After-Effects of the Conspiracy—Calling Council of 1876—Principle of
Selection—Mr. Beecher Cautions his Church—Bowen Reappears; Proposes
a Secret Tribunal—Mr. Beecher’s Reply—Bowen Dropped by Plymouth
Church—Deliverance of Council sustaining Plymouth—Mr. Beecher’s
Persecutors Denounced—Special Tribunal.
But now the organized determination to break down Mr. Beecher’s ministry
and overthrow his church manifested itself by a new line of tactics.
There were at this time a few members whose relation to the church was
very peculiar, who were neither in it nor out of it, apparently, who did
not ask, or who refused positively, to take letters to other churches,
who were not amenable to the discipline of the church, but who stood
off, would not attend its meetings nor observe its ordinances, and who,
when dealt with fraternally, in every way the church knew how, to
procure them peaceably to sever their connection and relieve the church
from responsibility, refused to do it or neglected to do it; and then,
when it was proposed to drop them, without any reflection more than
belonged to the nature of the case, they threatened, “If you drop us we
will call a council.” There were at one time four councils threatened,
by four different members on these grounds. It soon became very clearly
understood, that the tactics of the adversary were now, to wear out the
patience of the people, by a continuous series of councils, which would
at last weary men from coming to a church where there was such incessant
trouble.
It was in consequence of these tactics, that Plymouth Church determined
to end all such annoyances, by calling a National Advisory Council, that
should look through its rules and principles, and its entire
administration under them; to have it of such magnitude, and made up of
such churches and men, as that its deliverances would be final, making
an end of all these controversies and giving the church solid ground to
go on.
Invitations were sent to one hundred and seventy-two churches, to be
represented by pastor and delegate, and twenty ministers without
charges, principally theological writers and professors in theological
colleges. None were invited from New York City or Brooklyn, because of
the general local feeling.
The principal questions submitted were, substantially, whether Plymouth
Church had acted contrary to the word of God or the principles of
Christian justice in allowing to itself in any case any other mode of
terminating membership than death, letters of dismission, and
excommunication?
2. What course ought it to pursue towards those who persistently
absented themselves from its services for various personal reasons?
3. And towards those who were reported as having made insinuations
affecting the character of other members, but who neither admit nor deny
such reports?
4. Whether the church should have called a mutual council to investigate
the charges against its pastor when so required by a member who submits
no charges, and more than a year after a full investigation by the
church, in which the pastor had been sustained by a unanimous vote?
5. Whether its course in the case of Mrs. Moulton had been wise and
just?
6. Whether, in its maintenance of order, it had gone beyond its rights,
so as to justly forfeit its claim to the confidence and fellowship of
Congregational churches?
The letter-missive was dated February 1, 1876, and the council was
called for the 15th.
The principle upon which the council was made up, we can learn from a
letter written January 28, 1876, by Mr. Beecher to an eminent doctor of
divinity whose advice he wished respecting certain churches in his
vicinity:
“Allow me to say a word as to the principles of selection in this
council. It will be gathered from the whole land, as far West as the
Mississippi. It leaves out men committed to a policy, or who are known
to be working in league with adversary churches. But I wish to have
honest men, capable of judging upon facts and evidence, who are not so
obstinate that they will not yield to conviction, or so tied to theories
that they will look at everything under a bias. I don’t care whether
they like me or not, whether they agree with my views, whether they
approve or disapprove of all the policy of Plymouth Church. I only want
men who will be candid and who will act impartially.”
Quite a number attended who had been members of the prior council of
1874; and when the council met, a considerable majority—their views
having been acquired from newspaper reports—entertained grave doubts as
to the regularity of Plymouth Church in its previous conduct. The effect
which the evidence presented had upon their minds will appear later on.
At the Friday night prayer-meeting just preceding the sitting of
council, Mr. Beecher cautioned his people respecting their conduct
during the council.
“This church has for years been called to go through deep waters. For
more than twenty years we had well-nigh unabated prosperity, and we were
almost ready to boast that we had such wise methods of government and
such signal presentations of truth as made our church life easy; that we
had not the vexations which belonged to other churches; and it is not
unlikely that we may have become proud and self-sufficient. But
certainly for the last few years God has been dealing with us as with
sons, and has chastened us; and it becomes us to bear in mind that the
best gift of God to an individual or to a church is that kind of
chastisement which works out trust, patience, long-suffering, kindness,
and fruitfulness in labor.
“With these thoughts in mind, I wish to-night to speak a few words to
you, and exhort you, even more signally in days that are to come, than
you have in days that are past (for from my heart I can commend you in
this respect), to carry out and ennoble that patience, that fidelity,
and that churchly love, which, under great difficulties you have shown.
“My beloved, beware lest your intelligent judgment and conscientiousness
in the cause of Christ, be absorbed in the feeling of personal love and
sympathy for your elder brother. Beware lest you be drawn into a kind of
clannish feeling of anxiety for him. I know that I have your love and
sympathy, and I know that I am prayed for by you. That suffices me; but
on your part it will be very bad for you to suffer this mere human
feeling toward an individual to fill so large a place in your heart as
that it may be said to fill your experience. You are a church of Christ
set on a hill, and you cannot be hid; and your business here is to
manifest Jesus Christ to the world in such a way as to win them to a
nobler life; and you ought not to forget for what you are ordained. I
have tried to set you an example. I have endeavored to keep free from
such states of mind, and from such personality, either as regards you or
myself, as should interfere with the teaching and the reception here of
the fullest and most edifying truths of our common faith; and by the
grace of God I have been enabled mainly to succeed in doing it. I doubt
if any one hearing the sermons that have been preached here, with one or
two exceptions, for the last five years, would from them suspect
anything of that history through which this church has gone.
“So far as you are concerned, I do not say that it is possible for you
not to converse about our difficulties in your families, and with each
other; but you may do it too much; and, therefore, I wish to emphasize
that your business as a church is not to take care of me, but to take
care of and forward the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, your Head and
Master. Do not, therefore, under the influence of amiable feelings, and
warm sympathies, make the mistake of supposing that you are in a
campaign of any sort, except that of rallying around about our appointed
Leader. In the church, in your families, and in our mission schools,
your business is to promote the teaching of Christ, for the awakening of
men, and for the building up of all those who have undertaken the
Christian life.
“In pursuing this course, it behooves you to remember that under such
severe and prolonged trouble, God expects of you, not only that you will
be constant and faithful in His service, but that you will grow richer,
more spiritual, and in every way more like Christ. You have had, and are
having, a better opportunity for fulfilling the disposition set forth in
the Gospel, than is given to one church in a hundred. God has been and
is dealing with you as with sons.
“We are on the eve of a memorable week. In 1874 a great council was
called in Brooklyn to sit on our affairs, in which we were not to
participate; now we have called a council to act upon our own affairs,
and in this we must needs participate; and there are one or two things
that I wish to say to you.
“First, you that receive the brethren into your households, ought to set
up in your hearts a sentiment of honor that shall have no downfall nor
intermission. Those gentlemen that come to take part in this council
come impartially. Their office is to hear, and to give such advice as
the Lord may inspire in them, upon the facts that shall be presented. In
some sense—not technically—they are as judges; and you must not attempt
in your homes to influence them, nor by your sympathy and kindness in
the least degree to beguile them from the fullest and fairest discharge
of their duty. Even if their judgment should be adverse to your
convictions and mine, nevertheless it is very plainly a matter of
Christian honor that they should be in your families, without in the
least being biassed by social influences.
“Secondly, when you shall attend the open meetings of the council (for
it must needs be that largely the audience will be composed of members
of this church and society), I beseech of you, by all that is honorable
and by all that is gentlemanly, that there be, neither from the gallery
nor from any other part of the house, first or last, the slightest
exhibition either of approval or disapproval. I could wish that you
might sit in your pews as if you were marble, though I know that your
hearts are hot within you. That council ought to be able to sit in the
midst of the congregation of this church and never hear a whisper nor
feel a wave of influence exerted upon them. We called them that they
might do their duty faithfully; and I trust that you will commend
yourselves in their sight by the most absolute abstention from any
expression of thought or feeling in their presence.
“In the third place, I beg of you, both now and when they shall have
assembled, to bear them in your hearts in prayer, morning and night,
before God.
“If you will pray more for men you will have less occasion to do
anything else; and, in regard to this council, praying for them is a
mode of exerting an influence upon them, which you may indulge in. Do
you believe in God? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you believe in
prayer? Do you not believe that it is in the power of God to descend
into such a council, to bring a summer atmosphere into them and around
them, and to lead them by the invisible hand of truth, of love, and of
justice? Pray much for them.
“And in one last word let me say that while all this agitation is going
on, while the papers are full of bickerings, full of fiery darts that
fall like sparks from the smith’s forge, remember that your duty is in
church work and in church life. So far as possible, throw these
unpleasant things off from your mind; take care of your classes and
schools; attend faithfully to your mission work; live sweeter and holier
lives in the family; be better men and better Christians in the
household; do not let too much of the storm whistle through the cracks
and crevices of your experience—keep it out; live individually and
collectively near to Christ, and He will take care of me and of you. As
He has done in times past, so will He do, and more abundantly, in the
future, to the joy of our hearts and to the honor of His own great
name.”
In the interim between the calling of the council and its convening, the
case of Mr. Bowen came up before the church. For several years past, the
old stories, which were supposed to have originated with him, had been
set in circulation again, and quite recently a card appeared in a
Brooklyn paper, over the signature of Mr. Bowen’s son, in effect
repeating these slanders. A committee of Plymouth Church waited upon Mr.
Bowen, but he refused to admit or deny that he was the originator of the
stories—refused to make any statement or do anything. Ultimately he sent
a letter to the committee (at the same time publishing it in the
newspapers) making charges against Mr. Beecher, but in effect refusing
to substantiate them, because he had not time to look up his evidence;
but offering to submit his charges to a confidential committee of three,
provided he should not be called on to give names, and that the
committee should report only their conclusions.
When this letter was read at a church meeting Mr. Beecher arose and
said:
“I do not propose to argue this question to-night—it is not fit that I
should do it. I only propose to say one or two words on the matter; and
one is: if for the last fifteen years and more, Mr. Bowen has been in
possession of such facts as he now alleges in his letter, that he has,
and never has mentioned them to me, nor communicated them to any officer
of this church, nor in anywise brought them to the knowledge of the
church itself, he deserves to be expelled from the church for a
violation of his covenant. If I am what he alleges me to be, and have
been what he alleges I have been, and he knew it, and permitted it,
without a word of warning to me or to this church, he has committed a
crime against the church, and against morality; and if his allegation is
not true, but is a lie, then he is guilty of one of the blackest crimes
that ever emanated from the bottomless pit—and, before God, I pronounce
the allegations that he has, made to be utterly false.
“Further let me say that when Mr. Bowen, being called upon to state what
these facts are, and what are the proofs of them which he has in his
possession, pleads that he is upon trial, and that he has not time to
look them up, what are we to think of such a plea? He had time to write
that letter, and to charge me with being a criminal before the public of
this continent, and, having had time to represent me as a monster, and
to publish that representation in the newspapers, now, when he is asked,
‘What is your evidence?’ he has not time to produce it! Ought not that
to have been thought of before he made the charge public?
“I have another word to say, and that is in regard to the tribunal which
he proposes—a tripartite committee, a committee composed of three
persons—on condition that in their presence he may hide names, and that
then their judgment be given out in adjudication of the question. Now, I
say that no secrecy shall rest on this matter. I do not say that I would
not in some respects be willing to go before such a committee, but this
I say: Nothing on this subject shall be kept secret. If this matter is
not explored to the bottom it shall be because my will is set aside. I
do not propose that Mr. Bowen shall hide himself, nor will I permit
anything to be hidden about me, by having the matter referred to any
three gentlemen who shall only let out what they _think_. What they
think will not satisfy you; what they think will not satisfy me; and
since the allegations have been made public through the newspapers, and
Mr. Bowen’s name is attached to them, he has got to face the facts, he
has got to produce the evidence. And as for myself, I have only this to
say: I pronounce all the insinuations and allegations he has made as
false, and, with Almighty God and the judgment day before me, I arraign
him as a slanderer and a liar.”
Mr. Bowen produced no evidence to sustain his charges, and the church
subsequently voted that they could dispense with him.
On the 15th of February the council, the largest of its kind that had
ever been convened in this country, met. Dr. Bacon was chosen moderator;
ex-Governor Dingley, of Maine, and General Erastus N. Bates, assistant
moderators.
While the questions presented to the council were principally as to
church regularity, the sixth also opened up the question of the action
and result of the Investigating Committee referred to, and, generally,
the whole conduct of the church with reference to its pastor; this
naturally led to questions being put to Mr. Beecher personally as to the
policy he had followed respecting the scandal.
Both Mr. Beecher and the committee of the church invited the fullest
questioning on any point that could be suggested; urged the council to
invite Drs. Storrs and Budington to be present, to call Mrs. Moulton’s
counsel, and to examine Mr. Bowen—all of which the council did, Drs.
Storrs and Budington declining to attend.
For eight days—three sessions each day, morning, afternoon, and
evening—Mr. Beecher and the committee stood as targets for the questions
of the council.
We present some of Mr. Beecher’s replies, as throwing light upon
himself, and his actions, during the origin and growth of the scandal.
To the question why he had remained silent during the earlier rumors set
afloat by Bowen and Tilton, and did not demand an investigation, he
said: “This was the reason. The relations which subsisted between me and
my people were those of very strong personal affection. I know all of
you must be very much beloved by those whom you attend in sickness, to
whom you preach, and whose troubles and sorrows you console. My God has
given me a sympathetic nature, ardent and loving. I attract friends to
me, and usually I hold them. I was dear to very many; and it has been
the honor, as it has been the glory, of my recollection, that I have
been beloved by those, to be beloved by whom is itself enough witness
and enough honor. And it was because, from various reasons, intimations
were made pointing to one, and another, and another, that I saw that, if
I were to rush recklessly out after every rumor of this kind, which came
insidiously and circuitously, I should bring a torrent of publicity and
reproach upon one, two, three, many persons; and the question with me
was, not simply what I ought to do, but, ‘Will you, for your own
vindication, bring on an investigation, and project into publicity those
persons who have the rights, the sanctities, and the delicacies of the
domestic circle around about them?’ And now you see, when the first of
these rumors has been brought into public notice, how it has spread and
gone, like a fire on a prairie, all over the United States; and you see
just what I apprehended would be the case. Having connected with me, in
my relations to public affairs, parties and discussions of many sorts, I
knew that the connection with my name in one of these various matters,
under the circumstances, would proclaim it throughout Christendom; and
the question with me was: ‘Will you stand patiently for God to vindicate
you from these suggestions, putting to shame those that accuse you
falsely; or will you vindicate yourself by bringing sheeted publicity,
and lurid investigation, on one, on two, or on scores?’ I chose the
course of silence.”
In reply to another question:
“Now, I wish to hear the other part of the question, sir—whether I am
willing that Dr. Storrs and Dr. Budington should state anything that
they know—any facts? I should like to know how much longer a man need be
at the focus of a solar microscope, with all the sun in the heavens
concentrated upon him for six months, and everything that could be
raked, from the North Pole to the South Pole, and round the earth forty
times circuited, raked up and brought in, and be willing to have it
raked up and brought in again? How much longer does a man want to have
his willingness to have the truth come out, vindicated? If there is any
man on earth that has anything to say—that he wants to say—if there is
any man on earth that has anything to say to my detriment, I here and
now challenge him to say it! I go further than that. If there be any
angel of God, semi-prescient and omniscient, I challenge him to say
aught. I go beyond that, and, in the name of our common Redeemer, and
before Him who shall judge you and me, I challenge the truth from God
Himself! And what is all this going to do? To-morrow morning it will be
said in the local journals: ‘Well, Mr. Beecher—how rhetorically he
managed the matter!’ And it will be put in the religious papers: ‘Oh!
yes; that was a very plausible statement at the time, but—but—’ And I am
in judgment between two devils, ‘But’ and ‘If.’ Nothing that I say is
taken to be true, and I am put upon a perpetual trial of my veracity;
although I am willing to be tried, I don’t disguise from myself,
suppressing every sentiment of natural honor that pertains to a
gentleman—I know perfectly well this whole process is a continuous trial
and crucifixion of every sentiment of honor and every sensibility of my
soul, and that I am questioned, and questioned, and questioned, and
questioned, as I have been, through months and years, on the supposition
that the truth has not been got out. And I suppose it will be so to the
end of my life. I don’t look with any great hope for the result of this
council. I don’t look for any hope from the result of any council or
tribunal. I think there is hope in the grave, and beyond; but for me, I
expect to walk with a clouded head, not understood, until I go to
heaven, and that is not far off—that is not far away. And I am content
to bear just that lot that my dear Lord puts on me. He knows what is
best. I have accepted it. Though the natural man rebels once in a while
and bubbles out, yet grace in the end puts it down. But I am content to
walk so. All my sorrow is that the preciousness of the Gospel, which it
is given to me to preach, is hindered somewhat by this trouble; but to
work for Christ, and to save men, is my calling, and not to vindicate
myself.”
Again, referring to the perverse malignity that had characterized his
enemies: “I said, and now I repeat it, that this church and its pastor
have been systematically, studiously pursued with perversions and what
cannot be considered other than deliberate falsehoods. In some quarters,
whatever has happened has been so uniformly twisted, as to indicate what
I supposed to be the truth—namely, an organized movement to pervert
everything and destroy that influence which I formerly had with the
common people of America, and then to bring vexations, so many and so
frequent, upon the church as to disintegrate its patience, and thus to
leave me alone without anything. And I will say that the backbitings,
the whisperings, the innuendoes, the studious shutting of the
understanding to all fairness, when I make statements, and the opening
it wide to all partisan misrepresentations, when those statements were
reported otherwise, have been such as to open a new chapter in my mind
of human experience, and to carry me far back towards the old doctrine
of total depravity.”
In the course of one of the sessions the pastor of a Boston church,
referring to the unjust rumor, current in certain quarters, that since
the scandal had come out the church and its pastor had not brought out
all the facts, that there were rumors of _something_ yet unpublished,
and that they were now unreasonably refusing to submit the matter before
some new tribunal, expressed his surprise at hearing the statement of
the committee, and wondered that Mr. Beecher and his church had not been
better understood by the public. To this Mr. Beecher replied:
“Gentlemen, you won’t suspect me of any disrespect to you, but I want to
put a home question to you. This church has been occupied in publishing
to the world for the last three years, a statement of those facts that
have set you perfectly aghast, as novel and wonderful. What are you
going to do when the representatives of the morality and the
intelligence of this nation won’t read a word that is published, of the
results of the church investigation, and the court investigation, but,
coming up after they have been published for months, yet are amazed at
the simple statement of that, which has been in the newspapers and the
court records, during all this time? Are we forced not only to forge
wedges of intelligence, but use clubs to drive them into your heads? We
have been doing everything that man could do, in opening, in publishing,
and, as far as it took any definite shape, in meeting. But you cannot
hunt a stench; you can an arrow, but a smell you can’t. And therefore
these odorous beasts are going up and down the streets, casting some
venom and some odor; we can’t spend the time of a Christian church for
ever hunting these things. Am I to run after every rat in creation? Am I
to run after every leech, and worm, and every venomous insect?
“You have a right to demand of us that we shall meet accusations when
they come up responsibly stated. Did we not meet them the moment the
‘Bacon letter’ appeared? Within the time that was necessary to bring me
back from the country and back to the city, did we not instantly meet
them with a call for investigation in the church? Was not that
investigation made with a proclamation to the world to bring in
everything known? It was not zeal covering me, it was dissection, and
when the investigation had been made it was published to the world. No
sooner had it been completed than we all distributed ourselves in the
country for rest. When we came back I went instantly to a civil court.
That trial was noticed for action immediately on my return, and I
continued for six months in that court-room, and every paper in the
United States helped distribute the information of the facts that were
then disclosed. In July or August the court adjourned and we went back
into the country. We had scarcely come back again from the summer
vacation, before we took the matter up again in regard to members of
this church, and issued process upon them, and this process has been
that which has filled, the whole time since, the newspapers and the
clerical mind of the country. Where has been the time and space in which
we could institute anything else? Have we not been busy? Or shall we
stay up all night, and turn Sunday into a judicial day, and investigate
somewhat more?
“I don’t know—as long as God knows, and my mother, how it is, I have
come to about the state of mind that I don’t care for you or anybody
else. Well, you know that is not so: I do care and I don’t, and I do
again and then I don’t—just as I happen to feel. I am tired of you; I am
tired of the world; I am tired of men that make newspapers, and men that
read them; I am tired of a community that has not a particle of moral
reaction. I am tired of an age which will permit the newspapers to be
flooded, and to make themselves the common sewers of filth and scandal;
I am tired of a community that can read them, and read them, and read
them without revolting. I am tired of waiting for an honorable man that
shall stand up at last, and say, in the name of honor and manhood, ‘This
is outrageous!’
“And yet I am going to bear it, and I am going on preaching, and I am
going to preach here, and when I am shut up here I don’t know where I
shall preach; but I don’t believe that I shall live long after I have
stopped preaching. But what I want is to do God’s work, and if it is
necessary to have a reputation in Andover, or a reputation in Chicago,
before I am to preach, I may as well stop at once. But my own feeling
about it is this: I am entrusted with the tidings of salvation to dying
men, and the first wish of my heart, is not my good name nor my
reputation. Dear as they are to me for my children’s sake, and for the
sake of my family, after all there is a Name that is better to me than
mine, there is a Name above every other name—for my trouble has brought
me very near to it, and the glory of Christ. God’s glory and God’s
delicacy, and sweetness and love were never made so apparent to me, as
since I have felt the need of them in other folks.
”... I will answer as regards any paper that is in the possession of any
man, woman, or child on this continent, or on the sea, or on the land,
and beyond the sea; anybody in heaven and anybody in hell, that has any
document that I have ever written, or any information that touches me in
any manner, I hereby give my permission to them to produce it, and I
challenge them to produce it, and if it is anything that will throw
light on me and inculpate me, I demand, by every consideration of honor,
truth, and justice, that it be delivered now and here, or that for ever
after they and everybody shall hold their peace.”
At another time, referring to the burden of expense in the civil trial
alone:
“I think people look upon my being tried as if it was a game of
battledore and shuttlecock, and as if being tried was nothing but being
tossed through the air by two clever fellows, and as if I ought to like
it. And any expression of preference of one tribunal over another, or
any arithmetical expression of how many times I would like to be tried,
is said to be covering up something or other. I would like to state to
the brethren here that my expenses for the trial of six months, and
expenses of living for the year, amounted to $118,000. I do not feel
disposed to go through a great many more such trials, but I trust you
won’t think it is because I want to cover anything up, unless it is my
pockets. And if there is anybody who wishes to take my place in the
matter, and will pay the expenses, I will give up most cheerfully and
let them represent me. I ought to state further in regard to these
expenses—I state it in love and honor to my dear friend Shearman—that he
would not take one penny for the whole year’s service, and that, aside
from serving freely without money and without price, he so absolutely
abandoned his business, that his income was cut down nine-tenths or more
of what he was accustomed to receive, and that, great as my expenses
were, relatively, his were double mine, for the love-service which he
performed during this time.”
On the 24th of February the “result of council was announced.”
In this the council sustained Plymouth Church on every point, at the
same time recommending a few changes in its manual which it was thought
might save complication in the future.[14]
-----
Footnote 14:
Most of them had at the time been proposed by the church, and all were
promptly adopted.
-----
The council further advised in its “result”:
“In view of the fact that the pastor of this church has demanded that
his accusers be brought to face him, and has invited such investigation
as this council may think desirable, for the peace and prosperity of the
churches, and in order to protect Plymouth Church from further vexatious
proceedings, this council advises this church to accept and empower a
commission of five members, to be created by a committee of three,
hereinafter specified, out of the twenty men hereinafter named; the duty
of which commission shall be to receive and examine all charges against
the pastor which they may regard as not already tried....
“We hold the pastor of this church, as we and all others are bound to
hold him, innocent of the charges reported against him until
substantiated by proof.” The time within which such charges should be
preferred was limited to sixty days.
This tribunal was thereafter appointed, and waited a year. It is perhaps
needless to say that no charges were preferred.
In the closing addresses of the council to the church the speakers
expressed more freely the prevailing personal feeling.
We quote Dr. Wellman, the first speaker:
“I would not depreciate at all the intense interest with which many of
us, strangers to the pastor, have looked upon him, and watched him, and
heard him as he has appeared before us and addressed us. But while I say
that, I must say, for one, that I watched with still keener interest the
men associated with him, and who came upon this platform to present this
case—the members of the Plymouth Church Investigating Committee. And why
have I watched these men with such intense interest? Now, all men know
the power of this man of God to persuade men; and some of us, who live
far away, have been told again and again, that this pastor had such
persuasive power, that he could manage all his men here, and make them
believe anything and do anything, and therefore it did not follow that,
because this great church and people were so loyal to their pastor, that
he was an innocent and pure man. Now, your loyal and magnificent
devotion to your pastor, is your praise all over this land and all over
this world. We had not seen you; we did not know what kind of men were
associated with this man of God; and it was possible, we thought, that
they were weak men, who could be blinded and could be made to believe
anything. I have watched these men, and I aver to-night that they are
not men of feeble mind, and not men who would have an impure pastor here
if they knew it, and not men to be managed by any pastor; and it has
been the joy of my heart to find that such men have been associated,
during these years of your darkness and sorrow, with this man of God.
“It has been said that this pastor is managing this council. Somehow
people all over the world have great confidence in the managing power of
this man. So far as I can see, he is the very last man to manage
anybody; and as to his managing this council, I wish to say here and
now, once for all, and I wish it to go through you to all the world,
that he has managed us—just as that man going down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and robbed, and stripped, and wounded and thrown aside and left
half-dead, managed that other man who came to his distress and bent over
him and poured oil upon his wounds and dressed them, and took him up and
brought him to the inn and cared for him. So this man has managed us,
and in no other way. I had no acquaintance with him; I never spoke to
him until the last week; but, coming here, I have been greatly
touched—indeed, nothing has touched me more than the manner in which
this pastor has laid bare his heart to us, and asked us to search him
through and through, his heart and his life, and tell him if there be
anything wrong in him or in what he has done. He has done this again and
again, before the council, and it has made me feel, for one, that there
was no need of searching such a man. I have noticed repeatedly, during
the presentation of this case, that the pastor of this church seemed to
be living two kinds of lives, one a sad one, and the other a life of
earnest duty. Underneath his work and his addresses to us, there came
out every now and then a sad undertone, as if he felt that he must live
and toil for all the rest of his life, under this dark cloud of
suspicion and constant misrepresentation, and with these constant
dagger-rents in his heart. Now, I do not believe that he is to live the
rest of his life under this cloud and this burden of trouble. Ever since
this council was by itself, I have seen out of all this darkness a
bright morning coming, and never has that morning seemed so near and so
close as it does to-night.”
And from the address of Dr. Sturtevant, president of Illinois College:
“What now are we to expect? What is to be the result of this? This:
Brother Beecher and his church are to be assured from this hour that
they have our confidence. He is to be regarded as innocent until charges
of guilt have been tabled and substantiated—not floating rumors, not the
slime of the crawling serpent, but charges clear, definite, with all
needed specifications of names and dates and witnesses, charges behind
which there stands a responsible endorser; and while he stands thus, we
extend to him the hand of our hearty fellowship, and entire confidence,
until those charges are tabled and established. That confidence begins
here and now; and it enables him to say, and his people to say: ‘All
these rumors, these innuendoes, these floating stories that circulate
through the press, and through the ten thousand channels in which rumor
flows, are worthy of no account until they are backed by responsible
men, who are willing to face that commission, and to attempt to prove
those charges before that commission; and if men continue to rail and
continue to tell horrible stories of what they know, how it was ten
years ago, and seven years ago, and five years ago, etc., and what this
man said and what that woman said—if they continue to say such things,
believe them not. They are just as respectable as Shimei was, when he
went along the hill and cursed David.’”
From parts of Mr. Beecher’s address to the council at the close, after
the “result” had been announced, we get a clearer insight of his
feelings, and of his life during these troublesome times, than from most
anything else that he has uttered:
“It has come to pass that for so many years I have read of myself and
heard of myself, that I have ceased in some moods to have any actual
self, and am projected as an idea before my own mind. And if I shall
therefore speak somewhat freely, after the manner of men, about myself,
I wish you to consider it a part of those metaphysics which Dr. Porter
says are very bad. I have often read as if I were reading in a novel
about the bad hero, and waked up from the dream and grimly laughed as I
asked myself: ‘Is it me that they mean? Is it possible for a man to live
as long as I have, and as openly, and to have acted upon so large a
theatre, and been agitated by such world-shaking events, and be so
utterly misconceived?’ I have had the reputation of being a frank man.
But it may be true that I am a man of very cautious speech, and may
therefore sometimes not have expressed myself intelligently, though at
other times I have had the reputation of being able to make myself
understood! Nevertheless it has come to pass that I supposed myself to
have been more thoroughly canvassed, and construed in no very enviable
light, than it has befallen to any of my contemporaries. I am very sorry
that it should be so. I have no love of being a hero, and I have still
less of being such a hero as I have been made to be. I tell you that to
hear men talking whether I am or am not guilty makes the very
mother-thought shiver within me. For I have sensibility—I am open to the
keenest sense of truth and purity, and honor and right; and to be held
before a jury, and to sit six long months, and to have rained upon me
perjury and professional abuse, and to feel that over the whole broad
extent of this land, I was the focal point on which journalism was
expending itself, and that, too, not as to whether I was Republican or
Democrat, not whether I was orthodox or heterodox, not whether this or
that system expounded was rightly held, but whether I was an ineffable
culprit! I have not been hunted as an eagle is hunted; I have not been
pursued as a lion is pursued; I have not been pursued even as wolves and
foxes. I have been pursued as if I were a maggot in a rotten corpse. And
do you suppose that it is in human nature to go through that, through
months and through years, and not feel it? And yet, if it please God,
who has enabled me to go through the desert and the Red Sea, that I
should go on, God is my judge, that I am both willing and I am able to
go on again another five years; for I can do all things, Christ
strengthening me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me never so much as now.
“At some time it may be in my power to defend myself on every count and
charge. It may be in my power, at some time, with dates and
circumstances to expound the reason of my conduct. I am the child of a
noble mother and of a noble father, and I was brought up in an austere
morality and in a pure and unblemished household, with a most reverent
honor for truth, for duty, for love. And to me has been given a nature
for which, whether it be prudent or whether it be not, I am not
questionable. When they rebuke the vine for throwing out tendrils and
holding on to anything that is next to it, whether it be homely or
handsome, whether it be dry or full of sap, then they may rebuke me.
When you shall find a heart to rebuke the twining morning-glory, or any
other plant that holds on to that which is next to it, you may rebuke me
for misplaced confidence; you may rebuke me for loving where I should
not love. It is not my choice; it is my necessity. And I have loved on
the right and on the left, here and there, and it is my joy, that to-day
I am not ashamed of it. I am glad of it, and if I had my life to live
over again, and were to choose between a cold caution, calculating every
step, without trust and confidence in man, I would, with all its
liabilities, choose to be generous, to be magnanimous, and to be
trustful, and to lean though some should step aside and let me fall to
the ground. And let me say further that I was brought up in a household
where the name of woman was only next to the name of saint, and with
good reason I always thought it should stand there. The memory of my
mother has been to me, what the Virgin Mary has been to a devotee of the
Roman Church. She has been part and parcel of my upper life—a star whose
parallax I could not take, but nevertheless, shining from afar, she has
been the light that lit me easier into the thought of the invisible and
the presence of the Divine. My sisters I need not speak of. My
associations have been with women who have left upon my mind an
indelible impression of honor, of reverence, and of affection; and all
that I have gone through, and all that I have suffered at the hands of
those that are of another school, has not changed, nor in the slightest
degree blurred, the sense that I have of the dignity and the sacredness
and the beauty of womanhood. And when I have stood upon the threshold of
what seemed to me—knowing the secret elements that were in it, and how a
cloud no bigger than a man’s hand might roll up and cover the whole
heaven—when I have stood and looked out upon what might come, what
misery might be, I have said, and God knows the sincerity and the depth
of it, ‘It is better for me—if it be possible—it is better for me to
stand, and be misunderstood than that there should be suffering over so
wide a circle,’ as I believed there would be. And that there have been
so many heart-aches, that there have been so many, whose faces I never
saw, that have been bathed in tears, that there has been even the
eclipse of faith that has been mentioned in many, only shows how much
would have been saved to humanity, if it had been possible that that
policy of suffocating a domestic trouble, and keeping it in the origin
of it, had been followed out and honorably observed. The fire, that at
the first is only so much that you can stamp it out, may, by fanning
winds or reckless hands, be spread beyond your reach, and the whole city
deluged with flame, the whole prairie be sheeted with fire. That which,
in its beginning, seems quite manageable, it seems to me policy not
only, but duty, to suppress and maintain in its seclusion; for if it
bursts out it will know no bounds and no termination. The endeavor I do
not regret; the ill success of it I do.
“But having gone through it all, my only question—that is, my only
deepest question—is, Has it wrenched you from the foundations of a true
manhood? Do you believe in God? Do you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Do you live by the communications of the Holy Ghost? Is the higher part
of your nature in commerce with God? I look around among men and I say,
Has it made you hating? Has it made you jealous? Has it made you a
misanthropist or a misogynist? Are you sound—sound in your chest, sound
in your heart? Are you a man? Do you love men? Do you trust men? Do you
honor women? Do you trust them? Are you willing to labor for them? Are
you willing to suffer for them? I think I may say, without any fear, I
do believe that I live in the Spirit of God and very near to Him, and in
regard to my feelings toward mankind there does not live the man on the
face of this earth that I would harm if I had him in my power. There is
not that human creature—I know it—there is not that human creature that
lives, that I would not rather help than hurt. There is not that
creature that lives for whom I would not bear suffering, if I could save
him from greater suffering. I have tried to live in the spirit of
Christ, who wrought our joy by His sorrow, who saved us by sacrificing
Himself. I have endeavored to so live. And now let me say further than
this, that while I make these asseverations of the honesty of my intent,
and while I mean to convey, in the strongest language, my consciousness
of innocence and rectitude, and honor and purity, I do not mean to say
that I have always been wise, and still less that I should advise
another to attempt to walk the path that I have walked, or that I have
always kept my temper, or that I have always restrained my tongue.
These, which I will not call infirmities, if you please to call them
wrongs or sins—name them yourselves, and I will still excel you in
condemning, in myself, anything that has been less than the straight
line of sweetness, and of meekness, and of gentleness. I do condemn
myself often that I am rash, that in an over-heat I said things I ought
not to have said, and I am the more concerned, when I learn that these
words are not merely a rhetorical fault, nor regarded simply as a blur
upon me, but that they go like poisoned arrows and afflict other hearts;
and if there is any word that I have said, that has hurt the pastors of
near churches, or churches afar off, I would to God that I could so
utterly recall it, that they should never think of it again; and I would
be the first of all to humble myself before them, and crave that pardon
of them, which I have asked before of God. And if that which I have said
or done is a hindrance to a full reconciliation, I would to God that all
the waters of the Jordan might wash it out from every memory. I disown
it and take it all back, and beseech of you, as I beseech of every other
one, to remember of me, only those things that are like the Lord Jesus
Christ, and that by His grace I have been enabled to do rightly. I am
discharged of all jealousy. I have no pride that hinders me from saying
these things to you, and giving you leave to give to them the utmost
latitude in their application.
“Allusion has been made to sadness on my part, of which no man may know.
For whatever may be the range of a man’s outward life, there is a world
within, unknown to any but God, and the most vital part of every man’s
life, is that which is within the crystal cave of his own silence and
secrecy; and of that I do not propose to speak any further than
this—that I have often felt that my life had come very near to its end.
I live in the shadow of that feeling every day. At some hour or other of
every day, it seems to me as though but a hand’s breadth was between me
and the New Jerusalem. It is not either, necessarily a desire for dying
nor an expectation of dying; it is a sentiment. And I live very much in
that habit; not altogether a painful one—often far from it. But this I
have felt in looking back in those moments upon my past life—I have felt
a great joy that no man can take it from me. I lived when the
reformation of intemperance first began, and I gave great time and
strength to recover my countrymen from the vice. I began early my
career, when there were few to plead for the liberty of the slave. I
have lived in a minority all my days, contesting for the right and for
liberty. I had the privilege of living through that glorious
revolutionary epoch of our time, when the political economy, and the
politics, and the constitutional elements of our land were regenerated.
Few men have ever had such a chance, or the health, or the opportunity
to put in labor, in a field so rich in future results. No man can take
it from me that I have loved my country and that I have labored for her.
No man can take it from me that I have loved the Church of Jesus Christ
and that I have labored for it. No man can take it from me that I have
loved my kind without caste or distinction. No man can take it from me!
Now, I do not care for my reputation after I am dead and gone. That kind
of love of reputation I never had, but there is something that is to me
as sweet as the bells of heaven. If I have been able to inject into the
literature of my time a truly sweet and Christian spirit; if I have been
able to clothe nature so that children and women and grown people will
have associations with trees and clouds, with the ground, with all the
processes of annual resuscitation; if I have been able to clothe them
with religious associations, so that the heavens declare again the glory
of God and the earth His handiwork; if I have put into words that which
will cheer the sick and the poor, that will inspire the young, and that
will go on working after I am dead—this has been a very sustaining and a
very comforting thought to me. There is my joy for posterity—that when
by and by the clouds are all gone, when by and by the truth is as much
known as the earth will ever know truth, that which I have done will
stand, that which I am God will know, and cause it to stand for ever and
ever.”
We give some extracts from his diary, and from letters written near this
time, which show how he looked upon the past few years:
“I have never read or heard of an instance where a pastor was called to
carry forward a great church under such a pressure as I have. Whatever
is deepest, tenderest, and best in manhood has been crucified with a
prolonged crucifixion. I have seen the poisonous malaria, affecting my
reputation in the whole community where I have dwelt for so many years
with an unblemished character. I have seen false brethren silently
bringing to bear upon me the odium of the most damaging suspicions. I
have seen them secretly taking counsel together, tampering with the
fidelity of the members of Plymouth Church, and seducing my personal
friends, violating, under false pretences, ecclesiastical good
neighborhood, calling councils to interfere with the peace and harmony
of Plymouth Church, and thus spreading a local scandal and a ruinous
suspicion over, literally, the wide world. From this persecution among
false brethren the trouble broke out into public and prolonged trial by
the newspapers of the country.
“With a few honorable exceptions, the religious press was quick to
believe evil and to confirm suspicion, and, with a few equally honorable
exceptions, the secular press joined my adversaries.
“I was next tried by my own church, and after a minute research, and
upon grounds never controverted or undermined, I was acquitted and
justified. For six months thereafter I was subjected to the disgrace of
sitting before a court of justice and having every atom of evidence
admitted that money and malice could bring together. And after this long
and weary trial the jury refused to grant to my enemy the verdict which
he sought; whereupon my ministerial neighbors, reversing the fact that
the jury refused him damages, reported that I was not cleared—as if I
had gone into court voluntarily, sought a verdict, and lost my suit.
“Following the civil trial, these insidious enemies commenced a course
of vexatious attempts to call councils, and so to weary the patience of
the Plymouth people.
“To meet this vexatious proceeding the church called the largest council
ever convened upon this continent. Its members came almost to a man,
with doubting hearts, but went away with enthusiastic joy, having
justified the church and justified its pastor. But, perceiving the
venomous spirit that disguised itself under pretence of anxiety for
ecclesiastical regularity, the Great Council provided a court to sit and
act when the council should be dissolved—a court composed of legal men,
than whom none more impartial, just, and pure were ever called to sit
upon the bench. No one dared to bring charges, though the court waited
for years.
“In this long and dreadful season it would be difficult to say which
suffered most intensely, the church or its pastor.
“No one will ever know the nervous strain required to bear this terrible
pressure, to maintain a Christian spirit, to carry on my pulpit duties,
and to encourage and sustain the spirit of the church.”
NOVEMBER, 1875.
“_Nov. 12, Friday morning._—For several years I have been passing
through severe trials on account of the troubles in the Tilton family.
This has taken hold upon the church, personal friends, family,
newspapers, civil courts, ecclesiastical bodies, etc. I have thus been
like a lamb, not before her shearers, but before a fire, every stick of
which has had enough heat in it to consume one’s peace and comfort. In
all this six years I have laid down for myself the strictest adherence
to Christian principles, in all my feelings toward each person or party
concerned, and upon my conduct in every part of the perplexing and
exhausting struggle for life—for my life is aimed at, and the struggle
is for life, in every sense in which life is a blessing.”
“_Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1875._—H——— called from Missionary Association to
inquire what I thought of their asking Dr. Storrs to speak at opening of
Fisk University at Nashville. Replied, No reason against, unless they
thought that just at this time, when he heads and inspires a movement
against Plymouth Church and me. But that _they_, and not I, should
determine.
“In myself there are two thoughts: (1) Should I give help to an enemy
who will use it for my harm? and (2), and a better one, Ought I to take
any care or notice of the ascent or descent in influence of one not
friendly? Is it not better to go on doing duty and leave wholly to the
Over-ruler the disposition of affairs?
“‘_Fret not thyself because of evil-doers._’”
Shortly after the council had adjourned, and on the 27th of February,
1876, Dr. Leonard Bacon, in that spirit of brotherly love that filled
the council at its close, wrote to Mr. Beecher:
“... ‘A brother offended,’ whether Storrs (R. S.) or Budington, ‘is
harder to be won than a strong city.’ But is it not possible for you
(God helping you) to win Brother Storrs, and then to win Budington also?
“Of course you are an innocent man, grievously calumniated, pierced
through and through with arrows, like St. Sebastian. You feel that the
position of those two brethren in relation to you is unbrotherly and
unkind. You complain (and, I will say, reasonably) that neither of them
came to you in the beginning of these troubles, or has come to you at
any later time, with a request for explanation or with offers of
sympathy and assistance. They, on the other hand, think that you have
withheld your confidence and have stood aloof from them.... Is it not
possible for you to win Storrs?... You will not win him by waiting till
he shall come to you.... What, then, would be the effect on Brooklyn, on
our country, on ‘English-speaking Christianity,’ if it should be
announced that you three are ‘brothers reconciled’? Have I proposed an
impracticable thing? Am I imagining an impossible result? If so,
alas!...”
To this Mr. Beecher replied:
“BROOKLYN, March 1, 1876.
”MY DEAR DOCTOR BACON:
“I heartily thank you for your letter and its kind and Christian
suggestions. They are such as a father might give to a son, and I am
emboldened to hope that for _my_ father’s sake you will allow me to
hold, in some degree, such a relation to you.
“There is nothing in _my heart_ to prevent a reconciliation with my
offended brethren.
“If it required only that I should express my regret for unanswered
letters, and my sorrow for harsh words forced from me in the height of
distress, the whole matter might be settled in an hour. But it has
largely ceased to be a personal affair, and has assumed the complex
character of two _parties_ with strong party feeling.
“So that Dr. Storrs, for instance, is not at liberty to act from
personal considerations alone.
“Pass by his long and repeated interviews with Mr. Tilton as late as
last New Year’s, and take the most recent case, that of Mrs. Moulton.
“Mrs. M. and I are in such opposition as admits of no middle ground. To
take her up is to take sides against me. Our testimony in court is in
deadly opposition.
“But Dr. Storrs has assumed her cause to the extent, that, (aside from
all counsel during her negotiations with Plymouth Church) he sends her
to Mr. Bell (who has just taken charge of the Mission Sabbath-school of
his church), with a letter requesting him _to give her a class_. Such an
act, at such a time, produced profound impressions, even more within his
own church than out of it. After two Sundays’ attendance Mrs. Moulton
retired from the school under plea of ill health, a great excitement
having arisen within the school.
“Dr. Storrs is surrounded by such men as ———, ———, ———, and ———, whose
animosity reaches bitterness.
“I have very little hope, therefore, of favorable results.
“You should be aware that from time to time during the two years past, I
have conveyed to these brethren my desire of reconciliation.
“After the civil suit of last summer I drew up a letter to Dr. Storrs at
the request of several members of his church (warm friends of mine), in
which I expressed everything which one Christian gentleman could to
another. But my advisers said that such a letter should not be sent
until it was distinctly ascertained that Dr. S. would take it kindly;
for, if disposed to do so, it might lay the foundations for a refusal
with reasons, which would leave the case far worse than it was before.
As the summer vacation was at hand, the matter was dropped.
“I fear that Dr. Storrs is so fully committed that it is too late. He
could not have made a declaration of war more effectually than by taking
up Mrs. Moulton, considering her deadly antagonism to me and her
peculiar relations to Plymouth Church.
“But if the Lord will open a way, you may be sure that I shall not hold
back nor hesitate. I do not regard my own personal feelings or interests
as comparable to the welfare of these neighboring churches, and the
cause of religion in all churches. I would go to the very verge of truth
and honor in my expressions of regret and retraction. Yet, with all
this, I fear, alas! there is no hope.
“But I leave all to God. The effect of a reconciliation would be
pentecostal.
“I am the man going to Jericho, stripped, wounded, and left for dead.
Nevertheless I am writing to apologize both to the priest and Levite,
for not considering the proprieties and respect due them as they passed
by.
“Gratefully yours,
“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”
“P.S. I have thought long and anxiously upon this matter. I have sent
friends to Dr. Storrs, who could get no word of encouragement. He
eschews even my personal friends who were his warm friends.
“I have thought that any movement with hope of success must come from
within his own church. But there is an undeveloped _party_ on each side.
“On the whole, I have come to about this:
“That the _families_ of the two churches should hold on to each other
more firmly than ever before, and on both sides refuse to be separated.
“Then, as time goes on and the scandal gives place to other things in
the public mind, occasions or influences which we do not now command may
arise in God’s good providence, and a way be opened.
“I have often and often thought that if it were God’s will that I might
die, a great stumbling-block would be taken away, and health would come
out of my grave to the ailing hearts about me.
“And why not?
“I have lived long, and no one ever had leave to live in an age of such
_opportunities_, as those who have had their prime in the past thirty
years. One ought not to be greedy of years.”
The hope in which the Great Council was called was realized. The pastors
and delegates, called from twenty-one States, returning to their homes,
became centres of a noble, generous influence, correcting false
impressions, setting doubts at rest, renewing again the old love and
confidence.
It is true that here and there, especially in certain theological
centres, there were those whose partisan zeal, jealous malice, or even
personal hatred would not let them rest content with the deliverance;
who would rather have kept Christendom deluged with the vile mess than
that Mr. Beecher should stand cleared and justified.
But the great serpent was dead; only its tail wiggled and stirred a
little dust for a short time. After a little even that lay quiet.
The clouds were dissipating, the sky was clearing, and soon the sun
shone with its former brightness, giving comfort, light, and life to
many thousands.
The conspiracy had failed. Where to-day are the conspirators?[15]
-----
Footnote 15:
A friend has aptly put the story in a few short lines:
-----
THE FALSE SECRET.
“’Twas the thistle that told the yellow-bird,
And the yellow-bird told the bee,
And the gossip winds that overheard
Went telling the willow-tree;
And that is the way the little tree-frog
Is supposed to know it all;
He told his cousins that lived in a bog,
And they croaked to the rushes tall;
They whispered the reptiles that live in the mud,
And wiggle and creep and crawl,
To tell the mosquitoes that feast on blood
That a _star_ was seen to fall.
“But the lilies knew that it could not be true,
The lilies that looked on high;
And the waters blue, where the lilies grew.
Not so the little fire fly:
He met his friends where the garden ends
And the low marsh meadows lie;
They said it was sad as sad could be
That a star must fall and die,
And the goblin meteors danced with glee—
_But the star is still in the sky_.”