BEECHER, Henry Ward, American cler gyman, son of Lyman Beecher: b. Litchfield, Conn., 24 June 1813; d. Brooklyn, N. Y., 8 March 1887. He was the offspring of a union which has produced some of the world's great est influences, and in theory ought always to produce them — of a stern, energetic, high principled father., with a sweet and beauty loving. mother, giving power and continuity to sensibility and sympathetic emotion. Macaulay and Victor Hugo are notable instances in this respect. Beecher had a rather bare, hard childhood, under a father and stepmother who both considered duty and enjoyment hardly compatible. The great genial orator who shouted down and won over hostile mobs was a shy and sensitive boy; the editor, author and booklover had a wretched memory, disliked study and wanted to go to sea. But the reli gious atmosphere was around him; ((converted° in a revival, he decided to train for the min istry, entered the Boston Latin School in 1826, then the Mount Pleasant School at Amherst, graduated from Amherst College in 1834, and began a theological course under his father at Lane Seminary. He revolted at his father's sulphurous theology, however, and for a short time in 1837 was editor of an anti-slavery paper in Cincinnati, fervid love for humanity holding first place with him then as always. Later in the year he took charge of a country church at Lawrenceburg, Ind., and married Eunice White Bullard of West Sutton, Mass., to whom he had been seven years engaged. In 1839 he was called to a church in Indianapolis, then a town of 4,000 people, remaining there eight ye.ars and becoming widely known both as a revivalist of great power and as a preacher of delightful humor and originality. In 1847 he was called to Brooklyn to talce charge of a new church of nine members, called Plymouth Church. He held this pastorate for 40 years, ladcing a few months; and for the most of the tbne the church was not only a Mecca to the vast class seeking to retain Christianity while forced to discard very much in the way of theology, but the fountain of a stream of in fluence acting powerfully on the moral and social, and sometimes the political, tendencies of the age. He preached on whatever related to the public welfare, probed every evil and championed every reform, especially of intem perance and slavery. His outspoken courage, strength of thought and felicity of expression, his exhaustive wealth of eloquent rhetoric, humor and pathos, dramatic force and apt analogy and illustration, not only drew to hear him one of the largest permanent congregations in the United States—his immense church with its seating capacity of nearly 3,000 being constantly crowded—but made his pulpit one of the most famed and influential of the Eng lish-spealcing world; his utterances forming a basis of action for many. He was not a the ologian in any sense, and his influence rested on his abstinence f rom credal logic; he was the spokesman of those who fear that if they compute their doctrinal latitude they may dis cover much more than they wish to know, and prefer to keep the fruits of faith by evading exact definition rather than lose them by a rigid self-inquiry. To the orthodox of his day he seemed an underminer; though to many at the present he seems conservative enough. He believed in the divinity of Christ, in immortal ity, in special providences and miracles, in the Bible as a divme revelation by fallible human instruments; he did not believe in eternal pun ishment (which he publicly denied in 1g78), election and reprobation, the fall of Adam, the vicarious atonement, or imputed sin and right eousness; and he declared the orthodox Deity ((barbaric, heinous, hideous." He gave his whole soul to the work of preaching, often de livering several discourses in a single day; but such was his physical and mental vigor that he accomplished work in several other directIons sufficient in each case for an able and lusty man.
He was one of the giants in oratory of the anti-slavery time; and none of the champions of the cause was more hated and reviled than °the abolitionist Beecher,' whose work was ex celled only by that of his great sister. He left his pulpit in the Fremont catnpaiin to de nounce the Kansas crime, joining the Repub lican party on its inception and traveling great distances to speak at its meetings. Yet he was not an abolitionist like Phillips and Garrison; and like Lincoln and the mass of the Repub licans, held that Congress could not interfere with slavery in the South, but only prevent its extension. The Pro-Slavery party drew no fine distinctions, however, and the Northern Demo cratic papers all through this period are filled with denunciation and caricature of him. His series of speeches in England in the fall of 1863 helped to turn the tide of English opinion in favor of the North. The prime element of his success was his enormous physical vitality: he tired out the mobs which attempted to howl him down, by actual bodily endurance and power of lungs, before he began the splendid addresses which made them at least enthusiastic admirers of himself, if not perhaps converted believers in the cause he represented. He had the *rapture of the strife* which Attila lcnew : he loved to be the target of a ring of opponents as well as John Quincy Adams, though with out his bitterness, and was as instant and un failing in retort; a dozen taunts hurled at him in a breath met a dozen crushing but never malicious answers. He was for many years one of the most popular lecturers and after dinner speakers in America. Of his set ora tions, those at the Burns centennial of 1859, and by government request at Fort Sumter, in April 1865, on the anniversary of its capture by the Confederates, are most famous. He occupied several editorial positions: editing the Independent 1861-63; founding the Chrutian Union, editing it 1870-81; was a fertile sketch writer, and wrote a novel and a 'Life of Christ.) Besides this, he was an enthusiastic amateur farmer, and loved outdoor nature passionately, as well as art and the drama. His open., im pressible, sensitive nature responded readily to all things that stimulate the intellect, the heart or the soul. He was essentially a man of im pulses and inspirations, trusting to the spon taneous suggestion of the moment, often not even making notes for a sermon, but like all men who make any impress on the world, kept himself filled with material for inspiration to work on, both from books and life. He always lamented that it had not been permitted him to lead a life of scholarship; but in fact he did not lead it because he was not willing to pay the price for it, of abstinence from leaderslup in the political and social life of the time. He never lacked courage to talce a side, right or wrong, and often grieved and alienated large bodies of his friends by doing so when passions were hot. He was a firm adherent of the Seward-Johnson policy of reconstruction in 1866, despite the terrible results to which its prematunty led; sympathized with the Greeley movement in 1872; and braved a threatened disruption of his church in 1884 by voting and speaking for Grover Cleveland. He believed in and advocated free trade and woman suff rage. So brave and impulsive a nature was always shoclang the conventions of his order. Naturally, he was forever perpetrating indiscre tions in speech, to the delight of his enemies and the discomfiture of his friends. Tact was unfortunately not a large inheritance of most of Lyman Beecher's children, and the paucity of Henry Ward's share was the cause of many an inept and unfortunate public utterance; while his fertility of comparisons and analogies often led him into pithy exaggerations and a humorous extravagance of language which his opponents could. easily disprove in the letter.