Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

"I am ready, sir."

"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant, and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at once. As soon as you are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an appointment."

The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst. The Doctor felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, "I shall have that boy in the ministry yet."

At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in him a fair knowledge of the science. Young Beecher also took lessons in elocution from Professor John E. Lovell. Under the instructions of this able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had troubled him so much. He continued at this school for three years, devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.

During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should attain the proper age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst College upon the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that institution in 1834.

In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected. Henry followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet, in 1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.

"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume the work of the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed by a deep melancholy. He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian minister. He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval profession. He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others; that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy work in it, was a treason to all honor.

"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely and heartily the same with that of his father, to secure the regeneration of the individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and thereby to effect the regeneration of human society. The problem that oppressed him was, how to do this. His father had used certain moral and intellectual weapons, and used them strongly and effectively, because employing them with undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into his mind to qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of thought and inquiry, that were partially inconsistent with the received statements of his party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield them with the force which could make them efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could wield the weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of objections more profound and perplexities more bewildering. Like the shepherd boy of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying the armies of the living God, and longed to attack him, but the armor in which he had been equipped for the battle was no help, but only an incumbrance!

"His brother, who studied with him, had already become an unbeliever and thrown up the design of preaching, and he could not bear to think of adding to his father's trials by deserting the standard. Yet his distress and perplexity were so great that at times he seriously contemplated going into some other profession....

"In his last theological term he took a Bible class in the city of Cincinnati, and began studying and teaching the Evangelists. With the course of this study and teaching came a period of spiritual clairvoyance. His mental perplexities were relieved, and the great question of 'what to preach' was solved. The shepherd boy laid aside his cumbrous armor, and found in a clear brook a simple stone that smote down the giant; and so, from the clear waters of the Gospel narrative Mr. Beecher drew forth that 'white stone with a new name,' which was to be the talisman of his ministry. To present Jesus Christ personally as the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ as God impersonate, eternally and by a necessity of His nature helpful, and remedial, and restorative; the Friend of each individual soul, and thus the Friend of all society,—this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy object in entering the ministry. He afterward said, in speaking of his feelings at this time,'I was like the man in the story to whom a fairy gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, which he found always came again as soon as he had spent it. I thought I knew at least one thing to preach. I found it included every thing.'"