Church and Steamboat—Jenny Lind—Hospitality—Colonel Pertzel—The
Family—Twins—Medicine—Giving Counsel—For the Sailor—An Absurd Story
Contradicted—Salisbury—Trouting—Death of Alfred and Arthur—Letters
to his Daughter at School—Lenox—Equivocal Honors Declined—The
Pulpit—“Plymouth Collection”—“Shining Shore.” A Church
Liturgy—Courting with his Father’s old Love-letters—1857 a Year of
Trial—Matteawan—Visit to Litchfield—1858 a Year of Harvest—Revival
Meetings—Hospitality of Plymouth Church—Courtesy to Errorists—New
Organ—Peekskill—Letters to his Daughter abroad—Marriage of his
Daughter—Lecturing—Title of D.D. declined—Flowers in
Church—Christian Liberty in the Use of the Beautiful—His two Lines
of Labor.
No sooner has he put his foot on shore than he is engaged in battle.
This time it is against religious bigotry and intolerance upon the seas.
A Star article from his pen appeared September 19 upon “Church and
Steamboat—Cunard Line”:
No religious service was allowed on the steamers except that which was
appointed for the crew, at which the passengers were _permitted_ to be
present. No one was allowed to read the service there except the
captain, who, having been playing cards late Saturday night, and being
addicted to the sailor habit of profanity, was not considered fit for
the office. No one at all was permitted to preach, or, if the rule were
ever varied, only a clergyman of Episcopal ordination. One of the
owners, who happened to be on the ship, when courteously asked to allow
some one of the nine clergymen on board to preach, and to give the use
of one of the several cabins to those who chose to have service of their
own, lost his temper and said that if Americans did not choose to go on
his line, “d——— ’em! they may go to h———.” All this appeared to Mr.
Beecher as rank injustice and an interference with the freedom of
worship of multitudes of travellers. Humorously, yet with good, solid,
set phrase, he denounces this bigotry in the article above mentioned.
Like most of his articles, it was strong enough to draw the fire of the
enemy.
The captain and the son of this owner reply in letters which partly
explain, partly deny, but wholly charge Mr. Beecher with falsehood. This
brings another article from him in the next issue, September 26:
“It is not to be supposed, gentlemen, that either of you can sympathize
fully with me in an inveterate prejudice which I have contracted against
lying in all its moods and tenses. But, really, I feel hurt that you
have so low an opinion of my ingenuity as to suppose that, if I set out
to tell lies, I should tell such poor and graceless ones.
“Allow me to assure you, gentlemen, that while my principles forbid me
to employ falsehood, yet should I attempt it I should conscientiously
endeavor to lie well.”
He reiterates his charges, adds to them some further remarks upon the
gambling habits of the captain, which unfit him to act as conductor of
public worship, procures affidavits from responsible parties to
substantiate his charges, and refers them to the courts for redress, if
they think themselves aggrieved.
The first battle upon his return to his native land was waged for
freedom of worship upon the high seas!
In this same month of September, Jenny Lind came to this country and
began that series of concerts which have never been surpassed. Her first
concert in Castle Garden, September 11, netted $30,000. Some of the
papers having criticised her and her manager for the high price of
tickets, and the community for paying it, Mr. Beecher takes up the
cudgels in her behalf:
“Jenny Lind, if we understand her desires and aims, is employing a
resplendent musical genius in the most noble accordance with the spirit
of the Gospel. In her we behold a spectacle of eminent genius employing
its magic power in the elevation of the human race.
“If men would spare from the disgusting weed and poisonous liquors
one-half of what they spend every month, there are few so poor as not to
be able to hear Jenny Lind. *”
One of his children gives this incident:
“In those early days father always had a flower-garden in the back-yard
of our city homes. I remember when we lived in the little, brown wooden
house on Columbia Heights, Jenny Lind came to board near us for a short
time. All the neighboring children used to gather round her door to see
her start for her drive; and one day when we saw the carriage in front
of her house, I ran in to ask father if H——— and I could go and see her
come out. He was at work in the garden among his flowers, and, after
giving his consent, called me back, cut a handful of roses, and told me
I could take those and give them to her. So off H——— and I went, but I
believe, after all, my courage failed, and I brought them home again,
very much ashamed. Father laughed, but comforted me by saying he’d
rather I would be too shy than too bold.”
He closes this eventful year (1850) with two Star articles—the one
(December 12), “Remember the Poor”: “Upon the whole, we doubt if there
is any other means of grace so profitable to a Christian as the _whole_
duty of relieving the poor; for giving money is but a small part, and
often the least effective part, of duty to them. Every man ought to take
a single case or family, and look after them through the winter.”
Another (December 19) upon “Different Ways of Giving”: “Now and then you
will find a man whose face is March but whose pocket is June. He will
storm and scold at you, but send you away with ten times as much as you
asked.”
Mr. Beecher was very hospitable, and kept open house for friends, and
even for such chance acquaintance as came to be associated with him.
“When Kossuth was in this country, Colonel Pertzel, his chief of staff,
with his wife, stopped with us for several weeks. When they went away
she gave me her bracelet of national coins, which, she said, was prized
by the Hungarian women in their exile above all their possessions.
“Our own family circle at this time consisted of father, mother, and
three children—two boys and a girl. Besides these Aunt Esther was with
us, whom I remember as little and round, straight and precise, with
snapping black eyes, looking after the second generation of nephews and
nieces, and telling us stories; and also Grandma Bullard, doing the
mending and cosseting while she sang ‘Bounding Billow’ and ‘Like the
Hart and the Roe.’ Dear, ideal old grandmother!”
December 20, 1852, there was an addition to this circle. “I can remember
sitting in the parlor one evening with Aunt Esther, and father’s coming
in, going up to her, and kissing her first on one cheek and then on the
other, and her giving a little jump, saying, ‘Not two, Henry!’ and his
answering, ‘Yes, two.’ Then he told me that I had two little new
brothers up-stairs.
“Father was so proud of these twins that I remember on New Year’s day he
took fifteen or twenty of the Hungarians who were making New Year’s
calls up into mother’s room to see them.”
At the Thanksgiving service of this year Mr. Beecher had announced that
an effort would be made to raise by subscription the sum of $13,000 to
pay off the floating debt of the church before January 1, and the papers
of a later date contain the announcement that the sum was promptly
subscribed, “and Plymouth Church may now be considered on a firm
foundation in temporal matters, and is in every way in a prosperous
condition.”
The church entered the new year, 1852, without debt, and more than ten
thousand dollars were realized from the rent of the pews.
Evidently he begins the year with especial effort to overcome spiritual
coldness among the people, and bring in the summer of Christian life and
growth, for his Star Papers are upon subjects like these: “Ice in the
Church,” “Various Convictions of Sin,” and later are announcements in
the papers of morning prayer-meetings in “Plymouth Church,” “Preaching
Every Evening.”
In due time the announcement is made that “sixty persons were last
Sabbath morning received into the church, fifty upon profession of
faith.”
He is experiencing one of the evils to which religious meetings are
prone, and concerning it he sends out a note of warning, “One Cause of
Dull Meetings”:
“We hardly know of a more unprofitable exercise for social meetings than
what is called exhortation. Men impose upon themselves and social
meetings degenerate into absurd formalities—a pretence of caring for
what they do not care for, of renouncing what all the world knows they
do not renounce, of asking for what they do not desire and desiring what
they dare not ask.”
Through life Mr. Beecher was as free with pathies in medicine as of isms
in religion, and used allopathy, homœopathy, hydropathy, electricity,
or hand-rubbing, as seemed to him at the time most likely to secure the
coveted result. In general he trusted more to the man than to the
system. His position on this matter, which he held substantially for
years, is given in a review of a medical work:
“In good earnest, we regard medicine with little favor. Our first recipe
for sickness is, not to get sick. Our second is reliance upon a
well-bred, sensible doctor. _We_ select the doctor. It is his business
to select the medicine, and we do not care a pin what it is. To all who
ask us, therefore, what school we belong to, we reply: ‘We are firmly
persuaded of Dr. ———.’ This is the sum of our present creed.”
His interest in common men and their affairs brought many to him by
letter or in personal conversation for advice in their difficulties.
Probably few physicians or lawyers in good practice were consulted by
more people than came daily to Mr. Beecher. So practical were his
principles of action, so great his sympathy with men in trouble, and
such his ability to see through the difficulty, that men came to him for
counsel from far and near.
A man asks him as to his duty to his creditors under certain peculiar
circumstances which he mentions. Mr. Beecher goes over the matter in
detail, states the ground of difficulty in that and all similar cases,
and points out the way of relief in this fruitful sentence: “Selfishness
is the great mischief-maker in settlements. Men think of their own
rights first and their creditors’ afterwards. Reverse this. Be careful
first that no man suffer by you.”
Again, at this time a man writes asking as to the duty of a temperance
man and a professor of religion in regard to selling liquor as an agent.
“... He, therefore, who loves his situation or his pocket more than his
religion can expect but little sympathy from robust Christians, and
little favor from that Christ of the cross who has ordered a church of
cross-bearing disciples. But we will turn our friend in such a dilemma
over to our friend Hall, a drayman in New York, who utterly refuses to
cart liquor, who will not unload a ship if in so doing he must cart
brandy. For he says he will not disgrace any horse that he owns by
letting him be seen with a load of liquor behind him.”
While carrying a free lance ready as any knight of old to champion every
cause that was suffering injustice, we want to emphasize the fact that
he had none of that small, truculent spirit that leads to personal
attacks. He was very lenient to individual human failures, charitable in
his judgments, and would rather attempt to save by hiding than to punish
by exposing them. In answer to a question which we once asked concerning
a man who, to our mind, had greatly transgressed the limits of public
propriety, if not of morality, “Why don’t you pitch in and show up this
matter?” this man of a thousand battles said quietly, with just a shade
of rebuke for the spirit we had shown in his tone: “I don’t like to
pitch into folks as much as some do.” But when wrong or injustice had
wrought itself into a system, it made no difference to him how high in
position they were who upheld it, or how low in the scale were the
sufferers, or how securely entrenched was the wrong; he waited for no
invitation, he asked no permission, he sought for no support, but
attacked it at once, aiming to expose and remove the root element of the
evil.
An illustration of this characteristic of Mr. Beecher is afforded by an
article written by him at this time upon “Naval Discipline,” in which he
brings to the sailor the same broad sympathy, established principles,
and clear reasoning that he was accustomed to employ in the case of
another and very different class:
“... It is of little use to cobble a system whose radical idea is wrong.
This is our judgment in the case of the American navy. The republican
institutions of America, slavery always excepted, contemplate the
improvement and elevation of the masses. Government does not undertake
to educate the citizen, but it contemplates, it is obliged from its
origin to accommodate itself to the radical idea of, the liberty of the
people to move among themselves, to guide, to change, to advance freely
in any direction. The American navy is a monarchy. Its subjects are
regarded in but one light—_they are to be under service_. More than this
nothing is thought of. Sailors have no liberty. There is neither
provision for, nor expectation of, improvement.... There must be an
entirely new spirit infused into the whole system of such service.
”... In short, the naval system must address the social and moral need
of the sailor. They must be allowed to act under all those high motives
which develop men on shore.”
While moved by these world-wide sympathies, he was in no mood to submit
with patience to bigotry nearer home, and utters a very strong protest
against the ostracizing of certain Sabbath-schools by the orthodox
schools of Brooklyn in their yearly parade:
“We ought to seize such an occasion to promote kindly feelings and
cultivate such sympathy as differing sects might lawfully have in
common. There is no liberality in urging this matter; it is simply
common sense and common decency....
“Does the ——— (paper) regard it as dangerous to walk the streets with a
Unitarian? Is heresy like smallpox, so contagious that one school will
give it to another by sitting for an hour in the same audience-room with
it?... We shall pray more earnestly than ever for the advance of that
day when the love of God shall abound in the hearts of men and inspire
men to love each other.”
His Star Papers of 1852 close with this, which will at once be
recognized as eminently characteristic:
“We had always supposed that absurd stories grew in this vicinity like
weeds in the tropics or trees planted by rivers. For once, however, the
country newspapers have got ahead of our neighborhood.
“We have made diligent search, taken the census, examined every cradle,
drawer, closet, crib, nook, and corner, and are prepared to affirm the
following story, which was born in the _Windham County Telegraph_, the
Norwich _Tribune_, Springfield _Republican_, Boston _Chronicle_, and
other papers, to be _exaggerated_:
“‘Rev. H. W. Beecher’s lady has presented him with five little
responsibilities in a little better than one year: two soon after the
arrival of Kossuth and three the other day.’
“Twins there were a year ago whose blessed faces fill the house with
light, but the _three above-mentioned_ were born of those maternal
editors whose brains fulfil the prophet’s word, ‘Ye shall consume chaff;
ye shall bring forth stubble.’
“We turn these mousing, mongering editors over to the next
woman’s-rights convention; or, if they are not fit for a seat there,
they may amuse the children with nursery tales while the mothers are at
discussion; or, if not fit for that, let them in mercy be bound out as
very dry nurses at some foundling hospital.”
He spends the summer of 1853, as he had the one preceding, at Salisbury,
Connecticut.
“Once more we find ourselves at home among lucid green trees, among
hills and mountains, with lakes and brooks on every side, and country
roads threading their way in curious circuits among them. All day long
we have moved about with dreamy newness of life. Birds, crickets, and
grasshoppers are the only players upon instruments that molest the air.
Chanticleer is at this instant proclaiming over the whole valley that
the above declaration is a slander on his musical gifts. Very well; add
chanticleer to cricket, grasshopper, and bird. Add, also, a cow, for I
hear her distant low melodious through the valley, with all roughness
strained out by the trees through which it comes hitherward. O this
silence in the air, this silence on the mountains, this silence on the
lakes!”
He closes a long letter upon trouting in this fashion:
“You forget your errand. You select a dry, tufty knoll, and, lying down,
you gaze up into the sky. O those depths! Something in you reaches out
and yearns. You have a vague sense of infinity, of vastness, of the
littleness of human life, and the sweetness and grandeur of divine life
and of eternity. You people that vast ether. You stretch away through it
and find that celestial city beyond, and therein dwell oh! how many that
are yours! Tears come unbidden. You begin to long for release. You pray.
Was there ever a better closet? Under the shadow of the mountain, the
heavens full of cloudy cohorts, like armies of horsemen and chariots,
your soul is loosened from the narrow judgments of human life, and
touched with a full sense of immortality and the liberty of a spiritual
state. An hour goes past. How full has it been of feelings struggling to
be thoughts, and thoughts deliquescing into feeling! Twilight is coming.
You have miles to ride home. Not a trout in your basket! Never mind; you
have fished in the heavens and taken great store of prey. Let them laugh
at your empty basket. Take their raillery good-naturedly; you have
certainly had good luck.”
The sadness which is plainly visible in the passage quoted is an old
acquaintance. We have learned to expect its appearance somewhere at
every feast. At this time undoubtedly it comes the oftener because of
the sorrowful experiences of the early summer. The twins, Alfred and
Arthur, “whose blessed faces fill the house with light,” had both died
on the fourth of July of this year, and been buried in the same grave.
It was one of the deep sorrows of his life, seldom mentioned save when
attempting by his sympathy to comfort others in like affliction; it
became a fountain of deep and tender feeling for all in distress, and of
earnest longings for the rest and the reunions of heaven.
The going away of his daughter to boarding-school during the autumn
makes another break in the family, to which he refers in a letter in
November:
“... This is the first departure of any of my children from home, and it
is an experience which testifies to my affection for you and my
solicitude; yet I do not in the least doubt that you will do well....
“There is little news at home. Your room is occupied by E——— B———, who
now lives with us and takes care of W———. She seems a very good girl,
and W——— is getting very fond of her. He makes no resistance to her
dressing him, and submits even to having his hair curled with great
peace. The rogue is fat and happy, and opens his big eyes with a
half-tearful, dreamy look when we ask him: _Where is Sister H———?_...
“We are all going to Aunty H———’s to dinner, and in the evening Mrs.
H——— and family will come round there too. As for me, I am in the agony
of writing my Thanksgiving sermon....
“There, H———, I have made quite an effort, for me, at letter-writing and
news-telling. Let me hear from you.
“Your loving father,
“H. W. B.”
In a letter to her the following June he mentions an important domestic
event:
“BROOKLYN, June 24, 1854.
”_My dear H———_:
“I must answer your last letter to me before you leave, lest I lose my
repute as a good and frequent correspondent; and I am the more willing
to do it as I have very agreeable tidings to communicate to you.
“You will receive a visit from W——— A———, of our church, whom I presume
you remember. Well, it has been thought best, after consultation, and
some mysterious correspondence with your Aunt S——— which you may have
noticed, that you should meet me at Cleveland and spend the next Sabbath
there, July 2; go to Painesville and spend _July 4_ with me there; and
then come back at our leisure to see your mother and a new little
brother who was safely born into this world on last Thursday, June 22,
at three o’clock in the afternoon, weighing ten pounds, and filling all
people’s hearts with joy at his health and general peaceable qualities.
As yet we have fallen upon no name....
”... Meanwhile young Master Nameless is sleeping off all traces of
remembrance of that former state of existence from which Edward supposes
him to be an emigrant to this world....
“H. W. B.”
This year he spent the summer in Lenox, Berkshire County, Massachusetts,
where a few friends have aided him to purchase a farm, “which the deeds,
with great definiteness, say contains ninety-six acres, more or less.”
Annoyed by the inquisitiveness of certain newspapers, he goes on to say:
“We gave for farm and farm-buildings $4,500; for the crops, stock,
implements, etc., $1,000 more; total, $5,500. Any person in search of
useful information can have further particulars as to terms of payment
and any other private publicities by personal application to us.”
His emotions upon taking possession are described in a letter of that
date:
“It was in the presence of this pasture elm, which we name the Queen,
that we first felt to our very marrow that we had indeed become owners
of the soil! It was with a feeling of awe that we looked up into its
face, and when I whispered to myself, ‘This is mine,’ there was a
shrinking, as if there were sacrilege in the very thought of _property_
in such a creature of God as this cathedral-topped tree! Does a man bare
his head in some old church? So did I, standing in the shadow of this
regal tree, and looking up into that completed glory at which three
hundred years have been at work with noiseless fingers! What was I in
its presence but a grasshopper? My heart said, ‘I may not call thee
property, and that property of mine! Thou belongest to the air. Thou art
the child of summer. Thou art the mighty temple where birds praise God.
Thou belongest to no man’s hand, but to all men’s eyes that do love
beauty, and that have learned through beauty to behold God! Stand, then,
in thine own beauty and grandeur! I shall be a lover and a protector, to
keep drought from thy roots and the axe from thy trunk.’”
Although the owner of the farm, we are not to suppose that he took hold
of work as the neighboring farmers did. We fancy that his love of
downright hard work exhausted itself in the West.
“The chief use of a farm, if it be well selected and of a proper soil,
is to lie down upon. Mine is an excellent farm for such uses, and I thus
cultivate it every day. Large crops are the consequence, of great
delight and fancies more than the brain can hold. My industry is
exemplary. Though but a week here, I have lain down more hours and in
more places than that hard-working brother of mine in the whole year
that he has dwelt here. Strange that industrious lying down should come
so naturally to me, and standing up and lazing about after the plough or
behind the scythe so naturally to him!”
When we remember how many ministers who take an interest in public
affairs find themselves elected to some town or village office, made
mayor of a city, sent to the State Legislature or even to Congress, we
are surprised that Mr. Beecher was never elected, so far as we remember,
to the smallest public office. This was largely owing to the fact that
he looked upon the work of a preacher, to inspire men to right conduct
in public affairs, as more important than filling any official position,
however high.
He declares this opinion facetiously, but none the less as a matter of
deliberate judgment, in a letter:
EQUIVOCAL HONORS DECLINED.
“The _Tribune_ last Saturday, in reply to a private letter asking its
advice on the matter, recommends that we be nominated for Congress,
elected and sent, and, when that shall be done, that we _go_....
“Had the proposal to go to Congress proceeded from the American Board of
Missions there would have been grave reasons for considering it. We
doubt whether they have a harder field in all heathendom, nor yet a
field where the Gospel is more needed. But, for mere political reasons,
to backslide from the pulpit into Congress is a little too long a slide
for the first venture. We beg to decline in advance.”
In some of the sharp discussions of this year, 1854, the ministry have
been bitterly criticised by papers who opposed politics in public, and a
great deal of advice has been given to ministers concerning preaching.
This receives his attention in this fashion:
“When one considers the amount of advice given to ministers about
preaching, it is surprising that there should ever be again a dull or
improper sermon.
”... We have no doubt that a rigorous landlord, having sharked it all
the week, screwing and gripping among his tenants, would be better
pleased on Sunday to doze through an able Gospel sermon on divine
mysteries than be kept awake by a practical sermon that, among other
things, set forth the duties of a Christian landlord. A broker who has
gambled on a magnificent scale all the week does not go to church to
have his practical swindlings analyzed and measured by the ‘New
Testament spirit.’ Catechism is what he wants; doctrine is to his taste.
A merchant whose last bale of smuggled goods was safely stored on
Saturday night, and his brother-merchant who on the same day swore a
false invoice through the custom-house—they go to church to hear a
sermon on faith, on angels, on resurrection. As they have nothing
invested in those subjects, they expect the minister to be bold and
orthodox. But if he wants respectable merchants to pay ample pew-rents,
let him not vulgarize the pulpit by introducing commercial questions. A
rich Christian brother owns largely in a distillery, and is clamorous
against letting down to the vulgarity of temperance sermons. Another man
buys tax-titles and noses around all the week to see who can be slipped
out of a vacant lot. On Sunday he naturally wants us to preach about
eternity, or moral ability and inability. A mechanic that plies his
craft with the unscrupulous appliance of every means that will win, he,
too, wants “doctrine” on the Sabbath—not these secular questions. Men
wish two departments in life—the secular and the religious. Between them
a high and opaque wall is to be built. They wish to do just what they
please for six long days. Then, stepping the other side of the wall,
they wish the minister to assuage their fears, to comfort their
conscience, and furnish them a clear ticket and insurance for heaven. By
such a shrewd management our modern financiers are determined to show
that a Christian _can_ serve two masters, both God and Mammon, at the
same time.”
While fully alive to all the advantages of natural forces, the Sabbath,
the pulpit, and a spiritual church-membership always held the highest
place in his regard.
“It is no small thing, as it regards the education of the community,
that from their youth up they have been taught to discuss all questions
from ascertained and authoritative moral grounds....
“The pulpit is the popular religious educator. Its object is to
stimulate and develop the religious feelings....
“When a whole community are wont to have their social life, their
secular business, their public duties taken out of their low and selfish
attitudes, and lifted up into the light of God’s countenance, and there
measured, judged, repressed, or developed, and wholly bathed or inspired
by the spirit of conscience and of love, then they are receiving a moral
education for which there is no other provision except the Sabbath and
the pulpit.
“Such are the members that make a church rich—poor in this world’s
goods, but rich toward God—rich in faith, in hope, in meekness, in
patience, in prayer, and, according to the feeble measure of their
ability, in good works. Many a church is destroyed through an ambition
of having strong and wealthy men, only rich, not holy....
“It may be very easy to sustain a church that has great wealth and
little piety, but it is not worth sustaining. It is not a moral power.”
He had no confidence in secret political organizations. “One might as
well study optics in the pyramids of Egypt or the subterranean tombs of
Rome, as liberty in secret conclaves controlled by hoary knaves versed
in political intrigue, who can hardly enough express their surprise and
delight to find honest men going into a wide-spread system of secret
caucuses. Honest men in such places have the peculiar advantage that
flies have in a spider’s web—the privilege of losing their legs, of
buzzing without flying, and of being eaten up at leisure by big-bellied
spiders!...
“When will men understand that simple, open integrity, an unflinching
adhesion to PRINCIPLE, is the peculiar advantage of truth and liberty?
All that the Right asks is air, light, an open enemy, and room to
strike. It is Wrong that sneaks in the dark and gains by the
stiletto. *”
From time to time he gave examination to modern spiritualism, with this
result:
“I am a stout unbeliever in the spiritual origin of this phenomenon,
either by good spirits, bad spirits, or any spirits whatever.
“A belief in modern spiritualism seems to weaken the hold of the Bible
upon conscience, the affections, and to substitute diluted
sentimentalism and tedious platitudes instead of inspired truth.”
In 1855 Mr. Beecher published the “Plymouth Collection.” Of its history
he has spoken somewhat at length:
“Soon after I came to Brooklyn from the West the conductor of music in
this church was a Mr. Jones. He was intimately associated with the house
of Mason Bros., publishers of music in New York, and sons of Lowell
Mason, of honored and revered memory. I desired very much to inaugurate
a new day in music—that is to say, to transfer to the great congregation
on Sunday the same methods, so far as singing was concerned, that we had
already instituted in our evening meetings, our conference meetings, and
our revival meetings—namely, that of having both the hymns and the music
before them at the same time.
“I can go back in my memory, easily, to the time when there was no
hymn-book with notes for church use. The ‘Christian Lyre,’ edited by
Joshua Leavitt, was largely used in the revivals under Dr. Finney, and
‘Christian Songs,’ by Mr. Hastings (the sweet singer of Israel, whose
service to the church was never adequately recognized), were also used
in revivals. When these books came they brought a progeny with them; but
still there was nothing of the kind for the great congregation. The
music-books for choirs were those long, narrow, inconvenient ones which
could not well be held in the hand, but must always needs be laid upon a
shelf. These were granted to the choir only, and the congregation had to
sing from memory or not at all. It seemed to me that it would be a step
in the right direction to put the tunes and hymns together, so that
everybody who had the one should also have the other.
“With this end in view I asked the trustees of this church to agree to
purchase a few copies of the ‘Temple Melodies,’ a small book of hymns,
the music for which was to be selected by Mr. Jones and myself, and in
which I interested the publishing house of Mason Bros.
“Connected with this was a curious incident. Mason Bros. would not
publish the book unless we would pay for the stereotype plates; and the
trustees agreed to take a certain number of copies of the book—enough to
cover the cost of the plates—so that the publishers should suffer no
loss. When the book came to be published there was an acknowledgment of
the services of Mr. Jones, but my name was not mentioned. Although I did
not care particularly about that, I was curious to know how it should
happen that Mr. Jones, conductor of music in my church, was personally
mentioned, and I, who had given to the work time and influence, and who
had obtained means with which to pay for the plates, was not mentioned
at all. Though I was the father of the book, everybody else got a slice
of the credit, and I was left without a crumb. I asked Jones how it was,
and, blushing up to his ears, he said (if you will pardon the adjective)
that the publishers said that they would not have the name of a d—d
abolitionist in their book.
“This was the first step in that direction. The success of the
undertaking was such as to satisfy me that a larger endeavor of the same
sort would be successful also; and I went to work and laid the
foundation for the ‘Plymouth Collection.’ It was to be published by Mr.
A. S. Barnes, but it was necessary that there should be a guarantee in
the form of an advance sufficiently large to pay for the plates, that
the publishers might run no risk in issuing the book. Mr. Henry C. Bowen
and Mr. James Freeland agreed to furnish the money, with the
understanding that when the income, if there was one, from our copyright
should equal the amount they had advanced, with interest, all further
profits from the copyright should inure to the benefit of the choir of
this church.
“The book has been a profitable one on the whole; but I know not how
much the choir has ever received from it. There was no written
agreement, and the memorandum lapsed. I forgot to make any arrangement
for myself. The consequence was that I was left out in the cold, and
never got a penny for my services in the matter. I do not care for that.
The object for which I was eager and earnest was to procure for the
churches a book of hymns and tunes, so that they should have both before
them at the same time.
“The book was assailed, but was defended, and it made its way.
“Since that time there have been eight or ten books of the same general
character adopted, and they have so exactly copied the ‘Plymouth
Collection’ as to size, type, and form that you may take the eight or
ten volumes and set them on a shelf, and unless a man stood close to
them he could not tell one from the other. So that the ‘Plymouth
Collection’ not only has been a good book for this church, but has been
a good pattern for other churches to follow. Although it was the first
one of its kind, it was so well adapted to the want of the community
that it has not been deemed expedient to change in the least degree its
form, nor to change, except to a very small extent, its method. It has
invariably proved to be a book acceptable and well suited to the purpose
for which it was designed. It was made on a theory of my own, or rather
it was the result of my observation and experience. I had observed what
hymns appealed to the imagination and the affections of the people; and
I did not believe that any hymn-book would ever be popular which had not
in it hymns the elements of which appealed to these faculties. I had
observed, also, what tunes the people loved. I had observed that any
music, however irregular or grotesque, that appealed to their
imagination and affection, they would adopt and make their own. Guided
by that observation, I introduced into the book a great many melodies of
a kind that were unknown in the sobriety of the old-fashioned psalmody,
but that have been developed more fully and skilfully in subsequent
books.
“With that conception of what a hymn-book should be, I was very much
shocked in a conversation with Mr. Lowell Mason, whose services to
American music cannot be over-estimated, and who has gone to a higher
choir, but who in his old age fell upon a theory that I thought to be as
vicious as it could possibly be—the theory, namely, that all music
should be of one character, and that the tune should be the main thing.
He said to me one day: ‘I think a perfect hymn-tune is one to which you
ought to be able to sing every psalm in the whole collection.’ I
considered that simply monstrous, literalizing and Platonizing
everything. His late books lost ground a great deal because they were so
insuperably flat. A man might sing them to all eternity and not find in
them anything which hooked on to his memory or affections, or anything
that had a tendency to develop his higher nature.
“About twenty years ago Mr. Love, of Chicago—who has conferred great
benefit upon churches and schools by his compositions—and I were riding
together from Brooklyn to Boston, and we discussed this question of
music. He was under the influence of Mr. Mason, and partook of his views
on the subject, and I blew him up soundly and told him how preposterous
I thought they were. He went home pondering what I said, and
subsequently, as I afterward heard, cut out from a newspaper the verses
beginning ‘My days are gliding swiftly by,’ and with that conversation
in his mind he sat down and wrote the ‘Shining Shore’ to go with them.
Whether this tune has justified my idea or not, it has been employed in
this congregation for many years. Moreover, it was taken by the Brooklyn
Fourteenth Regiment to the war, it was performed by their band, and
whenever they gave anything like a serenade in the army the ‘Shining
Shore’ was called for. Since that time this tune has been played and
sung all over the continent. How great a favorite it has been here you
know.”
This collection was vehemently attacked by one of the religious papers
of the day in the lead, several others following, and was vigorously
defended by Mr. Beecher in a series of articles in the _Independent_
over his well-known signature, the *. So simple a matter as bringing out
a hymn-book for the use of his own church, and only for others so far as
they chose, would hardly seem likely to call out so strong a protest,
but it shows the position that he had already come to occupy in the
public mind. With his advanced views and strong following, everything
that he did demanded examination, must be sifted and probably marked
dangerous. In the vigorous defence of this child of his heart he
discourses at length upon hymns. We have room for only two or three
extracts:
“Hymns are the exponents of the inmost piety of the Church. They are
crystalline tears, or blossoms of joy, or holy prayers, or incarnated
raptures. They are the jewels which the Church has worn; the pearls, the
diamonds, and precious stones formed into amulets more potent against
sorrow and sadness than the most famous charms of wizard or magician.
And he who knows the way that hymns flowed knows where the blood of
piety ran, and can trace its veins and arteries to the very heart.
[Illustration: Henry Ward Beecher in 1850.]
“Oftentimes when, in the mountain country, far from noise and
interruption, we wrought upon these hymns for our vacation tasks, we
almost forgot the living world, and were lifted up by noble lyrics as
upon mighty wings, and went back to the days when Christ sang with His
disciples, when the disciples sang too, as in our churches they have
almost ceased to do. Oh! but for one moment, even, to have sat
transfixed and to have listened to the hymn that Christ sang and to the
singing! But the olive-trees did not hear His murmured notes more
clearly than, rapt in imagination, we have heard them!
“There, too, are the hymns of St. Ambrose and many others, that rose up
like birds in the early centuries, and have come flying and singing all
the way down to us. Their wing is untired yet, nor is the voice less
sweet now than it was a thousand years ago.
“There are Crusaders’ hymns, that rolled forth their truths upon the
Oriental air, while a thousand horses’ hoofs kept time below and ten
thousand palm-leaves whispered and kept time above! Other hymns,
fulfilling the promise of God that His saints should mount up with wings
as eagles, have borne up the sorrows, the desires, and the aspirations
of the poor, the oppressed, and the persecuted, of Huguenots, of
Covenanters, and of Puritans, and winged them to the bosom of God.
“In our own time, and in the familiar experiences of daily life how are
hymns mossed over and vine-clad with domestic associations!
“One hymn hath opened the morning in ten thousand families, and dear
children with sweet voices have charmed the evening in a thousand places
with the utterance of another. Nor do I know of any steps now left on
earth by which one may so soon rise above trouble or weariness as the
verses of a hymn and the notes of a tune. And if the angels that Jacob
saw sang when they appeared, then I know that the ladder which he beheld
was but the scale of divine music let down from heaven to earth.”
We must find room for his answer to the charge of having left out from
Watts “fifteen splendid hymns,” whose first lines are mentioned. After
accounting for five of them by showing that they were left out because
others of Watts’s versions of the same Psalms, and better ones, have
been selected, he goes on to say: “Next in the list the ——— charges that
we have omitted Watts’s hymn, ‘Glory to Thee, my God, this night.’ This
evening hymn, dear to thousands of hearts, was probably written before
Watts was born, certainly before he had written his psalms and hymns, by
Bishop Ken, who was thirty-seven years old when Watts was born, and who
died when Watts was but thirty-six years old. There is not, perhaps,
another hymn in the language which it would require such ignorance to
ascribe to Dr. Watts. To make the blunder full-orbed, it turns out that
the hymn is _not_ omitted, after all, from ‘Plymouth Collection,’ but
may be found at page 416, hymn 1287.
“The next omission from Watts charged by the ——— is the hymn ‘While my
Redeemer’s near.’ We left that hymn out from Watts because Dr. Watts
left it out himself, not thinking it honest, we suppose, to insert a
hymn before it was written, or to appropriate another author’s labors as
his own. For this hymn was written by Mrs. Steele, I know not how many
years after Watts’s death. How dearly this critic must have loved Watts!
“We are next charged with excluding from ‘Plymouth Collection’ the hymn
of Watts, ‘God is our Refuge and Defence.’ Alas! this hymn is by
Montgomery, and not by Watts at all.
“How precious Watts’s hymns must be to a man who cannot tell a Steele or
a Montgomery from a Watts! With what grief must one be afflicted at the
injury done to Watts by not ascribing to him Bishop Ken’s hymns? Why did
not the ——— go on and mention the even more glaring omissions from Watts
in the ‘Plymouth Collection,’ such as ‘Ye Mariners of England, ‘Drink to
me only with thine eyes,’ ‘To be or not to be’—all of which are left out
of Watts and the ‘Plymouth Collection,’ and which should have attracted
the learned attention of the critic of the ———.
“It is rumored that the Psalm-Book of the New School Assembly is to be
revised. If so, the interests of the Church require that the editor of
the ——— should be put on the committee. His accuracy, his carefulness,
his profound knowledge of hymns, and especially his intelligent
admiration of Dr. Watts, cannot be spared in such a labor.”
In this discussion his adversaries found out, what to this day, we
think, is not well understood, that his action, however impulsive it
might appear, really sprang from very clearly defined principles, which
could be justified whenever, wherever, and by whom attacked, and that,
however careless he seemed, he had a habit of making himself thoroughly
acquainted with the matter in hand, and was prepared to meet any
antagonist. Mr. Beecher had great boldness and perfect confidence in his
conclusions, and was willing to stand alone upon them, because he had
thought them out and settled the matter once for all.
From the kindly manner in which he had often spoken of the Episcopal
Church, his mother’s communion, and in his account of the effect which
the service had upon him at Stratford-on-Avon, it might seem that he
would attempt to bring some form of it into use in Plymouth Church; but
no movement in that direction was ever made, and he appears to have been
well satisfied with the possibilities that lay in the simple forms of
his own order. He has several articles at different times upon a
proposed “Congregational Liturgy,” but advocates no change of method,
only an improvement of spirit. “Our services are barren, not from any
want of common forms of devotion, but from the want of common sympathy.
_A church has a right to the gifts of every one of its members, and the
minister is set to disclose and develop them._ He is not to lean upon
the strong, or avail himself alone of the services of those already
developed. It is his office to take hold of every individual man, and to
educate him, so that he may bring forth the one, or five, or ten talents
which are committed to him for the use and profit of all his brothers. A
man of books, a man of ideas, a man of sermons, is not Christ’s idea of
a minister. ‘Follow me and I will make _you fishers of men_.’ A minister
is a man of men. He is an inspirer and driller of men.... But a dead
church with a liturgy on top is like a sand desert covered with
artificial bouquets. It is bright for the moment. But it is fictitious
and fruitless. There are no roots to the flowers. There is no soil for
the roots. The utmost that a liturgy can do upon the chilly bosom of an
undeveloped, untrained church is to cover its nakedness with a faint
shadow of what they fain would have but cannot get....
“As to ‘surpliced boys,’ we have them already. The whole congregation is
a choir, and our boys, bright and happy, unite and respond with the
elders; so the surplice which they wear is just that thing which the
dear mother threw over them when they left her.
“If we were disposed to use any liturgy, we know of no one which we
should sooner employ than that which expressed the earliest religious
feelings of our own mother, now in heaven. The mere fact that she had
used and loved it would for ever make it sacred to us. We never hear it
pronounced by a sincere and earnest man without deriving profit from it
ourselves; and we have no doubt that others are benefited by its use. We
do not, however, believe that its continual use as the only vehicle of
expression of the religious feeling of the congregation would be as
profitable, on the whole, as an extemporaneous worship. If we did we
should use a liturgy. While, then, we decline to use it in public,
because we think it, on the whole, less edifying than the usage of
Congregational churches, we do it without wishing to detract from its
intrinsic excellence, and without wounding the feelings of those who
delight to use it.”
At this time he takes pains to contradict the report that he had spoken
slightingly of the Episcopalian forms in saying that “he would as soon
go a-courting with his father’s old love-letters as to go to church and
carry a book to pray out of”:
“So far from its being true that the remark in this story was applied to
the Episcopal or any other liturgy, it was applied to what are called
extemporaneous prayers in Congregational and Presbyterian
prayer-meetings. We were reprehending the practice of praying without
sincerity or real religious feeling. We said that when men began to lead
in public prayer they should be simple, truthful, and strictly
individual, expressing their own wants or feelings with child-like
truthfulness. We commented upon the undeniable fact that men too often
borrowed their prayers, copying the elder or deacon or minister, not to
express real feelings, but as forms. Thus extemporaneous prayers became
hereditary. And it was in reference to these unwritten forms of prayer,
in our own Congregational churches, that the remark imputed to us was
made. It was not a fling at the Episcopal service. We never indulge in
such remarks at the expense of other denominations, and never intend to
do it. We regard the whole practice of railing at other sects or their
religious usages, from the pulpit, as not only unchristian but
discourteous and ungentlemanly.”
The year 1857 was one of great commercial trouble through the country.
Many of his people were involved and became bankrupt. This gave him much
uneasiness from his sympathy with them, and to some extent affected his
health, which he alludes to in a letter to his brother later in the
year:
“I do not think it safe for me to undertake so much work this winter. My
head is already suffering from overwork and anxiety induced by
commercial troubles among my people. God will in the end make it a
greater blessing than their prosperity.”
A family affliction which he felt very keenly, both in his personal
affection and in sympathy with those who were bereaved, added to his
burden. In a letter to the _Independent_, July 16, 1857, he says:
“The writer has been called by the stroke of violence to part with three
nephews within two weeks—two of them of one age—dying, one in New
Hampshire, and the others in Ohio.
“Two sons of Dr. Talbot Bullard, of Indianapolis, Ind.—Henry, aged
thirteen, and Frank, aged eighteen—were thrown with the cars over an
embankment, and died the same day.
“Nobler, truer, more gentle, and more amiable natures never were. Just a
moment before the accident one of them said to a gentleman by their
side: ‘In a few moments we shall be at home.’ They were indeed nearer
home than they thought.
“Henry E. B. Stowe was the eldest son of his father’s family. On the 9th
of July, while bathing in the Connecticut River, he was drowned. But we
sorrow not as those without hope: his race was quickly run.”
We are not surprised, therefore, that we detect in most of the letters
of this year a tinge of sadness accompanied with increased spiritual
tenderness, as if he were finding the sources of consolation for
himself, that he might lead others to them.
Lenox was found to be so far from Brooklyn that it was given up as a
summer home, and this year, 1857, he spends his vacation at Matteawan,
on the Hudson. His first letter gives us this bit of characteristic
description:
“We are living in a pleasant old house, around which fruit-trees have
grown in which birds have bred and lived unmolested from year to year.
It is but a dozen wing-beats from the trees to the mountain woods.
Nothing can please a meditative bird better than to have domestic scenes
on one side and the seclusion of the wilderness on the other. A bird
loves a kind of shy familiarity. Here we have a garden, a door-yard, an
orchard, and a barn grouped together; and they on the other side have
the young forests of scooped mountain-side. So the birds come down here
for fun and go up there for reflection. This is their world; that is
their cathedral.”
“In the Mountain and the Closet” he is speaking out of his own
experience:
“The influences which brood upon the soul in such a covert as the closet
are not like the coarse stimulants of earthly thought. The soul rises to
its highest nature and meets the influences that rest upon it from
above. What are its depths of calmness, what is the vision of faith,
what is the rapture, the ecstasy of love, the closet knows more grandly
than all other places of human experience.”
It is not all sadness even in this year of the minor key. In August we
have a long article upon “Hours of Exaltation,” in which he gives us
some of those higher experiences which were common to him:
“... We are filled with the very affluence of peacefulness and joy.
There is neither sorrow, nor want, nor madness, nor trouble in the wide
world. The glory of the Lord, that at other times hangs upon the horizon
like embattled clouds full gorgeous with the sun, on such days as we
have described descends and fills the whole earth. The impassioned
language of the psalmists and prophets, which on other days is lifted up
so high above our imaginations that we can scarcely hear it, now comes
down and sounds all its grandeur in our ears. The mountains do praise
the Lord; the trees clap their hands. The clouds are His chariot and
bear Him through the air, leaving brightness and joy along their path.
The birds know their King. The flowers lift up their hands, and with the
silent tongue of perfume praise God with choice odors. The whole earth
doth praise _Thee_.”
In September of this year he visits Litchfield with his father—the
latter for the first time since he had moved to Boston—and writes a
letter upon “An Aged Pastor’s Return”:
“A man past eighty going through the streets, to visit all the fathers
and mothers in Israel that had been young in his ministry there, was a
scene not a little memorable. One patriarch in his ninety-ninth year,
when his former pastor came into the room, spoke not a word, but rose up
and, putting his trembling arms around his neck, burst into tears....”
“The particular errand that brought us hither was a lecture. A new organ
was to be bought. All Litchfield boys were permitted to help. Our
contribution was asked in the shape of a lecture. My part was soon done.
Then the aged pastor came forward. A crowd of old and young gathered at
the pulpit-stairs to greet the hand that had baptized them or had broken
to them the bread of life. It was a scene of few words. One woman gave
her name, but was not recognized in her married name. She then mentioned
her maiden name. That touched a hidden spring. Both burst into tears,
but spoke no words. The history came up instantly before both, but
silently, which had occasioned the preaching of those sermons upon
intemperance whose influence for good will never cease.”
And now he points to one of the dangers which he has learned to avoid,
and opens to us some of the lessons which he has himself learned from
the experiences of this year:
“Many troubles in life cease when we cease to nurse them.
“Many troubles are but the strain which we endure when God would carry
us the right way and we insist upon going the wrong. Troubles come to us
like mire and filth, but when well mingled they change to flower and
fruit.
“It should be borne in mind and thought of with thankfulness that
although a heavy pecuniary pressure has been resting on the community,
_nothing perishes_. No ships will rot, as under embargo; stores will not
go down; not a wheel will rust, but only rest; the railroads, whose
creation has cost us so much, are created, and will not go back but
thunder on. Not an acre will go again to the forest; not a seed will
rot.
“We shall hold the substantial elements gained, losing no art, no
science, no ideas, no habits, no skill, no industry, nothing but a
little temporary comfort; and for that we shall receive back steadiness,
safety, reality, and consolation worth a thousand-fold.”
That there had been no diminution of the prosperity of the church
appears from an announcement in one of the New York papers of the annual
pew-renting, which took place January 7 of the following year:
“The membership of Plymouth Church was never so large as at present, and
the size of the congregation is undiminished. The building admits of an
audience of about three thousand persons, and it is not an uncommon
occurrence on a pleasant Sunday evening for fully as great a number as
this to go away from the church-doors, unable to get even standing-room
within the walls.”
If the year 1857 was one of sadness, that of 1858 was one of rejoicing.
The sowing with tears was followed by the reaping with joy. Never in the
history of our country were revivals of religion so frequent, so deep
and wide-spread, as in the year that followed the great financial
disasters of 1857. The shattering of men’s hopes of wealth, the
disturbance and destruction of their confidence in material things, was
followed by a very general turning to those things that endure. From a
little book entitled “The Revival in Plymouth Church,” published
anonymously, from the testimony of those who were active at that time,
and from letters and sermons besides, we get a very clear idea of the
part which Mr. Beecher took in this great work and the methods he
pursued. Near the close of the year preceding he had received a letter
from a young man in New York, who described himself as slowly but surely
sinking beneath the temptations which he could not escape, and who
implored help from the destruction that hung over him. He said, “Preach
to me the terrors of the law, anything to arouse me from this fearful
lethargy.” Mr. Beecher read the appeal to his audience, and answered it
by preaching on the love of God in Jesus Christ as the only remedy for
man’s sin and the only power for his salvation, and said: “If this
remedy fails I know of no other. If love will not save you, fear will be
of no avail.” He then led the congregation in a most earnest and tender
prayer for that young man and for the great multitude which he
represented.
It was by such means as this, enlisting the feeling of his audience in
specific cases, awakening and directing the sympathies of the church,
that the work began. He disclaimed any confidence in a revival, born of
mere excitement, carefully explained God’s methods in saving men, and
threw the whole responsibility for success upon Christians. If their
hearts were filled with the love of God the influence would be felt with
power by those around them.
On the last Sabbath in February he preached upon the reasonableness,
usefulness, and Scriptural nature of revivals, combated objections
against them, and finally brought it home to the conscience of his
people: “Ought you not to have a revival?”
On the next Sabbath, at the communion season, he preached upon the
words, “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” holding
up before his people with great clearness and tenderness the privileges
and the infinite rewards of patient, Christian following and labor. The
father, who assisted at the service which followed, expressed the
feeling of many hearts when, in his prayer, he said: “Lord, we thank
Thee for the opening out of Thy word this morning; we have been brought
very near heaven; we see not how we can be any nearer till we stand
within the very gates.”
On the Wednesday evening following, at the usual weekly lecture, he
spoke to a crowded audience upon the conversion of the Philippian
jailer. It was a service of confession of the lack of faith in the
ever-present grace of God, of instruction concerning the spirit and
methods of the apostles, and of guidance to any who were seeking light
and peace. A prayer-meeting followed, at which any who desired prayers
for themselves or others were given opportunity to make their desire
known, and the work was begun.
“Morning meetings were opened daily, and were attended by
ever-increasing numbers, while so many remained afterward for
instruction that the pastor’s work was rarely over before eleven or
twelve o’clock. He called in lieutenants of both sexes, who helped him
in the work. No one who attended on those occasions can ever forget the
fascinating mixture of tenderness, earnestness, pathos, dry humor, quick
wit, and sound common sense that ran through all the instruction of
those meetings. One would be told to pray; another, whose knees were
almost worn out and whose mind was diseased with useless anxiety, was
told in the next breath to stop praying and go to sweeping; the many
timid and shrinking ones were encouraged into freedom, while one or two,
who thought that all the angels were anxiously awaiting the news of
their conversion before the business of heaven could proceed, were taken
down by a little quiet humor that cured yet did not wound; and all alike
were brought into the one fold. Under such influences and instructions
three hundred and thirty-five persons united with the church this
season.
“The morning prayer-meeting has been in Plymouth Church emphatically a
‘love-feast,’ the attractive influences being love to Christ, to the
pastor, and to one another in full and lively exercise. No better
description of these meetings can be given than that of a happy and
united family gathering together, under the guidance of a beloved and
honored father, for morning worship. No wonder that men as they passed
along the street, though unused to a prayer-meeting, could not resist
the voice of song which fell on their ear daily in the sweet morning
hour; and no wonder that, once having entered, they should be fascinated
by the scene which met their eye and warmed by the atmosphere of love
which they breathed, and should return saying: ‘Surely God is in this
place, though we knew it not; this is indeed the house of God, and this
is none other than the gate of heaven.’ There was no such feeling as
that smiles, or even an honest laugh, were sinful; smiles and tears
mingled in curious proximity, without any attempt at restraint; in
short, everything was natural.
“At the close of a meeting, when, owing to the quaintness of speech of
some of the brethren, especially the newly-awakened ones, in the
relation of their varied experiences, we had laughed and cried
alternately, the one as heartily as the other, Mr. Beecher said: ‘I call
you to witness whether this has not been a good meeting, whether there
has not been a tender spirit among us, and whether the influence of the
Holy Ghost has not been here? I say this because, as you know, many
persons entertain the opinion that laughing is quite inexpedient on such
occasions as these and a sure means of grieving away the Spirit. Bear
this meeting in mind, and let it be your answer to the charge of
irreverence whenever it may be brought against us on this score.’”
He gave one of his own experiences:
“You know that my usual frame of mind is hopefulness. I am apt to look
at the bright side of things and take cheerful views of life. On this
very account an occasional experience of sadness is an inexpressible
luxury to me. Last night, I know not why, but I could not sleep for some
hours. I lay restlessly, turning from side to side, till this morning
between one and two. No sooner was I asleep than it seemed to me I was
in an Episcopal church, robed in black, where a clergyman was
celebrating the Lent service. By and by he ascended the pulpit and began
to speak. There was no eloquence in his language, nor anything
particularly striking in his mode of dealing with his subject, but his
heart was evidently in it. He was setting forth in simple language the
sufferings of Jesus, and as I listened there seemed to rise up before me
a vivid conception of the Saviour in His last agony on Calvary. I gazed
till the tears gushed from my eyes, and I awoke to find my pillow
soaking wet. I composed myself again to sleep, and my imagination took
up the stitch just where I had dropped it, and knitted on. I beheld the
same vision, and again the tears flowed. I gazed and wept until it
seemed to me as if my very soul would dissolve and the fountain of tears
be itself exhausted. Again I awoke, and, again falling asleep, the
vision was for the third time repeated, and I seemed to weep my very
life away. I know not when I had before such a sweet, rich experience of
the love of my Saviour; and when I awoke finally this morning, it was
with a tenderness of soul I cannot well describe. I was thankful I did
not sleep sooner, and that when I did sleep I made such good use of my
time.”
Opportunity was given at these meetings to any who wished to ask the
brethren to pray for themselves or for others, and was largely used. A
little before the close of the meeting Mr. Beecher would rise, and,
taking the slips of paper that covered his table, read from them aloud.
After reading these he would ask, “Are there any here who desire to make
requests on behalf of their friends?” And then when these had all been
made he would say, “Are there any who desire to ask on their own
account?” Then having caught the eye of each as they arose, and
acknowledged the request by a slight inclination of the head, in token
of recognition, until they ceased rising, “in a low, soft tone would
come the words, ‘Let us unite in prayer,’ and instantly every head was
bowed. The prayers which followed these scenes were the most precious
opportunities of communion with the Lord Jesus Christ which we were ever
permitted to enjoy. We believe that he who uttered them was taught of
the Holy Ghost, and that he spake as the Spirit gave him utterance.
There was an exuberance of faith and love in these utterances not
usually found in prayer; a gladness on the part of the speaker, and a
recognized consciousness of gladness on the part of Christ. They were
the breathings of love into a loving ear.” “We always concluded with a
hymn, for Mr. Beecher was wont to say that he liked to send us away with
a full tide of song, and for a long time our choice for concluding hymns
lay between ‘Shining Shore’ and ‘Homeward Bound.’”
March 27, 1858, Mr. Beecher gave a twenty-minute address in Burton’s old
theatre in Chambers Street at the noon prayer-meeting. “I wish to leave
the impression that the matter of salvation is a matter between your own
heart and the Lord Jesus Christ; that there is between you a sympathy so
plain that there is no need of any interference. You may become a
Christian _now_, and go home to your household and be enabled to ask a
blessing at your table to-day.”
Letters are frequent this year upon subjects like this, “Trust in God”:
“We ought not to forget that an affectionate, confiding, tender faith,
habitually exercised, would save us half the annoyances of life, for it
would lift us above the reach of them. If an eagle were to fly low along
the ground every man might aim a dart at it; but when it soars into the
clouds it is above every arrow’s reach. And they that trust in God
‘shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.’”
About this time he answers a criticism that appeared in several papers
upon the extravagant income of Plymouth Church:
“It is easy to stand off and rail. Will any one suggest a plan by which
five thousand men can be put into a church that can hold only three
thousand?
“The poor should be held in lively remembrance. But ought we to provide
for the poor in a way that shall punish those who are not poor?...
“In closing we will only say that from the beginning no church ever more
conscientiously endeavored to give the Gospel to all classes, rich and
poor, resident or strangers. For ten years the members of this society
have cheerfully submitted to an inconvenience, for the sake of the poor
and of strangers, such as has rarely had a parallel. Gentlemen have paid
hundreds of dollars for pews which were, with the exception of a single
Sabbath in the year, more or less filled with the poor.
“Every Sabbath day families who have paid hundreds of dollars for a pew,
coming to church, find it pre-occupied by the poor and the stranger, and
it is a rare exception that in such cases there is any irritation.
“Generally the owner, distributing his family as best he can, takes a
seat in the aisle or stands in the entry. And this is not an occasional
thing. It is the regular experience of the congregation, year after
year.”
The year 1859 opens with some very characteristic letters from Mr.
Beecher. He had been charged with having held the doctrine of total
depravity up to ridicule in a lecture which he delivered in Boston. This
brings from him a letter, two or three passages of which we here
transcribe:
“But although we did not employ the phrase total depravity in any
opprobrious sense at the time mentioned, we do not hesitate to say that
we regard it as one of the most unfortunate and misleading terms that
ever afflicted theology....
“On the other hand, we do believe, with continual sorrow of heart and
daily overflowing evidence, in the deep sinfulness of universal man....
We heartily hate the phrase total depravity, and never feel inclined to
use it except when reading the ethics of ——— or the religious editorials
of ———.”
He was shortly after this attacked for lecturing in a “Fraternity
Course” in the same city. This calls out a long answer upon “Working
with Errorists,” in which he says:
“I have long ago been convinced that it was better to love men than to
hate them, that one would be more likely to convince them of wrong
belief by showing a cordial sympathy with their welfare than by nipping
and pinching them with logic. And although I do not disdain but honor
philosophy applied to religion, I think that the world just now needs
the Christian heart more than anything else. And even if the only and
greatest question were the propagation of the right theology, I am
confident that right speculative views will grow up faster and firmer in
the summer of true Christian loving than in the rigorous winter of
solid, congealed orthodoxy or the blustering March of controversy....
“If tears could wash away from Mr. Parker’s eyes the hindrances, that he
might behold Christ as I behold and adore Him, I would shed them without
reserve. If prayers could bring to him this vision of glory, beyond
sight of philosophy, I would for him besiege the audience-chamber of
heaven with an endless procession of prayers, until another voice,
sounding forth from another light brighter than the noonday sun, should
cast down another blinded man, to be lifted up an apostle with inspired
vision.
“But since I may not hope so to prevail, I at least will carry him in my
heart; I will cordially work with him when I can, and be heartily sorry
when I cannot.
“While we yet write word comes that Mr. Parker, broken down by
over-labor, seeks rest and restoration in a warmer climate. Should these
lines reach his eyes let him know that one heart at least remembers his
fidelity to man in great public exigencies, when so many swerved of whom
we had a right to expect better things. God shield him from the ocean,
the storm, the pestilence, and heal him of lurking disease! And there
shall be one Christian who will daily speak his name to the heart of God
in earnest prayer, that with health of body he may receive upon his soul
the greatest gift of God—faith in Jesus Christ as the Divine Saviour of
the world.”
Another incident calls forth a similar response:
“At the recent celebration of Tom Paine’s birthday at Cincinnati the
infidels present toasted: ‘The heretic clergy, Parker, Emerson, Conway,
Chapin, Beecher, and all who love man above all creeds, and sects, and
rituals, and observances, who regard man as the highest and holiest and
most sacred of all in the universe—may their motto be: Ever onward,
greater freedom, and clearer light.’” Having disclaimed any distinction
as one who loves man more than creeds, since this is “true of all
Christians when they are in their most Christian disposition,” and
having accepted their motto as being in line with sundry passages of
Scripture, he gives his true and honest feeling towards them in these
words:
“Let no man think that we despise the sympathy and well-wishing of a
convention of infidels. We thank them for their kind feelings. Like our
Master, we had rather discourse with publicans and sinners than dine
with the most select and eminent Pharisee. But we _love_ a true
Christian better than either. But, infidel or Pharisee, all need the
grace of God, and all, by repentance of sin and faith in Christ, the
Saviour of sinners, may yet meet in heaven.
“Gentlemen of the Cincinnati convention of infidels! we should be
ashamed to be less kind and courteous than you have been, and in
concluding we take leave of you kindly, saying, in the words of Inspired
Writ:
“‘Now may the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord
Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the
everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His
will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through
Jesus Christ. To whom be glory for ever and ever.’ *”
The setting up of a new organ in Plymouth Church this winter is thus
duly announced:
“The organ long expected has arrived, been unpacked, set up, and
glorified over. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered. It
has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so softly that
nobody could hear.”
After speaking of the characteristics of the many organists who have
tried it, and of one who was an especially brilliant player, he says:
“But he was not a Christian man, and the organ was not to him a
Christian instrument, but simply a grand Gothic instrument, to be
studied just as a mere Protestant would study a cathedral, in the mere
spirit of architecture and not at all in sympathy with its religious
signification or uses. And before long he went abroad to perfect himself
in his musical studies, but not till a most ludicrous event befell him.
On a Christmas day a great performance was to be given. The church was
full; all were musically expectant. It had been given out that something
might be expected. And surely something was had a little more than was
expected. For when every stop was drawn, that the opening might be with
a grand choral effect, the down-pressing of his hands brought forth not
only the full expected chord, but also a cat that by some strange chance
had got into the organ. She went up over the top as if gunpowder had
helped her. Down she plunged into the choir, to the track around the
front bulwark of the gallery, until opposite the pulpit, when she dashed
down one of the supporting columns, made for the broad aisle, when a
little dog joined in the affray, and both went down toward the
street-door at an astonishing pace. Our organist, who, on the first
appearance of this element in his piece, snatched back his hands, had
forgotten to relax his muscles, and was to be seen following the cat
with his eyes, with his head turned, while his astonished hands stood
straight out before him, rigid as marble!”
In the spring of this year he purchased a farm in Peekskill, and
explains his object as follows:
“I knew that the place was good for grass, for grain, and for fruits, of
all which I talked a good deal during the preliminary approaches to a
purchase, but for which I cared about as much as I should whether the
inside of my boots were red or yellow.
“If the thing must be told—and I mention it to you, Mr. Bonner,
confidentially—it was the remarkable aptitude of the place for
_eye-crops_ that caught my fancy. It was not so much what grew upon the
place, as what you could see off from it, that won me. It is a great
stand for the eye. If a man can get rich by _looking_, I am on the royal
road to wealth. And, indeed, it is true wealth that the eye gets, and
the ear and all the finer senses; riches that cannot be hoarded or
squandered; that all may have in common; that come without meanness and
abide without corrupting. So long as it remains true that the heavens
declare the glory of God, and the earth His handiwork, so long will men
find both heart wealth and strength by a reverent admiration of the one
and a sympathetic familiarity with the other.”
In a letter to his daughter he describes the new home:
“... _Farm_—I wrote so far at home, but being interrupted have brought
it up to the green hills. You will be quite ashamed to think that
Matteawan ever seemed beautiful to you when you shall have seen this
place. It has no wild or romantic features, but it is full of soft,
nice, beautiful views. No barren fields are seen, no brown
pasture-lands, no rugged hills—the very mountains in the horizon are
carved into round and graceful shapes. The near hills are round, gentle,
smooth, and verduous to the very top. Only one summit is rugged and
wild, and we keep that in the distant foreground as a contrast to all
the other graceful shapes. The river in the distance is like a _lake_,
except the fleets of sloops and schooners give it a sense of navigation.
From the _top_ hill of the farm you can see almost as wide a prospect as
from Bald Mountain in Salisbury—on the north and east, wild,
mountainous, solitary; but all the rest beautiful and cultivated, with
the Hudson rolling along the west. I have traced a rude diagram[6] on
the opposite page, but it will be only just better than nothing, though
you must confess that it is exceedingly well drawn for me!
-----
Footnote 6:
The Publishers regret that the diagram could not be given.
-----
”... I heard from H——— yesterday. He is well and lively, and wrote me
quite a sprightly and witty letter. W——— is round, rosy, curly, and
loving as usual. B———, the rogue, is fairly recovering from a double
charge of scarlet-fever and whooping-cough, and is becoming most
healthfully saucy.“
Early in the autumn they returned from the country and began life again
in the city. We give copies of several letters written to his daughter:
”BROOKLYN, Sept. 4, 1859.
“... In the beginning let me say, my dear child, that I heartily approve
of all that you have done. I am not a superstitious observer of the
Sabbath, nor do I hold to the rigor either of the Jewish or the Puritan
Sabbath. But I _do_ believe that one-seventh part of our time was
originally appointed for rest, for home-society, and for religious
culture....
“When I was myself in Paris I acted just as I do in Brooklyn. I took no
more liberties, and was quite as observant of my home proprieties. And I
must say that I do not relish the idea of our young countrymen going to
Europe to learn how to get rid of religious habits. Foreign travel
should improve our manners, increase our information, enlarge our
experience of men, enrich our imagination, cultivate our tastes, but
_not_ enervate our conscience....
“Everything is going well at the farm. I have bought a yoke of cattle,
white with mottled necks and red heads; also two Ayrshire calves, and a
little bull calf of the same breed. Your mother is driving away at her
cheeses in the most housewifely style. She has already made, eaten, and
given away two or three, and she has four or five on hand, good large
ones, which are to grow old for city use. Already I imagine myself a
nimble little maggot making the cheese fly. The pet ponies do bravely,
the pigs are fat and flourishing, the chickens comely, and the ducks
noisy but drawing very near to doom and dinner.
“I would not advise you to use wine unless you are weak and it is
recommended by judicious advisers for real reasons of health; and then I
should take it frankly and without hesitation. But while you do not use
it, you are not bound to take it on any occasion for _others’_ sake. If
the occasion comes, call for a glass of water and calmly lift that to
your lips. But more of this by and by. I have no objection to your
learning to _dance_ as a part of physical education.”
The home life in Brooklyn ran undisturbed through the autumn, until,
early in 1860, a serious accident befell Mrs. Beecher, which Mr. Beecher
describes in the following letter:
“FEBRUARY 11, 1860.
”MY DEAR CHILD H———:
“I suppose you will not scold me if I relieve your mother of
letter-writing this steamer; it is, I think, the first time she has
missed. But she is too lame to write to-day, having had an accident that
_ought_ to have killed her, and that _would_ have killed anybody else.
And that your fears may not magnify the matter, I shall go back and
describe it all to you.
“On Wednesday last, February 8, she took the horse and chaise (a
_two_-wheeled chaise, which we have bought of Mr. M———), and started to
go to New York and meet and bring me home from the New Haven depot.
Eliza and Bertie were taken in, the former to go over to the Hudson
River Railroad for milk, and Bertie for the ride. The horse was spirited
and soon got under way beyond control, but did not run till, turning
into Hicks Street from Orange, she dashed off like lightning, ran to
Fulton Street and right across it, up on to the pavement and headlong on
to the Brooklyn Bank steps. The carriage was broken and turned over, and
all, of course, heaped up together—horse, chaise, and people. Men sprang
to the horse, held and detached her; others succored the party. Bertie
had a smart thump on his right eye, or above it, which has done him no
harm, and he has not been kept in from his play, though made a little
homelier than he was before. Eliza was thrown against the stone and a
smart slit cut in her head, which bled profusely, and though she has
kept her bed by the doctor’s orders, she expects to be about to-day.
Your mother, as usual, took everybody’s share on herself. She was shot
out apparently head-first, and fell upon the right side of her head,
neck, and shoulder, bruising her, but breaking nothing. She was
insensible when taken into the drug-store close by. I know not how H———
was notified so soon, but he seems to have been on the spot within five
minutes, and manifested as much self-possession and decisive wisdom as
would have done credit to a much older head. He gave orders to have his
mother taken home, sent for Dr. Adams to come to the drug-store, sent
another messenger to the stableman to look after the carriage and horse
(who, confound her homely self! was but little hurt), and then took a
hack to meet me at the New Haven depot and bring me home.
“I reached the house very nearly as soon as your mother did. Found Mrs.
E——— B———, Mrs. L———, Mrs. B———, Mrs. E———, and one or two strange
ladies present, the doctor, a policeman or two, and scores of people
running to and fro; yet, in the main, there was order and good sense.
”... The doctors regard her as out of danger, but she will be a sufferer
for a week or more. Everything is going on regularly in the house,
except that I am at home all the time, which is very irregular in my
habits.
“... And so when you read this you must remember that though it seems to
you as if it had just happened, it will have been all past, and your
mother doubtless, while you read, will be marching forth in full
authority. Everybody who saw the scene speaks in admiration of her
courage and skill. She guided the horse to the last, though she could
not control her, and was game to the end. But _that_ we should all
_expect_. Nor does her courage flinch yet. Some one said to her
yesterday: ‘Well, I suppose you will never drive that horse again.’
‘Yes, _I shall too_,’ said she; and _she shall_. We are very grateful
for her safety and merciful deliverance, and although she will suffer
from twinges, yet, as there are no internal injuries, no bones
fractured, it is only a matter of patience.... Slept very well and has
the beginning of an appetite, although I am constrained to say that when
I mentioned the little luxury of _gruel_ as something appetizing and
excellent for her, she turned up her nose (I could not be mistaken) at
the suggestion, so that she is evidently not quite settled yet in her
mind. She can walk slowly, takes her bath, submits to packs, and has
refreshed herself once or twice with a hand-glass, looking at the recent
improvements about her countenance.
”... Love to all. I shall keep you faithfully apprised of her health,
and you need not fear that anything is a bit worse than I say. I shall
tell the truth. Good-by.
“May God have you in His care!
“Your affectionate father,
H. W. BEECHER.”
“FEBRUARY 14.
”MY DEAR H———:
“Your aunt has told you of your mother, and little is to be added on
that score.... I wish you would take all your gauze paper and send it to
Cardinal Antonelli, or the pope, or the—that is, burn it up, tear it up,
crumple it, throw it away, do anything with it except sending it to me.
Go forth and search and buy some that is respectable, for I wow a wow
that I will vex my eyes no more with such intolerable stuff. I feel as
though I could say a little more with great comfort to myself, but, as I
must receive several letters before this reaches you and reforms your
writing materials, I reserve a stock of wrath for those several
occasions.
”_Wednesday, Feb. 15._—Your mother this morning is generally better,
though suffering from cramps. She is now lying in a _pack_. Mrs. F———
has been as good as an angel, and a great deal more useful. Indeed, I do
not think much of angels, unless they have a good serviceable body on.
Of course Auntie B——— is on hand kindly and constantly. Everybody is
kind. Mrs. G——— has spent four days here, two in the parlors to receive
company, etc., and two with your mother. Mrs. L——— has been incessantly
here, and has both watched, waited, and run for watchers and nurses
without tire or fatigue. We had a meeting on Monday night for new
church. The action of the trustees was confirmed, and they were
requested to go ahead immediately and raise the necessary funds, and as
soon as $100,000 were secured to proceed to lay the foundations. I do
not regard the enterprise as _quite_ sure yet, though looking favorably.
Give my love to the pope. I am sorry for his situation. If he only sat
under my preaching how much his eyes might be opened! As it is, if he
chooses to write to me in regard to any of his little difficulties, I
hope he will allow no delicacy to restrain him. I will do the best I can
for him. Ditto Antonelli.
“I am now the holder of _your_ room. There nap I, and there sleep I, and
seldom either without a faint shadow of a rosy-cheeked, Minerva-eyed
girl that whilom tenanted it. I have removed the boys, W——— and B———,
into the room next it, formerly H———’s, while he holds the front large
room, now pink-papered and famously carpeted and furnished. Eliza is
quite well and trots about the house with a diligence that shows how
wholesome it is for an Irishwoman to have her head broke. I have
promised her, whenever she is sick, to give her a granite-steps course,
instead of water, as being much better adapted to her wants and
nationality. Give my love to all the great American family.... Remember
that _paper_, THAT PAPER, THAT PAPER!
“Your loving and longing father,
“H. W. B.”
“Good-by, old fellow. Give my love to Hattie, and tell her that her
father hasn’t forgotten her,” were the first words of Mr. Beecher to me
that I remember. I had been introduced to him the evening before, but he
had just returned from a lecturing tour, tired and sleepy, and if he
said anything brilliant it has entirely escaped my memory. I was going,
in company with Mrs. Stowe’s son, to take a pedestrian tour in Europe.
We expected, in time, to join her party, who were then on the Continent,
and were busy getting ready to go on board ship that day. It was a
hearty send off to one who was comparatively a stranger, that was very
characteristic of the man.
Of course I remembered the message and gave it faithfully; and after
several months’ acquaintance, travelling in Switzerland and Italy, made
an addition of the same in kind on my own account, which being accepted
and reciprocated, we were married September 25, 1861.
“The innumerable friends of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher would hardly
forgive us if we were to omit mentioning the pleasing incident that
occurred at his country residence at Peekskill last week. On Wednesday
morning, after the dew was dry, Mr. Beecher chose a spot under the
shadows of the trees near his garden, where, in the presence of a fit
circle of friends and neighbors, he gave away his only daughter in a
novel ceremony of marriage. The beauty of the day and the beauty of the
ceremony together rendered the scene singularly charming, tender, and
impressive.”
Of his method of making himself acquainted with the peculiar features of
the villages in which he lectured, and his pleasant words concerning the
people he met, the following letter is a good illustration:
“MY DEAR DOCTOR:
“I sent you a scrap from the goodly town of Norwich, N. Y., in which I
have most pleasantly spent a portion of three days, and would fain have
added as many more. It is one of the many towns in this Chenango Valley
of which Dr. Dwight said that the time would come when men of wealth
would leave the seaboard cities and retire to it as a place of rare
repose.
“The great hammer manufactory of the New World is also located here.
What hardware man has not seen David Maydole’s name? Many of the best
improvements in the hammer have sprung from his ingenious skill. But
there is room for improvement still. Thus our hammers have the power of
_hiding_ themselves.
“After investigating many cases it becomes plain that hammers have a
power of locomotion, and that when we are asleep they crawl off. We have
never seen them actually move, but we have _almost_. We have found them
on the ground or floor, and they were probably on their way somewhere
when we surprised them, and then, like many insects, they feigned
dead.... We should be glad to listen every night to as sweet music as
that which rose up before our window in Hamilton and in Norwich.”
As a complement to the above an experience in _not_ lecturing is here
given in full:
“ST. LOUIS, ———, 1859.
”REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER, _Brooklyn_:
“DEAR SIR: On behalf of the Mercantile Library Association of this city,
it is my pleasant duty to address you. We are now endeavoring to form
the lecture programme for our association for the coming season, and we
wish to do so as early as possible. Fully appreciating your well-known
reputation as a lecturer and an orator, we should be pleased to make an
engagement with you for two or three lectures the coming fall and
winter. If you can serve us, will you be so kind as to give us your
_terms_, _time_, and _subject_ as soon as possible?
“As our Association may not be well known to you, permit me to say one
word in regard to it. We think that there is no library association in
this country that is in a more prosperous condition than ours. It has
some eighteen hundred members, and is rapidly increasing. Its members
are merchants, clerks, and members from the several professions. As a
matter of course these members come from all parts of our country, and
naturally entertain a variety of views, both as to politics and
religion. Hence it becomes our Association to be very careful to eschew
all matters pertaining to either of these subjects in its lectures.
Should you be so kind as to favor us with a course of lectures—and we
sincerely hope you will do so—you will please bear the above facts in
mind. Hoping to hear from you at your earliest convenience, I remain,
Yours truly,
“R. H. D———,
”_Chairman Lecture Committee, M. L. A._“
They heard from him at once as requested, and this was the answer:
MR. BEECHER’S REPLY.
”BROOKLYN, ———, 1859.
“DEAR SIR: I have received your letter politely inviting me to give one
or more lectures before the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association
next fall or winter. But you ask, in consequence of the diversity of
opinions among your members, that I should, if I accepted your
invitation, ‘_eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion_.’
I am too much of a patriot to eschew the one, and too good a Christian
to neglect the other. Indeed, the only motive that I have for lecturing
at all is the hope that I may make better citizens and better Christians
of my fellow-men. And it seems to me that a course of lectures from
which have been strained out ‘all matters pertaining to politics and
religion,’ must afford but a very meagre diet to the young people of St.
Louis.
“Nor can I imagine why you should, under the circumstances, have wished
me to visit you. If I have ever been of any service to my fellow-men, it
has been because I never would eschew any topic which I thought it
needful for them to hear. Nor have I ever allowed myself to stand on any
platform where I could not follow my own judgment as to what should be
said with the most unlimited freedom. And it is too late in my life for
me to yield up my sense of self-respect and come under a censorship.
“I hope I have not taken seriously a matter which, perhaps, you meant
only as a pleasant jest. For, on reading your letter again, I hardly
repress the conviction that you deemed it a pleasant jest to ask me to
come all the way to St. Louis to give lectures, under an implied
agreement that I should ‘_eschew all matters pertaining to politics and
religion_!’”
When the title of Doctor of Divinity was offered him he declined it, as
follows:
“PEEKSKILL, August 21, 1860.
”_To President and Board of Trustees of Amherst College_:
“GENTLEMEN: I have been duly notified that at the last meeting of the
Board of Trustees the title of D.D. was conferred upon me. It would
certainly give me pleasure should any respectable institution bear such
a testimony of good will, but that Amherst College, my own mother,
should so kindly remember a son is a peculiar gratification. But all the
use of such a title ends with the public expression. If the wish to
confer it be accepted, for the rest it would be but an encumbrance and
furnish an address by no means agreeable to my taste. I greatly prefer
the simplicity of that name which my mother uttered over me in the holy
hour of infant consecration and baptism.
“May I be permitted, without seeming to undervalue your kindness or
disesteeming the honor meant, to return it to your hands, that I may to
the end of my life be, as thus far I have been, simply
HENRY WARD BEECHER.”
One of the peculiar features of Mr. Beecher’s work in those days of
1861-63 was the revival interest that continued, with variations of
intensity, it is true, but with no substantial interruption, for years.
The revival of 1858 had not entirely ceased at that time, and although
those days of war, especially since he gave himself so intensely to
public matters, would naturally be regarded as unfavorable to any marked
religious interest, yet it continued notwithstanding, as is shown by the
numbers that constantly sought admission to the church upon profession
of faith. This was owing, we doubt not, to the perfect conviction of Mr.
Beecher that the whole work of that time was the Lord’s, and to his
entering upon it with such consecration that he was continually shielded
and refreshed by experiences of the divine presence. This gave a deep
practical spirituality to his preaching, which was appropriated and
reflected by his church, making the Gospel attractive, in those days of
trouble, as never before. Men turned to the refuge which they saw he had
found, and which, with deepest sympathy and with abundant hopefulness,
he was pointing out to them. He himself says: “It is a mistake to
suppose that the preoccupation of the public mind with the war, and the
great excitements which are fed by the ever-changing rumors and news,
are unfavorable to the work of a true minister of the Gospel.”
The continued ingathering into Plymouth Church during all those years of
the war was something almost phenomenal. One marked occasion, the May
communion of 1862, was described in a newspaper of that day: “Every part
of the house was densely packed. The platform and desk were decorated
with vases of flowers, while banks of azaleas, magnolias, carnations,
fuchsias, white lilies, roses, and other plants in blossom reached from
the pulpit floor to the orchestra. After the usual exercises of singing,
reading, and prayer, Mr. Beecher read a list of about eighty names of
persons who were to unite with the church. Many of them were members of
the Sabbath-schools and Bible-classes. Some were persons of middle age;
a few were persons of advanced years. After a brief address Mr. Beecher
read the articles of faith, to which the parties gave their assent. The
ordinance of baptism was then administered to those who had never before
received it; after which the members of the church arose and received
the new members into full and cordial communion. Mr. Beecher took his
text from John x. 3, 4. There had been provided memorial bouquets for
each new communicant, which were distributed at the close of the
services.”
These floral decorations may almost be said to have been introduced by
Plymouth Church, and were justified by Mr. Beecher upon the highest
moral and religious grounds. He says of “Flowers in Church”:
“They are simply the signs of gladness. They are offerings of joyful
hearts to God.
“Flowers are not of man. They are divine. Man can, by culture, develop
all that God has hidden in them, but can add nothing to them, nor can he
invent or build them.
“God has made flowers for everybody. They are next in abundance to the
great elements—air, light, water. The poorest man has a roadside
flower-garden. No mission-church is so poor that it cannot afford wild
flowers upon the altar and a few assorted leaves in the windows. How
beautifully would woman’s hand light up the dreary plaster wall and
frigid seats of many a church room, if permitted to garnish them with
these field-thoughts of God!
“The effect upon children is well worth our thought. To teach a child to
love flowers is to give him riches that no bankruptcy can reach. This is
the wisdom of finding our pleasures, not in conventional arrangements,
but in sympathy with nature, which never is confiscated, or goes out of
fashion, or becomes old and exhausted. There is a new heaven and a new
earth every day, as if suggesting that grand and final event of
prophecy.
“The use of flowers on social and religious occasions soon gives to them
meanings which they had not to us before. We read nature more
thoughtfully and lovingly.
“Weeds change to flowers. The moment a plant inspires intelligent
emotion in us it ceases to be a weed and becomes a flower. The natural
world is not any longer godless or commercial and mechanical. It has a
moral power.
“At first many will shrink at seeing flowers upon the speaker’s desk or
on the pulpit. But why? Is the place too holy? But is it holier than
God? And are not flowers His peculiar workmanship? If God deemed it
suitable to His dignity and glory to occupy His mind with making and
preserving such innumerable flowers, are we wise in disdaining them or
considering the place too sacred for God’s favorites? Do men reflect
that God has been pleased to name Himself from flowers? ‘_I am the Rose
of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley._’”
In line with this are his views upon “Christian Liberty in the Use of
the Beautiful”:
“I cannot but think Christian men have not only a right of enjoyment in
the beautiful, but a duty, in some measure, of producing it, or
propagating it, or diffusing it abroad through the community.
“But in all your labors for the beautiful, remember that its mission is
not of corruption, nor of pride, nor of selfishness, but of
_benevolence_! And as God hath created beauty, not for a few, but hath
furnished it for the whole earth, multiplying it until, like drops of
water and particles of air, it abounds for every living thing, and in
measure far transcending human want, until the world is a running-over
cup, so let thine heart understand both the glory of God’s beauty and
the generosity of its distribution. So living, life shall be a glory,
and death a passing from glory to glory.”
If we have supposed that his love for nature was intuitive or came to
its fulness without effort or study, the following letter will correct
that impression:
“We are performing not alone a work of love in commending Ruskin, but
paying a small part of a debt that can never be discharged. We are more
indebted to him for the blessings of sight than to all other men. We
were, in respect to nature, of the number of those who, having eyes, saw
not; and ears, heard not. He taught us what to see and how to see.
Thousands of golden hours and materials both for self-enjoyment and the
instruction of others, enough to fill up our whole life, we owe to the
spirit excited in us by the reading of Ruskin’s early works.
“The sky, the earth, and the waters are no longer what they were to us.
“We have learned a language and come to a sympathy in them more through
the instrumentality of Ruskin’s works than by all other
instrumentalities on earth, excepting always the nature which my mother
gave me—sainted be her name!”
We have again come to the point, 1863, which we once before reached in
this biography, but this time upon entirely different lines. In our
first examination, for the sake of unity of impression, we confined
ourselves to the events of the great anti-slavery conflict. In this
which we have just completed we have sketched the outline of other
labors and the events of his home life during this period. No one, we
suspect, reading the first record, the record of strife and battle,
would conceive it possible that a life so full of all manner of peaceful
pursuits and home labors was being lived; nor, on the other hand, would
any one going over his work of preaching, lecturing, writing helpful
Star articles upon all manner of common subjects, imagine that he had
the time or the spirit for the former work. But, in fact, in his case
they were each the necessary complement of the other.
We have seen how, at the West in the midst of continued revival efforts,
he took up the study of landscape-gardening as an alterative. This was
an illustration of his habit through life. In the midst of the most
exciting events he would escape and go apart from them all, if possible,
to some point where he could look out upon the landscape or up to the
clear heavens. Such places at such times seemed to become Mountains of
Transfiguration, where he would meet the Master and be refreshed by His
presence, and whence returning he would bring back a store of beautiful
experiences that enabled him to give cheer and inspiration to his
fellow-toilers, who had not, perhaps, noted his absence from their side.
Or he would escape to some quiet nook and hold converse with birds and
flowers, delight himself in quaint and pleasant fancies, look at life
from a new standpoint, until he was able again to take up the burden
without weariness; or he would sit down with his boxes of seeds or
catalogues of plants, and lose himself in their imagined growth and
beauty; or, drawing from his pocket some one of the precious stones he
always carried with him, gather rest and inspiration as he watched its
changing hues.
In this way he was enabled to carry on the most various and exhaustive
labors, and at the same time to preserve that mental health and good
cheer for which he was remarkable.