the political world, and his devotion to the cause of liberty has endeared him to thousands who might otherwise have never heard his name. ”

“ Three hundred children from Plymouth Church Sunday-school sang his favorite hymn,—
"Love divine, all love excelling,"
accompanied by the band of the Thirteenth Regiment.
Henry Ward Beecher, the son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813. The father was an eloquent, fearless, great-hearted man, the son and grandson of a sturdy blacksmith; the mother a refined, dignified, intellectual, beautiful, and superior woman. Her family connections were of the best in New England. ”

“ Beecher, it would be easy to criticise, especially in the light of recent events. In such criticism, even to the extent of regrets and censure, we are sure no man would join more sincerely than Mr. Beecher himself.
“We find nothing whatever in the evidence that should impair the perfect confidence of Plymouth Church or the world in the Christian character and integrity of Henry Ward Beecher. ”

“ Henry Ward Beecher has intimated in various places in his books how the whole Beecher brood loved their father, yet as precaution against misunderstanding they made the sudden sneak and the quick side-step whenever they saw him coming.
Village life with a fair degree of prosperity, but not too much, is an education in itself. The knowledge gained is not always classic, nor even polite, but it is all a part of the great, seething game of life. Henry Ward Beecher was not an educated man in the usual sense of the word. ”

“ Henry Ward Beecher entered Amherst College in 1830 in a class of forty members. Although prepared for the Sophomore year, yet, following the advice of his father, he entered as a Freshman in the class of ’34. On the cover of a very commonplace-looking copy-book, brown and yellow with age, which we have in our possession, he has written with a great many flourishes “Private Journal,” and then has added with equal emphasis, “Not to be looked into.” But since he afterwards drew his pen through both clauses, we have taken the liberty not only to look but also to make extracts from its contents. ”

“ But even then the roguish mouth, the laughing, merry eyes, the quaint humor and quick repartee, very soon put all such anxiety to flight. This was Henry Ward Beecher as I first saw him. Truth to tell, an exceedingly homely young man. But, in youth or old age, who ever thought of that, or, thinking, believed it after being with him an hour? Before that first evening was ended none of the family thought of him as a stranger; he was thoroughly at home with all. There were truly ‘only three Ebenezers there,’ each equally ready for quiet conversation, music, fun, repartee, or teasing ”

“ Lyman Beecher had been an influential preacher and theologian, and a sturdy defender of orthodoxy against Boston Unitarianism. Of his numerous sons and daughters, all more or less noted for intellectual vigor and independence, the most eminent were Mrs. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, the great pulpit orator of Brooklyn. Mr. Beecher was too busy a man to give more than his spare moments to general literature. His sermons, lectures, and addresses were reported for the daily papers and printed in part in book form ”

“ Among them all no man poured out his life more generously than Henry Ward Beecher. Since 1850, through the intensities of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Fremont campaign, the Kansas troubles, the Lincoln election, the era of secession and the first two years of the war, he had been preaching, writing, lecturing, making public addresses, attending to his great pastorate, and active in every civic and national interest. ”

“ A sturdy tree, standing alone in a vast field, suggesting strength, growth and independence, and regarded both as a landmark and a shelter; withstanding alike the heats of summer and wrestling with and throwing off the blasts of winter; drawing from Nature her myriad stores of nutrition and giving back to Nature a wealth of power and grace in return; seemed Henry Ward Beecher, in his youth of old age, to the observation of men. Original orator, advocate, poet, humorist, agitator, rhetorician, preacher, moralist and statesman. ”

“ THE American people are so familiar with the name and character of Henry Ward Beecher, that no explanation of what follows, is needed by the present generation. Beecher is the most gifted and noted liberalist and progressionist in America. ”

“ Beecher's direction, women made articles for the soldiers at the front. By personal solicitation large sums were raised from families and merchants. Mr. Beecher told his wife to use all his salary except the smallest amount necessary for family expenses. He made patriotic addresses which were read and talked about the country over. "It is probable," said the well-known journalist, Frederick Hudson, "that there is not another man in the United States who is as much heard and read as Henry Ward Beecher, unless the other man is Wendell Phillips." ”

“ His active participation in public affairs continued up to his death. His part in the election of 1884 is of course fresh in the memory of readers—so fresh, indeed, that it can hardly be reviewed without intrenching upon the prejudices of present day partisanship.
Henry Ward Beecher was a great man—one of the greatest and most remarkable men of his day. His personality was so large, his gifts so varied, his mental and moral composition so multiform, that a volume would be needed to give a complete character sketch of the man. ”

“ A man's religious convictions are most important. I remember in October, 1882, what criticism and abuse there was of my friend Henry Ward Beecher, when he decided to resign from the religious associations of which he was a member. I was asked by members of the press to give my opinion, but I was out when they called. Mr. Beecher was right. He was a man of courage and of heart. I shall never forget the encouragement and goodwill he extended to me, when I first came to Brooklyn in 1869 and took charge of a broken-down church. ”

“ Indeed, the first news that the country had from Stanton of one of the great victories came to Beecher's pulpit and was [Pg 236] read over his desk. Other great men, the President, secretaries, the generals, the statesmen, editors, lecturers, preachers, did their part, but high among co-workers ranks Henry Ward Beecher. God gave him a great task, and armed him for the battle. He loved the poor, he broke the shackles from the slave, he discovered to the world the love of God, and dying he flung his helmet into the thick of the enemy. ”

“ Mark Hopkins, in Edward W. Bok's "Memorial Volume," said of Henry Ward Beecher's forty years in Plymouth pulpit, "No such instance of prolonged, steady power at one point, in connection with other labors so extended and diversified, and magnificent in their results, has ever been known."
Dr. Thomas Armitage of the Fifth-avenue Baptist Church, New York, his life-long friend, gave Beecher [Pg 218] "the first place among the preachers of the world to-day." Dr. Robert Collyer said, "To my mind, he was the greatest preacher on this planet.... Men will be his debtors for ages to come." ”

“ The next day was Sunday. The report of his sermon was headed thus: “Henry Ward Beecher on the Crisis: ‘What will you do, stand still or go forward?’
“The good people of Brooklyn have shared with us all the fears and anxiety of the past weeks. Yesterday there was, if possible, a more dense mass of human beings than usual packed within the walls of Plymouth Church, and a more than ordinary curiosity on the part of strangers, and a more than customary solemnity pervading the congregation. ”

“ Chain-gangs of slaves were continually passing on the decks of the steamboats, to be sold down South, and fugitives from bondage were keeping the sympathy or the hatred of the people in continual activity. Life of high pressure and in great variety was presented to Henry Ward Beecher there in the heart of the great West in the years 154of 1834-1837; life that was very real, and that called not so much for fine-spun theories as for practical forces; not for dead and formal dogmas, but for living truth, for Him who is both Life and Truth. ”

“ II. And I, Theodore Tilton, do, of my own free will and friendly spirit toward Henry C. Bowen and Henry Ward Beecher, hereby covenant and agree that I will never again repeat, by word of mouth or otherwise, any of the allegations, or imputations, or innuendoes contained in my letter hereunto annexed, or any other injurious imputations or allegations suggested by or growing out of these; and that I will never again bring up or hint at any cause of difference or ground of complaint heretofore existing between the said Henry C. Bowen and myself or the said Henry Ward Beecher. ”

“ When pygmies are all dead, the noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth, radiant as a rising sun,—a sun that will never set. He has become to us a lesson, his death an example, his whole history an encouragement to manhood,—to heroic manhood.Henry Ward Beecher. ”

“ The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" Such a piece of work was Henry Ward Beecher. He had no predecessor, and can have no successor till a similar ancestry and life; the one coeval with birth, and the other running parallel with the lusty youth of such a nation, and a similar life and death struggle, both in a conflict of moral principles fought out under a Democratic form of Government, shall combine to evolve a similar career. The course of human history does not furnish a probability of another coincidence of elements so extraordinary. ”

“ There were none of them, perhaps, unusual, certainly not unprecedented; for others besides Henry Ward Beecher have had 70heavenly-minded and large-hearted mothers; others, as well as he, have been trained in conscientiousness and have had a happy Christian example set before them, and have enjoyed the influence of fathers full of manly inspiration, while God and nature have been with and around them, and yet no such marked results have been seen as in him. ”

“ I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him. ”

“ I should be very happy to have her pay me and my family a visit at Baldinsville. Come and bring your knittin', Miss MONK. Mrs. WARD will do the fair thing by you. She makes the best slap-jacks in America. As a slap-jackist, she has no ekal. She wears the Belt.
What the review was all about, I don't know. I haven't a gigantic intelleck, which can grasp great questions at onct. I am not a WEBSTER or a SEYMOUR. I am not a WASHINGTON or a OLD ABE. Fur from it. I am not as gifted a man as HENRY WARD BEECHER. Even the congregation of Plymouth Meetin'-House in Brooklyn will admit that. ”

“ I met Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance, he said: “Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age—nobody is going to deny that—but in matters of business I don't suppose you know more than enough to come in when it rains. ”

“ I was not a poet executively, but sympathetically I was in union with the whole universal life and beauty of God’s world and with all human life. My earliest religious training was at home. My father’s public teaching may be called alleviated Calvinism. Even under that the iron entered my soul. There were days and weeks in which the pall of death over the universe could not have made it darker to my eyes than those in which I thought: ‘If you are elected you will be saved, and if you are not elected you will be damned, and there is no hope for you.’ I wanted to be a Christian. ”

“ Tilton fully recognized, writing Mr. Beecher, a short time before he began his plotting:
“My Friend: From my boyhood up you have been to me what no other man has been, what no other man can be. While I was a student the influence of your mind on mine was greater than all books and all teachers. The intimacy with which you honored me for twelve years has been, next to my wife and family, the chief affection of my life. By you I was baptized; by you married; you are my minister, teacher, father, brother, friend, companion. The debt I owe you I can never pay. ”

“ His father, Lyman Beecher, was one of the leading preachers, reformers, and controversialists of his day. Sturdy in body and mind, full of sensibility, aflame with enthusiasm, devoted to the highest aims and utterly unselfish in life, a Christian in whom deep spirituality and strong common sense were happily blended, he was just the man to transmit excellent qualities to his children; a father to be enjoyed while living, and to be remembered with love and reverence after his death. ”

“ So much of good is there in the lowest of men! He allowed her to go to Washington to solicit aid from the Free-State men there, and she succeeded in obtaining $400 more. I was then applied to, to know if we would do anything to raise the remaining $500. I answered we would do nothing unless the woman could come here. After much hesitation on the part of her master she was allowed to visit New York, giving her word of honor that she would return to Richmond if the money were not raised’; and, going to the platform stairs, ‘Come up here, Sarah, and let us all see you,’ said he. ”