When Henry Ward was nineteen his father received a call to become President of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, and Henry Ward accompanied him as assistant. The stalwart old father had now come to recognize the worth of his son, and for the first time parental authority was waived and they were companions. They were very much alike—exuberant health, energy plus, faith and hope to spare. And Henry Ward now saw that there was a gentle, tender and yearning side to his father's nature, into which the world caught only glimpses. Lyman Beecher was not free—he was bound by a hagiograph riveted upon his soul; and so to a degree his whole nature was cramped and tortured in his struggles between the "natural man" and the "spiritual." The son was taught by antithesis, and inwardly vowed he would be free. The one word that looms large in the life of Beecher is Liberty.
Henry Ward Beecher died aged seventy-four, having preached since he was twenty-three. During that time he was pastor of three churches—two years at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, six years at Indianapolis, and forty-three years in Brooklyn. It was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven that he became pastor of the Congregational Church at Lawrenceburg. This town was then a rival of Cincinnati. It had six churches—several more than were absolutely needed. The Baptists were strong, the Presbyterians were strenuous, the Episcopalians were exclusive, while the Congregationalists were at ebb-tide through the rascality of a preacher who had recently decamped and thrown a blanket of disgrace over the whole denomination for ten miles up the creek. Thus were things when Henry Ward Beecher assumed his first charge. The membership of the church was made up of nineteen women and one man. The new pastor was sexton as well as preacher—he swept out, rang the bell, lighted the candles and locked up after service.
Beecher remained in Lawrenceburg two years. The membership had increased to one hundred six men and seventy women. I suppose it will not be denied as an actual fact that women bolster the steeples so that they stay on the churches. From the time women held the rope and let Saint Paul down in safety from the wall in a basket, women have maintained the faith. But Beecher was a man's preacher from first to last. He was a bold, manly man, making his appeal to men.
Two years at Lawrenceburg and he moved to Indianapolis, the capital of the State, his reputation having been carried thither by the member from Posey County, who incautiously boasted that his "deestrick" had the most powerful preacher of any town on the Ohio River.
At Indianapolis, Beecher was a success at once. He entered into the affairs of the people with an ease and a good nature that won the hearts of this semi-pioneer population. His "Lectures to Young Men," delivered Sunday evenings to packed houses, still have a sale. This bringing religion down from the lofty heights of theology and making it a matter of every-day life was eminently Beecheresque. And the reason it was a success was because it fitted the needs of the people. Beecher expressed what the people were thinking. Mankind clings to the creed; we will not burn our bridges—we want the religion of our mothers, yet we crave the simple common-sense we can comprehend as well as the superstition we can't. Beecher's task was to rationalize orthodoxy so as to make it palatable to thinking minds. "I can't ride two horses at one time," once said Robert Ingersoll to Beecher, "but possibly I'll be able to yet, for tomorrow I am going to hear you preach." Then it was that Beecher offered to write Ingersoll's epitaph, which he proceeded to do by scribbling two words on the back of an envelope, thus: "Robert Burns."
But these men understood and had a thorough respect for each other. Once at a mass-meeting at Cooper Union, Beecher introduced Ingersoll as the "first, foremost and most gifted of all living orators."
And Ingersoll, not to be outdone, referred in his speech to Beecher as the "one orthodox clergyman in the world who has eliminated hell from his creed and put the devil out of church, and still stands in his pulpit."
Six years at Indianapolis put Beecher in command of his armament. And Brooklyn, seeking a man of power, called him thither. His first sermon in Plymouth Church outlined his course; and the principles then laid down he was to preach for fifty years: the love of God; the life of Christ, not as a sacrifice, but as an example—our Elder Brother; and Liberty—liberty to think, to express, to act, to become.
It would have been worth going miles to see this man as he appeared at Plymouth Church those first years of his ministry. Such a specimen of mental, spiritual and physical manhood Nature produces only once in a century. Imagine a man of thirty-five, when manhood has not yet left youth behind, height five feet ten, weight one hundred eighty, a body like that of a Greek god, and a mind poised, sure, serene, with a fund of good nature that could not be overdrawn; a face cleanly shaven; a wealth of blond hair falling to his broad shoulders; eyes of infinite blue—eyes like the eyes of Christ when He gazed upon the penitent thief on the cross, or eyes that flash fire, changing their color with the mood of the man—a radiant, happy man, the cheeriest, sunniest nature that ever dwelt in human body, with a sympathy that went out to everybody and everything—children, animals, the old, the feeble, the fallen—a man too big to be jealous, too noble to quibble, a man so manly that he would accept guilt rather than impute it to another. If he had been possessed of less love he would have been a stronger man. The generous nature lies open and unprotected—through its guilelessness it allows concrete rascality to come close enough to strike it. "One reason why Beecher had so many enemies was because he bestowed so many benefits," said Rufus Choate.