Chapter XVIII · (continued 2)

“R. H. D———,

”Chairman Lecture Committee, M. L. A.“

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

MR. BEECHER’S REPLY.

”Brooklyn, ———, 1859.

“Dear Sir: I have received your letter politely inviting me to give one or more lectures before the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association next fall or winter. But you ask, in consequence of the diversity of opinions among your members, that I should, if I accepted your invitation, ‘eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion.’ I am too much of a patriot to eschew the one, and too good a Christian to neglect the other. Indeed, the only motive that I have for lecturing at all is the hope that I may make better citizens and better Christians of my fellow-men. And it seems to me that a course of lectures from which have been strained out ‘all matters pertaining to politics and religion,’ must afford but a very meagre diet to the young people of St. Louis.

“Nor can I imagine why you should, under the circumstances, have wished me to visit you. If I have ever been of any service to my fellow-men, it has been because I never would eschew any topic which I thought it needful for them to hear. Nor have I ever allowed myself to stand on any platform where I could not follow my own judgment as to what should be said with the most unlimited freedom. And it is too late in my life for me to yield up my sense of self-respect and come under a censorship.

“I hope I have not taken seriously a matter which, perhaps, you meant only as a pleasant jest. For, on reading your letter again, I hardly repress the conviction that you deemed it a 391pleasant jest to ask me to come all the way to St. Louis to give lectures, under an implied agreement that I should ‘eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion!’”

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

“Peekskill, August 21, 1860.

”To President and Board of Trustees of Amherst College:

“Gentlemen: I have been duly notified that at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees the title of D.D. was conferred upon me. It would certainly give me pleasure should any respectable institution bear such a testimony of good will, but that Amherst College, my own mother, should so kindly remember a son is a peculiar gratification. But all the use of such a title ends with the public expression. If the wish to confer it be accepted, for the rest it would be but an encumbrance and furnish an address by no means agreeable to my taste. I greatly prefer the simplicity of that name which my mother uttered over me in the holy hour of infant consecration and baptism.

“May I be permitted, without seeming to undervalue your kindness or disesteeming the honor meant, to return it to your hands, that I may to the end of my life be, as thus far I have been, simply

Henry Ward Beecher.”

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 392deepest 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 393hand 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. 394So 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 395look 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.

396