A Preacher—His Place—His Training—His Estimate of the
Work—Defects—Effectual Call—Upon Drawing an Audience—His
Theory—Preparation—Results—A Theologian—His
Orthodoxy—Evolution—Ordinances—Christian
Unity—Sectarianism—Peacemaker.
It now belongs to us, among the closing chapters of this biography, to
speak of Henry Ward Beecher, or rather to allow him, for the most part,
to speak for himself, as a preacher, a theologian, and an administrator
of ordinances—three spheres of activity so blended that it is of
advantage to treat them together. His doctrines necessarily shaped his
preaching, his preaching colored and emphasized his theology, and both
together determined his estimate of the Church as an organized body, and
the value of its rites and ceremonies.
Among them, the preacher stood pre-eminent. He himself regarded
preaching as especially his vocation, and in his judgment it ranked
highest of all earthly pursuits. Nowhere else was he so happy as in this
his chosen work. As a preacher he was most widely known, and for his
labors in this sphere, we doubt not, he will be the longest remembered.
His field was broader than was ever before given to any preacher, and no
man that ever lived preached continuously to so large and influential
audiences. During his forty years in Plymouth pulpit men from every part
of the civilized world came to hear him, and to every part of the
civilized world did his published sermons find their way, bringing
instruction, inspiration, and comfort to multitudes.
Of his rank as a preacher, it is not for us to speak dogmatically. We
stood too near him—perhaps all men of the present time stand too near
him—to be impartial judges. Many letters and reports of sermons have
come to us in which he is given the first place among the preachers of
this age, and a few, among them some from men who themselves hold the
first rank, place him before all preachers since the Apostle Paul. Which
of these, or whether either, is the true estimate or not, it does not
belong to us nor to any man living to decide; but we believe that the
latter judgment will in time largely prevail.
The open heart that receives inspiration of God; the prophetic insight
of the true preacher that sees into the heart of things, and sees God
there, and believes, with an intense conviction born of experience, that
God’s nature is love; that this love is not for the Jew only, for those
of favored lineage, of excellent position, of high moral standard and
attainment, or of right belief, but is for the Gentile, for the
wandering, the erring, the lost, outside the Church, outside even the
sympathies and hope of religious men, the only power that can save, but
able to save to the uttermost; the ability to see this love incarnated
in Jesus Christ and feel it as sunshine upon the soul, continually
dispelling the darkness; to love Him, as He is so manifested, with an
all-absorbing passion of personal affection, before which all things
pass away from their old adjustments and become new; to see Him not only
head of the Church, but head over all things; to find in Him the centre
of unity which the world needs, middle walls of partition between Jew
and Gentile, between learned and unlearned, between ranks and classes,
between science and religion, broken down; the power to rejoice in
sufferings for His sake, to bear without faltering, to love without
failing, although “the more we love the less we be loved”; the ability
to open this Gospel to others, in speech that moved all hearts, as the
winds move the tree-tops, that never touched an object, however common,
but to leave it exalted, set in some new and higher relation; the
ability to move men to think, to act, to love—all this, we believe, has
never been possessed to an equal degree with Mr. Beecher by any preacher
since Saint Paul preached to the Athenians, taking the altar of the
unknown god for his text; since he described charity to the Corinthians,
told the Colossians that all the creation _consists_, stands in harmony,
in Jesus Christ, and wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians. Nor do we
believe that to any one but to him has there been given a work that so
nearly resembled that of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, whose part
it was to bridge over by a living faith, or rather by faith in a living
One, the vast differences that kept classes and orders and nationalities
separate; to give expression to the new and broader hope; to reconcile
the old to the new and more vital faith, and show the relation of a
risen Lord to a material universe. But in this we may be unduly
prejudiced by our affection. We will let the sifting processes of the
years decide.
That he became a minister, as did his brothers, by reason of the
unswerving faith and prayer of the parents, is already well known. “Out
of six sons not one escaped from the pulpit.” “My mother dedicated me to
the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me, wept
over me, and set me apart to preach the Gospel among the heathen, and I
have been doing it all my life long, for it so happens one does not need
to go far from his own country to find his audience before him.”
Ushered into the preparation for the ministry by the parental faith,
stumbling and discouraged and ready to give up the work, another hand
was not wanting to open still more clearly the way, draw back the
curtains, and let in the light:
“I beheld Him as a helper, as the soul’s midwife, as the soul’s
physician, and I felt because I was weak I could come to Him; because I
did not know how, and, if I did know, I had not the strength, to do the
things that were right—that was the invitation that He gave to me out of
my conscious weakness and want. I will not repeat the scene of that
morning when light broke fairly on my mind; how one might have thought
that I was a lunatic escaped from confinement; how I ran up and down
through the primeval forest of Ohio, shouting, ‘Glory, glory!’ sometimes
in loud tones and at other times whispered in an ecstasy of joy and
surprise. All the old troubles gone, and light breaking in on my mind, I
cried: ‘I have found my God; I have found my God!’ From that hour I
consecrated myself to the work of the ministry anew, for before that I
had about made up my mind to go into some other profession.”
His early training-school for effective preaching was well selected. It
was, as is well known, one of the little villages on the banks of the
Ohio River, where the wants of river barge-men and frontiermen demanded
his attention. It was there he decided what his life-work should be.
“‘My business shall be to save men, and to bring to bear upon them those
views that are my comfort, that are the bread of life to me’; and I went
out among them almost entirely cut loose from the ordinary church
institutions and agencies, knowing nothing but ‘Christ, and Him
crucified,’ the sufferer for mankind. Did not the men round me need such
a Saviour? Was there ever such a field as I found? Every sympathy of my
being was continually solicited for the ignorance, for the rudeness, for
the aberrations, for the avarice, for the quarrelsomeness of the men
among whom I was, and I was trying every form and presenting Christ as a
medicine to men. I went through the woods and through camp-meetings and
over prairies. Everywhere my vacations were all missionary tours,
preaching Christ for the hope of salvation. I am not saying this to show
you how I came to the knowledge of Christ, but to show you how I came to
the habit and forms of my ministry. I tried everything on to folks.”
Added to the forces of experience and surroundings was always that of
his own personal, natural endowment. This he found fault with and tried
to change, as most people do at some period of their lives, but finally
accepted and concluded to use as best he could, without murmuring, but
always conscious of its limitations.
“I have my own peculiar temperament, I have my own method of preaching,
and my method and temperament necessitate errors. I am not worthy to be
related in the hundred-thousandth degree to those more happy men who
never make a mistake in the pulpit. I make a great many. I am impetuous.
I am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me. I feel as though
all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power behind my words,
nor all the thunders that were in the heavens, and it is of necessity
that such a nature as that should give such intensity at times to parts
of doctrine as to exaggerate them when you come to bring them into
connection with a more rounded-out and balanced view. I know it—I know
it as well as you do. I would not do it if I could help it; but there
are times when it is not I that is talking, when I am caught up and
carried away so that I know not whether I am in the body or out of the
body, when I think things in the pulpit that I never could think in the
study, and when I have feelings that are so far different from any that
belong to the lower or normal condition that I neither can regulate them
nor understand them. I see things and I hear sounds, and seem, if not in
the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that leads me to understand what
Paul said—that he heard things which it was not possible for a man to
utter. I am acting under such a temperament as that. I have got to use
it, or not preach at all. I know very well I do not give crystalline
views nor thoroughly guarded views; there is often an error on this side
and an error on that, and I cannot stop to correct them. A man might run
around, like a kitten after its tail, all his life, if he were going
around explaining all his expressions and all the things he had written.
Let them go. They will correct themselves. The average and general
influence of a man’s teaching will be more mighty than any single
misconception, or misapprehension through misconception.”
Successful as he was, he yet had none of the self-conceit that would
lead him to believe that he had reached perfection; on the contrary, his
language was always that of one who had not yet attained, but was
continually reaching out unto it. “Young gentlemen, I want to tell you
true preaching is yet to come. Of all professions for young men to look
forward to, I do not know another one that seems to me to have such
scope before it, in the future, as preaching.
“And as my years increase I want to bear a testimony. I suppose I have
had as many opportunities as any man here, or any living man, of what
are called honors and influence and wealth. The doors have been opened,
the golden doors, for years. I want to bear witness that the humblest
labor which a minister of God can do for a soul for Christ’s sake is
grander and nobler than all learning, than all influence and power, than
all riches. And, knowing so much as I do of society, I have this
declaration to make: that if I were called to live my life over again,
and I were to have a chance of the vocations which men seek, I would
again choose, and with an impetus arising from the experience of this
long life, the ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for honor, for
cleanliness, for work that never ends, having the promise of the life
that now is as well as of that which is to come—I would choose the
preaching of the Gospel: to them that perish, foolishness; to them that
believe and accept it, life everlasting.”
And that not because of great success: “There is a deep enjoyment in
having devoted yourself, soul and body, to the welfare of your
fellow-men, so that you have no thought and no care but for them. There
is a pleasure in that which is never touched by any ordinary experiences
in human life. It is the highest. I look back to my missionary days as
being transcendently the happiest period of my life. The sweetest
pleasures I have ever known are not those that I have now, but those
that I remember, when I was unknown, in an unknown land, among a
scattered people, mostly poor, and to whom I had to go and preach the
Gospel, man by man, house by house, gathering them on Sundays, a
few—twenty, fifty, or a hundred, as the case might be—and preaching the
Gospel more formally to them as they were able to bear it.”
In his whole course we believe that he was as little moved by personal
ambition as any man could possibly be. Upon his graduation he took the
first church that asked for his services—as undesirable a church at that
time probably, in position, character, and strength, as could well have
been found. And the two removes he made were the result of necessity
rather than of choice. He had no large and stock sermons with which to
awaken the admiration of men. Large subjects he had in plenty, but the
sermon was such as grew at the time.
From our knowledge of him we believe he spoke with absolute truthfulness
when he says:
“I have had no ambitions; I have sought no laurels; I have deliberately
rejected many things that would have been consonant to my taste. It
would have been for me a great delight to be a scholar; I should have
relished exceedingly to have perfected my thought in the study, and to
have given it such qualities as that it should stand as classics stand.
But when the work was pressed upon me, and my relations to my own
country and to mankind became urgent, I remember, as if it were but
yesterday, when I laid my literary ambition and my scholarly desires
upon the altar and said: ‘If I can do more for my Master and for men by
my style of thinking and working, I am willing to work in a second-rate
way; I am willing to leave writing behind my back; I am willing not to
carve statues of beauty, but simply to do the things that would please
God in the salvation of men.’”
He had not only no ambitions for himself, but he had no patience in that
seeking for place which, sometimes with the best of intentions,
ministers adopt. We well remember how, early in our ministry, hearing
that a larger church was offered to us, and fearing lest, in our
inexperienced zeal, we might accept, he telegraphed us not to decide
until we had seen him, but to come on to Brooklyn, that he might urge
upon us the importance of a young man’s staying in his first parish
until “he had done something,” by which he meant doing the work he had
gone there to undertake.
Two things he considered essential to an effectual call to the minister
to change his parish: one was “an open door in front, and the other was
a kick from behind.” It was not enough that there was an open door; some
pressure of health or dissatisfaction was needed to make a perfect call.
What a man was to do when he got the kick, and there was no open door in
front, we do not remember.
Again he writes me:
“MY DEAR SAM:
“It is not needful that a Christian should be a Stoic, and indifferent
to all experiences of success and popularity among others; yet, if a
straightforward working man finds that he does not produce popular
results, it is not for him to worry about it. If a man reaches the true
spirit, he will find a certain high and solemn satisfaction, down deep
in himself, that he is thoroughly and earnestly faithful without the
outward signs and remunerations.
“This is working ‘as unto the Lord,’ and not unto men. You will find
much of this in Paul, who was not popular, as Apollos was, and who dug
out his results by the hardest—and saw but little at that—of all his
real usefulness. Read 2 Cor. xii. 12-15. _That last verse_ is deeply
affecting. It goes far beyond and below any experience that you or I
ever had. As to the _not drawing_ large audiences, my own experience is
probably, in my early ministry, far less encouraging than yours. My
Lawrenceburg church held about one hundred and fifty to two hundred, and
was never crowded. At Indianapolis I never saw my church really full but
three or four times in eight years. I think that my audience for the
first ten years of my preaching life did not average two hundred and
fifty.
“I never regarded myself as particularly popular, nor destined to any
considerable success more than belongs to any hard-working and sensible
minister. The fact is, when I came East I came with a real but
unexpressed determination to work hard for _common folks_, and not to
expect much; and I have become thoroughly seasoned to the feeling that
large, hard, and painful work, heartily performed for Christ, is dearer
to _Him_ when it pays nothing outwardly to the doer, than when, by overt
success, it gratifies the natural feelings.
“In this, too, we must learn ‘_to walk by faith_ and not by _sight_,’ by
the inside eyes and not by the outside vision.
“I think a minister who is discouraged should read the eleventh and
twelfth chapters of Second Corinthians every week. It is the most
wonderful record of experience ever penned, if you consider how
uncomplaining—without acrimony—how cheerful, how wholesome and
victorious is the whole spirit in which his career is recited. It is not
the language of a discouraged and baffled man. It is the calm retrospect
of a great nature, superior in one part of his soul to experiences which
he acutely feels in another part.
“Yours lovingly,
“H. W. BEECHER.”
His theory of preaching, which came to be formed out of his experience
of the grace of God and his labors for men, he himself has given:
“To preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to have Christ so melted and
dissolved in you that when you preach your own self you preach Him as
Paul did; to have every part of you living and luminous with Christ, and
then to make use of everything that is in you, your analogical
reasoning, your logical reasoning, your imagination, your mirthfulness,
your humor, your indignation, your wrath; to take everything that is in
you all steeped in Jesus Christ, and to throw yourself with all your
power upon a congregation—that has been my theory of preaching the
Gospel. A good many folks have laughed at the idea of my being a fit
preacher because I laughed, and because I made somebody else laugh. I
never went out of my way to do it in my life; but if some sudden turn of
a sentence, like the crack of a whip, sets men off, I do not think any
worse of it for that—not a bit. I have felt that man should consecrate
every gift that he has got in him that has any relation to the
persuasion of men and to the melting of men—that he should put them all
on the altar, kindle them all, and let them burn for Christ’s sake. I
have never sought singularity, and I have never avoided singularity.
When they wanted some other sort of teaching I have always said, ‘Get
it. If you want my kind, here I am ready to serve you; if you do not,
serve yourself better.’”
For this preaching there was always going on a certain preparation,
almost involuntarily. It consisted in a constant study of the processes
of nature around him, examining them and digesting them, until he saw
the relations in which they stood to other facts, and a principle was
discovered or an illustration of some deeper moral and spiritual truth
was gained. This action of his mind, we believe, became almost
automatic. He had an insatiable curiosity to learn facts. But he wanted
them for the same reason that a miller wants grain, to grind and make
bread. So he worked them over until he had got something from them that
fed his mind or heart, and this was the only way he could remember them.
For this preaching there had been carried on for years a study of the
Bible. The evidences, found in note-books and books of analysis, of his
broad and painstaking study of the Gospels have astonished us. People
seeing him always on the wing, finding him never in his study—in fact,
having in his house no study-room, as such—got the impression that he
worked but little; but they made a great mistake. He worked, but it was
in his own way. The winter that I saw him most he had Stanley’s
“Commentary upon the Epistles to the Corinthians,” which he carried for
weeks in his carpet-bag, studied, and annotated from beginning to end.
Mr. Pond, who has travelled with him thousands of miles, says that Bible
reading and study was a part of his daily work while on the train.
The results of such reading and study appear in scores of little
note-books that he used, some of which lie before us, containing
subjects, heads of sermons jotted down at moments of inspiration, in the
family circle, on the railroad, in the street-car, after a talk with
some friend, written for the most part in that strong, full hand that is
so well known, sometimes plainly, at other times so obscurely as to make
it doubtful if he himself could read it after it had become cold.
This was his method of getting subjects. These were the acorn thoughts,
out of which grew up in time strong, wide-spreading oak-tree sermons.
With eyes wide open to see things, he kept his active sympathy and
hearty fellow-feeling for men in exercise by constant intercourse with
those about him. Some have a regard for mankind in general, but only
criticism and coldness for the concrete specimen before them. This was
not the case with him; he liked the common men of the present, and made
it an object to get acquainted with them and to be with them. Very
seldom did he cross the river on the ferry-boat but he made his way up
into the pilot-house, to which a key had been given him, to have a talk
with the pilot.
We have been often asked, “How does Mr. Beecher prepare his sermons?”
His general preparation we have already given. The more special
preparation for preaching on the Sabbath began on Saturday and consisted
in doing as little work as possible—doing what pleased him, making it a
kind of active rest-day. Perhaps, if the weather permitted, he ran up to
Peekskill to look over the place, and get rid of all friction and rasp
by giving attention to its common and homely details, or to feed his
imagination by looking out upon its beautiful landscape. Perhaps he
spent it in the city. If so, he has probably been over to New York,
looking into shop-windows, dropping into Appleton’s to look at books, or
into Tiffany’s to look at gems, having a little chat in each place with
some of the clerks. You may be sure he did not forget his afternoon nap
of from one to two hours; wherever he was he aimed to secure that. He
has fed well to-day, but has been careful not to eat anything that does
not agree with him. He will have the body in perfect order for the great
work of the morrow. The evening he spent quietly at home, or, possibly,
ran into one or two of the homes where he was most familiar, where he
could have his own way and be not bored by anybody’s trying to draw him
out into some excited discussion. If you had followed him there you
would very likely have found him taking his ease upon the sofa, while
the family life went on around him, in which he took part by humorous
sallies or quiet suggestions, as the fancy prompted him; home and a few
games of backgammon with Mrs. Beecher, and to bed by eleven o’clock. Up
to this time he has not decided upon the subject or text that he will
handle on the morrow; to have chosen it so early as this, especially to
have written any part of it down, would have killed his sermon the next
day. He could not have kindled up to it and made it a living thing, if
it had been for so long a time buried on parchment. Even upon so
important a matter as his first lecture of the Lyman Beecher lectureship
in Yale College—a new enterprise, with the faculty of the college as
well as the clergymen of the city present, and his lecture to be
reported in the religious press—he did not touch pen to paper until
after he had reached New Haven, taken dinner, had his nap, and was
within an hour of its delivery, although of course the subject-matter
had been for a long time a-brewing. Then while shaving the outline came
clear to his mind, and he slashed his face with his razor in his
eagerness, but his lecture secured the hearty and grateful commendation
of Dr. Leonard Bacon, who said: “If I had heard such talk as that before
I began to preach, it would have made a better preacher of me.”
The decision was made in a general way when he awoke in the morning—that
is, the kind of sermon he would preach that day. If he was heavy and a
little cloudy in the higher faculties, he would select a subject that
was in harmony with that state of mind. If he was stirred in spirit and
imagination, a subject that drew upon those higher elements, and that
ministered to the same in others, would be decided upon. There was no
approach to a sanctimonious expression on his face as he came down to
the breakfast-table, and he did not refuse to take part in the
conversation, whatever it might be; and very likely there would some
humorous remark drop from his lips, or he would steal the bread from the
plate of one of the children as usual. Yet it was all done with the air
of a man that had something that engaged his attention apart from us.
Family prayers were likely to be short that morning, and if there were
any of those delays that sometimes occur in the best-regulated families,
he would depute some one else to conduct them. And then he locked
himself in his own room, and for an hour and a half must be left
undisturbed, except in the case of some imperative necessity, and then
to be approached by no one but his wife. No noise in the halls. The hour
of the whole week had come to him, and he must have it without
interruption. Of course none of us, and no one but God, ever saw him in
that hour, but we know that then he made his final and definite
selection of a subject, perhaps taking it from one of those little
note-books; that he wrote with his goose-quill pen, upon large sheets of
paper, his introduction; that he put down head after head, with such
opening as the time permitted, and gave a word of illustration here and
there. The vision stood before him, and as hastily as possible he
sketched the outline. As the bell began to ring for the last time, some
fifteen minutes before the opening of the service, he would come out
with his papers hastily thrown together and held in his hand, or thrust
into his coat-pocket, and, with scarcely a word to any one, put on his
hat, take Mrs. Beecher on his arm, and start for the church.
This hour may be shortened. It may be spent in some other place than in
his study, but as a rule it was had, this time of supreme choice and
arrangement, and jotting down the heads of his sermon. As an extreme
illustration of his powers of making all places available, and to seize
the most outwardly unpropitious surroundings for this final preparation,
I can say from personal knowledge that the notes of the sermon which he
preached in Charleston in 1865 to the thousands in Zion Church, and
which was one of great scope and power, was outlined in the outhouse of
the home where we were stopping, on scraps of envelopes which he
happened to have with him. From thence we went directly to the church
and to the delivery of that grand sermon. When I spoke to him afterwards
about the sermon and its power, he said: “The vision came to me there,
and if I could only have brought it out as I saw it, it would have been
worth hearing; but I could not.”
When he preached upon the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of the Congregational Church in Stamford, he
came into my house hastily, stopping only long enough to kiss his
daughter as he hurried upstairs. In about fifteen minutes he came down,
putting away some notes in his side-pocket, and said to her: “Well, I
have got my sermon ready for the evening.” This was in the forenoon.
Being prepared so long beforehand, it got cold before the time for its
delivery, and when he went into the pulpit he felt barren and dry.
Neither the singing by the choir nor the prayer by a brother minister,
of which he spoke afterwards very highly, gave him the desired relief,
and he sat with the fixed, settled expression of a man who is bound to
do his duty as well as he can; but to those who knew him well there was
a lack of the light in the eye and the deep, full, restful look of
countenance which was marked in him when he was all prepared. It
happened that we had at that time a solo-singer of great richness and
sweetness of voice, and she sang for an offertory just before preaching.
“The Three Kings of the Orient.” The sympathetic rendering of the words
of that beautiful solo smote the rock; the waters gushed out and
suffused soul and intellect, and the sermon was one of great power and
beauty.
Because of its adaptation to awaken devotion in his own heart and in the
hearts of his audience he valued organ music, but it must be rendered by
one who himself felt its power and could express this feeling through
the instrument. If the organist failed in this, no brilliancy of
execution nor facility in rendering popular tunes could atone for the
fundamental lack. By reason of John Zundel’s ability to express and
interpret religious emotion he valued him above all players that ever
officiated at the organ in Plymouth Church. As with the organ, so with
the choir. No efficiency in the leader of the choir, in the machinery,
could atone for the lack of appreciation of the devotional element in
the music.
In the Scripture-reading he was himself, feeding upon the word which he
read, drinking in and appropriating its truths; and in the prayer he
came to the fountain-head, to Christ Himself, for refreshing and life
power.
And now for the sermon itself. For the first few moments his eyes
followed the manuscript closely. He seemed to be reading; perhaps he
was, and perhaps there were only catch sentences upon the page which he
was scanning so carefully. He was gathering his forces, getting under
headway, making preparatory explanations, divisions, and definitions. He
will get into the full, rushing current of thought and feeling and
speech presently.
We can liken the whole process to nothing better than the descent of
some of our Western rivers under the care of a skilful guide. You get
into the boat in some sheltered cove. He takes the oar and pushes out
gently but strongly, points out the rocks on either side and avoids
them, and makes his way around some tree-top that has fallen in from the
shore. Like to this was often Mr. Beecher’s opening. The current now is
felt and begins to bear you along on its bosom, and in that hour all
your life-experiences are gone over or pointed out to you. You are in
the shallows where life seems poor and worthless, and he shows you how
to find the deeper channels. He points out the pleasant places on the
shore, and shows you where living springs burst out; takes you under the
shadow of the lofty trees whose branches sweep down within your reach,
and anon out under the clear, sun-lighted heaven. Swirls of temptation
are before you, and he shows you how to steer straight through or how to
avoid them. You are now in the very rapids, in the rush of the life that
for six days in the week is roaring around you, and all things seem to
be rushing to destruction; but this man is not disturbed. He is no
still-water pilot. He has thoroughly studied that river and knows all
its dangers. Through the fiercest rapids that ever boat was called upon
to pass he will guide you safely; over the deepest fall that ever boats
must venture he will stand by you. He goes with you until he has brought
you into some quiet spot of God’s great and present mercy, or perhaps to
the mouth of the river and in sight of the islands of the blest. What a
hand was that, so gentle, skilful, strong! What a voice, so clear,
tender, inspiring, confident! What a heart, that knew all the ways of
sorrow! What a guide and helper he was! “O my father! my father! the
chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!”
In the largeness of his audience, in his power over them for the time
being, there can be no question; but how about the permanent results in
growth and strength of Christian character, in making men and women
Christlike?—for this, as he would be first to claim, is the only true
success. Our first witness here, of course, must be Plymouth Church, the
body that received most impress from the word he preached and the life
he lived. One of the largest churches in the land, it has been called a
drag-net “which has been cast into the sea and has gathered of every
kind.” And undoubtedly it has its proportion of human weakness and
imperfections, but, after making all deductions of this nature, it
nevertheless remains true that, tried by all the tests that can apply to
a church, it will answer as well as any that can be found. It has been
singularly harmonious and free from quarrels and contention, and that
under trials the like of which few churches have ever been called to
endure. Its failures in Christian character have been as few; its works
have been as broad and beneficent; its weekly care to provide for
strangers that visited it as hospitable; its benevolent contributions as
generous, we believe, as those of any other church. But, deeper than all
this, and better than all, the spirit that has pervaded the church has
been unusually kind, helpful, Christlike.
It was said that it had no life separate from Mr. Beecher. But the
bearing of that body since the death of its pastor has given an emphatic
denial to that statement. From the day that his body lay in state, and
its members gathered like a stricken household around the coffin, the
church, to all outward appearances, has been growing more earnest in
developing its powers, more loving in its spirit. The seed so long
planted is bearing fruit, the benediction so long resting upon it is
showing its beauty, and is proving that indeed it is the fruit of but
one thing, and that is the Gospel of God’s dear Son, of Jesus the
Christ.
But other witnesses rise up to testify—troubled, weary, heartbroken
souls the world over, who have read the sermons as they have come to
them from Plymouth pulpit; and they bear witness that this one spake as
he was moved of the Holy Ghost, that his message was of Him who came to
heal the sick, to raise the dead, to set at liberty the captive.
We call to the witness-stand all ministers and all denominations of
every name who have ever read his sermons or heard him preach, and they
will testify that his message was of God.
Yea, we will go beyond this circle and ask those of other
pursuits—laborers, workers, soldiers, actors—if there has not shone upon
them something of the light that our Saviour shed upon all classes and
conditions of men, and their answer will be unanimously in the
affirmative. We go beyond the personality of men and come into the realm
of beliefs and relationships, and affirm, without fear of denial, that
theology is to-day more truthful, science more devout, religion more
attractive, sectarianism less bitter, churches more loving, politics
purer, property more humane, labor more faithful, social ranks more
tolerant, and nations brought nearer together, by reason of the
preaching of the Gospel by Henry Ward Beecher.
To speak of Mr. Beecher as a theologian will awaken, we are well aware,
a smile of incredulity with many. It will be said that theology was not
his forte; that he seldom made use of the term except to make fun of it,
or of those who were its exponents and teachers. Now, we acknowledge
that we might give a definition of this science in which he would appear
to very poor advantage. But if theology can be considered as the
knowledge of God in His relations to living men and to this present
world, then was Mr. Beecher a theologian excelled by few now living or
that ever have lived. He had this knowledge of God. It was as real to
him as his own existence. He had the nature and order of God’s
attributes very clearly settled in his own mind. He had His relations
with the whole universe in which He dwelt very thoroughly outlined in
his thought. He had his own system, upon which he worked from day to
day, which included all existences and orders, and all times, and all
worlds; that, as he believed, had a place for all truth that had ever
been lived or revealed, and for all that ever should be lived or
revealed, here, or in Saturn, or Sirius, in this present time or in the
ages of ages. He made a great deal of fun of theologians, sometimes
because of the one-sidedness of their views, sometimes because of their
dryness, at others because of their pretensions, and partly because all
classes of men were, in his view, at times objects of legitimate
mirth-making. Yet nevertheless he greatly valued them and their work.
“Now, young gentlemen,” he said in his “Lectures to Yale Students,” “I
have often indulged myself in words that would seem to undervalue
theologians; but you know I do not mean it. I profess to be a theologian
myself; my father was a theologian; my brothers are all theologians, and
so are many men whom I revere, and who are the brightest lights of
genius, I think, that have ever shone in the world. I believe in
theologians, and yet I think it is perfectly fair to make game of them!
I do not think there is anything in this world, whether it be man or
that which is beneath a man, that is not legitimate food for innocent,
innocuous fun; and if it should cast a ray of light on the truth and
alleviate the tediousness of a lecture now and then to have a slant at
theologians, why, I think they can stand it! It will not hurt them and
it may amuse us. So let me speak freely—the more so because I affirm
that it is indispensable for every man who is to do a considerable
religious work during a long period, or with any degree of
self-consistency, to be a theologian. He must have method; there must be
a sequence of ideas in his thoughts. And if the work runs long enough
and far enough, and embraces many things, there must be a system of
applying means to ends, there must be a knowledge of instruments. These
things are theology in a sense—a part of it, at any rate.”
Equally indispensable, in his view, was it that a man have a theology
that would change by growth:
“As summer makes the tree so much larger that the bark has to let out a
seam, because the old bark will not do for the new growth, and as the
same thing takes place from season to season, so mental philosophy—for
all theology is mental philosophy—changes from age to age through both
obvious and latent causes.”
His bearing towards theological questions was largely decided, as he
tells us, by his own religious experience, and by the controversies
which in his early life were raging around him:
“In the first place, let me say that my early religious experience has
colored all my life. I was sympathetic by nature, I was loving, I was
mercurial, I was versatile, I was imaginative. I was not a poet
executively, but sympathetically I was in union with the whole universal
life and beauty of God’s world and with all human life. My earliest
religious training was at home. My father’s public teaching may be
called alleviated Calvinism. Even under that the iron entered my soul.
There were days and weeks in which the pall of death over the universe
could not have made it darker to my eyes than those in which I thought:
‘If you are elected you will be saved, and if you are not elected you
will be damned, and there is no hope for you.’ I wanted to be a
Christian. I went about longing for God as a lamb bleating longs for its
mother’s udder, and I stood imprisoned behind those iron bars: ‘It is
all decreed. It is all fixed. If you are elected you will be saved
anyhow; if you are not elected you will perish.’ While in that state,
and growing constantly and warmly in sympathy with my father, in taking
sides with orthodoxy that was in battle in Boston with Unitarianism, I
learned of him all the theology that was current at that time. In the
quarrels also between Andover and East Windsor and New Haven and
Princeton—I was at home in all these distinctions. I got the doctrines
just like a row of pins on a paper of pins. I knew them as a soldier
knows his weapons. I could get them in battle array. I went from my
college life immediately to the West, and there I fell into another
fuliginous Christian atmosphere when the Old School and the New School
Presbyterians were wrangling, and the Church was split, and split on the
rock of slavery, and my father was tried for believing that a man could
obey the commandments of God, and Dr. Wilson was contending against him
in church courts that men had no ability, either moral or physical, to
obey God; and the line of division ran all through the State, and there
was that tremendous whirl of Old School theology, old Calvinism and new
Calvinism, and by the time I got away from the theological seminary I
was so sick—no tongue can tell how sick I was of the whole medley. How I
despised and hated this abyss of whirling controversies that seemed to
me to be filled with all manner of evil things, of everything, indeed,
but Christ! And then on one memorable day, whose almost every cloud I
remember, whose high sun and glowing firmament and waving trees are
vivid yet, there arose before me, as if an angel had descended, a
revelation of Christ as being God, because He knew how to love a sinner;
not that He would love me when I was true and perfect, but because I was
so wicked that I should die if He did not give Himself to me, and so
inconstant that I never should be steadfast—as if He were saying to me:
‘Because you are sinful I am yours.’ Before that thought of a God who
sat in the centre and seat of power, that He might bring glory and
restoration to everything that needed Him, I bowed down in my soul, and
from that hour to this it has been my very life to love and to serve the
all-helping and pitiful God.” This was addressed to the association of
which he was a member.
One who was present wrote that while he was saying this “he seemed to
lose consciousness of his audience; his voice, although clear and
distinct, became low and gentle; he was carried away by one of those
very inspirations which he was describing; and when he spoke of the
revelation of Christ to himself, as one who loved men because they
needed love, his face underwent a marvellous change: it seemed
transparent with a radiant light, like a sunset glow on the Alps, while
rapid and instantaneous changes of expression passed over it, such as
can only be compared to heat-lightning silently playing over the golden
clouds of a summer evening.”
From this living experience there came into existence an order of
truths. “As I went on, and more and more tried to preach Christ, the
clouds broke away and I began to have a distinct system in my own mind.”
There grew up also a very decided dislike and oppugnance to much of the
theology that was then in vogue, for it seemed to stand in the way of
men instead of helping them:
“I dedicated myself, not to be a fisher of ideas, nor of books, nor of
sermons, but a fisher of men, and in this work I very soon came to the
point in which I felt dissatisfied with the views of God that had been
before given. I felt dissatisfied with that whole realm of theology
which I now call the machinery of religion, which has in it some truth,
and I would it had more. But I came to have this feeling, that it stood
in the way of sinful men. I found men in distress, in peril of soul, on
account of views which I did not believe were true, or, if true, not in
any such proportion. If you want to know why I have been fierce against
theology, that is it: because I thought with Mary, and I said time and
again, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have
laid Him.’ It seemed to me that men could not believe in such a God as I
heard preached about, that men could not believe such a schedule of
truth as I had seen crystallized and promoted among men. I do not care
the turn of my hand about a man’s philosophy; I do not care about one
system or another; any system that will bring a man from darkness to
faith and love I will tolerate; and any system that lets down the
curtain between God and men, whether it is canonical priest or church
service or church methods, whether it is the philosophical or
theological—anything that blurs the presence of God, anything that makes
the heavens black and the heart hopeless, I will fight it to the death.”
But how about his orthodoxy? He says: “I hold there is but one
orthodoxy, and that all others are bastard orthodoxies. The orthodoxy of
the heart, that loves God, and loves man to such an extent that it is
willing to suffer for him, and to endure hardship for the sake of the
love it bears to men—that is the true orthodoxy, and there is none
other.”
He said in an address given at a meeting of Congregational ministers in
London in September, 1886:
“I think I am as orthodox a man as there is in this world. Well, what
are the tests of orthodoxy? Man universally is a sinner; man universally
needs to be born again; there is in the nature of God that power and
influence that can convert a man and redeem him from his animal life;
and it is possible for man so to bring to bear this divine influence in
the ministration of the Gospel as that men shall be awakened, and
convicted, and converted, and built up in the faith of Jesus Christ.
There is my orthodoxy. But how about the Trinity? I do not understand
it, but I accept it. If anybody else understands it I have not met him
yet; but it seems to me that that is the easiest way of rendering the
different testimonies or words of truth in the New Testament, neither do
I see any philosophical objection to it at all, and I accept it without
questioning. What about original sin? There has been so much actual
transgression that I have not had time to go back on to that. On what
grounds may a man hope? On the atonement of Christ? Yes, if you want to
interpose that word, atonement, on that ground, unquestionably, I am
accustomed to say Christ saves men. But how? That is His look-out, not
mine. I think that because the nature of God is sanative, God is love.
‘If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them
which ask Him?’ If you choose to fix it in this way, and say that Christ
saw it possible to do thus and so, and that was the atonement He made—if
you take any comfort in it, I shall not quarrel with you. But it is
enough for me to know this, that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, has
proclaimed, to whosoever will, health, life, new life—‘born again.’ He
has offered these, and therefore I no more want to question how he does
it than a sick man questions the doctor before he takes a pill. If he
says, ‘Doctor, what is in it?’ the doctor says, ‘Take it and you will
find out what is in it.’ If men think I am heterodox because I do not
believe this, that, and the other explanation of the atonement of Jesus
Christ, it is enough for me to say I believe in Christ, and I believe
Christ is atonement. Now, if you ask me whether I believe in the
divinity of Christ, I do not believe in anything else. Let a man stand
and look at the sun, then ask him what he sees beside. Nothing: it
blinds him. There is nothing else to me when I am thinking of God: it
fills the whole sphere, the heaven of heavens, and the whole earth and
all time; and out of that boundlessness of love and that infiniteness of
divine faculty and capacity it seems to me that He is, to my thought,
what summer is when I see it marching on after the cold winter is over.
I know where the light comes from and where the warmth comes from. When
I see anything going on for good and for the staying of evil I know it
is the Sun of Righteousness, and the name to me is Jesus—every time
Jesus. For Him I live, for Him I love, for Him I labor, for Him I
rejoice in my remaining strength, for Him I thank God that I have yet so
much in me that can spend and be spent for the only one great cause,
which should lift itself above every other cause in this whole world.”
Concerning one other doctrine, future punishment, he states his belief
as follows:
“I have my own philosophical theories about the future life; but what is
revealed to my mind is simply this: The results of a man’s conduct reach
over into the other world on those that are persistently and inexcusably
wicked, and man’s punishment in the life to come is of such a nature and
of such dimensions as ought to alarm any man and put him off from the
dangerous ground and turn him toward safety. I do not think we are
authorized by the Scriptures to say that it is endless in the sense in
which we ordinarily employ that term. So much for that, and that is the
extent of my authoritative teaching on that subject.”
From his life-long interest in material science it may well be supposed
that he watched the development of the theory of evolution with the
greatest eagerness. It was not, in substance, unknown to him:
“Slowly, and through a whole fifty years, I have been under the
influence, first obscurely, imperfectly, of the great doctrine of
evolution. In my earliest preaching I discerned that the kingdom of
heaven is a leaven, not only in the individual soul but in the world;
the kingdom is as a grain of mustard-seed. I was accustomed to call my
crude notion a _seminal theory_ of the kingdom of God in this world.
Later I began to feel that science had struck a larger view, and that
this unfolding of seed and blade and ear in spiritual things was but one
application of a great cosmic doctrine which underlay God’s methods in
universal creation, and was notably to be seen in the whole development
of human society and human thought. That great truth—through patient
accumulations of fact, and marvellous intuitions of reason, and luminous
expositions of philosophic relation, by men trained in observation, in
thinking, and in expression—has now become accepted throughout the
scientific world. Certain parts of it yet are in dispute, but
substantially it is the doctrine of the scientific world. And that it
will furnish—nay, is already bringing—to the aid of religious truth as
set forth in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ a new and powerful
aid, fully in line with other marked developments of God’s providence in
this His world, I fervently believe.”
He had great hope from the influence he felt certain it would exert:
“The theology that is rising upon the horizon will still rise. I cannot
hope that it will be the perfect theology, but it will be a regenerated
one, and I think far more powerful than the old—a theology of hope, and
of love, which shall cast out fear. Nay, more, it is to be a theology
that will run nearer to the spirit and form of Christ’s own teachings,
He who found the tenderness of Divine Providence in the opening lilies
of the field, and the mighty power of God’s kingdom in the unfolding of
germ and leaf and fruit.”
Mr. Beecher’s view of ordinances was in harmony with his practical view
of preaching and of theology. To his mind the ordinance was appointed by
God because it helped men, and was to be continued on that same ground,
and the form best suited to that end was the one he adopted. The form of
church government and of administration of ordinances was left
uncertain, because it was to be adapted to the peculiar conditions of
the times or the circumstances of people. It was of principle rather
than of rule. It was the expression of the new life rather than of any
artificial arrangement. Hence he believed that different forms of church
government and different methods of administering ordinances were
equally Scriptural, and to be adopted without controversy if they
secured the end in view—the bringing into and training up of men in
Christ Jesus—and equally antagonistic to the New Testament view when
they were a mere form.
But of this he himself has spoken somewhat at length:
“Now, there is one more thing that I want to say something about—that
is, church economy, ordination, and ordinance. I regard it as true that
there is laid down in the New Testament no form of church government
whatever nor of church ordinance—none. Paul did not see the outlines of
the Church; they grew, they developed out of the nature of things. And
so I say, in regard to all church worship, that is the best form of
church economy that in the long run helps men to be the best Christians.
Whatever thing is found when applied to human nature to do good, that is
God’s ordinance. If there are any men that worship God through the Roman
Catholic Church—and there are—I say this in regard to them: ‘I cannot,
but you can; God bless you!’ In that great, venerable church there is
Gospel enough to save any man, no man need perish for want of light and
truth in that system; and yet what an economy it is, what an
organization, what burdens, and how many lurking mischiefs that
temptation will bring out! I could never be a Roman Catholic, but I
could be a Christian in a Roman Catholic Church; I could serve God
there. I believe in the Episcopacy—for those that want it. Let my tongue
forget its cunning if I ever speak a word adverse to that church that
brooded my mother, and now broods some of the nearest blood kindred I
have on earth. It is a man’s own fault if he do not find salvation in
the teachings and worship of the great Episcopal body of the world. I
was for ten years a member of the Presbyterian Church, for I swore to
the Confession of Faith; but at that time my beard had not grown. The
rest of the Book of Worship has great wisdom in it, and, rather than not
have any brotherhood, I would be a Presbyterian again if they would not
oblige me to swear to the Confession of Faith. On the other hand, my
birthright is in the Congregational Church. I was born in it, it exactly
agreed with my temperament and my ideas; and it does yet, for although
it is in many respects slow-moulded, although in many respects it has
not the fascinations in its worship that belong to the high
ecclesiastical organizations, though it makes less for the eye and less
for the ear, and more for the reason and the emotions, though it has
therefore slender advantages, it has this: that it does not take men
because they are weak and crutch them up upon its worship, and then just
leave them as weak after forty years as they were when it found them. A
part of its very idea is so to meet the weakness of men as that they
shall grow stronger; to preach the truth and then wait till they are
able to seize that truth and live by it. It works slowly, but I tell you
that when it has finished its work it makes men in the community.”
“I immerse, I sprinkle, and I have in some instances poured, and I never
saw there was any difference in the Christianity that was made. They
have all, for that matter, come out so that I should not know which was
immersed or which was sprinkled.
“The unity of Christians does not depend upon similarity of ordinance or
methods of worship. It is a hard business. I do not believe the
millennium will see one sect, one denomination, any more than the
perfection of civilization will see only one great phalanstery, one
family. The man on this side of the street keeps house in one way, and
the man over on the other side keeps house in another. They do not
quarrel; each lets the other alone. So I hold about churches. The unity
of the Church is to be the unity of the hearts of men—spiritual unity in
the love of Christ and in the love of each other. Do not, then, meddle
with the details of the way in which different persons choose to conduct
their service. Let them alone; behave at least as decently in the church
of Christ as you would do in your neighborhood and in each other’s
families. I do not know why they should not concurrently work in all the
great causes of God among mankind. I am not, therefore, to teach
Congregationalism, I am not to teach the Baptist doctrine, I am not to
teach Presbyterianism; I am to preach ‘O ye that are lost by reason of
your sins, Jesus Christ has found a ransom for you; come, come, and ye
shall live.’ That is my message, and in that I have enthusiasm. It is
not to build up one church or another church, or to cry down one church
or another. Brethren, we have been trying conscience for a great while;
what have we got by it? About one hundred and fifty denominations. There
is nothing so unmanageable as a conceited conscience. Now, suppose we
should try another thing; suppose we should try love a little while;
suppose we should try sympathy, trust, fellowship, brotherhood, without
inquisitorial power; suppose we should let men’s theologies take care of
themselves, and bring this test to bear upon them: What is the fruit of
their personal living, and what is the fruit of their personal teaching?
‘By their fruits shall ye know them’ did not exhaust itself in personal
thought alone. It is a good test for denominationalism, and whenever I
find a denomination that puts emphasis upon holiness, where there is no
envy, nor detraction, nor backbiting, nor suspicion, nor holding each
man to philosophical schedules, when I find a denomination in which they
are full of love and gentleness and kindness, I am going to join that
denomination. But I do not expect to change for some time.”
His estimate of sectarianism was very low:
“The selfishness that inheres in the very elements of sectarianism is
radically opposed to the spirit of the Gospel. Love works from within
outward. Selfishness or sectarianism works from without inward. One is
centrifugal, the other is centripetal. The only difference between a
pious denominational spirit and sectarianism is the difference between a
cub and a full-grown wolf. You may baptize your wolf every year with
what soft names you please; it is a wolf still, that will never cease to
make havoc on the flock. As for ourselves, in all this tumult of men
running up and down throughout the vast and misty realm of
ecclesiasticism, we will none of it. There is a fairer realm, there are
brighter skies, distilling selecter influences. We are well satisfied
that this world will never behold any earthly force so great as the
heart of man irradiated by the fire of Christ, and turned in all its
warmth upon men; hence our prayer for our brethren shall not be for
esprit de corps but for esprit de Christ.”
And so, wherever he was, we find him bearing one character. In the
matter of rituals he grasped the reality, as he thought, and, looking at
men on either side of him, asking, not surrender of principle, but
charity. And all sects found that they had something in common with him.
In doctrines, while accused of heresy, yet, when making a full statement
of his belief before the New York and Brooklyn Association, or the
meeting of Congregational ministers in England, his views received the
heartiest commendation from men of all shades of opinion; while as a
preacher what multitudes of every class and of all sects have been
brought together in Plymouth Church!
Among parties, except when in the very onset, it was the same. When the
battle had been fought, not a blow more than was necessary to secure the
victory, not an act for revenge. In the very midst of the war of the
Rebellion, in 1862, as we have already mentioned, he said, “I think I
never pray for the loyal States without praying, at least in thought, if
not in utterance, for those misguided men in the South that wage this
rebellion; and, let me tell you, I have a tender place in my heart for
them.” And when the war had ceased he stood up for what he deemed best
for their prosperity, at the loss, for the moment, of a great deal of
his popularity at the North. In England he plead, with no tones of fear
but with manly words, for peace between the mother and daughter. In this
age of spiritual growth on one side and materialistic tendencies on the
other, Mr. Beecher, born with an intense love for nature, given a
surpassingly deep and rich Christian experience, and reconciling them
both in himself, and feeling that each interprets and enriches the
other, and both are unified in Him who is the head over all, became—he
was raised up for that purpose—a mediator between the deepest spiritual
experience and the most advanced stage of real science.
One scene illustrates his true position—the place he has held between
many diversities, and the one that we are sure will be more and more
recognized as his as the years go by. It was when the delegates from
England were presenting their credentials to the National Council of
Congregationalists in Boston, at about the close of the war. There was a
very sore feeling in the hearts of many of the loyal people of the North
at the position of antagonism that their brethren in England and Wales
had taken in the great Rebellion, and it happened that the delegates
present had belonged very decidedly to the obnoxious side. The question
was upon receiving them, and several speeches had been made, and it
seemed that a very unpleasant result would be reached. At last Mr.
Beecher was recognized and called to the platform. In a few words he
described the situation, represented the failure of each side in the
great matter of Christian charity, showed how grand an opportunity was
given to illustrate this highest of Christian virtues, and closed by
reaching down and clasping a hand of each delegate, while the whole
audience of venerable ministers and delegates arose and showed their
delight by cheers and waving of handkerchiefs. It was his rightful
place, won by years of patient charity. Other names have been given him.
He has been called Reformer, War Trumpet, Popular Lecturer, Preacher.
They are all good, but we lift a name that we never remember to have
seen applied to him, but which is his by right, which represents the
resultant of all his life of toil and battle—the name which belongs to
him as to but few men that ever lived—and place it lovingly upon his
brow, while our eyes long for the look which he used to give: the name
“PEACEMAKER”; and the familiar words come with a new significance as if
spoken for him, “_Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
the children of God._”