Church and Steamboat—Jenny Lind—Hospitality—Colonel Pertzel—The Family—Twins—Medicine—Giving Counsel—For the Sailor—An Absurd Story Contradicted—Salisbury—Trouting—Death of Alfred and Arthur—Letters to his Daughter at School—Lenox—Equivocal Honors Declined—The Pulpit—“Plymouth Collection”—“Shining Shore.” A Church Liturgy—Courting with his Father’s old Love-letters—1857 a Year of Trial—Matteawan—Visit to Litchfield—1858 a Year of Harvest—Revival Meetings—Hospitality of Plymouth Church—Courtesy to Errorists—New Organ—Peekskill—Letters to his Daughter abroad—Marriage of his Daughter—Lecturing—Title of D.D. declined—Flowers in Church—Christian Liberty in the Use of the Beautiful—His two Lines of Labor.

No sooner has he put his foot on shore than he is engaged in battle. This time it is against religious bigotry and intolerance upon the seas. A Star article from his pen appeared September 19 upon “Church and Steamboat—Cunard Line”:

No religious service was allowed on the steamers except that which was appointed for the crew, at which the passengers were permitted to be present. No one was allowed to read the service there except the captain, who, having been playing cards late Saturday night, and being addicted to the sailor habit of profanity, was not considered fit for the office. No one at all was permitted to preach, or, if the rule were ever varied, only a clergyman of Episcopal ordination. One of the owners, who happened to be on the ship, when courteously asked to allow some one of the nine clergymen on board to preach, and to give the use of one of the several cabins to those who chose to have service of their own, lost his temper and said that if Americans did not choose to go on his line, “d——— ’em! they may go to h———.” All this appeared to Mr. Beecher as rank injustice and an interference with the freedom of worship of multitudes of travellers. Humorously, yet with good, solid, set phrase, he denounces this bigotry in the article above mentioned. Like most of his articles, it was strong enough to draw the fire of the enemy.

The captain and the son of this owner reply in letters which partly explain, partly deny, but wholly charge Mr. Beecher with falsehood. This brings another article from him in the next issue, September 26:

“It is not to be supposed, gentlemen, that either of you can sympathize fully with me in an inveterate prejudice which I have contracted against lying in all its moods and tenses. But, really, I feel hurt that you have so low an opinion of my ingenuity as to suppose that, if I set out to tell lies, I should tell such poor and graceless ones.

“Allow me to assure you, gentlemen, that while my principles forbid me to employ falsehood, yet should I attempt it I should conscientiously endeavor to lie well.”

He reiterates his charges, adds to them some further remarks upon the gambling habits of the captain, which unfit him to act as conductor of public worship, procures affidavits from responsible parties to substantiate his charges, and refers them to the courts for redress, if they think themselves aggrieved.

The first battle upon his return to his native land was waged for freedom of worship upon the high seas!

In this same month of September, Jenny Lind came to this country and began that series of concerts which have never been surpassed. Her first concert in Castle Garden, September 11, netted $30,000. Some of the papers having criticised her and her manager for the high price of tickets, and the community for paying it, Mr. Beecher takes up the cudgels in her behalf:

“Jenny Lind, if we understand her desires and aims, is employing a resplendent musical genius in the most noble accordance with the spirit of the Gospel. In her we behold a spectacle of eminent genius employing its magic power in the elevation of the human race.

“If men would spare from the disgusting weed and poisonous liquors one-half of what they spend every month, there are few so poor as not to be able to hear Jenny Lind. *”

One of his children gives this incident:

“In those early days father always had a flower-garden in the back-yard of our city homes. I remember when we lived in the little, brown wooden house on Columbia Heights, Jenny Lind came to board near us for a short time. All the neighboring children used to gather round her door to see her start for her drive; and one day when we saw the carriage in front of her house, I ran in to ask father if H——— and I could go and see her come out. He was at work in the garden among his flowers, and, after giving his consent, called me back, cut a handful of roses, and told me I could take those and give them to her. So off H——— and I went, but I believe, after all, my courage failed, and I brought them home again, very much ashamed. Father laughed, but comforted me by saying he’d rather I would be too shy than too bold.”

He closes this eventful year (1850) with two Star articles—the one (December 12), “Remember the Poor”: “Upon the whole, we doubt if there is any other means of grace so profitable to a Christian as the whole duty of relieving the poor; for giving money is but a small part, and often the least effective part, of duty to them. Every man ought to take a single case or family, and look after them through the winter.” Another (December 19) upon “Different Ways of Giving”: “Now and then you will find a man whose face is March but whose pocket is June. He will storm and scold at you, but send you away with ten times as much as you asked.”

Mr. Beecher was very hospitable, and kept open house for friends, and even for such chance acquaintance as came to be associated with him. “When Kossuth was in this country, Colonel Pertzel, his chief of staff, with his wife, stopped with us for several weeks. When they went away she gave me her bracelet of national coins, which, she said, was prized by the Hungarian women in their exile above all their possessions.

“Our own family circle at this time consisted of father, mother, and three children—two boys and a girl. Besides these Aunt Esther was with us, whom I remember as little and round, straight and precise, with snapping black eyes, looking after the second generation of nephews and nieces, and telling us stories; and also Grandma Bullard, doing the mending and cosseting while she sang ‘Bounding Billow’ and ‘Like the Hart and the Roe.’ Dear, ideal old grandmother!”

December 20, 1852, there was an addition to this circle. “I can remember sitting in the parlor one evening with Aunt Esther, and father’s coming in, going up to her, and kissing her first on one cheek and then on the other, and her giving a little jump, saying, ‘Not two, Henry!’ and his answering, ‘Yes, two.’ Then he told me that I had two little new brothers up-stairs.

“Father was so proud of these twins that I remember on New Year’s day he took fifteen or twenty of the Hungarians who were making New Year’s calls up into mother’s room to see them.”

At the Thanksgiving service of this year Mr. Beecher had announced that an effort would be made to raise by subscription the sum of $13,000 to pay off the floating debt of the church before January 1, and the papers of a later date contain the announcement that the sum was promptly subscribed, “and Plymouth Church may now be considered on a firm foundation in temporal matters, and is in every way in a prosperous condition.”

The church entered the new year, 1852, without debt, and more than ten thousand dollars were realized from the rent of the pews.

Evidently he begins the year with especial effort to overcome spiritual coldness among the people, and bring in the summer of Christian life and growth, for his Star Papers are upon subjects like these: “Ice in the Church,” “Various Convictions of Sin,” and later are announcements in the papers of morning prayer-meetings in “Plymouth Church,” “Preaching Every Evening.”

In due time the announcement is made that “sixty persons were last Sabbath morning received into the church, fifty upon profession of faith.”

He is experiencing one of the evils to which religious meetings are prone, and concerning it he sends out a note of warning, “One Cause of Dull Meetings”:

“We hardly know of a more unprofitable exercise for social meetings than what is called exhortation. Men impose upon themselves and social meetings degenerate into absurd formalities—a pretence of caring for what they do not care for, of renouncing what all the world knows they do not renounce, of asking for what they do not desire and desiring what they dare not ask.”

Through life Mr. Beecher was as free with pathies in medicine as of isms in religion, and used allopathy, homoeopathy, hydropathy, electricity, or hand-rubbing, as seemed to him at the time most likely to secure the coveted result. In general he trusted more to the man than to the system. His position on this matter, which he held substantially for years, is given in a review of a medical work:

“In good earnest, we regard medicine with little favor. Our first recipe for sickness is, not to get sick. Our second is reliance upon a well-bred, sensible doctor. We select the doctor. It is his business to select the medicine, and we do not care a pin what it is. To all who ask us, therefore, what school we belong to, we reply: ‘We are firmly persuaded of Dr. ———.’ This is the sum of our present creed.”

His interest in common men and their affairs brought many to him by letter or in personal conversation for advice in their difficulties. Probably few physicians or lawyers in good practice were consulted by more people than came daily to Mr. Beecher. So practical were his principles of action, so great his sympathy with men in trouble, and such his ability to see through the difficulty, that men came to him for counsel from far and near.

A man asks him as to his duty to his creditors under certain peculiar circumstances which he mentions. Mr. Beecher goes over the matter in detail, states the ground of difficulty in that and all similar cases, and points out the way of relief in this fruitful sentence: “Selfishness is the great mischief-maker in settlements. Men think of their own rights first and their creditors’ afterwards. Reverse this. Be careful first that no man suffer by you.”

Again, at this time a man writes asking as to the duty of a temperance man and a professor of religion in regard to selling liquor as an agent.

“... He, therefore, who loves his situation or his pocket more than his religion can expect but little sympathy from robust Christians, and little favor from that Christ of the cross who has ordered a church of cross-bearing disciples. But we will turn our friend in such a dilemma over to our friend Hall, a drayman in New York, who utterly refuses to cart liquor, who will not unload a ship if in so doing he must cart brandy. For he says he will not disgrace any horse that he owns by letting him be seen with a load of liquor behind him.”

While carrying a free lance ready as any knight of old to champion every cause that was suffering injustice, we want to emphasize the fact that he had none of that small, truculent spirit that leads to personal attacks. He was very lenient to individual human failures, charitable in his judgments, and would rather attempt to save by hiding than to punish by exposing them. In answer to a question which we once asked concerning a man who, to our mind, had greatly transgressed the limits of public propriety, if not of morality, “Why don’t you pitch in and show up this matter?” this man of a thousand battles said quietly, with just a shade of rebuke for the spirit we had shown in his tone: “I don’t like to pitch into folks as much as some do.” But when wrong or injustice had wrought itself into a system, it made no difference to him how high in position they were who upheld it, or how low in the scale were the sufferers, or how securely entrenched was the wrong; he waited for no invitation, he asked no permission, he sought for no support, but attacked it at once, aiming to expose and remove the root element of the evil.

An illustration of this characteristic of Mr. Beecher is afforded by an article written by him at this time upon “Naval Discipline,” in which he brings to the sailor the same broad sympathy, established principles, and clear reasoning that he was accustomed to employ in the case of another and very different class:

“... It is of little use to cobble a system whose radical idea is wrong. This is our judgment in the case of the American navy. The republican institutions of America, slavery always excepted, contemplate the improvement and elevation of the masses. Government does not undertake to educate the citizen, but it contemplates, it is obliged from its origin to accommodate itself to the radical idea of, the liberty of the people to move among themselves, to guide, to change, to advance freely in any direction. The American navy is a monarchy. Its subjects are regarded in but one light—they are to be under service. More than this nothing is thought of. Sailors have no liberty. There is neither provision for, nor expectation of, improvement.... There must be an entirely new spirit infused into the whole system of such service.

”... In short, the naval system must address the social and moral need of the sailor. They must be allowed to act under all those high motives which develop men on shore.”

While moved by these world-wide sympathies, he was in no mood to submit with patience to bigotry nearer home, and utters a very strong protest against the ostracizing of certain Sabbath-schools by the orthodox schools of Brooklyn in their yearly parade:

“We ought to seize such an occasion to promote kindly feelings and cultivate such sympathy as differing sects might lawfully have in common. There is no liberality in urging this matter; it is simply common sense and common decency....

“Does the ——— (paper) regard it as dangerous to walk the streets with a Unitarian? Is heresy like smallpox, so contagious that one school will give it to another by sitting for an hour in the same audience-room with it?... We shall pray more earnestly than ever for the advance of that day when the love of God shall abound in the hearts of men and inspire men to love each other.”

His Star Papers of 1852 close with this, which will at once be recognized as eminently characteristic:

“We had always supposed that absurd stories grew in this vicinity like weeds in the tropics or trees planted by rivers. For once, however, the country newspapers have got ahead of our neighborhood.

“We have made diligent search, taken the census, examined every cradle, drawer, closet, crib, nook, and corner, and are prepared to affirm the following story, which was born in the Windham County Telegraph, the Norwich Tribune, Springfield Republican, Boston Chronicle, and other papers, to be exaggerated:

“‘Rev. H. W. Beecher’s lady has presented him with five little responsibilities in a little better than one year: two soon after the arrival of Kossuth and three the other day.’

“Twins there were a year ago whose blessed faces fill the house with light, but the three above-mentioned were born of those maternal editors whose brains fulfil the prophet’s word, ‘Ye shall consume chaff; ye shall bring forth stubble.’

“We turn these mousing, mongering editors over to the next woman’s-rights convention; or, if they are not fit for a seat there, they may amuse the children with nursery tales while the mothers are at discussion; or, if not fit for that, let them in mercy be bound out as very dry nurses at some foundling hospital.”

He spends the summer of 1853, as he had the one preceding, at Salisbury, Connecticut.

“Once more we find ourselves at home among lucid green trees, among hills and mountains, with lakes and brooks on every side, and country roads threading their way in curious circuits among them. All day long we have moved about with dreamy newness of life. Birds, crickets, and grasshoppers are the only players upon instruments that molest the air. Chanticleer is at this instant proclaiming over the whole valley that the above declaration is a slander on his musical gifts. Very well; add chanticleer to cricket, grasshopper, and bird. Add, also, a cow, for I hear her distant low melodious through the valley, with all roughness strained out by the trees through which it comes hitherward. O this silence in the air, this silence on the mountains, this silence on the lakes!”

He closes a long letter upon trouting in this fashion:

“You forget your errand. You select a dry, tufty knoll, and, lying down, you gaze up into the sky. O those depths! Something in you reaches out and yearns. You have a vague sense of infinity, of vastness, of the littleness of human life, and the sweetness and grandeur of divine life and of eternity. You people that vast ether. You stretch away through it and find that celestial city beyond, and therein dwell oh! how many that are yours! Tears come unbidden. You begin to long for release. You pray. Was there ever a better closet? Under the shadow of the mountain, the heavens full of cloudy cohorts, like armies of horsemen and chariots, your soul is loosened from the narrow judgments of human life, and touched with a full sense of immortality and the liberty of a spiritual state. An hour goes past. How full has it been of feelings struggling to be thoughts, and thoughts deliquescing into feeling! Twilight is coming. You have miles to ride home. Not a trout in your basket! Never mind; you have fished in the heavens and taken great store of prey. Let them laugh at your empty basket. Take their raillery good-naturedly; you have certainly had good luck.”

The sadness which is plainly visible in the passage quoted is an old acquaintance. We have learned to expect its appearance somewhere at every feast. At this time undoubtedly it comes the oftener because of the sorrowful experiences of the early summer. The twins, Alfred and Arthur, “whose blessed faces fill the house with light,” had both died on the fourth of July of this year, and been buried in the same grave.

It was one of the deep sorrows of his life, seldom mentioned save when attempting by his sympathy to comfort others in like affliction; it became a fountain of deep and tender feeling for all in distress, and of earnest longings for the rest and the reunions of heaven.

The going away of his daughter to boarding-school during the autumn makes another break in the family, to which he refers in a letter in November:

In a letter to her the following June he mentions an important domestic event:

This year he spent the summer in Lenox, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where a few friends have aided him to purchase a farm, “which the deeds, with great definiteness, say contains ninety-six acres, more or less.” Annoyed by the inquisitiveness of certain newspapers, he goes on to say:

“We gave for farm and farm-buildings $4,500; for the crops, stock, implements, etc., $1,000 more; total, $5,500. Any person in search of useful information can have further particulars as to terms of payment and any other private publicities by personal application to us.”

His emotions upon taking possession are described in a letter of that date:

“It was in the presence of this pasture elm, which we name the Queen, that we first felt to our very marrow that we had indeed become owners of the soil! It was with a feeling of awe that we looked up into its face, and when I whispered to myself, ‘This is mine,’ there was a shrinking, as if there were sacrilege in the very thought of property in such a creature of God as this cathedral-topped tree! Does a man bare his head in some old church? So did I, standing in the shadow of this regal tree, and looking up into that completed glory at which three hundred years have been at work with noiseless fingers! What was I in its presence but a grasshopper? My heart said, ‘I may not call thee property, and that property of mine! Thou belongest to the air. Thou art the child of summer. Thou art the mighty temple where birds praise God. Thou belongest to no man’s hand, but to all men’s eyes that do love beauty, and that have learned through beauty to behold God! Stand, then, in thine own beauty and grandeur! I shall be a lover and a protector, to keep drought from thy roots and the axe from thy trunk.’”

Although the owner of the farm, we are not to suppose that he took hold of work as the neighboring farmers did. We fancy that his love of downright hard work exhausted itself in the West.

“The chief use of a farm, if it be well selected and of a proper soil, is to lie down upon. Mine is an excellent farm for such uses, and I thus cultivate it every day. Large crops are the consequence, of great delight and fancies more than the brain can hold. My industry is exemplary. Though but a week here, I have lain down more hours and in more places than that hard-working brother of mine in the whole year that he has dwelt here. Strange that industrious lying down should come so naturally to me, and standing up and lazing about after the plough or behind the scythe so naturally to him!”

When we remember how many ministers who take an interest in public affairs find themselves elected to some town or village office, made mayor of a city, sent to the State Legislature or even to Congress, we are surprised that Mr. Beecher was never elected, so far as we remember, to the smallest public office. This was largely owing to the fact that he looked upon the work of a preacher, to inspire men to right conduct in public affairs, as more important than filling any official position, however high.

He declares this opinion facetiously, but none the less as a matter of deliberate judgment, in a letter:

“In the Mountain and the Closet” he is speaking out of his own experience:

“The influences which brood upon the soul in such a covert as the closet are not like the coarse stimulants of earthly thought. The soul rises to its highest nature and meets the influences that rest upon it from above. What are its depths of calmness, what is the vision of faith, what is the rapture, the ecstasy of love, the closet knows more grandly than all other places of human experience.”

It is not all sadness even in this year of the minor key. In August we have a long article upon “Hours of Exaltation,” in which he gives us some of those higher experiences which were common to him:

“... We are filled with the very affluence of peacefulness and joy. There is neither sorrow, nor want, nor madness, nor trouble in the wide world. The glory of the Lord, that at other times hangs upon the horizon like embattled clouds full gorgeous with the sun, on such days as we have described descends and fills the whole earth. The impassioned language of the psalmists and prophets, which on other days is lifted up so high above our imaginations that we can scarcely hear it, now comes down and sounds all its grandeur in our ears. The mountains do praise the Lord; the trees clap their hands. The clouds are His chariot and bear Him through the air, leaving brightness and joy along their path. The birds know their King. The flowers lift up their hands, and with the silent tongue of perfume praise God with choice odors. The whole earth doth praise Thee.”

In September of this year he visits Litchfield with his father—the latter for the first time since he had moved to Boston—and writes a letter upon “An Aged Pastor’s Return”:

“A man past eighty going through the streets, to visit all the fathers and mothers in Israel that had been young in his ministry there, was a scene not a little memorable. One patriarch in his ninety-ninth year, when his former pastor came into the room, spoke not a word, but rose up and, putting his trembling arms around his neck, burst into tears....”

“The particular errand that brought us hither was a lecture. A new organ was to be bought. All Litchfield boys were permitted to help. Our contribution was asked in the shape of a lecture. My part was soon done. Then the aged pastor came forward. A crowd of old and young gathered at the pulpit-stairs to greet the hand that had baptized them or had broken to them the bread of life. It was a scene of few words. One woman gave her name, but was not recognized in her married name. She then mentioned her maiden name. That touched a hidden spring. Both burst into tears, but spoke no words. The history came up instantly before both, but silently, which had occasioned the preaching of those sermons upon intemperance whose influence for good will never cease.”

And now he points to one of the dangers which he has learned to avoid, and opens to us some of the lessons which he has himself learned from the experiences of this year:

“Many troubles in life cease when we cease to nurse them.

“Many troubles are but the strain which we endure when God would carry us the right way and we insist upon going the wrong. Troubles come to us like mire and filth, but when well mingled they change to flower and fruit.

“It should be borne in mind and thought of with thankfulness that although a heavy pecuniary pressure has been resting on the community, nothing perishes. No ships will rot, as under embargo; stores will not go down; not a wheel will rust, but only rest; the railroads, whose creation has cost us so much, are created, and will not go back but thunder on. Not an acre will go again to the forest; not a seed will rot.

“We shall hold the substantial elements gained, losing no art, no science, no ideas, no habits, no skill, no industry, nothing but a little temporary comfort; and for that we shall receive back steadiness, safety, reality, and consolation worth a thousand-fold.”

That there had been no diminution of the prosperity of the church appears from an announcement in one of the New York papers of the annual pew-renting, which took place January 7 of the following year:

“The membership of Plymouth Church was never so large as at present, and the size of the congregation is undiminished. The building admits of an audience of about three thousand persons, and it is not an uncommon occurrence on a pleasant Sunday evening for fully as great a number as this to go away from the church-doors, unable to get even standing-room within the walls.”

If the year 1857 was one of sadness, that of 1858 was one of rejoicing. The sowing with tears was followed by the reaping with joy. Never in the history of our country were revivals of religion so frequent, so deep and wide-spread, as in the year that followed the great financial disasters of 1857. The shattering of men’s hopes of wealth, the disturbance and destruction of their confidence in material things, was followed by a very general turning to those things that endure. From a little book entitled “The Revival in Plymouth Church,” published anonymously, from the testimony of those who were active at that time, and from letters and sermons besides, we get a very clear idea of the part which Mr. Beecher took in this great work and the methods he pursued. Near the close of the year preceding he had received a letter from a young man in New York, who described himself as slowly but surely sinking beneath the temptations which he could not escape, and who implored help from the destruction that hung over him. He said, “Preach to me the terrors of the law, anything to arouse me from this fearful lethargy.” Mr. Beecher read the appeal to his audience, and answered it by preaching on the love of God in Jesus Christ as the only remedy for man’s sin and the only power for his salvation, and said: “If this remedy fails I know of no other. If love will not save you, fear will be of no avail.” He then led the congregation in a most earnest and tender prayer for that young man and for the great multitude which he represented.

It was by such means as this, enlisting the feeling of his audience in specific cases, awakening and directing the sympathies of the church, that the work began. He disclaimed any confidence in a revival, born of mere excitement, carefully explained God’s methods in saving men, and threw the whole responsibility for success upon Christians. If their hearts were filled with the love of God the influence would be felt with power by those around them.

On the last Sabbath in February he preached upon the reasonableness, usefulness, and Scriptural nature of revivals, combated objections against them, and finally brought it home to the conscience of his people: “Ought you not to have a revival?”

On the next Sabbath, at the communion season, he preached upon the words, “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” holding up before his people with great clearness and tenderness the privileges and the infinite rewards of patient, Christian following and labor. The father, who assisted at the service which followed, expressed the feeling of many hearts when, in his prayer, he said: “Lord, we thank Thee for the opening out of Thy word this morning; we have been brought very near heaven; we see not how we can be any nearer till we stand within the very gates.”

On the Wednesday evening following, at the usual weekly lecture, he spoke to a crowded audience upon the conversion of the Philippian jailer. It was a service of confession of the lack of faith in the ever-present grace of God, of instruction concerning the spirit and methods of the apostles, and of guidance to any who were seeking light and peace. A prayer-meeting followed, at which any who desired prayers for themselves or others were given opportunity to make their desire known, and the work was begun.

“Morning meetings were opened daily, and were attended by ever-increasing numbers, while so many remained afterward for instruction that the pastor’s work was rarely over before eleven or twelve o’clock. He called in lieutenants of both sexes, who helped him in the work. No one who attended on those occasions can ever forget the fascinating mixture of tenderness, earnestness, pathos, dry humor, quick wit, and sound common sense that ran through all the instruction of those meetings. One would be told to pray; another, whose knees were almost worn out and whose mind was diseased with useless anxiety, was told in the next breath to stop praying and go to sweeping; the many timid and shrinking ones were encouraged into freedom, while one or two, who thought that all the angels were anxiously awaiting the news of their conversion before the business of heaven could proceed, were taken down by a little quiet humor that cured yet did not wound; and all alike were brought into the one fold. Under such influences and instructions three hundred and thirty-five persons united with the church this season.

“The morning prayer-meeting has been in Plymouth Church emphatically a ‘love-feast,’ the attractive influences being love to Christ, to the pastor, and to one another in full and lively exercise. No better description of these meetings can be given than that of a happy and united family gathering together, under the guidance of a beloved and honored father, for morning worship. No wonder that men as they passed along the street, though unused to a prayer-meeting, could not resist the voice of song which fell on their ear daily in the sweet morning hour; and no wonder that, once having entered, they should be fascinated by the scene which met their eye and warmed by the atmosphere of love which they breathed, and should return saying: ‘Surely God is in this place, though we knew it not; this is indeed the house of God, and this is none other than the gate of heaven.’ There was no such feeling as that smiles, or even an honest laugh, were sinful; smiles and tears mingled in curious proximity, without any attempt at restraint; in short, everything was natural.

“At the close of a meeting, when, owing to the quaintness of speech of some of the brethren, especially the newly-awakened ones, in the relation of their varied experiences, we had laughed and cried alternately, the one as heartily as the other, Mr. Beecher said: ‘I call you to witness whether this has not been a good meeting, whether there has not been a tender spirit among us, and whether the influence of the Holy Ghost has not been here? I say this because, as you know, many persons entertain the opinion that laughing is quite inexpedient on such occasions as these and a sure means of grieving away the Spirit. Bear this meeting in mind, and let it be your answer to the charge of irreverence whenever it may be brought against us on this score.’”

He gave one of his own experiences:

“You know that my usual frame of mind is hopefulness. I am apt to look at the bright side of things and take cheerful views of life. On this very account an occasional experience of sadness is an inexpressible luxury to me. Last night, I know not why, but I could not sleep for some hours. I lay restlessly, turning from side to side, till this morning between one and two. No sooner was I asleep than it seemed to me I was in an Episcopal church, robed in black, where a clergyman was celebrating the Lent service. By and by he ascended the pulpit and began to speak. There was no eloquence in his language, nor anything particularly striking in his mode of dealing with his subject, but his heart was evidently in it. He was setting forth in simple language the sufferings of Jesus, and as I listened there seemed to rise up before me a vivid conception of the Saviour in His last agony on Calvary. I gazed till the tears gushed from my eyes, and I awoke to find my pillow soaking wet. I composed myself again to sleep, and my imagination took up the stitch just where I had dropped it, and knitted on. I beheld the same vision, and again the tears flowed. I gazed and wept until it seemed to me as if my very soul would dissolve and the fountain of tears be itself exhausted. Again I awoke, and, again falling asleep, the vision was for the third time repeated, and I seemed to weep my very life away. I know not when I had before such a sweet, rich experience of the love of my Saviour; and when I awoke finally this morning, it was with a tenderness of soul I cannot well describe. I was thankful I did not sleep sooner, and that when I did sleep I made such good use of my time.”

Opportunity was given at these meetings to any who wished to ask the brethren to pray for themselves or for others, and was largely used. A little before the close of the meeting Mr. Beecher would rise, and, taking the slips of paper that covered his table, read from them aloud. After reading these he would ask, “Are there any here who desire to make requests on behalf of their friends?” And then when these had all been made he would say, “Are there any who desire to ask on their own account?” Then having caught the eye of each as they arose, and acknowledged the request by a slight inclination of the head, in token of recognition, until they ceased rising, “in a low, soft tone would come the words, ‘Let us unite in prayer,’ and instantly every head was bowed. The prayers which followed these scenes were the most precious opportunities of communion with the Lord Jesus Christ which we were ever permitted to enjoy. We believe that he who uttered them was taught of the Holy Ghost, and that he spake as the Spirit gave him utterance. There was an exuberance of faith and love in these utterances not usually found in prayer; a gladness on the part of the speaker, and a recognized consciousness of gladness on the part of Christ. They were the breathings of love into a loving ear.” “We always concluded with a hymn, for Mr. Beecher was wont to say that he liked to send us away with a full tide of song, and for a long time our choice for concluding hymns lay between ‘Shining Shore’ and ‘Homeward Bound.’”

March 27, 1858, Mr. Beecher gave a twenty-minute address in Burton’s old theatre in Chambers Street at the noon prayer-meeting. “I wish to leave the impression that the matter of salvation is a matter between your own heart and the Lord Jesus Christ; that there is between you a sympathy so plain that there is no need of any interference. You may become a Christian now, and go home to your household and be enabled to ask a blessing at your table to-day.”

Letters are frequent this year upon subjects like this, “Trust in God”:

“We ought not to forget that an affectionate, confiding, tender faith, habitually exercised, would save us half the annoyances of life, for it would lift us above the reach of them. If an eagle were to fly low along the ground every man might aim a dart at it; but when it soars into the clouds it is above every arrow’s reach. And they that trust in God ‘shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.’”

About this time he answers a criticism that appeared in several papers upon the extravagant income of Plymouth Church:

“It is easy to stand off and rail. Will any one suggest a plan by which five thousand men can be put into a church that can hold only three thousand?

“The poor should be held in lively remembrance. But ought we to provide for the poor in a way that shall punish those who are not poor?...

“In closing we will only say that from the beginning no church ever more conscientiously endeavored to give the Gospel to all classes, rich and poor, resident or strangers. For ten years the members of this society have cheerfully submitted to an inconvenience, for the sake of the poor and of strangers, such as has rarely had a parallel. Gentlemen have paid hundreds of dollars for pews which were, with the exception of a single Sabbath in the year, more or less filled with the poor.

“Every Sabbath day families who have paid hundreds of dollars for a pew, coming to church, find it pre-occupied by the poor and the stranger, and it is a rare exception that in such cases there is any irritation.

“Generally the owner, distributing his family as best he can, takes a seat in the aisle or stands in the entry. And this is not an occasional thing. It is the regular experience of the congregation, year after year.”

The year 1859 opens with some very characteristic letters from Mr. Beecher. He had been charged with having held the doctrine of total depravity up to ridicule in a lecture which he delivered in Boston. This brings from him a letter, two or three passages of which we here transcribe:

“But although we did not employ the phrase total depravity in any opprobrious sense at the time mentioned, we do not hesitate to say that we regard it as one of the most unfortunate and misleading terms that ever afflicted theology....

“On the other hand, we do believe, with continual sorrow of heart and daily overflowing evidence, in the deep sinfulness of universal man.... We heartily hate the phrase total depravity, and never feel inclined to use it except when reading the ethics of ——— or the religious editorials of ———.”

He was shortly after this attacked for lecturing in a “Fraternity Course” in the same city. This calls out a long answer upon “Working with Errorists,” in which he says:

“I have long ago been convinced that it was better to love men than to hate them, that one would be more likely to convince them of wrong belief by showing a cordial sympathy with their welfare than by nipping and pinching them with logic. And although I do not disdain but honor philosophy applied to religion, I think that the world just now needs the Christian heart more than anything else. And even if the only and greatest question were the propagation of the right theology, I am confident that right speculative views will grow up faster and firmer in the summer of true Christian loving than in the rigorous winter of solid, congealed orthodoxy or the blustering March of controversy....

“If tears could wash away from Mr. Parker’s eyes the hindrances, that he might behold Christ as I behold and adore Him, I would shed them without reserve. If prayers could bring to him this vision of glory, beyond sight of philosophy, I would for him besiege the audience-chamber of heaven with an endless procession of prayers, until another voice, sounding forth from another light brighter than the noonday sun, should cast down another blinded man, to be lifted up an apostle with inspired vision.

“But since I may not hope so to prevail, I at least will carry him in my heart; I will cordially work with him when I can, and be heartily sorry when I cannot.

“While we yet write word comes that Mr. Parker, broken down by over-labor, seeks rest and restoration in a warmer climate. Should these lines reach his eyes let him know that one heart at least remembers his fidelity to man in great public exigencies, when so many swerved of whom we had a right to expect better things. God shield him from the ocean, the storm, the pestilence, and heal him of lurking disease! And there shall be one Christian who will daily speak his name to the heart of God in earnest prayer, that with health of body he may receive upon his soul the greatest gift of God—faith in Jesus Christ as the Divine Saviour of the world.”

Another incident calls forth a similar response:

“At the recent celebration of Tom Paine’s birthday at Cincinnati the infidels present toasted: ‘The heretic clergy, Parker, Emerson, Conway, Chapin, Beecher, and all who love man above all creeds, and sects, and rituals, and observances, who regard man as the highest and holiest and most sacred of all in the universe—may their motto be: Ever onward, greater freedom, and clearer light.’” Having disclaimed any distinction as one who loves man more than creeds, since this is “true of all Christians when they are in their most Christian disposition,” and having accepted their motto as being in line with sundry passages of Scripture, he gives his true and honest feeling towards them in these words:

“Let no man think that we despise the sympathy and well-wishing of a convention of infidels. We thank them for their kind feelings. Like our Master, we had rather discourse with publicans and sinners than dine with the most select and eminent Pharisee. But we love a true Christian better than either. But, infidel or Pharisee, all need the grace of God, and all, by repentance of sin and faith in Christ, the Saviour of sinners, may yet meet in heaven.

“Gentlemen of the Cincinnati convention of infidels! we should be ashamed to be less kind and courteous than you have been, and in concluding we take leave of you kindly, saying, in the words of Inspired Writ:

“‘Now may the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ. To whom be glory for ever and ever.’ *”

The setting up of a new organ in Plymouth Church this winter is thus duly announced:

“The organ long expected has arrived, been unpacked, set up, and glorified over. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered. It has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so softly that nobody could hear.”

After speaking of the characteristics of the many organists who have tried it, and of one who was an especially brilliant player, he says: “But he was not a Christian man, and the organ was not to him a Christian instrument, but simply a grand Gothic instrument, to be studied just as a mere Protestant would study a cathedral, in the mere spirit of architecture and not at all in sympathy with its religious signification or uses. And before long he went abroad to perfect himself in his musical studies, but not till a most ludicrous event befell him. On a Christmas day a great performance was to be given. The church was full; all were musically expectant. It had been given out that something might be expected. And surely something was had a little more than was expected. For when every stop was drawn, that the opening might be with a grand choral effect, the down-pressing of his hands brought forth not only the full expected chord, but also a cat that by some strange chance had got into the organ. She went up over the top as if gunpowder had helped her. Down she plunged into the choir, to the track around the front bulwark of the gallery, until opposite the pulpit, when she dashed down one of the supporting columns, made for the broad aisle, when a little dog joined in the affray, and both went down toward the street-door at an astonishing pace. Our organist, who, on the first appearance of this element in his piece, snatched back his hands, had forgotten to relax his muscles, and was to be seen following the cat with his eyes, with his head turned, while his astonished hands stood straight out before him, rigid as marble!”

In the spring of this year he purchased a farm in Peekskill, and explains his object as follows:

“I knew that the place was good for grass, for grain, and for fruits, of all which I talked a good deal during the preliminary approaches to a purchase, but for which I cared about as much as I should whether the inside of my boots were red or yellow.

“If the thing must be told—and I mention it to you, Mr. Bonner, confidentially—it was the remarkable aptitude of the place for eye-crops that caught my fancy. It was not so much what grew upon the place, as what you could see off from it, that won me. It is a great stand for the eye. If a man can get rich by looking, I am on the royal road to wealth. And, indeed, it is true wealth that the eye gets, and the ear and all the finer senses; riches that cannot be hoarded or squandered; that all may have in common; that come without meanness and abide without corrupting. So long as it remains true that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth His handiwork, so long will men find both heart wealth and strength by a reverent admiration of the one and a sympathetic familiarity with the other.”

In a letter to his daughter he describes the new home:

“... Farm—I wrote so far at home, but being interrupted have brought it up to the green hills. You will be quite ashamed to think that Matteawan ever seemed beautiful to you when you shall have seen this place. It has no wild or romantic features, but it is full of soft, nice, beautiful views. No barren fields are seen, no brown pasture-lands, no rugged hills—the very mountains in the horizon are carved into round and graceful shapes. The near hills are round, gentle, smooth, and verduous to the very top. Only one summit is rugged and wild, and we keep that in the distant foreground as a contrast to all the other graceful shapes. The river in the distance is like a lake, except the fleets of sloops and schooners give it a sense of navigation. From the top hill of the farm you can see almost as wide a prospect as from Bald Mountain in Salisbury—on the north and east, wild, mountainous, solitary; but all the rest beautiful and cultivated, with the Hudson rolling along the west. I have traced a rude diagram^[6] on the opposite page, but it will be only just better than nothing, though you must confess that it is exceedingly well drawn for me!

”... I heard from H——— yesterday. He is well and lively, and wrote me quite a sprightly and witty letter. W——— is round, rosy, curly, and loving as usual. B———, the rogue, is fairly recovering from a double charge of scarlet-fever and whooping-cough, and is becoming most healthfully saucy.“

Early in the autumn they returned from the country and began life again in the city. We give copies of several letters written to his daughter:

“... In the beginning let me say, my dear child, that I heartily approve of all that you have done. I am not a superstitious observer of the Sabbath, nor do I hold to the rigor either of the Jewish or the Puritan Sabbath. But I do believe that one-seventh part of our time was originally appointed for rest, for home-society, and for religious culture....

“When I was myself in Paris I acted just as I do in Brooklyn. I took no more liberties, and was quite as observant of my home proprieties. And I must say that I do not relish the idea of our young countrymen going to Europe to learn how to get rid of religious habits. Foreign travel should improve our manners, increase our information, enlarge our experience of men, enrich our imagination, cultivate our tastes, but not enervate our conscience....

“Everything is going well at the farm. I have bought a yoke of cattle, white with mottled necks and red heads; also two Ayrshire calves, and a little bull calf of the same breed. Your mother is driving away at her cheeses in the most housewifely style. She has already made, eaten, and given away two or three, and she has four or five on hand, good large ones, which are to grow old for city use. Already I imagine myself a nimble little maggot making the cheese fly. The pet ponies do bravely, the pigs are fat and flourishing, the chickens comely, and the ducks noisy but drawing very near to doom and dinner.

“I would not advise you to use wine unless you are weak and it is recommended by judicious advisers for real reasons of health; and then I should take it frankly and without hesitation. But while you do not use it, you are not bound to take it on any occasion for others’ sake. If the occasion comes, call for a glass of water and calmly lift that to your lips. But more of this by and by. I have no objection to your learning to dance as a part of physical education.”

The home life in Brooklyn ran undisturbed through the autumn, until, early in 1860, a serious accident befell Mrs. Beecher, which Mr. Beecher describes in the following letter:

“Good-by, old fellow. Give my love to Hattie, and tell her that her father hasn’t forgotten her,” were the first words of Mr. Beecher to me that I remember. I had been introduced to him the evening before, but he had just returned from a lecturing tour, tired and sleepy, and if he said anything brilliant it has entirely escaped my memory. I was going, in company with Mrs. Stowe’s son, to take a pedestrian tour in Europe. We expected, in time, to join her party, who were then on the Continent, and were busy getting ready to go on board ship that day. It was a hearty send off to one who was comparatively a stranger, that was very characteristic of the man.

Of course I remembered the message and gave it faithfully; and after several months’ acquaintance, travelling in Switzerland and Italy, made an addition of the same in kind on my own account, which being accepted and reciprocated, we were married September 25, 1861.

“The innumerable friends of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher would hardly forgive us if we were to omit mentioning the pleasing incident that occurred at his country residence at Peekskill last week. On Wednesday morning, after the dew was dry, Mr. Beecher chose a spot under the shadows of the trees near his garden, where, in the presence of a fit circle of friends and neighbors, he gave away his only daughter in a novel ceremony of marriage. The beauty of the day and the beauty of the ceremony together rendered the scene singularly charming, tender, and impressive.”

Of his method of making himself acquainted with the peculiar features of the villages in which he lectured, and his pleasant words concerning the people he met, the following letter is a good illustration:

As a complement to the above an experience in not lecturing is here given in full:

They heard from him at once as requested, and this was the answer:

When the title of Doctor of Divinity was offered him he declined it, as follows:

One of the peculiar features of Mr. Beecher’s work in those days of 1861-63 was the revival interest that continued, with variations of intensity, it is true, but with no substantial interruption, for years. The revival of 1858 had not entirely ceased at that time, and although those days of war, especially since he gave himself so intensely to public matters, would naturally be regarded as unfavorable to any marked religious interest, yet it continued notwithstanding, as is shown by the numbers that constantly sought admission to the church upon profession of faith. This was owing, we doubt not, to the perfect conviction of Mr. Beecher that the whole work of that time was the Lord’s, and to his entering upon it with such consecration that he was continually shielded and refreshed by experiences of the divine presence. This gave a deep practical spirituality to his preaching, which was appropriated and reflected by his church, making the Gospel attractive, in those days of trouble, as never before. Men turned to the refuge which they saw he had found, and which, with deepest sympathy and with abundant hopefulness, he was pointing out to them. He himself says: “It is a mistake to suppose that the preoccupation of the public mind with the war, and the great excitements which are fed by the ever-changing rumors and news, are unfavorable to the work of a true minister of the Gospel.”

The continued ingathering into Plymouth Church during all those years of the war was something almost phenomenal. One marked occasion, the May communion of 1862, was described in a newspaper of that day: “Every part of the house was densely packed. The platform and desk were decorated with vases of flowers, while banks of azaleas, magnolias, carnations, fuchsias, white lilies, roses, and other plants in blossom reached from the pulpit floor to the orchestra. After the usual exercises of singing, reading, and prayer, Mr. Beecher read a list of about eighty names of persons who were to unite with the church. Many of them were members of the Sabbath-schools and Bible-classes. Some were persons of middle age; a few were persons of advanced years. After a brief address Mr. Beecher read the articles of faith, to which the parties gave their assent. The ordinance of baptism was then administered to those who had never before received it; after which the members of the church arose and received the new members into full and cordial communion. Mr. Beecher took his text from John x. 3, 4. There had been provided memorial bouquets for each new communicant, which were distributed at the close of the services.”

These floral decorations may almost be said to have been introduced by Plymouth Church, and were justified by Mr. Beecher upon the highest moral and religious grounds. He says of “Flowers in Church”:

“They are simply the signs of gladness. They are offerings of joyful hearts to God.

“Flowers are not of man. They are divine. Man can, by culture, develop all that God has hidden in them, but can add nothing to them, nor can he invent or build them.

“God has made flowers for everybody. They are next in abundance to the great elements—air, light, water. The poorest man has a roadside flower-garden. No mission-church is so poor that it cannot afford wild flowers upon the altar and a few assorted leaves in the windows. How beautifully would woman’s hand light up the dreary plaster wall and frigid seats of many a church room, if permitted to garnish them with these field-thoughts of God!

“The effect upon children is well worth our thought. To teach a child to love flowers is to give him riches that no bankruptcy can reach. This is the wisdom of finding our pleasures, not in conventional arrangements, but in sympathy with nature, which never is confiscated, or goes out of fashion, or becomes old and exhausted. There is a new heaven and a new earth every day, as if suggesting that grand and final event of prophecy.

“The use of flowers on social and religious occasions soon gives to them meanings which they had not to us before. We read nature more thoughtfully and lovingly.

“Weeds change to flowers. The moment a plant inspires intelligent emotion in us it ceases to be a weed and becomes a flower. The natural world is not any longer godless or commercial and mechanical. It has a moral power.

“At first many will shrink at seeing flowers upon the speaker’s desk or on the pulpit. But why? Is the place too holy? But is it holier than God? And are not flowers His peculiar workmanship? If God deemed it suitable to His dignity and glory to occupy His mind with making and preserving such innumerable flowers, are we wise in disdaining them or considering the place too sacred for God’s favorites? Do men reflect that God has been pleased to name Himself from flowers? ‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley.’”

In line with this are his views upon “Christian Liberty in the Use of the Beautiful”:

“I cannot but think Christian men have not only a right of enjoyment in the beautiful, but a duty, in some measure, of producing it, or propagating it, or diffusing it abroad through the community.

“But in all your labors for the beautiful, remember that its mission is not of corruption, nor of pride, nor of selfishness, but of benevolence! And as God hath created beauty, not for a few, but hath furnished it for the whole earth, multiplying it until, like drops of water and particles of air, it abounds for every living thing, and in measure far transcending human want, until the world is a running-over cup, so let thine heart understand both the glory of God’s beauty and the generosity of its distribution. So living, life shall be a glory, and death a passing from glory to glory.”

If we have supposed that his love for nature was intuitive or came to its fulness without effort or study, the following letter will correct that impression:

“We are performing not alone a work of love in commending Ruskin, but paying a small part of a debt that can never be discharged. We are more indebted to him for the blessings of sight than to all other men. We were, in respect to nature, of the number of those who, having eyes, saw not; and ears, heard not. He taught us what to see and how to see. Thousands of golden hours and materials both for self-enjoyment and the instruction of others, enough to fill up our whole life, we owe to the spirit excited in us by the reading of Ruskin’s early works.

“The sky, the earth, and the waters are no longer what they were to us.

“We have learned a language and come to a sympathy in them more through the instrumentality of Ruskin’s works than by all other instrumentalities on earth, excepting always the nature which my mother gave me—sainted be her name!”

We have again come to the point, 1863, which we once before reached in this biography, but this time upon entirely different lines. In our first examination, for the sake of unity of impression, we confined ourselves to the events of the great anti-slavery conflict. In this which we have just completed we have sketched the outline of other labors and the events of his home life during this period. No one, we suspect, reading the first record, the record of strife and battle, would conceive it possible that a life so full of all manner of peaceful pursuits and home labors was being lived; nor, on the other hand, would any one going over his work of preaching, lecturing, writing helpful Star articles upon all manner of common subjects, imagine that he had the time or the spirit for the former work. But, in fact, in his case they were each the necessary complement of the other.

We have seen how, at the West in the midst of continued revival efforts, he took up the study of landscape-gardening as an alterative. This was an illustration of his habit through life. In the midst of the most exciting events he would escape and go apart from them all, if possible, to some point where he could look out upon the landscape or up to the clear heavens. Such places at such times seemed to become Mountains of Transfiguration, where he would meet the Master and be refreshed by His presence, and whence returning he would bring back a store of beautiful experiences that enabled him to give cheer and inspiration to his fellow-toilers, who had not, perhaps, noted his absence from their side. Or he would escape to some quiet nook and hold converse with birds and flowers, delight himself in quaint and pleasant fancies, look at life from a new standpoint, until he was able again to take up the burden without weariness; or he would sit down with his boxes of seeds or catalogues of plants, and lose himself in their imagined growth and beauty; or, drawing from his pocket some one of the precious stones he always carried with him, gather rest and inspiration as he watched its changing hues.

In this way he was enabled to carry on the most various and exhaustive labors, and at the same time to preserve that mental health and good cheer for which he was remarkable.