The life of Henry Ward Beecher may be either compressed into a sentence
or expanded into a volume. He was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on
the 24th day of June, 1813, the child of the well-known Lyman Beecher;
graduated at Amherst College in 1834, and subsequently studied at Lane
Theological Seminary (Cincinnati), of which his father was the
president; began his ministerial life as pastor of a Home Missionary
(Presbyterian) church at the little village of Lawrenceburg, twenty
miles south of Cincinnati on the Ohio River; was both sexton and pastor,
swept the church, built the fires, lighted the lamps, rang the bell, and
preached the sermons; was called to the pastorate of the First
Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, where he
remained for eight years, 1839 to 1847, and where his preaching soon won
for him a reputation throughout the State, and his occasional writing a
reputation beyond its boundaries; thence was called in 1847 to be the
first pastor of the newly organized Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he
remained with an ever increasing reputation as preacher, lecturer,
orator, and writer, until the day of his death, March 8th, 1887.
Such is the outline of a life, the complete story of which would be the
history of the United States during the most critical half-century of
the nation's existence. Living in an epoch when the one overshadowing
political issue was pre-eminently a moral issue, and when no man could
be a faithful preacher of righteousness and not a political preacher;
concerned in whatever concerned humanity; believing that love is the
essence of all true religion, and that love to God is impossible without
love to man; moral reformer not less than gospel preacher, and statesman
even more than theologian: throwing himself into the anti-slavery
conflict with all the courage of a heroic nature and all the ardor of an
intensely impulsive one,--he stands among the first half-score of
writers, orators, reformers, statesmen, and soldiers, who combined to
make the half-century from 1835 to 1885 as brilliant and as heroic as
any in human history.
The greatness of Henry Ward Beecher consisted not so much in a
predominance of any one quality as in a remarkable combination of many.
His physique justified the well-known characterization of Mr. Fowler,
the phrenologist, "Splendid animal." He was always an eager student,
though his methods were desultory. He was familiar with the latest
thought in philosophy, had studied Herbert Spencer before his works were
republished in the United States, yet was a child among children, and in
his old age retained the characteristic faults and virtues of childhood,
and its innocent impulsiveness.
His imagination might have made him a poet, his human sympathies a
dramatic poet, had not his strong common-sense kept him always in touch
with the actualities of life, and a masterful conscience compelled him
to use his æsthetic faculties in sterner service than in the
entertainment of mankind. The intensity of his moral nature enhanced
rather than subdued his exuberant humor, which love prevented from
becoming satire, and seriousness preserved from degenerating into wit.
His native faculty of mimicry led men to call him an actor, yet he
wholly lacked the essential quality of a good actor,--power to take on
another's character,--and used the mimic art only to interpret the truth
which at the moment possessed him.
Such power of passion as was his is not often seen mated to such
self-control; for while he spoke with utter abandon, he rarely if ever
did so until he had carefully deliberated the cause he was espousing. He
thought himself deficient in memory, and in fact rarely borrowed
illustrations from his reading either of history or of literature; but
his keenness of observation photographed living scenes upon an unfading
memory which years after he could and did produce at will. All these
contrary elements of his strangely composite though not incongruous
character entered into his style,--or, to speak more accurately, his
styles,--and make any analysis of them within reasonable limits
difficult, if not impossible.
For the writer is known by his style as the wearer by his clothes. Even
if it be no native product of the author's mind, but a conscious
imitation of carefully studied models,--what I may call a tailor-made
style, fashioned in a vain endeavor to impart sublimity to commonplace
thinking,--the poverty of the author is thereby revealed, much as the
boor is most clearly disclosed when wearing ill-at-ease, unaccustomed
broadcloth. Mr. Beecher's style was not artificial; its faults as well
as its excellences were those of extreme naturalness. He always wrote
with fury; rarely did he correct with phlegm. His sermons were published
as they fell from his lips,--correct and revise he would not. The too
few editorials which he wrote, on the eve of the Civil War, were written
while the press was impatiently waiting for them, were often taken page
by page from his hand, and were habitually left unread by him to be
corrected in proof by others.
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]
His lighter contributions to the New York Ledger were thrown off in
the same way, generally while the messenger waited to take them to the
editorial sanctum. It was his habit, whether unconscious or deliberate I
do not know, to speak to a great congregation with the freedom of
personal conversation, and to write for the press with as little reserve
as to an intimate friend. This habit of taking the public into his
confidence was one secret of his power, but it was also the cause of
those violations of conventionality in public address which were a great
charm to some and a grave defect to others. There are few writers or
orators who have addressed such audiences with such effect, whose style
has been so true and unmodified a reflection of their inner life. The
title of one of his most popular volumes might be appropriately made the
title of them all--'Life Thoughts.'
But while his style was wholly unartificial, it was no product of mere
careless genius; carelessness never gives a product worth possessing.
The excellences of Mr. Beecher's style were due to a careful study of
the great English writers; its defects to a temperament too eager to
endure the dull work of correction. In his early manhood he studied the
old English divines, not for their thoughts, which never took hold of
him, but for their style, of which he was enamored. The best
characterization of South and Barrow I ever heard he gave me once in a
casual conversation. The great English novelists he knew; Walter Scott's
novels, of which he had several editions in his library, were great
favorites with him, but he read them rather for the beauty of their
descriptive passages than for their romantic and dramatic interest.
Ruskin's 'Modern Painters' he both used himself and recommended to
others as a text-book in the observation of nature, and certain passages
in them he read and re-read.
But in his reading he followed the bent of his own mind rather than any
prescribed system. Neither in his public utterances nor in his private
conversation did he indicate much indebtedness to Shakespeare among the
earlier writers, nor to Emerson or Carlyle among the moderns. Though not
unfamiliar with the greatest English poets, and the great Greek poets in
translations, he was less a reader of poetry than of poetical prose. He
had, it is true, not only read but carefully compared Dante's 'Inferno'
with Milton's 'Paradise Lost'; still it was not the 'Paradise Lost,' it
was the 'Areopagitica' which he frequently read on Saturday nights, for
the sublimity of its style and the inspiration it afforded to the
imagination. He was singularly deficient in verbal memory, a deficiency
which is usually accompanied by a relatively slight appreciation of the
mere rhythmic beauty of literary form. It is my impression that for
amorous poems, such as Moore's songs, or even Shakespeare's sonnets, and
for purely descriptive poetry, such as the best of 'Childe Harold' and
certain poems of Wordsworth, he cared comparatively little.
But he delighted in religious poetry, whether the religion was that of
the pagan Greek Tragedies, the mediaeval Dante, or the Puritan Milton.
He was a great lover of the best hymns, and with a catholicity of
affection which included the Calvinist Toplady, the Arminian Wesley, the
Roman Catholic Faber, and the Unitarian Holmes. Generally, however, he
cared more for poetry of strength than for that of fancy or sentiment.
It was the terrific strength in Watts's famous hymn beginning
"My thoughts on awful subjects dwell,
Damnation and the dead,"
which caused him to include it in the 'Plymouth Collection,' abhorrent
as was the theology of that hymn alike to his heart and to his
conscience.
In any estimate of Mr. Beecher's style, it must be remembered that he
was both by temperament and training a preacher. He was brought up not
in a literary, but in a didactic atmosphere. If it were as true as it is
false that art exists only for art's sake, Mr. Beecher would not have
been an artist. His art always had a purpose; generally a distinct moral
purpose. An overwhelming proportion of his contributions to literature
consists of sermons or extracts from sermons, or addresses not less
distinctively didactic. His one novel was written avowedly to rectify
some common misapprehensions as to New England life and character. Even
his lighter papers, products of the mere exuberance of a nature too full
of every phase of life to be quiescent, indicated the intensity of a
purposeful soul, much as the sparks in a blacksmith's shop come from the
very vigor with which the artisan is shaping on the anvil the nail
or the shoe.
But Mr. Beecher was what Mr. Spurgeon has called him, "the most
myriad-minded man since Shakespeare"; and such a mind must both deal
with many topics, and if it be true to itself, exhibit many styles. If
one were to apply to Mr. Beecher's writings the methods which have
sometimes been applied by certain Higher Critics to the Bible, he would
conclude that the man who wrote the Sermons on Evolution and Theology
could not possibly have also written the humorous description of a house
with all the modern improvements. Sometimes grave, sometimes gay,
sometimes serious, sometimes sportive, concentrating his whole power on
whatever he was doing, working with all his might but also playing with
all his might, when he is on a literary frolic the reader would hardly
suspect that he was ever dominated by a strenuous moral purpose. Yet
there were certain common elements in Mr. Beecher's character which
appeared in his various styles, though mixed in very different
proportions and producing very different combinations. Within the
limits of such a study as this, it must suffice to indicate in very
general terms some of these elements of character which appear in and
really produce his literary method.
Predominant among them was a capacity to discriminate between the
essentials and the accidentals of any subject, a philosophical
perspective which enabled him to see the controlling connection and to
discard quickly such minor details as tended to obscure and to perplex.
Thus a habit was formed which led him not infrequently to ignore
necessary limitations and qualifications, and to make him scientifically
inaccurate, though vitally and ethically true. It was this quality which
led critics to say of him that he was no theologian, though it is
doubtful whether any preacher in America since Jonathan Edwards has
exerted a greater influence on its theology. But this quality imparted
clearness to his style. He always knew what he wanted to say and said it
clearly. He sometimes produced false impressions by the very
strenuousness of his aim and the vehemence of his passion; but he was
never foggy, obscure, or ambiguous.
This clearness of style was facilitated by the singleness of his
purpose. He never considered what was safe, prudent, or expedient to
say, never reflected upon the effect which his speech might have on his
reputation or his influence, considered only how he could make his
hearers apprehend the truth as he saw it. He therefore never played with
words, never used them with a double meaning, or employed them to
conceal his thoughts. He was indeed utterly incapable of making a speech
unless he had a purpose to accomplish; when he tried he invariably
failed; no orator ever had less ability to roll off airy nothings for
the entertainment of an audience.
Coupled with this clearness of vision and singleness of purpose was a
sympathy with men singularly broad and alert. He knew the way to men's
minds, and adapted his method to the minds he wished to reach. This
quality put him at once _en rapport_ with his auditors, and with men of
widely different mental constitution. Probably no preacher has ever
habitually addressed so heterogeneous a congregation as that which he
attracted to Plymouth Church. In his famous speech at the Herbert
Spencer dinner he was listened to with equally rapt attention by the
great philosopher and by the French waiters, who stopped in their
service, arrested and held by his mingled humor, philosophy, and
restrained emotion. This human sympathy gave a peculiar dramatic quality
to his imagination. He not only recalled and reproduced material images
from the past with great vividness, he re-created in his own mind the
experiences of men whose mold was entirely different from his own. As an
illustration of this, a comparison of two sermons on Jacob before
Pharaoh, one by Dr. Talmage, the other by Mr. Beecher, is interesting
and instructive. Dr. Talmage devotes his imagination wholly to
reproducing the outward circumstances,--the court in its splendor and
the patriarch with his wagons, his household, and his stuff; this scene
Mr. Beecher etches vividly but carelessly in a few outlines, then
proceeds to delineate with care the imagined feelings of the king, awed
despite his imperial splendor by the spiritual majesty of the peasant
herdsman. Yet Mr. Beecher could paint the outer circumstances with care
when he chose to do so. Some of his flower pictures in 'Fruits, Flowers,
and Farming' will always remain classic models of descriptive
literature, the more amazing that some of them are portraits of flowers
he had never seen when he wrote the description.
While his imagination illuminated nearly all he said or wrote, it was
habitually the instrument of some moral purpose; he rarely ornamented
for ornament's sake. His pictures gave beauty, but they were employed
not to give beauty but clearness. He was thus saved from mixed
metaphors, the common fault of imaginative writings which are directed
to no end, and thus are liable to become first lawless, then false,
finally self-contradictory and absurd. The massive Norman pillars of
Durham Cathedral are marred by the attempt which some architect has made
to give them grace and beauty by adding ornamentation. Rarely if ever
did Mr. Beecher fall into the error of thus mixing in an incongruous
structure two architectural styles. He knew when to use the Norman
strength and solidity, and when the Gothic lightness and grace.
Probably his keen sense of humor would have preserved him from this not
uncommon error. It is said that the secret of humor is the quick
perception of incongruous relations. This would seem to have been the
secret of Mr. Beecher's humor, for he had in an eminent degree what the
phrenologists call the faculty of comparison. This was seen in his
arguments, which were more often analogical than logical; seen not less
in that his humor was not employed with deliberate intent to relieve a
too serious discourse, but was itself the very product of his
seriousness. He was humorous, but rarely witty, as, for the same reason,
he was imaginative but not fanciful. For both his imagination and his
humor were the servants of his moral purpose; and as he did not employ
the one merely as a pleasing ornament, so he never went out of his way
to introduce a joke or a funny story to make a laugh.
Speaking broadly, Mr. Beecher's style as an orator passed through three
epochs. In the first, best illustrated by his 'Sermons to Young Men,'
preached in Indianapolis, his imagination is the predominant faculty.
Those sermons will remain in the history of homiletical literature as
remarkable of their kind, but not as a pulpit classic for all times; for
the critic will truly say that the imagination is too exuberant, the
dramatic element sometimes becoming melodramatic, and the style lacking
in simplicity. In the second epoch, best illustrated by the Harper and
Brothers edition of his selected sermons, preached in the earlier and
middle portion of his Brooklyn ministry, the imagination is still
pervasive, but no longer predominant. The dramatic fire still burns, but
with a steadier heat. Imagination, dramatic instinct, personal sympathy,
evangelical passion, and a growing philosophic thought-structure,
combine to make the sermons of this epoch the best illustration of his
power as a popular preacher. In each sermon he holds up a truth like his
favorite opal, turning it from side to side and flashing its opalescent
light upon his congregation, but so as always to show the secret fire at
the heart of it. In the third epoch, best illustrated by his sermons on
Evolution and Theology, the philosophic quality of his mind
predominates; his imagination is subservient to and the instrument of
clear statement, his dramatic quality shows itself chiefly in his
realization of mental conditions foreign to his own, and his style,
though still rich in color and warm with feeling, is mastered, trained,
and directed by his intellectual purpose. In the first epoch he is the
painter, in the second the preacher, in the third the teacher.
Judgments will differ: in mine the last epoch is the best, and its
utterances will long live a classic in pulpit literature. The pictures
of the first epoch are already fading; the fervid oratory of the second
epoch depends so much on the personality of the preacher, that as the
one grows dim in the distance the other must grow dim also; but the
third, more enduring though less fascinating, will remain so long as the
heart of man hungers for the truth and the life of God,--that is, for a
rational religion, a philosophy of life which shall combine reverence
and love, and a reverence and love which shall not call for the
abdication of the reason.
[Illustration: Signature: Lyman Abbott]