Call to Preach—License—Examination by Miami Presbytery—Refusal to Subscribe to Old School—Ordination by Oxford Presbytery—Visit East—Marriage—Housekeeping.

In the early spring of 1837 Mr. Beecher graduated from Lane Seminary. In accordance with the practice of the Presbyterian Church, a clergyman might be licensed to preach, even though not ordained; but such license could only be obtained after the applicant had appeared before the Presbytery for examination, and he was required also to read a “trial lecture,” as it was called. Agreeably to this custom, upon graduating from the Seminary Mr. Beecher went before the Cincinnati Presbytery, was examined, and read his “trial lecture.” The examination and lecture seem to have been satisfactory, for he was duly licensed to preach.

For a few weeks prior to his examination for license he preached in a little hall at Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. He seriously contemplated settling there as soon as he should be licensed.

“After preaching there [Covington] three or four Sundays I was called, by Martha Sawyer, a Yankee woman, to go to Lawrenceburg and preach. There was a church in that place, composed of about twenty members, of which she was the factotum. She collected the money, she was the treasurer, she was the manager, she was the trustee, she was the everything of that church.”

At this time the pulpit of the little, struggling Presbyterian church at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, was vacant, and one of the ladies of that church came up to Cincinnati to see if Bishop Little could not secure for them a pastor. The good bishop introduced her to young Henry Ward Beecher. This led to his preaching one or two trial sermons at Lawrenceburg. The result of the experiment seemed to be satisfactory on both sides, although the first sermon was said to have been a lamentable failure through the nervous apprehensions of the young preacher in facing the unusually large audience of one hundred persons.

In May, 1837, he moved to Lawrenceburg and began preaching regularly as a licentiate, not yet ordained.

It may not be uninteresting to read just here the brief memoranda from the journal which he was keeping then:

“May 4 [1837].—Returned from Lawrenceburg. I think seriously of settling there—a destitute place indeed....

“If I go to Lawrenceburg, remember you can gain men easily if you get round their prejudices and put truth in their minds; but never if you attack prejudices. Look well at this....

”Mem.—My people must be alert to make the church agreeable, to give seats and wait on strangers, etc.“

”June 15, Thursday.—To-day received call from Lawrenceburg, and a very flattering call it was and did my heart good. Meeting called June 12, 1837; about 30 persons present. Mr. Hunt, moderator; D. S. Mayer, sec. Vote for me unanimous. Blank filled for $250, with but one dissenting voice (he voting for double that sum).“

”Monday, July 10.—Sat. eve., 8th, arrived here permanently to remain....

“I mean to write down little plans and devices for pastoral labor as they occur; I may else forget them.

“1. In different districts get men quietly to feel themselves responsible for progress of temperance or Sunday-schools.

“2. Quietly to visit from house to house and secure congregations.

“3. Secure a large congregation. Let this be the first thing. For this—

“1. Preach well uniformly.

“2. Visit widely and produce a personal attachment; also wife do same.

“3. Get the young to love me.

“4. See that the church have this presented as a definite thing, and set them to this work just as directly as I would to raising a fund, building, etc.

“4. Little girls’ societies for benevolent purposes.”

The town was small, scarce fifteen hundred inhabitants, located at the junction of the Ohio and Miami rivers—just across the Miami from Ohio on the east, and the Ohio River from Kentucky on the south—subject to devastating floods from both rivers impartially.

The church was small, with meagre accommodations, the people poor. We quote his description of the place and church:

“You can form some conception of that field when I tell you that it was a place where they had four gigantic distilleries, from which was carried to market a steamboat-load of liquor every day. When I went there and entered upon my vocation of preaching, I found a church, occupying a little brick building, with nineteen or twenty members. There was one man, and the rest were women. With the exception of two persons, there was not one of them who was not obliged to gain a livelihood by the labor of the hands. So you will understand how very poor they were. I could not, of course, obtain my living in so small a church, and in a community that was not overblessed with wealth. I was taken up, therefore, as a pensioner by the Home Missionary Society, and my first two years were spent in the field as a missionary, in part supported by the funds of this society.

“I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and bought some, and filled them and lit them. I swept the church and lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell, because there was none. I opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after every meeting. I took care of everything in the church.”

Here in this little frontier village, then upon the very borders of civilization, began his real work. For twenty-four years he had been preparing for this step. Now it must be determined whether his life should be a success or a failure.

The year passed uneventfully, and it was not until September, 1838, when he applied for ordination, that he got his first taste of trouble.

At this time the division between the Old School and the New School Presbyterian churches was about to take place, and two General Assemblies, afterwards called the Old School General Assembly and the New School General Assembly, were, a short time later, convened in Philadelphia. A resolution was introduced into the Oxford Presbytery that no man should be licensed or ordained by that body who did not connect himself with the Old School Presbyterian Church, dropping from their care those who declined to do so.

This resolution, it was thought, was probably aimed at Mr. Beecher^[3]—an attempt to strike the father over the shoulders of his son. For the actual division and separation of the Presbyterian Church into Old and New School was in no small measure the result of the controversy carried on for several years previously against Dr. Lyman Beecher. The doctor in 1832 had, as we have seen, accepted the presidency and professorship of doctrinal theology in Lane Seminary. He had been brought up in, and had been connected with, the Congregational Church until this time. While he entertained no revolutionary spirit, he had some expectation that the free spirit of New England thought, and that loving spirit of voluntary co-operation which he had enjoyed so in his New England pastorate, might be infused into the forms of Presbyterianism. The idea of an intimate friendship and co-operation between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in the United States had always been dear to him.

But when he went to Cincinnati there had already commenced in different quarters a movement aiming at greater stringency and the expulsion from the Presbyterian Church of what was called the New England element, of which Dr. Beecher was an eminent representative. His settlement at Lane Seminary was followed by a more active demonstration of hostility. Formal charges of heresy, slander, and hypocrisy were preferred against him, to which reference has already been made.

These proceedings produced a very markedly unfavorable impression in the public mind against Presbyterianism. They had only ended at about the time his son, Henry Ward, came to Lawrenceburg.

There was a good deal of feeling in the two branches of the Presbyterian Church, and when Mr. Beecher applied to the Oxford Presbytery, within whose jurisdiction Lawrenceburg was located, a good deal of interest was aroused. A son of Dr. Lyman Beecher was to be examined by a presbytery known to be in marked hostility to him. It would be a good chance to demonstrate the laxity and heterodoxy of Dr. Beecher. For, of course, the young man would only reflect the father’s views.

The presbytery duly met in session in September, 1838, and Henry Ward appeared before them. Writing to his brother George, he refers to his examination. After telling of his family affairs he says:

“So much for family news—a quiet lake; now for public affairs—a troubled ocean casting up mud and dirt.

“I went some sixty miles up into Preble County, near Eaton, before Oxford Presbytery. Presented my papers. Father Craigh was appointed to squeak the questions. They examined me to their hearts’ content. I was a model to behold, and so were they! Elders opened their mouths, gave their noses a fresh blowing, fixed their spectacles, and hitched forward on their seats. The ministers clinched their confessions of faith with desperate fervor and looked unutterably orthodox, while Graham and a few friendly ones looked a little nervous, not knowing how the youth would stand fire. There he sat, the young candidate begotten of a heretic, nursed at Lane; but, with such a name and parentage and education, what remarkable modesty, extraordinary meekness, and how deferential to the eminently acute questioners who sat gazing upon the prodigy! Certainly this was a bad beginning. Having predetermined that I should be hot and forward and full of confidence, it was somewhat awkward, truly, to find such gentleness and teachableness!

“Then came the examination: ‘Will the mon tell us in what relation Adam stood to his posterity?’ ‘In the relation of a federal head.’ ‘What do you mean by a federal head?’ ‘A head with whom God made a covenant for all his posterity.’ Then questions on all the knotty points. ‘Still the wonder grew,’ for the more the lad was examined the more incorrigibly orthodox did he grow, until they began to fear he was a leetle too orthodox upon some points. What was to be done? The vote on receiving me was unanimous! Well, they slept upon it. Next day, while settling the time of my ordination, Prof. McArthur, of Oxford, moved to postpone the business to take up some resolutions. In the first they ‘sincerely adhered to the Old School Pby. Assembly’; second, required that all licentiates and candidates under their care should do the same or be no longer such. I declined acknowledging it to be the true one. Father Craigh (whom my orthodoxy had softened) said they would give me six months to think and decide, and I might continue to preach in their bounds. I refused, and they turned me out and gave me my papers back again. I asked them what the duty of my church was. They replied that it was vacant—just what they had to say, and just what I wanted them to say, and, moreover, just what I determined they should say. I drove home forthwith; got back on Saturday. On Sunday recounted from the pulpit the doings of Pby., and declared them vacant if they continued under Oxford; appointed a meeting for Wednesday P.M. for their action. By a unanimous vote they withdrew from Oxford and declared themselves an Independent Pbyn. ch. Now for Synod. The Old School called a convention to meet two days before Synod met; cut out a series of resolutions going for O. S. Assembly, cutting off those who had officially joined the Constitutional Assembly, etc., etc. After sermon by Jno. Rankin, Stowe and Coe nominated for moderator—Stowe 47, Coe 70. The New School then determined simply to urge on to voting. All speaking was on one side. When they had passed the resolutions to the one cutting off all who had joined N. S. Assembly they inserted a new one, by which majority of Cincinnati Presbytery were ejected! Jno. Rankin then rose and declared the body dissolved,dissolved, and as moderator of last Synod would give them time to leave the house, and would then form the true Synod. They prayed and adjourned to Wilson’s. It was queer. ‘Synod of Cincinnati will adjourn to meet at 7 in 1st Pby. ch.’; ‘Synod Cin. will now come to order,’ etc. I left after this and both bodies were still in session. I stepped in a moment Saturday morning just before leaving, and they were then passing in our Synod a resolution not to allow any slave-holder in our connection. Mills agreed to it. I did not wait to hear votes, but presume it was nearly unanimous. Synod declared the whole ground formerly held by Oxford Pby. to be held by the Cin. Pby. Stowe has just written me that Graham, Thomas, Chidlow, Merril, Crothers, Dickey, and others have formally withdrawn from the Old School Synod, but not yet united with ours. This is a brief sketch of matters ecclesiastical. Pby. of Cin. will begin their new authority over former territory of Oxford Pby., by coming here to ordain me on Thurs., Nov. 8 [1838].”

The New School Presbytery met in Cincinnati, and before this body Mr. Beecher applied for ordination, the minutes of which record that it ordained and installed him November 9, 1838, over the independent church at Lawrenceburg, Dr. Lyman Beecher presiding, Dr. Blanchard charging the pastor, and Dr. Calvin E. Stowe, his brother-in-law, charging the people.

Mr. Beecher felt that the division in the Church was wholly uncalled for, but naturally was unwilling to desert the school to which he was attached by its more liberal and democratic policy, by the associations of his education, and the ties of filial love and admiration. The bitterness of this controversy in the body of the Church, and the utter folly of a great Church, organized for the work of saving men’s souls, wasting its strength in harsh recriminations and angry feuds over matters which seemed to him of minor importance, and finally splitting the Church into two hostile bodies, produced a profound impression upon Mr. Beecher’s mind, and developed rapidly that trait, doubtless then latent, which has so markedly characterized his preaching since then—a disregard of mere forms, provided he could secure the substance. And so he grew to look upon all denominations as his brethren, wholly disregarding the formal differences that existed, rejoicing heartily in all their successes, and wishing them God-speed, seeing only the objects for which all labored—the enlightenment of the world, the saving of mankind. He was always willing to co-operate. He never withheld his hand or voice, when there was a chance to help a struggling church, because it was of a different denomination from his own.

He gave another account of these experiences and their effect upon his mind, in some remarks at one of his Friday-night meetings, suggested by the meeting, in the spring of 1869, of the Assemblies of the Old and New Schools, and their reunion as one body at that time:

“My whole life has more or less taken its color from the controversy which led to the division of the Old School and the New School Presbyterians. I was brought up in New England, a minister’s son, the son of a minister who was doctrinally inclined and whose warmest friends were great doctrinarians. My father’s household was substantially a debating society. As early as I can remember I knew enough to discuss foreordination, and I could do it as well as my betters. I could go just as far as they could, could run against snags at the same spots that they did, and could not get off any better than they could. All those great doctrines which tend powerfully to enlarge the imagination and to sharpen the reason without feeding them were, I had almost said, matters of daily conversation in my father’s family. When I went to college I fell under the influence of a young minister who became an Old School Presbyterian. He was a man of large brain and marked ability. He had a naturally philosophic mind. He was noble-hearted and genial. I remember that my poetic temperament, alongside of his rigorous, logical temperament, used to seem to me mean and contemptible. I thought he was like a big oak-tree, while I was more like a willow, half-grown and pliant, yielding to every force that was exerted upon it. At any rate, he had a powerful influence upon my development. But as I came to the possession of myself more and more I took on the logical methods in the exercise of the reasoning faculty which God had implanted in me, and they came near wrecking me; for I became sceptical, not malignantly but honestly, and it was to me a matter of great distress and anguish. It continued for years, and no logic ever relieved me. My brother Charles went through the same process, and he came back in the same way that I did, through the instrumentality of a living Saviour. An abstract, philosophical statement of the truth never met my wants, but when there arose over the horizon a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ as a living Friend, who had the profoundest personal interest in me, I embraced that view and was lifted up. My heart did for me then what my head had failed to do. This was an experience which has constituted one of the greatest affirmative forces that have acted on my mind in preaching. All my life long I have had a strong disposition to so preach the truth as to meet the wants of men who stand not only outside of the churches but outside of belief. I suppose that as long as I live I shall think of the truth, not as it looks to those that are within the Church, but as it looks to those that are outside of the Church and outside of belief itself.

“This has given to my preaching an element of naturalism. It has led me to seek for a ground on which I could stand and bring men to a knowledge of the love of Christ. I have gone far from the usual narrow ecclesiastical and theological rules to broader social methods by which men that are doubters can be reached.

“My first settlement as a pastor was at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where I was two years in the Presbyterian Church. When I left Lane Seminary I went down there to preach, and I thought nothing about Church connection. My business, as I supposed, was to preach what little I knew and to lead men to the Saviour; but I soon felt, for the first time, the authority of the Church. I had not been ground; I was nothing but corn, and I had to be run through a mill. This Lawrenceburg church was in the territory of the Miami Presbytery. The Presbytery was not only a body of Presbyterians, but was composed of Old School Presbyterians; not only were they Old School Presbyterians, but they were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; and not only were they straight, but they bent like a hoop the other way. I had received an ordination license at the Cincinnati Presbytery—where my father belonged at that time—in about 1837; but it was necessary that I should undergo another examination. The Assemblies had not then divided; there was only the one Church; but there were two parties—the Old School and the New School. There was the one great body, but there were these two sections. There were presbyteries and synods of the New School, and there were presbyteries and synods of the Old School; but they were under the same authority.

“I went on horseback from Lawrenceburg to Oxford, where the Presbytery was in session. And, by the way, I came near losing my life in crossing the river. The water was high, and I was thrown into it; but I got out and dried off, and started again, and reached my destination without any further mishap, and went through my examination.

“At that time, under the instruction which I had had in my father’s family, under the college drill that I had gone through, and under the training to which I was subjected in Lane Seminary, I had become so familiar with the doctrines of theology that it was difficult for any one to put me down in a discussion of them. I could state them very glibly. I was ready with an explanation of every single point connected with them. I knew all their proofs, all their dodging cuts, all their ins and outs. Therefore I had no trouble in standing my ground with the men who examined me. They knew they had Dr. Beecher’s son before them; the questions came like hail, and I was very willing. Somehow I have always had a certain sympathy with human nature which has led me invariably, in my better moods, to see instinctively, or to perceive by intuition, how to touch the right chord in people, how to reach the living principle in them; and that faculty was fully awakened in me on this occasion. I recollect that the presiding clergyman at that Presbytery was a man that I had seen at my father’s house and that I had taken a sort of fancy to. He was probably fifty or sixty years of age. He was tall, and was thin in the face, and he had a shrill, ringing voice. I felt that he was like a file; but still I liked him. Well, he put questions to me. Some of them I answered directly, some ingeniously, some intelligently, and others somewhat obscurely. The examination extended over two or three hours; and I thought I perceived a warming and melting influence among those men. I was quite indifferent as to whether or not I came out with their endorsement, and I have a recollection of feeling very fine. They questioned, and questioned, and questioned; and it happened that the points on which they were very particular were man’s sinfulness, the influence of the Holy Ghost, its necessity, its work, the thoroughness of it, and so on.

“Now, I was always immensely orthodox—thunderingly so; and when they thought they were going to get heresy they got a perfect avalanche of orthodoxy. This man whom I had seen at father’s was quite carried away with me; he shielded me and helped me over some rough places; and the Presbytery, without a dissenting voice, voted that I was orthodox—to their amazement and mine!

“I thought then that the bitterness of death was past, when lo! a professor from Oxford University, Miami, introduced a resolution, which was passed, that that Presbytery would not license nor ordain any candidate who would not give in his adhesion to the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly. It was on that point that the Old and New Schools divided, and I, being my father’s son, spurned the idea of going over to the Old School; I felt as big as forty men; and when that resolution passed I simply said: ‘Well, brethren, I have nothing to do but to go back to my father’s house.’ They were kind to me; they seemed to have conceived an affection for the young man; they took the greatest pains to conciliate me; they endeavored to smooth the way for me, and tried to persuade me to comply with their wish; but I was determined, and said, ‘I won’t.’ I always had the knack of saying that and sticking to it!

“So I turned my back on the Oxford Presbytery, and rode to Lawrenceburg again; and the next Sunday morning I announced to my congregation the result of my week’s pilgrimage, told them of the vote which declared their church vacant, and said to them: ‘Now, brethren, one of two things is necessary: you must get somebody else to preach for you, or you must declare yourselves independent of the Presbyterian Church.’ It was no sooner said than done. Before sundown on that day they declared themselves an independent church, and I decided to stay with them. I was then ordained by the New School Presbytery in Cincinnati, after which I went on with my work regularly.

“Preceding all this, you should recollect that during the three years that I was in the Seminary the controversy between the Old and New School Presbyterians ran very high on questions of theology and on questions of Church authority. I had been stuffed with these things. I had eaten and drank them. I had chopped and hewed them. I had built up from them every sort of argument. I had had them ad nauseam.

“When I went out into the field I found all the little churches ready to divide, such was the state of feeling throughout the whole West. Going into my work in the midst of that state of affairs, I made up my mind distinctly that, with the help of God, I would never engage in any religious contention. I remember riding through the woods for long, dreary days, and I recollect at one time coming out into an open place where the sun shone down through to the bank of the river, and where I had such a sense of the love of Christ, of the nature of His work on earth, of its beauty and its grandeur, and such a sense of the miserableness of Christian men quarrelling and seeking to build up antagonistic churches—in other words, the kingdom of Christ rose up before my mind with such supreme loveliness and majesty—that I sat in my saddle, I do not know how long (many, many minutes; perhaps half an hour), and there, all alone, in a great forest of Indiana, probably twenty miles from any house, prayed for that kingdom, saying audibly, ‘I will never be a sectary.’ I remember promising Christ that if He would strengthen me and teach me how to work I would all my life long preach for His kingdom and endeavor to love everybody who was doing that work. Not that I would accept others’ belief, not that I would embrace their theology, not that I would endorse their ecclesiastical organizations; but whatever their instruments might be, if they were sincerely working for the kingdom of Christ I would never put a straw in their way and never strike a blow to their harm. By the grace of God I have kept that resolution to this day. There was so much good that came from the discussions and quarrels of the Old and New Schools by which at that period of my ministry I was surrounded. So much for the influence on my mind of those early scenes and experiences, which were more, in some respects, a theological school to me than Lane Seminary itself was.”

Such was the beginning of his ministry.

We may now retrace our steps a little to take a look at the beginning of his domestic life.

For seven years, like Jacob of old, he had labored, waiting for the time when he could claim his wife. Of course, until he was settled somewhere with some definite income, it was folly to think of marrying. But when he began preaching on trial at Lawrenceburg, and it seemed probable that he might be called there, his mind ran forward to when, having a definite home, he might go East for his bride. In his journal we find one of his written reveries:

“Spring, March 1, 1837.—The winter has gone. Spring has come—the time of the singing of birds. How vividly does that little expression call up the whole scene—the bright sun, the mild air, the heaven full of sweet influences, and the green sprouting grass among patches of snow, and the swelling buds! Every voice echoes in the air, and all sounds are mellow. The falling of a plank, the pound of a hammer or beetle, the rumble of a wagon, all, this morning, sound like joyful music. But I have one thought sweeter than any of these, which makes these sweet: it is that now only spring and summer are to fly before I meet my dear wife, not again to be parted, except by death!”

In July, 1837, having been formally called, though before his ordination—it then being apparent that he was to be definitely settled at Lawrenceburg—he wrote to Miss Bullard, suggesting that their marriage be celebrated shortly after his ordination, which was then expected to be in the following September. He had no sooner written and mailed the letter when he said to himself, as he explained to his wife later: “Why should I wait for my ordination? Why not have my wife present at it? And I started that very afternoon.”

His letter reached Miss Bullard in the morning of Saturday, July 29, and he himself appeared in the evening of the same day, to the great surprise of all. His plan was explained, and after a hasty discussion August 3 was fixed on for the wedding, and three o’clock in the afternoon the hour.

“I was expected to be ready to leave in the afternoon of August 3,” writes Mrs. Beecher. “The wedding-dress and wedding-cake were to be made—for what New England damsel could be married without wedding-cake? At one o’clock Monday morning I began my work, sewing until the family were up. After the breakfast was over the materials for the wedding-cake were brought from the village store, and Henry and I began the work for the cake. He picked over and stoned the raisins—taking abundant toll while doing it—beating the eggs, and in every way made himself useful, and kept the whole family in good spirits and cheerful, when, but for him, in such hurried preparations we might have felt the great exertion severely. But the work was done, and the 3d of August dawned bright and rosy.

“Very few guests were invited outside of the brothers and sisters, with their families, who were near enough to the old home to reach us. Both my sisters were married in a storm, and I had always said I would not be. Three o’clock was the hour appointed for the wedding. About two a heavy thunder-shower came on, and it began to rain, thunder, and lighten. At three o’clock we were summoned, but I said: ‘Wait until the storm passes,’ and, in spite of their remonstrance, they did wait. At four o’clock the clouds broke away and the sun appeared, and we were ushered into the parlor, Henry and I together. Just as we were entering the door (it was very warm, and door and windows all open) a rainbow, the most brilliant I ever saw, and so remarked by all in the room, seemed through the open window to span the parlor, and the spectators said we walked under its arch to our places. In his prayer the clergyman spoke of the ‘bow of peace and promise,’ which he hoped was the beautiful symbol of what our lives were to be.

“We rode to Worcester after the long farewells were said, not expecting to meet the home friends again for years.”

A few days later Mr. Beecher wrote from New York to his sister, Mrs. Stowe:

Leaving New York, they started westward, partly by rail, partly by steamer, and not a little by the slow method of the canal; travelled day and night, until they finally reached Cincinnati the last of August.

From Mrs. Beecher’s memory we obtain her impressions of their first pastorate:

“We remained a few days at Walnut Hills, and then took the little steamer with a free pass to Lawrenceburg. We were to board for the present, as we did not think that eighteen cents in pocket and three hundred dollars a year prospective salary would enable us to begin housekeeping. Lawrenceburg was a small place on the Miami.

“Mr. Beecher was obliged to take charge of that part of the building in which he was to preach. Together we went every Saturday afternoon, swept and dusted the room, filled the lard-oil lamps, and laid the wood and kindlings ready for him to start the fire the next morning before service, when needed; for the members of the church were all, except a few families, poor laboring people, with all they could attend to at home.

“But curiosity to hear the young preacher filled the room the first Sabbath, and from that time it continued to be filled—crowded. The Methodist church had always been the fashionable church, where the wealthy and more refined part of the population worshipped. This little Presbyterian church had almost died out, and, when first requested to preach there, neither Mr. Beecher nor the people had any thought of his coming for more than that one Sabbath. But his manner of preaching was so very different from what they had been accustomed to—so original—that they wanted to hear him again, and after that they gave him a call to settle there. The Home Missionary Society were to give $150, and the little band who composed the church thought they could manage to raise $150—in all $300—and the call was accepted, notwithstanding the remonstrance of friends in Cincinnati. They were more ambitious for him than he was for himself, knowing that he could doubtless, in a short time, get a better settlement. They knew, also, he intended to marry as soon as his theological course was finished, and thought him wild to think of bringing a wife out West and expect to be able to live on three hundred dollars a year. But from the first he acted up to the advice he always gave in after-years to young graduates from theological seminaries: ‘Don’t hang round idle, waiting for a good offer. Enter the first field God opens for you. If He needs you in a larger one He will open the gate for you to enter.’ And so he did.

“From his first sermon^[4] in Lawrenceburg that little room was crowded. He did not extemporize so entirely, at first, as in later years—at least he wrote more copious notes—but those who knew him can well imagine that when warmed up by his subject his notes did not hold him very closely.

“How vividly I recall that first Sabbath! How young, how boyish he did look! And how indignant I felt, when some of the ‘higher classes’ came in out of simple curiosity, to see the surprised, almost scornful looks that were interchanged!

“He read the first hymn, and read it well—as they had never heard their own ministers (often illiterate, uneducated men) read hymns. I watched the expression change on their faces. Then the first prayer! It was a revelation to them, and when he began the sermon the critical expression had vanished, and they evidently settled themselves to hear in earnest.

“The next Sunday the interest was still more strongly marked. His preaching was to them something unusual. It was evident the hearers were not quite at ease. He woke them up, and they were not quite prepared to decide whether they were anxious to be so thoroughly aroused. They were not exactly comfortable, and some went away, after the services were over, a little irritated and half-decided never to hear him again.

“The next Sabbath they concluded it would not hurt them to go just this one time more, and from that time were constant attendants. The satisfaction with this young preacher increased, and many from all sects came regularly.”

On his return from the East with his young wife, not feeling that they could afford to undertake housekeeping, he accepted the hospitality of one of his elders, who had offered him a room in his house. There they lived for some little time, when the sudden death of a member of the family and the necessity of a change in the good elder’s domestic arrangements required the use of this room.

At this time Mr. Beecher was attending a synodical meeting at Cincinnati. Mrs. Beecher set to work at once to get board elsewhere. Failing in this, she sought to hire rooms. After hunting until nearly exhausted she secured the refusal of two rooms over a stable down by the banks of the Miami, which had been occupied by the hostler, rental forty dollars per annum.

She immediately took the boat to Cincinnati, and then, being too poor to hire a wagon, she walked to Walnut Hills, four miles from Cincinnati—which was then the home of the Beecher family—to report on the state of affairs to her husband. A hasty examination of his finances showed just sixty-eight cents. As they had no household furniture of any kind, the prospect was not alluring. But an ability to get along somehow was a characteristic of those days. Friends, though not over-rich themselves, were able each to furnish something. One supplied half of an old carpet, another some knives and forks, a third a few sheets and pillow-cases, then a bedstead, a stove; and little by little, before they returned home that night, there was gathered together enough to meet the absolute requirements of living. Later the sale of Mrs. Beecher’s cloak realized thirty dollars. The salary, though nominally $500 per annum, was in fact but $300, of which one-half was paid by the Home Missionary Society, and neither half paid with great regularity. Any industrious day-laborer of modern times would have been ill-content with either income or home possessions.

Returning from Walnut Hills, the next thing was to cleanse the rooms and settle down. Mrs. Beecher gives a graphic account of their first housekeeping: “When we reached our former boarding-house we found our good friends with whom we had boarded very blue because their pastor and wife could find no better rooms; but the lady was a true New England woman and knew how soon a little hard labor would change the looks of the rooms. Old Toby, their colored man, brought round, the next morning, two pails and scrub-brushes and plenty of soap, and Henry and I went to work with great energy. Think of father with sleeves rolled up, a big apron on, scrubbing the floors! But I confess I never had known anything so hard to clean. Tobacco-stains and all manner of dirt that might have been looked for from the former occupants was so soaked into the floor that it seemed impossible to remove the stains. I asked the landlord if we might get some paint and paint the floors. ‘Oh! no. That would injure the wood!’

“In a day or two the rooms were as clean as faithful, hard work could make them, and after our last breakfast with our kind friends we bade them good-morning, with thanks and a blessing, and went to get our furniture, which the good captain of the steamboat had stored until we were ready. With it came some groceries, wash-tubs, and a nice painted dining-table, and a husk mattress, and husk pillows.

“‘Where did these last things come from?’ said your father.

“‘Part of my cloak,’ I replied, ‘but not all of it.’

“The kitchen-window looked out on a large back-yard that could be made a fine one with a little care, but among the rubbish I espied an old three-legged table and something that looked like the remains of small hanging shelves. I ran down stairs and asked the landlady if they had been thrown aside as worthless. ‘Oh! yes. They are good for nothing.’ ‘Then may I have them?’ ‘Certainly. But on examination you will find them of no use.’

“I washed and cleaned them well, and called to Henry to take them up-stairs to our rooms. By the table I found the broken leg. With very little trouble the table was repaired, the hanging shelves put up, and both varnished. They proved to be mahogany, and when the varnish was dry they looked quite nice. Among your father’s very scanty wardrobe was an old coat past any mending. I took the skirt, cleaned it, and put it on the top of the table, and fastened the sides and ends with some strips of kid that I had brought from home. It did look quite fine, and you can hardly imagine how much pride and pleasure your father had with his writing-table.

“The long boxes made in Amherst expressly to pack his books in when he came West were well made of planed boards. These we set one atop of the other, open side out, and filled with books bought by his own labors while in college, teaching school, and making speeches. These made quite a fine addition to the room which was to be the parlor, study, and our bed-room all in one.

“In the back room was a cook-stove given by brother George, and the old three-quarter bedstead that your father used at Lane Seminary, now all nice and clean, curtained with some four-cent calico Mrs. Judge Burnet gave us. Henry made the upright posts and ran a large wire round it on which the curtain was hung, with a wide tape all round the top on which our clothes were pinned. Crosswise from the door to the chimney a piece of four-cent calico curtained the corner where wash-benches and tubs, flour-barrel and sugar-barrel (the two last sent in by good friends) were placed, and over the door leading to the loft in the adjoining store your father had nailed some large pieces to hold saddle, bridle, and buffalo-robe. On the other side of the range was a good dish-closet, and in front a sink.

“So these two small rooms, at first so repulsive, were becoming quite a pleasant home. The house was situated very near the boat-landing on the wharf of the Miami River—too near for comfort when freshets swept down in that direction, but a pleasant outlook across on to the Kentucky hills; the river sometimes so low that your father has walked across and gathered flowers in Kentucky, then again rising so as to sweep everything before it as it did two years ago, utterly obliterating all that portion of Lawrenceburg where we lived.”

We are indebted to the Rev. John H. Thomas, the present pastor of Mr. Beecher’s old church in Lawrenceburg, for the impressions of his ministry there, as gathered from the reminiscences of his surviving parishioners:

“Mr. Beecher made his mark immediately. His youthful appearance—he was but twenty-three—and his careless dress may have raised doubts as to his ability when his hearers first saw him, but they disappeared as soon as he began to speak. The characteristics of his later oratory were all present from the first—fluency, glowing rhetoric, abundance of illustrations, witty points, brilliant ideas. From the first he filled the church. Merchants told their customers of the talented young preacher, and they would come miles to hear him. He was annoyed at interruptions, and when late-comers appeared he would stop speaking till they were seated.

“His personal habits were as original and effective as his pulpit efforts. He was not what would be called a good pastor. An old pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Lawrenceburg said to me: ‘Mr. Beecher could outpreach me, but I could out-visit him, and visiting builds up a church more than preaching.’ The records of the church during his pastorate are yet in our hands, though in one of the great floods here the volume floated out of the submerged study of the pastor, and was found, by chance, embedded in the yellow deposit of the Ohio. It is accurately and neatly kept, in the beautiful hand of Mr. Beecher, each entry signed with his well-known autograph. The additions to the church were about on the average of other pastors.

“But outside of strictly pastoral work Mr. Beecher’s influence was felt widely and beneficially. He was universally popular. He was kindly, genial, and free with all classes. He would hunt and fish with men not used to the society of clergymen, and spent much time on the river, especially in catching drift-wood brought down in every rise. Once he called to a poor German emigrant woman that if she would bring him her clothes-line he would show her how to get her winter’s supply of fuel. She brought it, and he tied a stone to one end, and, flinging it out from the shore over logs, would draw them in. In a little while their combined efforts had brought in a dray-load.

“He was fond of talking with all sorts and conditions of men. There was an old shoemaker in the town of pronounced infidel views. Mr. Beecher would spend hours in the room where he worked, discussing with him.

“There is no evidence that he lowered in any degree his character as a Gospel minister, but plenty that his influence was felt by the neglected classes, and even by the rough elements. And in this did he not follow the example of his divine Master, of whom it was said: ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them’?

“He was not unscholarly, but is remembered as a reader rather than as a student. He studied men even more than books. A Baptist minister with whom he had a discussion one Sunday is yet living here, and has told me that at the close of the discussion, in which the Baptist minister thought he had the best of it, Mr. Beecher waved his hand and said to the audience: ‘Well, I don’t care if you all go down to the river and get immersed.’

“His going away was esteemed a great loss. ‘Cords of people,’ says an old lady graphically, ‘were about to come into the Church.’ But Indianapolis, then with only 2,500 people, was the State capital, and was rapidly outstripping the little town on the river. It was a louder call.

“Mr. Beecher’s relations with the other ministers were happy, although he outshone them completely. He established a popular union Sunday-school, notwithstanding there was one in each church, and he often spoke in other churches.”

Mr. Beecher described his preaching there as follows:

“I preached some theology. I had just come out of the Seminary, and retained some portions of systematic theology, which I used when I had nothing else; and as a man chops straw and mixes it with Indian meal in order to distend the stomach of the ox that eats it, so I chopped a little of the regular orthodox theology, that I might sprinkle it with the meal of the Lord Jesus Christ. But my horizon grew larger and larger in that one idea of Christ. It seems to me that first I saw Christ as the Star of Bethlehem, but afterward He seemed to expand, and I saw about a quarter of the horizon filled with His light, and through years it came around so that I saw about one-half in that light; and it was not until after I had gone through two or three revivals of religion that, when I looked around, He was all and in all. And my whole ministry sprang out of that.”

At another time he said:

“I had no idea that I could preach. I never expected that I could accomplish much. I merely went to work with the feeling: ‘I will do as well as I can, and I will stick to it, if the Lord pleases, and fight His battle the best way I know how.’ And I was thankful as I could be. Nobody ever sent me a spare-rib that I did not thank God for the kindness which was shown me. I recollect when Judge ——— gave me his cast-off clothing I felt that I was sumptuously clothed. I wore old coats and second-hand shirts for two or three years, and I was not above it either, although sometimes, as I was physically a somewhat well-developed man, and the judge was thin and his legs were slim, they were rather a tight fit.

“There was a humorous side to this, but I could easily have put a dolorous side to it. I could have said: ‘Humph! pretty business! Son of Lyman Beecher, president of a theological seminary, in this miserable hole, where there is no church, and where there are no elders and no men to make them out of! This is not according to my deserts. I could do better. I ought not to waste my talents in such a place.’ But I was delivered from any such feeling. I felt that it was an unspeakable privilege to be anywhere and speak of Christ. I had very little theology—that is to say, it slipped away from me. I knew it, but it did not do me any good. It was like an armor which had lost its buckles and would not stick on. But I had one vivid point—the realization of the love of God in Christ Jesus. And I tried to work that up in every possible shape for my people. And it was the secret of all the little success which I had in the early part of my ministry. I remember that I used to ride out in the neighborhood and preach to the destitute, and that my predominant feeling was thanksgiving that God had permitted me to preach the unsearchable riches of His grace. I think I can say that during the first ten years of my ministerial life I was in that spirit.”

Here he began a habit which he followed during the first ten years of his ministry—that of keeping a record of every sermon preached, stating the date, text, an outline of the sermon, and then the reasons why he preached that particular sermon, “as giving a kind of guide to my course by a perusal of what I have done, also to avoid repetition and to show why I made given sermons”; thus forming the habit of preparing his sermons with a view to reaching some specific object. This record, with his daily journal in which he jotted down such thoughts on religious subjects as came to his mind day by day, are now before us, and show an immense amount of painstaking care. His habit of careful analysis was of incalculable value to him later, giving a logical method to his reasoning. It was not until after he came to Brooklyn that, under the increased pressure of this larger field of work, he abandoned this habit.

The last recorded sermons we find were those preached on the morning and evening of January 5, 1848.

During the second year of his Lawrenceburg pastorate he received a call to the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, at a salary of $600 per year. Though this opened up a much larger and more effective field of labor, with the means of living much more comfortably, yet, feeling that he was doing effective work where he was, he refused the call. He was always opposed to short pastorates and frequent changes: he had no faith in rolling stones.

After a short time the call was repeated and again declined. He was then urged to reconsider his refusal, and strong representations were made to him that it was his duty to accept the larger and more important field. At last, perplexed, he agreed to lay the matter before the Synod and abide by their recommendation The Synod advised that he accept the call.

Aside from the strong aversion which he felt for restless changes, and the feeling that, no matter how humble the field might be, he ought to labor there so long as there was work for the Master to engage him, he also felt a great unwillingness to leave the people to whom he was becoming strongly attached. The life there, though rude and simple, had been very happy. There his first child had been born. There for the first time he really had begun to live and work in the field he had chosen. But as he felt constrained to be guided by the advice which he had sought, on the Synod’s recommendation he accepted the call.

On the afternoon of July 28, 1839, he preached his farewell sermon at Lawrenceburg from the text: “These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you.”