“I send herewith the volume which I have taken the liberty of inscribing to you. If you shall find between these brief lines any deeper sentiment than there appears, any grateful acknowledgment of a friendship which I have been fortunate and proud to possess, which I have sought to deserve and which has been most fondly returned; of thanks for many kindnesses on the threshold of my struggle for recognition, and of your continual helpful and welcome encouragement; of sincere gratitude too toward my pastor, who from earliest youth has quickened my aspirations toward a high ideal of character and a life of usefulness and integrity;—if you shall discover these and thus learn how close a place you hold in my affections, then you shall read truly the spirit of my dedication.
“With hopes that the coming Christmas may be blest with peace and joy to you and yours and that your helpful companionship may be spared to all of us with health and happiness to yourself and with continual beneficence to others for many years to come,
“Believe me,
“Yours affectionately,
“W. Hamilton Gibson.”
An interesting side-light is thrown on a now memorable event in Plymouth Church in another letter, written on the same day on which Mr. Beecher delivered his famous sermon in denunciation of Calvinism, and made his outspoken and unmistakable revolt against the stern dogmas of an older day. There is little doubt that Gibson was one of the quickest and heartiest in the applause which he describes:
“Mr. Beecher delivered, this morning, to an immense audience the finest sermon of his life,—the most eloquent effort, without doubt, that ever escaped his lips. He was heartily applauded throughout the house several times, as he vehemently denounced the right of bishops and other ecclesiastical heads, to usurp authority in the Church. True Christianity, he said, implied liberty. Men should not turn their hearts to Christ through fear but through love. The God that has been and is still preached in the churches throughout the land, is not a god but a devil. If he could picture a monster the most horrible and cruel imaginable it would be the God which is preached in many of our churches and to thousands of our people. He maintained his utter independence, and said that no man could say to him what he should do or what he should not do, he was responsible to God alone, and if he was inspired to preach the gospel to his people he would do it with all his heart and all his soul and would give utterance to every thought he chose. ‘Men say I shall not, I say I shall.’ Christianity, he said, had been trampled under foot by the spirit of ecclesiastical authority, that the time was approaching when liberty in the church was to rule triumphant and until it did the world would suffer.
“His voice rose very high and it was altogether the most eloquent effort he has ever made in this pulpit,—and is so conceded by all whom I have spoken with. I never saw Mr. Beecher when he appeared happier and healthier than now.
“It had been almost decided to send him away on a six months’ vacation for rest, but he to-day refused to take it, saying that he did not need it and would rather stay at home with his people as ‘they needed his preaching and he needed to preach.’ I am going to call on him soon.”
To attempt to enumerate the authors and the artists, the critics and the clergymen, the naturalists and the nature “amateurs” with whom he was on friendly and even intimate terms would be to make a long catalogue of the most eminent men of his time. It would include such names as Stedman and Stoddard, Beard and Murphy, Abbott and Ludlow, Burroughs and Roe and Ellwanger, Parsons and Alden and the Egglestons. His correspondence included men and women from all over the world. His genius appealed to men of all classes and pursuits—to all who had the simple heart of childhood and its open eye. And that genius was so full of the vitality of the individual, so warm with his own personality, that to admire him as artist or naturalist was to be drawn to him as a man. He seemed to come to people as a friendly interpreter and as a helpful friend, unlocking new gates outward into nature’s life, disclosing new horizons, telling new secrets of the Cosmos. The tone of the letters he received from hundreds of unknown admirers shows that he was everywhere held as a personal friend, a teacher who won at once the attention, the admiration, and the love of his disciples.
Two letters from correspondents curiously remote from each other are types of the hundreds who were drawn by the human spirit of his writings to ply him with questions, or overwhelm him with appreciation and gratitude. From the confines of civilization on the north to the boundary of the nation on the south, the friends whom he had made by his pencil and his pen, his art and his scientific knowledge, appealed to him with an instinctive feeling that he would understand them, welcome them, help them if he could. Nor were they ever disappointed. The first letter is from bleak Anticosti Island:
“The Lighthouse,
“South West Point,
“13th May, 1895.