Читать книгу A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher - Scoville Samuel - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Lane Seminary—Dr. Beecher Called—Home at Walnut Hills—Amusing Incidents—Family Meeting—Death of Mrs. Beecher—Extracts from Journal—First Mention of Preaching in the West—Experience in Ecclesiastical Matters—Despondency—Meeting of Synod—Influences of the Times—Revulsion—A Rift along the Horizon—“Full iolly Knight.”

At the close of his college course, after a two-days’ visit to Sutton with Miss Bullard, he started for Cincinnati to begin his theological studies at Lane Seminary, of which institution his father had been elected president and professor of theology, and whither he had moved with his family two years before. The Seminary, located at Walnut Hills, two miles out of the city, had been established for the sake of supplying preachers and pastors for the great and growing West. It was thought that the territory traversed by the Ohio and the Mississippi was “the valley of decision” for the great interests of our country and of the world. To meet the emergency and take possession of this broad domain for Christ, its rightful Lord, was felt to be the most important work that could occupy the attention of the Christian public. It had been decided that a theological seminary established at Cincinnati, in the very centre of this district, afforded the most effective means for attaining the great object in view; that the best man in the whole country should be secured to stand at its head; and that that man, all things considered, was Dr. Beecher. He would bring energy, enthusiasm, and practical wisdom; would secure confidence in the work among Eastern capitalists, and conduct the enterprise to assured success.

Out of this conviction sprang the Seminary and the call to Dr. Beecher to be its head. He was in perfect and enthusiastic sympathy with the object in view. He says of the project: “There was not on earth a place but that I would have opened my ears to for a moment. … But I had felt and thought and labored a great deal about raising up ministers, and the idea that I might be called to teach the best mode of preaching to the young ministry of the broad West flashed through my mind like lightning. It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it, and displaced everything else.”

Coming to this definite work under the inspiration of this great thought, from a church which had been for years in the midst of a continuous revival, he had naturally given the Seminary a markedly practical tone of spiritual earnestness. A strong man himself, he attracted men of like stamp; and there had come, soon after he took charge of the institution, “a noble class of young men, uncommonly strong, a little uncivilized, entirely radical, and terribly in earnest.”

Dr. Beecher’s method of instruction was peculiar and in harmony with his spirit and purpose. It was not so much of the formal lecture order as of the free conversational kind, in which questions were invited, objections were answered, thought was quickened, and feeling was awakened, with the result that the great truth which was the subject of the lecture was likely to be not only in a large measure comprehended but felt and appropriated by the students.

One of the professors, Calvin E. Stowe, for whom Henry Ward conceived one of those ardent friendships which distinguished him through life, helped him in the same direction. “He led him to an examination of the Bible and to an analysis of its several portions, not as the parts of a machine, formal and dead, but as of a body of truth instinct with God, warm with all divine and human sympathies, clothed with language adapted to their fit expression and to be understood as similar language used for similar ends in every-day life.” And we have now in our hands a roll of manuscript in which, in line with this idea, the young student wrote out during his theological course a careful analysis of the miracles and parables of the New Testament.

Without doubt this tone of the institution and method of instruction had an important and very beneficial influence upon him at this formative period of his professional life, giving him a genuine enthusiasm for his work, and training him to investigate carefully and analyze clearly the truths brought under examination.

And, that there might be lacking no element for his fittest training for the great work that was before him, the question of slavery had arisen among the students, creating such a disturbance that forty, under the leadership of Theodore Weld, had withdrawn just before he appeared on the ground.

Of the place, his coming, and some of the incidents in his life his brother, Rev. T. K. Beecher, says:

“By and by they two, Henry and Charles, came to study theology in Lane Seminary, a brick building in the woods of Ohio. The whistle of the quail, the scolding squirrels, once the heavy, busky flight of wild turkeys—my hero killed one and claimed a second—the soft thump and pat of a rabbit, the breezy rush of wild pigeons, were here heard.

“A foot-path led through the woods, over which came three times a day the heroes, shouting, exploding the vowel sounds, and imitating cows, frogs, and crows—a laughing menagerie.

“The Academy of Music, two miles off down-town—Henry primo-basso, Charles violin and tenor; and the little boy, at last an alto, permitted to run between the heroes and sing, while eyes feasted on Charles’s violin bow-hand, and ears were filled with Henry’s basso, are well remembered.

“The ‘Creation’ and ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ were our winter’s work, and Henry was off sometimes lecturing on temperance and phrenology. Sometimes on a Saturday morning, at family prayer, there were Catharine, George, Henry, Harriet, Isabella, Tom and Jim, Aunt Esther, and father still praying ‘Overturn and overturn,’ and singing by all hands:

“ ‘Awake and sing the song

Of Moses and the Lamb;

Wake, every heart and every tongue,

To praise the Saviour’s name.

Sing on your heavenly way,

Ye ransomed sinners, sing!

Sing on rejoicing every day

In Christ the Heavenly King.’

Long, long discussions, lasting till past midnight and resumed at every meal, of ‘free agency,’ ‘sovereignty,’ ‘natural and moral ability,’ interpretations, and such.

“Charles could whittle graceful boats with sharp knife out of thick sticks.

“Henry had the full set of Walter Scott’s works.

“Charles took lessons on the violin of Tosso, in the city. Henry wrote something that Editor Charles Hammond printed in the Cincinnati Gazette. O wonderful Henry! They both wrote long, long letters to two far-away beings, and the little boy sometimes took them to the post-office and paid twenty-five cents, wondering what they could find to write such long, long letters about.”

His brother Charles says:

“The glorious old forest lay between the Seminary and father’s house, and we made it ring with vocal practice and musical scales and imitations of band-music. The house father occupied was of brick, and Henry whitewashed it with a kind of whitewash that was equal to paint, of a sort of cream color. I can see him now, on his tall ladder, with his spattered overalls, working away.

“One of our professors was B———, a nice, dapper, rosy little man, in the chair of history. We naughty boys made fun of him. Henry took notes. I would give something handsome for that note-book. B———was fond of quoting authors with sounding names, Bochart among others, and Henry would have it ‘Go-cart,’ and made a hieroglyphic to that effect.

“We walked to and from the city, up and down the long hill, and attended father’s church, Second Presbyterian, on Fourth Street. Henry had a Bible-class of young ladies, for which he made preparation by writing.”

For three years young Beecher was again a member of the home-circle, from which he had been so long separated. This home had apparently lost none of that broad, open-doored hospitality and cheerful spirit that so markedly characterized it in Litchfield. “The house was full. There was a constant high tide of life and animation. The old carry-all was perpetually vibrating between home and the city, and the excitement of coming and going rendered anything like stagnation an impossibility.” “It was an exuberant and glorious life while it lasted. The atmosphere of the household was replete with mental oxygen, full charged with intellectual electricity. Nowhere else have we felt anything resembling or equalling it. It was a kind of moral heaven, the purity, vivacity, inspiration, and enthusiasm of which only those can appreciate who have lost it and feel that in this world there is, there can be, no place like home.”

Of two of its members and some of their make-shifts we have this account, copied from his journal:

“The Economical Family.—My father was an excellent man (for no one provided better dinners—soups, codfish, mutton-chops; even, upon great days, he has been known to have a turkey). He was a man of enlarged mind and great sagacity. He was before his age in his views, and always before his salary in his expenses. This was from no want of calculation: nobody ever was longer and shrewder in that. But he was aspiring, and by nature seemed to go beyond things seen, far into the region of things hoped for.

“His sister, an antique maiden lady, differed vastly from him and could in no sense be called enlightened. It was astonishing to see how his example and his reasoning were thrown away upon her. To the last she clung to those earthly, low notions which seem so peculiar to this world. She would persist in saying that no one should buy what he could not pay for, nor pay for any new thing until old debts were settled. Nor could she be brought to adopt an enlarged policy in respect to the family. We were obliged to wear clothes until they were worn out—at least out at the knees and elbows—altho’ the fashion should change a dozen times during that period. So that it was not uncommon to find one’s self two or three times the pink of fashion before a suit was fairly condemned as unseaworthy. In fact, we may be said always to have set the fashion at such times, since we were seen wearing the proper cut before even the leading beau. But if this was comfortable it was but little amends for the days of darkness which ensued. One day we revelled (?) in our glory; the next every one gaped at our uncouth fashion. We might properly be likened to a ship riding gracefully upon the water, but suddenly left by the tide sticking in the mud, stiff and immovable. I used to comfort myself, when laughed at, by saying, ‘Never mind; you laugh now, before six months you’ll be imitating me.’ And so it often proved, till I began to think I was a prophet.

“But it is of the family I write and not of myself, for be it known that I am not under vassalage. I am free from both authority and—money; the latter condition as no reproach. I have often noticed that these two kinds of independence are closely allied. True independence seems always in the lurch.”

One amusing incident that grew out of the half country-farm life which they then lived he used often to refer to.

Living in the outskirts of the city, where the fences were poor and straying cattle often gave them great annoyance, Henry one day, to his immense disgust, found a cow quietly resting in the middle of the barn floor. With the accumulated indignation aroused, by numerous chases, which these poachers of the highway had led him, by many tramplings across flower-beds and destruction of the garden vegetables, he drove her out and chased her down the street. Coming in hot and tired from his run, he threw himself upon the sofa, saying: “There, I guess I have taught one old cow to know where she belongs!” “What do you mean?” said the doctor, looking up apprehensively from his paper. “Why, I found another cow in the barn, and I have turned her out and chased her clear down the street, and I think she will stay away now.” “Well,” said Dr. Beecher, “you have done it. I have just bought that cow, and had to wade the Ohio River twice to get her home, and after I have got her safely into the barn you have turned her out. You have done it, and no mistake.” And the chasing of that cow was renewed.

His humor bubbled out at all times and in all places, finding its occasion even in so staid a matter as chapel prayers. He roomed with Prof. Stowe, who was the soul of punctuality, and was continually pained at the failure of his young room-mate to be on time at morning prayers in the Seminary chapel.

Having done his best to wake him up one morning, apparently without success, he had gone down-stairs with many expressions of disgust. No sooner was he out of the room than Henry sprang up, dressed himself as only college students can, ran to the Seminary by a back way, and when the professor entered was sitting demurely in front of the desk. The amazement of the teacher at this unexpected appearance, rubbing his glasses and peering at him again and again to determine whether it was real or he only saw a vision, was always remembered by Mr. Beecher with a chuckle of merriment.

For a short time near the close of his theological course he edited a paper, and appears to have done his work with marked success; but circumstances brought it to a speedy close. “The Cincinnati Journal needed an editor. There was at that time in the middle class of Lane Seminary a green young man of some facility of pen. He had written a series of anonymous articles on the Catholic question in the evening paper edited by Mr. Thomas. He was considered rather tonguey, and not likely to back down from anything from want of hopefulness and self-confidence. Him Dr. Brainerd called to the chair, and, on relinquishing the editorship, recommended this beardless youth to the proprietors of the journal as his successor. One fine morning this young man found himself an editor upon a salary! An editor must have a coat; and Platt Evans made a lion-skin overcoat that has never had a successor or an equal. He must have a watch! A plain, white-faced watch soon ticked in his pocket. Alas! evil days befell the publishers. The paper had a new owner. He did not want the young editor; the young editor did want the watch, but could not pay for it; the seller took it back, to the great grief of the young theologian, who went back disconsolate to his classes at Lane Seminary, and was broken-hearted for a whole day. The young man recovered, and has been in mischief ever since, some folks think.”

When the pro-slavery riots broke out in Cincinnati in 1836, and James G. Birney’s printing-office and press were destroyed by a mob headed by Kentucky slaveholders, young Beecher volunteered and was sworn in as special constable, and for several nights patrolled the streets thoroughly armed to protect the negroes and their friends. He was earnest in this matter, as in everything else that he undertook. His sister Harriet, finding him busy running bullets, and asking him what he was doing it for, was a good deal startled to hear him answer in a hard, determined voice: “To kill men.”

Besides the influence of this common, every-day life, which was afterwards reflected in his own hospitable spirit and home, two domestic events took place during these three years that deserve more especial notice. The first was “the Family Meeting.”

“Long before Edward came out here the doctor had tried to have a family meeting, but did not succeed. The children were too scattered. Two were in Connecticut, some in Massachusetts, and one in Rhode Island. But now—just think of it!—there has been a family meeting in Ohio! When Edward returned he brought on Mary from Hartford. William came down from Putnam, George from Batavia, Ohio; Catharine and Harriet were here already; Henry and Charles at home, too, besides Isabella, Thomas, and James. These eleven! The first time they all ever met together! Mary had never seen James, and she had seen Thomas but once. Such a time as they had! The old doctor was almost transported with joy. The affair had been under negotiation for some time. He returned home from Dayton late one Saturday evening. The next morning they for the first time assembled in the parlor. There were more tears than words. The doctor attempted to pray, but could scarcely speak. His full heart poured itself out in a flood of weeping. He could not go on. Edward continued, and each one in his turn uttered some sentence of thanksgiving. They then began at the head and related their fortunes. After special prayer all joined hands and sang ‘Old Hundred’ in these words:

“ ‘From all that dwell below the skies

Let the Creator’s praise arise.’

* * * *

“When left alone in the evening they had a general examination of all their characters. The shafts of wit flew amain, the doctor being struck in several places. He was, however, expert enough to hit most of them in return. From the uproar of the general battle all must have been wounded. …

“Tuesday morning saw them together again, drawn up in a straight line for the inspection of the king of happy men. After receiving particular instructions they formed into a circle. The doctor made a long and affecting speech. He felt that he stood for the last time in the midst of all his children, and each word fell with the weight of a patriarch’s. He embraced them once more in all the tenderness of his big heart. Each took of all a farewell kiss. With joined hands they united in a hymn. A prayer was offered, and finally the parting blessing was spoken.”

The other event referred to was the death of Mrs. Beecher, which occurred at the close of Henry’s first Seminary year. She was his step-mother, but “she did all that she could for my good.”

“In the holy yearnings of this truly devoted mother the whole family was included; nor could the older children perceive any less fervency in her desires for their true welfare than for that of her own flesh and blood.” And it was with deep and true feeling that he writes “that God was with her in her closing days, and that the light of his countenance cheered her passage to the tomb.”

These varied experiences of joy and sorrow in the home-life of this period; this variety of occupation—now studying and attending lectures in the Seminary, lecturing on temperance and phrenology, drilling in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” painting the old family mansion, accompanying his father in his attendance upon presbytery and synod, now a constable and anon an editor—all contributed to give him a broad culture, had much to do with the variety of labor which he undertook in after-life, and fitted him for that easy, natural, and familiar mingling with all kinds and conditions of men which was in him so marked a characteristic.

Of what he did, read, and thought at this time we are fortunate in having another source of authentic information from his own pen. Upon the unruled blank leaf of a letter-book, as large as a commercial ledger and heavily bound in leather, is written in a large hand, large enough to cover the whole page:

JOURNAL

OF

EVENTS, FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, PLANS, ETC.,

JUST AS THEY HAVE MET ME, THUS GIVING IN PART

A TRANSCRIPT OF MY INNER AND OUTER LIFE.

BEGUN JUNE, 1835, AT LANE THEOL. SEMINARY.

On the first page, “Begun three days after birthday,” June 27. “I have tried times without number to keep a diary or a journal of my religious feelings. I have never succeeded.” 1. “I am not enough contemplative to make a record of reflections and feelings very definite.” 2. “I never could be sincere. The only use which I distinctly know that I have derived from it is a knowledge of my being very averse to saying just what my feelings were. I could not help feeling: ‘This will, perhaps, be seen.’ And why should I not so feel? One object in keeping a journal is to look back upon your mind as it reflected itself at different periods past, and if you keep one no one can pretend to have enough of prospective wisdom to save it from the hands of others.”

After half a page of reasons why this possibility—which has indeed been realized—may take place, he says: “Can I conceal it all from myself, and feign to myself that that which I am disclosing and giving form and permanence to, my most secret feelings, none will see? And when I feel secretly that they will be seen, is it possible to go through honestly a narration of those emotions from the disclosure of which I shrink in my inmost soul?”

In view of this possibility, he decides upon a modification of his ideal:

“In this journal I do not set before me as an object to tell all my feelings, but only such as for any reason I may choose to tell. I intend to record, too, my opinions and reflections on occurrences, on persons, on books, and to find a resting-place, if possible, for many of those daily thoughts which are too short and unconnected to be noted down separately, and yet of some small value, perhaps—at least to give variety to a journal. Then, too, being little tenacious of dates, I here mean to record and date all changes in my life, that afterwards, when business and multiplicity of other facts have crowded from my mind such facts, I may here recur as to a faithful chronicle and refresh my memory.

“Here, then, I mean to be at ease, and not molest myself with any obligations to write so much, or so often, or so anything, but in mental dishabille I will stroll through my mind and do as I choose.”

It can well be supposed that with such an introduction facing us we feel some delicacy, even with the quasi permission which his departure from the true ideal of a journal gives, in handling, and especially in giving to the public, the matters which are here written. While we find no word that a perfectly upright and honorable man need be ashamed of, we do find private matters which we have no right to make public. Out of the great amount of material which the journal affords we have selected such portions as illustrate the salient features of his life, character, work, and methods at this time.

First of all, we find him still keeping up the old habit of reading, and after a very critical method.

“July 1, 1835.—I finished Scott’s ‘Antiquary’ this morning, and I propose giving some little account of my impressions. To do it I shall be obliged to collect my general scattered feelings into a definite, tangible form; and if I always did it after reading I should have more numerous ideas of things and of their forms, and more correct ones.

“I think it one of Scott’s best, although my personal taste gives his novels founded on warlike customs, as ‘Ivanhoe,’ more relish. But that does not alter the abstract merits of this, for there are grounds of judging a work altogether aside from our taste as to the subject judged. There are but two general considerations in estimating a novel. First, has the author been a faithful copyist of nature, even when his effort is of the imagination? And, second, has he made a judicious selection and skilful combination of his material.”

After several pages of the large ledger have been devoted to this subject, there follows this entry:

“July 4.—The difference between Scott and Shakspere is of two kinds: (1) the difference of dramatic and prosaic description, and (2) the native difference of the two men. The first involves a discussion and comparison of the two kinds of writing. The dramatic is narrower, more formal and measured, and consequently more stiff. No one ever heard one speak as Macbeth, as Hamlet, or as Iago, for no one ever spoke so. Passion, or indeed nature, never marches in heroic measure. In another respect it differs. There is a general sameness of language. The imitation of nature respects feelings and character, and not expression, if we except some comic characters. But prose imitates with perfect freedom, unshackled by verse, not only the passion, character, etc., but the expression and language.

“In this respect Scott differs from himself as a poet and novelist as much as when a novelist he differs from Shakspere, etc. …”

Similar and lengthy criticisms of Crabbe, Coleridge, Byron, Burns, and others follow, many of them crude, but all aiming to grasp and express the original thought of the poet, as he says after naming some rules by which to judge a book:

“But such things are the externals of criticism. I admire the German way of going into the motive and spirit of a poem, and discussing the principles and source of feeling.”

We find his habit of drawing from his own experiences some moral or spiritual lesson, and then teaching it to others, thus early formed:

“June 27, 1835.— … Being unwell is by no means useless. It crowds one on to thoughts of death, and sweeps away all the mist of forgetfulness which the frivolity of events has accumulated. One must either wrap himself in designed forgetfulness—which is a stupid resource—or come to some conclusion in respect to his religious prospects. For my part, in sickness (what little I have had) I am not agitated, but rendered serious and calmly apprehensive, and I begin to think what God is, and Christ, and heavenly joy, and compare them with my tastes and disposition, and see if they accord or are repulsive. I’ve written enough for the present, so I’ll return to Scott’s ‘Legend of Montrose.’ ”

We find very little, almost nothing, concerning the regulation work and studies of the theological course, possibly because some other book which has not come down to us contained these. He seems to have plenty to do, and carries into his work a very decided determination to succeed.

“Aug. 2, 1835, Sunday.—I have for this time work enough: two courses of lectures—one, for my Bible-class, to begin next Sunday; the other a course of temperance lectures for Reading and elsewhere. I don’t know how I shall succeed, but I am never self-distrustful and often feel sure I shall do VERY well, and as often see that I may fall through entirely. Either course failing would mortify me. But here, as elsewhere, let me start with feeling, ‘I will persevere, and with every endeavor which interest and ingenuity can furnish.’ Such being one’s constant feeling and action, hardly anything is invincible. Perseverance without corresponding exercise of ALL ONE’S MIND is but a dogged spinning out of tedious and useless effort. Remember when most discouraged to labor as though you were in the full blossom of Hope, and shortly you will be.”

At this time he was singing in, and sometimes leading, the choir in his father’s church, as he writes:

“Nov. 14.—The medical authorities of the family, having ordered me up for inspection, have decided that I was not sea-worthy, but have, in view of past services, ordered me into dock to be a receiving-ship, and there to undergo thorough repairs. I am quietly riding in the dock without mast or rigging. They have sent aboard two sets of workmen this morning, under the care of Messrs. Calomel and Aloes; and these are to remove all my cargo, ballast, etc., after which I am to be new-rigged and furnished and sent out on a new cruise. This is well. I have sailed very dully for some time and came near to foundering once or twice.

“Will you take my place to-day and sing bass? I know of no one possessing suitable gravity except yourself to confront the audience and do justice to music. … Yours truly,

“ ‘Old Constitution.’ ”

A line of tender sentiment runs through the journal, appearing whenever any reference is made to the one to whom he was engaged. Concerning so delicate a matter we only give extracts sufficient to show the radiant atmosphere in which, at least at times, he walked, and the deep and sincere affection which he cherished. They are to be read as the opening stanzas of that beautiful idyl that closed only with his life.

“Aug. 4, 1835.—It is a little curious, perhaps not, however, that I very much dislike to say anything in my journal of my thoughts and feeling for E., who is so much of my existence. Well, I suppose the more and the more delicately we love the less we care and wish to say about it. It becomes a matter of heart, not of tongue; it becomes a feeling, and feeling has no language except action. I have sent her a large letter, largely laden with affection. …”

“Aug. 5, 1835.—Woke up and thought of E———, M———, and G———; compared their characters. M———is marked by INTELLECT, G———by lady-like character, sweetness, and gayness. E———has neither so prominent, but both well combined and softened by strongest and sweetest affectionateness. Her character is uniform, and projects, if anywhere, in line of affection.”

“Sept. 14, 1835.—I wonder what people think of my warmth? Some, I know, estimate it far too highly, because they have not seen much of such things. Others, and most, suppose it very low and suspect very little of it. It is in truth but medium naturally. Well, in a year or two, and then E———will be disappointed the right way. What a noble creature E———is! I could have looked through ten thousand and never have found one so every way suited to me. How dearly do I love her! I long for the portrait.”

“Oct. 1, 1835.—Found a packet of letters from my dearest E———. Oh, how dear! Her likeness too, which, though imperfect in some respects, has very much the looks of the original, and if only one feature were preserved I would feel grateful. But, excepting the mouth, each feature is faithfully like her own. I shall begin a letter to her to-night. God bless and keep her! I love her more and more and say less and less about it.

“Harriet has had E———‘s portrait all day, and I have felt quite lonesome without it. Last evening I retired to bed and very philosophically decided to leave the portrait in my side-pocket. I lay for some half-hour and was quite convinced that it was in the wrong place, and removed it to my pillow. It soon underwent another migration—where, one may imagine if he will recall all such doings as depicted in novels.”

The following is his first mention of preaching in the West:

“Aug. 9, Sunday, 1835.—Preached twice in George’s church. In morning with great dryness and trouble, and felt much mortified—more, I think, than grieved.

“Afternoon smaller audience, but had great liberty and fluency, and produced effect; but whether superficial or permanent and saving, God only knows. Afternoon text: ‘My ways not as your ways’; Morning: ‘For we thus judge’ (2 Cor. v. 14, etc.)

“After preliminaries, subject, ‘The genius of Christianity is not to produce gloom or debar from pleasure; but, contrary, earthly pleasures can only be enjoyed by Christians, and much more heavenly.’ ”

He begins to be conscious of unused powers.

“Sept., 1835.—Since reading Crabbe and Scott I am possessed with the notion of writing characters. I have some models which I know would be originals.”

His love of fun evidently subjected him now and then to criticism. To one whose remarks had touched him to the quick he writes in self-defence:

“Oct. 29 [1835].— … You said last night that I was never made for a minister. If a minister were made to wear a lachrymose face and never to enjoy or make mirth, you said truly and I was not born to it. There are, in fact, three classes of divines—the ascetic, the neuter, and the sunshiny; the first conceive the chief end of man to consist in a long face, upturned eyes, a profound sanctimonious look. … I must plead guilty if you mean that I was not born to the rank of these worthy personages. Far be it from me to believe that religion makes ridiculous dunces. And though I think many such are truly pious men, yet such endowments are the deformity and misfortune, not the ornament, of their piety. The second class I call neuter because they (like the Chinese leaf by which character is told) quirl and roll just according to the party with which they are. … I must confess I have too many opinions of my own to be whirled about by every change of company. And though it is proper and decent that one should conform to the nature of different occasions, so as not to jest at a funeral, laugh at church, or dance in a hospital among the sick, the dead and dying; and though one should respect the conditions of his company, so as not to obtrude upon age the buoyancy of youth, … yet I am sure neither old age nor old reflections … shall make me disown mirth. … Now for the third class, the glorious, sunshiny ones. I envy them, I emulate them. These are they who think there is a time for relaxation and elegant enjoyment. Too much is to be done to allow them long seasons of gayety. … But while they labor hard, think and write, and preach and visit, weeping with those who weep, they conceive by the same authority that they may unbend and refresh the mind by laughing with those who laugh. … To be mirthful is part of our constitution, and I believe God never gave us that which it is a sin to exercise. … None but those who feel it can tell how hard it is to restrain a disposition which sees everything in the most ludicrous point of view. But God knows that if I have a good deal of mirth I compensate for it in secret; and although now I look for different times, yet till now I have had enough of anything but joy to make mirth acceptable to me. You said what you did in jest, but I lay awake all night thinking of it. God will bear me witness that I love the ministry, and if it be necessary for me to lay aside even my constitutional gayety that I may be more useful, I will cheerfully do it. …”

From a “catalogue of books in my possession” we learn that on December 2, 1835, he had 42 volumes of theological works, 71 volumes of literary, 10 scientific, and 12 miscellaneous, making a grand total in all of 135 volumes—not a bad showing for one who had earned every book, either by labor or severe economy, and, what is more to the point, had read and studied them all.

We must now turn from the perusal of his journal to note other influences than those already referred to—those of the Seminary, of home and books—that were at work upon him at this time. There were some that had a very important influence in shaping his ecclesiastical bearing through life.

These were days of heresy-hunting; days when Albert Barnes was arraigned before presbytery for unsoundness because of some kind of heterodoxy (?) discovered in his notes upon Romans, and when the conflict between the two parties in the Presbyterian Church was rapidly advancing to a division of that great body into Old and New School. “Dr. Beecher,” so writes Mrs. Stowe, “was now the central point of a great theological battle. It was a sort of spiritual Armageddon, being the confluence of the forces of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Calvinistic fatalism, meeting in battle with the advancing rationalism of New England New School theology. On one side was hard, literal interpretation of Bible declarations and the Presbyterian standards asserting man’s utter and absolute natural and moral inability to obey God’s commands, and on the other side the doctrine of man’s free agency and the bringing to the rendering of the declarations of the Scriptures and of the standards the lights of modern modes of interpretation.” This battle soon assumed the character of an assault upon Dr. Lyman Beecher for the purpose of his destruction. His son knew it to be wholly without justification and as senseless as it was wicked. He knew his father’s earnestness, devotion, and unselfishness, the sacrifices he had made to take up this work, felt how greatly he deserved the gratitude of all Christian men; and when he saw that father attacked for heresy and brought before every tribunal of the Presbyterian Church, except the highest, for trial, and all because his construction of the Presbyterian Confession was not according to the views of one or two of the leaders of that Church in the West, he was not more indignant than disgusted.

He saw him triumphantly acquitted by one body after another, but still pursued by suspicion, and knew that a conspiracy had been formed in which some of his Eastern friends and one or more Eastern seminaries were enlisted, with the avowed intention of crushing him, and all this mostly by good men, under the strong bias of ecclesiastical prejudice and in a mistaken zeal for God’s service.

We must feel his disgust as he was compelled to go scurrying through the country, not to rescue souls from danger nor to forward any great moral end, but to anticipate the action of some presbytery or arrange for some meeting of synod; we must realize his indignation at seeing his father compelled to leave the death-bed of his mother to defend himself against these heresy-hunters, if we would understand the position which Mr. Beecher occupied towards ecclesiastical bodies in after-years.

In a letter dated “Canal Boat, Wednesday morning, Oct. 14, 1835,” Henry Ward gives an account of a meeting of Synod. After a humorous description of the eccentricities of Dr. Beecher, for which we have no space, he writes: “At length we are ready to start. A trunk tumbles out of one side as Thomas tumbles in the other. I reverse the order—tumble Tom out, the trunk in. At length all are aboard, and father drives out of the yard, holding the reins in one hand, shaking hands with a student with the other, giving Charles directions with his mouth—at least that part not occupied with an apple; for since apples were plenty he has made it a practice to drive with one rein in the right hand and the other in the left, with an apple in each, biting them alternately, thus raising and lowering the reins like threads on a loom. Away we go, Charley horse on a full canter down the long hill, the carriage bouncing and bounding over the stones, father alternately telling Tom how to get the harness mended and showing me the true doctrine of original sin. Hurrah! we thunder alongside the boat just in time. … Yesterday the Synod was constituted Old School. Moderator by a majority of seven, under his administration the system is beginning to assume form and becomes apparent. All the committees are one way, and the whole aspect of affairs shows you that there is a deep-laid, regular plan, and the elders are all drilled in. The committee give leave of absence to all New School men, and refuse all others, so that they may increase and we decrease.

“It is Tuesday morning and everybody is talking, planning, plotting—all bustle; heads together; knots at every corner; hands going up and down, and faces approaching earnestly or drawing back in doubt; one taking hold of the other’s coat, leading off into one corner for a particular argument; elders receiving drill, some bolting the collar. Here, in my room, are father, George, and Mr. Rankin. They are looking over the ground, prognosticating, arranging for the onset, or for the reception of an onset. … I never saw so many faces of clergymen, and so few of them intellectual faces. … And the elders are just what forty or fifty common farmers would be supposed to be—except that for eldership the soberest men are chosen, and, as stupidity is usually graced with more gravity than great good sense, the body of elders are not quite so acute in look as the higher class of workingmen.”

Although written in a playful mood, it is evident that he had no fancy for such work, and as he advanced his dislike increased. The broad, kindly, hospitable living, the strong, practical, sympathetic preaching, and the honest dislike of all the rattle of ecclesiastical machinery, which marked his after-life, came naturally from the training he received on the outside of Lane Seminary.

The influences of the place in which he lived as well as of the times were powerful factors in his theological education. The great West, with its boundless possibilities which had so moved the spirit of his father, lay before him, and stirred his imagination as at an earlier period the sea had done. And, as when he looked out upon the broad Atlantic from the wharves of Boston he had felt the impulse to go forth to be a sailor, command ships, and fight naval battles, so did the movement of the great streams of population Westward, and the vast field that stretched out before him like the ocean, move his spirit to go forth upon the sea of human life and conquer for Christ.

In this period of theological study, when the most of students withdraw themselves as much as possible from real life, he was brought to face it in some of its most intense forms. Cincinnati was then the central and most important city of the great West; an immense commerce was carried on from its wharves; it was the point where gathered the multitudes that were going out to occupy the new territory; it was still the rendezvous for frontiersmen; more than this, it lay upon the border-land between the free and slave States, and already felt the uneasiness and bitterness of the irresistible conflict. Chain-gangs of slaves were continually passing on the decks of the steamboats, to be sold down South, and fugitives from bondage were keeping the sympathy or the hatred of the people in continual activity. Life of high pressure and in great variety was presented to Henry Ward Beecher there in the heart of the great West in the years of 1834–1837; life that was very real, and that called not so much for fine-spun theories as for practical forces; not for dead and formal dogmas, but for living truth, for Him who is both Life and Truth.

True, he might have measurably kept himself from it and immured himself in the library and class-rooms of the Seminary, but he followed an entirely opposite course; he lectured, wrote anti-slavery editorials, joined the citizens’ body of police for the preservation of order, every way keeping himself in sympathy with the stirring times in which he lived, and they helped to make him the living, practical preacher he afterwards became.

His Bible-class, to which he gave great attention, both in preparation and in teaching the lesson, afforded him a field for the application of the truths he had learned, and for testing the methods he had adopted.

Yet for the most of the time his mind was not settled. His ideal of the Christian ministry was so high that he sometimes despaired of ever attaining it, and at times he seems to have seriously contemplated giving up his preparation for the ministry and of devoting himself to some other pursuit. Mrs. Beecher says that through these years his letters were very full of the discomforts and doubts that troubled him. “… Sometimes I think I shall not succeed in anything. If, when my course here is finished, they will not license me, suppose I go far West, enter a homestead (?), clear the wood off, build a little log hut, work during the week, and hunt up the settlers and hold conference and prayer meetings—will you come to me if that is all I can offer you?” Then, perhaps, in the next letter: “I will preach, if it is in the by-ways and hedges; but oh! for more light to see my way clear!” “During the last two years his letters had less of this depression. He would preach, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear.” “But I must preach the Gospel as it is revealed to me, not as it is laid down in the schools.”

He gives his experience in these words:

“During the latter part of my stay in college my feelings were unsettled. Sometimes they inclined one way and sometimes the other, until I went to Lane Seminary. I was then twenty years old, and there came a great revulsion in me from all this inchoate, unregulated, undirected experience in religion. My mind took one tremendous spring over into scepticism, and I said: ‘I have been a fool long enough.’ I refused to be any longer played upon in such a way. It was bitter, it was malignant, it was sad, it was sorrowful; but it was wholesale, and swept away ten thousand fictions and external observances. I said: ‘I will not stir one step further than I can see my way, and I will not stand a moment where I cannot see the truth. I will have something that is sure and steadfast.’ Having taken that ground, I was in that state of mind for the larger part of two years.

“It then pleased God to lift upon me such a view of Christ as one whose nature and office it is to have infinite and exquisite pity upon the weakness and want of sinners as I had never had before. I saw that He had compassion upon them because they were sinners, and because He wanted to help them out of their sins. It came to me like the bursting forth of spring. It was as if yesterday there was not a bird to be seen or heard, and as if to-day the woods were full of singing birds. There rose up before me a view of Jesus as the Saviour of sinners—not of saints, but of sinners unconverted, before they were any better—because they were so bad and needed so much; and that view has never gone from me. It did not at first fill the whole heaven; it came as a rift along the horizon; gradually, little by little, the cloud rolled up. It was three years before the whole sky was cleared so that I could see all around, but from that hour I felt that God had a father’s heart; that Christ loved me in my sin; that while I was a sinner He did not frown upon me nor cast me off, but cared for me with unutterable tenderness, and would help me out of sin; and it seemed to me that I had everything I needed. When that vision was vouchsafed to me I felt that there was no more for me to do but to love, trust, and adore; nor has there ever been in my mind a doubt since that I did love, trust, and adore. There has been an imperfect comprehension, there have been grievous sins, there have been long defections; but never for a single moment have I doubted the power of Christ’s love to save me, any more than I have doubted the existence in the heaven of the sun by day and the moon by night.”

We have thus followed Henry Ward Beecher from the cradle to the moment that he stands prepared to enter upon his life-work; have noted every step of his course from the hills to the sea, from school to college, from the East to the West; have marked the influences of the home, of nature, of the city, of school, college, and seminary, of the times, of the Word and Spirit of God; have traced his experiences, felt his dawning strength, examined the life he lived, the dispositions he manifested, the hopes he cherished, and the character he formed; and in our confidence and admiration choose, as not inappropriate for him at this time, the description of “The Patrone of true Holinesse” in the “Faerie Queene”: