For forty years Mr. Beecher had been minister of Plymouth Church when on
a Sunday morning suddenly came the news that his ministry and probably
his life were ended; and he died a day or two afterwards. The preacher
and the church were more widely known than any others in the Union, and
during all his pastorate he was one of the most conspicuous figures in
the country. He was undoubtedly also one of the most famous preachers of
his time and of the English race, and the death of Wendell Phillips left
him the most eminent of American orators. There have been popular
preachers during Mr. Beecher's career, like Moffit and other
revivalists, and there are always eloquent and scholarly orators in the
American pulpit. The tradition of Summerfield presents a beautiful
youth and a captivating speaker. The charm of Channing was profound and
indescribable. But Beecher recalls Whitefield more than any other
renowned preacher. Like Whitefield, he was what is known as a man of the
people; a man of strong virility, of exuberant vitality, of quick
sympathy, of an abounding humor, of a rapid play of poetic imagination,
of great fluency of speech; an emotional nature overflowing in ardent
expression, of strong convictions, of complete self-confidence; but also
not sensitive, nor critical, nor judicial; a hearty, joyous nature,
touching ordinary human life at every point, and responsive to every
generous moral impulse.
Mr. Beecher was not a pioneer, nor a leader of forlorn hopes, but of the
main column of the army. He marched just ahead of the advance, and
touched with his elbows those who moved forward with him. He liked to
feel the warmth of their breath upon his cheek, and the magnetism of
their neighborhood. He spoke for them as they could not speak for
themselves. He liked the crowd. The hum and throb of multitudinous life
inspired and cheered him. He was at home in streets and towns; with a
bright jest for every comer; a happy quip and repartee; with an eye and
a heart for the unfortunate and forlorn, and a ready rebuke for
insolence and injustice. He had nothing of the recluse or scholarly
habit; no fastidious taste. He was fond of pictures and music and all
forms of art, without especial aesthetic accomplishment; a man of cheery
presence, of cordial address; with a willing word for the reporter,
chaffing the interviewer; jumping on the street-car in motion; yet
always seemly, and always, despite his slouched hat and careless dress,
undeniably clerical, but with no undue professional sense of dignity or
decorum.
In the pulpit, or, more truly, upon the platform--for whether preaching,
or lecturing, or speaking at table or upon the stump, he seemed to be
always upon the platform--he inculcated right living rather than
traditional doctrine. He was a soldier of the church militant, but his
warfare was with human wrong and misery, and false theories of life,
and low aims and poor ambitions. He aimed to build up righteousness of
life, and in the ardor of the strife he liked to pause and wink, and let
fly a bright-tipped, winged word at the opponent, against whom he bore
no kind of malice. He hated the wrong, but not the wrong-doer. Ardent
and impulsive, his generous emotions often overwhelmed his judgment; and
in politics, although the most popular of stump-orators, and never
happier or more truly himself than in a political speech, in which, with
the instinct of a born fighter, he "drank delight of battle," yet he
sometimes amazed and confounded his friends, who, however, could not
doubt his sincerity nor question his purpose.
The great cloud that fell upon his life seemed also to darken the
country. The grief and consternation showed how strong a hold he had
upon the national mind and heart, which indeed was never so firm as at
the very moment that his good name seemed to be obscured. It was the
most tremendous ordeal to which any public man of his peculiar
character and quality of eminence has ever been exposed in this
country. The most remarkable fact in it all was the way in which he
endured it. The blacker the cloud appeared to be, the more sturdy was
his stern defiance, and for weeks of seemingly accumulating and
insurmountable obstruction he faced unflinchingly a possible doom the
mere prospect of which might well have withered a brave heart conscious
of innocence. That the cloud ever wholly disappeared cannot be said, in
view of the tone of the press even as he lay dead in his house. But that
he could never have maintained his position as he did if he had not been
generally acquitted in the public mind seems to be indisputable. If the
relation of his later life to the country was somewhat changed, the
result was due to the decline of confidence in what had been believed to
be his strongest quality, supreme good sense and sound judgment, rather
than to doubt of his moral integrity.
No man lived more in the public eye and for the public than Mr. Beecher.
In his speeches and sermons and writings he took the public into his
confidence with a freedom that was characteristic and natural in him,
but which would have been extraordinary in any other man. He could not
pass through the street without universal recognition, and no man in the
two cities was so well known to everybody as he. At public meetings and
at dinners where he was to speak, he came late amid smiling and
expectant applause, and with the air of saying, "Where MacGregor sits,
there is the head of the table." He had the right to that air, for
wherever he was to speak he was the chief orator. But he was no niggard
of generous praise and sympathy, and no man spoke with more fervent
eulogy and eloquent approval of other men. Doubtless, like an actor or
singer, the long habit of receiving applause had made it pleasant to
him, and as is the fact with all extempore speaking, the greater the
applause the higher the eloquence of his strain. It is a reciprocal
action. Of Mr. Beecher's later platform speeches, the most remarkable
was his political address at the Brooklyn Rink in 1884, which was
delivered amid a storm of enthusiasm, while in the delivery he was
himself wrought to the highest feeling.
His power over the emotions of an audience was unsurpassed in this
country probably since Patrick Henry. Thomas Corwin and Sergeant
Prentiss perhaps were as great masters of humor and patriotic appeal
upon the stump; but Beecher added to these a pathos and sentiment and
poetic tone in which the others did not excel. He had not the fine,
glittering, incisive touch of Wendell Phillips's fatal sarcasm and
vituperation. Phillips stood quietly and played his polished rapier with
a flexible wrist, but its point was deadly; Beecher smote, and crushed.
One was the deft Saladin with his chased and curving cimeter, the other
was Richard with his heavy battle-axe. In the great controversy in which
both were engaged, upon the same side, indeed, but under different
banners and wearing different colors, Beecher and Phillips, amid a
chorus of eloquence, were the two chief voices. Garrison was not
distinctively an orator, while Phillips was the especial and
distinctive orator of the cause, and his fame as a public man belongs to
that cause alone. But Beecher had many interests and relations, and his
oratory had other strains. They were friends always, and Phillips spoke
often in Plymouth Church, and uttered many a glowing word of his
fellow-laborer.
When these words are published the freshness of the impression of
Beecher's death will have passed, and from every part of the country his
eulogy will have been spoken. The universal emotion, the warmth and
tenor of the tributes, will have shown how eminent a figure he was, and
that his death is felt to be a national loss. One of the papers
described him as the last of a great generation, and Senator Cullom,
speaking of Logan in the crowded Brooklyn Academy on the evening of
Beecher's death, called a roll of illustrious names, of which his was
the latest, and among which it surely belongs. His profession was the
preaching of peace and good-will. But how often he must have felt that
his Master came not to bring peace, but a sword! His buoyant
temperament, his perfect health, his love of nature and of man, of
children and flowers, of the changing sky and landscape, his abounding
sympathy, his rich and sensitive humor, made his life joyous and often
happy. But it was none the less a stormy life, ending at last, amid the
sorrow of a country, in happy rest and the good fame of a great orator
for human welfare.