No More Learning

His physique justified the well-known characteriza-
tion of Mr. Fowler, the phrenologist, Splendid animal. ”
He was
11-108


## p. 1714 (#512) ###########################################

1714
HENRY WARD BEECHER
always an eager student, though his methods were desultory. He was
familiar with the latest thought in philosophy, had studied Herbert
Spencer before his works were republished in the United States, yet
was a child among children, and in his old age retained the char-
acteristic faults and virtues of childhood, and its innocent impul-
siveness.
His imagination might have made him a poet, his human sym-
pathies a dramatic poet, had not his strong common-sense kept him
always in touch with the actualities of life, and a masterful con-
science compelled him to use his æsthetic faculties in sterner service
than in the entertainment of mankind. The intensity of his moral
nature enhanced rather than subdued his exuberant humor, which
love prevented from becoming satire, and seriousness preserved from
degenerating into wit. His native faculty of mimicry led men to
call him an actor, yet he wholly lacked the essential quality of a
good actor,-power to take on another's character, - and used the
mimic art only to interpret the truth which at the moment possessed
him.
Such power of passion as was his is not often seen mated to such
self-control; for while he spoke with utter abandon, he rarely if ever
did so until he had carefully deliberated the cause he was espousing.
He thought himself deficient in memory, and in fact rarely borrowed
illustrations from his reading either of history or of literature; but
his keenness of observation photographed living scenes upon an un-
fading memory which years after he could and did produce at will.
All these contrary elements of his strangely composite though not
incongruous character entered into his style, - or, to speak more
accu
curately, his styles, – and make any analysis of them within rea-
sonable limits difficult, if not impossible.
For the writer is known by his style as the wearer by his clothes.
Even if it be no native product of the author's mind, but a conscious
imitation of carefully studied models, — what I may call a tailor-
made style, fashioned in a vain endeavor to impart sublimity to
commonplace thinking, — the poverty of the author is thereby re-
vealed, much as the boor is most clearly disclosed when wearing
ill-at-ease, unaccustomed broadcloth. Mr. Beecher's style was not
artificial; its faults as well as its excellences were those of extreme
naturalness. He always wrote with fury; rarely did he correct
with phlegm. His sermons were published as they fell from his
lips, - correct and revise he would not. The too few editorials which
he wrote, on the eve of the Civil War, were written while the press
was impatiently waiting for them, were often taken page by page
from his hand, and were habitually left unread by him to be cor-
rected in proof by others.


## p. 1715 (#513) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1715
His lighter contributions to the New York Ledger were thrown off
in the same way, generally while the messenger waited to take them
to the editorial sanctum. It was his habit, whether unconscious or
deliberate I do not know, to speak to a great congregation with the
freedom of personal conversation, and to write for the press with as
little reserve as to an intimate friend. This habit of taking the pub-
lic into his confidence was one secret of his power, but it was also
the cause of those violations of conventionality in public address
which were a great charm to some and a grave defect to others.
There are few writers or orators who have addressed such audiences
with such effect, whose style has been so true and unmodified a
reflection of their inner life. The title of one of his most popular
volumes might be appropriately made the title of them all — Life
Thoughts.
But while his style was wholly unartificial, it was no product of
mere careless genius; carelessness never gives a product worth pos-
sessing The excellences of Mr. Beecher's style were due to a
careful study of the great English writers; its defects to a tempera-
ment too eager to endure the dull work of correction. In his early
manhood he studied the old English divines, not for their thoughts,
which never took hold of him, but for their style, of which he was
enamored. The best characterization of South and Barrow I ever
heard he gave me once in a casual conversation. The great English
novelists he knew; Walter Scott's novels, of which he had several edi.
tions in his library, were great favorites with him, but he read them
rather for the beauty of their descriptive passages than for their
romantic and dramatic interest. Ruskin's Modern Painters' he both
used himself and recommended to others as a text-book in the obser-
vation of nature, and certain passages in them he read and re-read.
But in his reading he followed the bent of his own mind rather
than any prescribed system. Neither in his public utterances nor in
his private conversation did he indicate much indebtedness to Shake-
speare among the earlier writers, nor to Emerson or Carlyle among
the moderns. Though not unfamiliar with the greatest English
poets, and
the great Greek poets in translations, he was less a
reader of poetry than of poetical prose. He had, it is true, not
only read but carefully compared Dante's Inferno) with Milton's
Paradise Lost'; still it was not the Paradise Lost, it was the
Areopagitica' which he frequently read on Saturday nights, for the
sublimity of its style and the inspiration it afforded to the imagina-
tion. He was singularly deficient in verbal memory, a deficiency
which is usually accompanied by a relatively slight appreciation of
the mere rhythmic beauty of literary forma. It is my impression
that for amorous poems, such as Moore's songs, or even Shake-
speare's sonnets, and for purely descriptive poetry, such as the best


## p. 1716 (#514) ###########################################

1716
HENRY WARD BEECHER
of Childe Harold' and certain poems of Wordsworth, he cared com-
paratively little.
But he delighted in religious poetry, whether the religion was
that of the pagan Greek Tragedies, the medieval Dante, or the
Puritan Milton. He was a great lover of the best hymns, and with
a catholicity of affection which included the Calvinist Toplady, the
Arminian Wesley, the Roman Catholic Faber, and the Unitarian
Holmes. Generally, however, he cared more for poetry of strength
than for that of fancy or sentiment. It was the terrific strength in
Watts's famous hymn beginning
“My thoughts on awful subjects dwell,
Damnation and the dead,)
which caused him to include it in the Plymouth Collection, abhor-
rent as was the theology of that hymn alike to his heart and to his
conscience.
In any estimate of Mr. Beecher's style, it must be remembered
that he was both by temperament and training a preacher. He was
brought up not in a literary, but in a didactic atmosphere. If it
were as true as it is false that art exists only for art's sake, Mr.
Beecher would not have been an artist. His art always had a pur-
pose; generally a distinct moral purpose. An overwhelming propor-
tion of his contributions to literature consists of sermons or extracts
from sermons, or addresses not less distinctively didactic. His one
novel was written avowedly to rectify some common misapprehensions
as to New England life and character. Even his lighter papers,
products of the mere exuberance of a nature too full of every phase
of life to be quiescent, indicated the intensity of a purposeful soul,
much as the sparks in a blacksmith's shop come from the very vigor
with which the artisan is shaping on the anvil the nail or the shoe.
But Mr. Beecher was what Mr. Spurgeon has called him, the
most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare”; and such a mind must
both deal with many topics, and if it be true to itself, exhibit many
styles. If one were to apply to Mr. Beecher's writings the methods
which have sometimes been applied by certain Higher Critics to the
Bible, he would conclude that the man who wrote the Sermons on
Evolution and Theology could not possibly have also written the
humorous description of a house with all the modern improvements.
Sometimes grave, sometimes gay, sometimes serious, sometimes
sportive, concentrating his whole power on whatever he was doing,
working with all his might but also playing with all his might, when
he is on a literary frolic the reader would hardly suspect that he was
ever dominated by a strenuous moral purpose. Yet there were cer-
tain common elements in Mr. Beecher's character which appeared in
his various styles, though mixed in very different proportions and


## p. 1717 (#515) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1717
producing very different combinations. Within the limits of such a
study as this, it must suffice to indicate in very general terms some
of these elements of character which appear in and really produce
his literary method.
Predominant among them was a capacity to discriminate between
the essentials and the accidentals of any subject, a philosophical per-
spective which enabled him to see the controlling connection and to
discard quickly such minor details as tended to obscure and to per-
plex. Thus a habit was formed which led him not infrequently
to ignore necessary limitations and qualifications, and to make him
scientifically inaccurate, though vitally and ethically true.
It was
this quality which led critics to say of him that he was no theo-
logian, though it is doubtful whether any preacher in America since
Jonathan Edwards has exerted a greater influence on its theology.
But this quality imparted clearness to his style. He always knew
what he wanted to say and said it clearly. He sometimes produced
false impressions by the very strenuousness of his aim and the
vehemence of his passion; but he was never foggy, obscure, or
ambiguous.
This clearness of style was facilitated by the singleness of his pur-
pose. He never considered what was safe, prudent, or expedient to
say, never reflected upon the effect which his speech might have on
his reputation or his influence, considered only how he could make
his hearers apprehend the truth as he saw it. He therefore never
played with words, never used them with a double meaning, or
employed them to conceal his thoughts. He was indeed utterly
incapable of making a speech unless he had a purpose to accomplish;
when he tried he invariably failed; no orator ever had less ability to
roll off airy nothings for the entertainment of an audience.
Coupled with this clearness of vision and singleness of purpose
was a sympathy with men singularly broad and alert. He knew the
way to men's minds, and adapted his method to the minds he wished
to reach. This quality put him at once en rapport with his auditors,
and with men of widely different mental constitution. Probably no
preacher has ever habitually addressed so heterogeneous a congre-
gation as that which he attracted to Plymouth Church. In his famous
speech at the Herbert Spencer dinner he was listened to with
equally rapt attention by the great philosopher and by the French
waiters, who stopped in their service, arrested and held by his
mingled humor, philosophy, and restrained emotion. This human
sympathy gave a peculiar dramatic quality to his imagination. He
not only recalled and reproduced material images from the past
with great vividness, he re-created in his own mind the experiences
of men whose mold was entirely different from his own.
As an


## p. 1718 (#516) ###########################################

1718
HENRY WARD BEECHER
illustration of this, a comparison of two sermons on Jacob before
Pharaoh, one by Dr. Talmage, the other by Mr. Beecher, is interest-
ing and instructive. Dr. Talmage devotes his imagination wholly to
reproducing the outward circumstances, the court in its splendor
and the patriarch with his wagons, his household, and his stuff; this
scene Mr. Beecher etches vividly but carelessly in a few outlines, then
proceeds to delineate with care the imagined feelings of the king,
awed despite his imperial splendor by the spiritual majesty of the
peasant herdsman. Yet Mr. Beecher could paint the outer circum-
stances with care when he chose to do so. Some of his flower pictures
in Fruits, Flowers, and Farming' will always remain classic models
of descriptive literature, the more amazing that some of them are
portraits of flowers he had never seen when he wrote the description.
While his imagination illuminated nearly all he said or wrote, it
was habitually the instrument of some moral purpose; he rarely
ornamented for ornament's sake. His pictures gave beauty, but they
were employed not to give beauty but clearness. He was thus saved
from mixed metaphors, the common fault of imaginative writings
which are directed to no end, and thus are liable to become first
lawless, then false, finally self-contradictory and absurd.
The mass-
ive Norman pillars of Durham Cathedral are marred by the attempt
which some architect has made to give them grace and beauty by
adding ornamentation. Rarely if ever did Mr. Beecher fall into the
error of thus mixing in an incongruous structure two architectural
styles. He knew when to use the Norman strength and solidity, and
when the Gothic lightness and grace.
Probably his keen sense of humor would have preserved him from
this not uncommon error. It is said that the secret of humor is the
quick perception of incongruous relations. This would seem to have
been the secret of Mr. Beecher's humor, for he had in an eminent
degree what the phrenologists call the faculty of comparison. This
was seen in his arguments, which were more often analogical than
logical; seen not less in that his humor was not employed with
deliberate intent to relieve a too serious discourse, but was itself the
very product of his seriousness. He was humorous, but rarely witty,
as, for the same reason, he was imaginative but not fanciful. For
both his imagination and his humor were the servants of his moral
purpose; and as he did not employ the one merely as a pleasing
ornament, so he never went out of his way to introduce a joke or a
funny story to make a laugh.
Speaking broadly, Mr. Beecher's style as an orator passed through
three epochs. In the first, best illustrated by his "Sermons to Young
Men, preached in Indianapolis, his imagination is the predominant
faculty. Those sermons will remain in the history of homiletical


## p. 1719 (#517) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1719
1
literature as remarkable of their kind, but not as a pulpit classic for
all times; for the critic will truly say that the imagination is too
exuberant, the dramatic element sometimes becoming melodramatic,
and the style lacking in simplicity. In the second epoch, best illus-
trated by the Harper and Brothers edition of his selected sermons,
preached in the earlier and middle portion of his Brooklyn ministry,
the imagination is still pervasive, but no longer predominant. The
dramatic fire still burns, but with a steadier heat. Imagination, dra-
matic instinct, personal sympathy, evangelical passion, and a growing
philosophic thought-structure, combine to make the sermons of this
epoch the best illustration of his power as a popular preacher. In
each sermon he holds up a truth like his favorite opal, turning it
from side to side and flashing its opalescent light upon his congre-
gation, but so as always to show the secret fire at the heart of it.
In the third epoch, best illustrated by his sermons on Evolution and
Theology, the philosophic quality of his mind predominates; his
imagination is subservient to and the instrument of clear statement,
his dramatic quality shows itself chiefly in his realization of mental
conditions foreign to his own, and his style, though still rich in color
and warm with feeling, is mastered, trained, and directed by his
intellectual purpose.
In the first epoch he is the painter, in the
second the preacher, in the third the teacher.
Judgments will differ: in mine the last epoch is the best, and its
utterances will long live a classic in pulpit literature. The pictures
of the first epoch are already fading; the fervid oratory of the sec-
ond epoch depends so much on the personality of the preacher, that
as the one grows dim in the distance the other must grow dim also;
but the third, more enduring though less fascinating, will remain so
long as the heart of man hungers for the truth and the life of
God, – that is, for a rational religion, a philosophy of life which shall
combine reverence and love, and a reverence and love which shall
not call for the abdication of the reason.
1
Lyman den


## p. 1720 (#518) ###########################################

1720
HENRY WARD BEECHER
BOOK-STORES AND BOOKS
From (Star Papers)
N
.
OTHING marks the increasing wealth of our times, and the
growth of the public mind toward refinement, more than
the demand for books. Within ten years the sale of com-
mon books has increased probably two hundred per cent. , and it
is daily increasing. But the sale of expensive works, and of
library editions of standard authors in costly bindings, is yet
more noticeable. Ten years ago such a display of magnificent
works as is to be found at the Appletons' would have been a
precursor of bankruptcy. There was no demand for them. A
few dozen, in one little show-case, was the prudent whole.
Now, one whole side of an immense store is not only filled with
admirably bound library books, but from some inexhaustible
source the void continually made in the shelves is at once re-
filled. A reserve of heroic books supply the places of those that
fall. Alas! where is human nature so weak as in a book-store!
Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon vivant's relish
for a dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings
compared with those fantasies of taste, those yearnings of
the imagination, those insatiable appetites of intellect, which
bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall ?
How easily one may distinguish a genuine lover of books
from a worldly man!
lly man! With what subdued and yet glowing en-
thusiasm does he gaze upon the costly front of a thousand embat-
tled volumes! How gently he draws them down, as if they were
little children; how tenderly he handles them! He peers at the
title-page, at the text, or the notes, with the nicety of a bird
examining a flower. He studies the binding: the leather, -rus-
sia, English calf, morocco; the lettering, the gilding, the edging,
the hinge of the cover! He opens it and shuts it, he holds it off
and brings it nigh. It suffuses his whole body with book magnet-
ism. He walks up and down in a maze at the mysterious allot-
ments of Providence, that gives so much money to men who
spend it upon their appetites, and so little to men who would
spend it in benevolence or upon their refined tastes! It is aston-
ishing, too, how one's necessities multiply in the presence of the
supply. One never knows how many things it is impossible to
do without till he goes to Windle's or Smith's house-furnishing


## p. 1721 (#519) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1721
stores. One is surprised to perceive, at some bazaar or fancy
and variety store, how many conveniences he needs. He is satis-
fied that his life must have been utterly inconvenient aforetime.
And thus too one is inwardly convicted, at Appletons', of hav-
ing lived for years without books which he is now satisfied that
one cannot live without!
Then, too, the subtle process by which the man convinces
himself that he can afford to buy. No subtle manager or broker
ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so
quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what
he must have. He promises himself marvels of retrenchment;
he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more
food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on
with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats.
Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books! The appe-
tite is insatiable. Feeding does not satisfy it. It rages by the
fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man eats first and
pays afterward, so the book-buyer purchases and then works at
the debt afterward. This paying is rather medicinal. It cures for
a time. But a relapse takes place. The same longing, the same
promises of self-denial. He promises himself to put spurs on
both heels of his industry; and then, besides all this, he will
somehow get along when the time for payment comes! Ah! this
SOMEHOW! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed
with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon
Hope. And yet, is there not some comfort in buying books, to
be paid for? We have heard of a sot who wished his neck as
long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer
enjoy the flavor of the draught! Thus, it is a prolonged excite-
ment of purchase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt
whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid
down, that would have been the end of it. There would have
been no affectionate and beseeching look of your books at you,
every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can
say, “Do not let me be taken from you. ”
Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them pro-
motes caution. You do not feel quite at liberty to take them
home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book.
She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot
afford. She has no “speculation” in her eyes. Plain figures
make desperate work with airy “somehows. ” It is a matter of


## p. 1722 (#520) ###########################################

1722
HENRY WARD BEECHER
no small skill and experience to get your books home, and
into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering
express brings them to the door just at evening. (What is it,
my dear? ” she says to you. “Oh! nothing — a few books that
I cannot do without. That smile! A true housewife that loves
her husband can smile a whole arithmetic at him at one look!
Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with
you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the strings of the
bundle (and of your heart), and outcomes the whole story.
You have bought a complete set of costly English books, full
bound in calf, extra gilt! You are caught, and feel very much
as if bound in calf yourself, and admirably lettered.
Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be
smuggled home.
Let them be sent to some near place. Then,
when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has
lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold,
hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put
them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or
on the topmost shelf. Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper,
and every suspicious circumstance. Be very careful not to be too
kind. That often brings on detection. Only the other day we
heard it said, somewhere, "Why, how good you have been lately.
I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief
secretly. ” Our heart smote us. It was a fact.
That very day
we had bought a few books which we could not do without. »
After a while you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and
leave it on the table.
«Why, my dear, what a beautiful book!
Where did you borrow it? You glance over the newspaper,
with the quietest tone you can command: « That! oh! that is
mine. Have you not seen it before ? It has been in the house
these two months; ” and you rush on with anecdote and incident,
and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and
everything else you can think of; but it all will not do; you
cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk
about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent
smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men. Of
course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting.
Another method which will be found peculiarly effective is to
make a present of some fine work to your wife. Of course,
whether she or you have the name of buying it, it will go into
your collection, and be yours to all intents and purposes. But it


## p. 1723 (#521) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1723
stops remark in the presentation. A wife could not reprove you
for so kindly thinking of her. No matter what she suspects, she
will say nothing. And then if there are three or four more
works which have come home with the gift-book — they will pass
through the favor of the other.
These are pleasures denied to wealth and old bachelors. In-
deed, one cannot imagine the peculiar pleasure of buying books
if one is rich and stupid. There must be some pleasure, or so
many would not do it. But the full flavor, the whole relish of
delight only comes to those who are so poor that they must
engineer for every book. They sit down before them, and
besiege them. They are captured. Each book has a secret his-
tory of ways and means. It reminds you of subtle devices by
which you insured and made it yours, in spite of poverty!
Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, New York.
SELECTED PARAGRAPHS
From (Selections from the Published Works of Henry Ward Beecher,' com-
piled by Eleanor Kirk
AN
N INTELLIGENT conscience is one of the greatest of luxuries.
It can hardly be called a necessity, or how would the
world have got along as well as it has to this day? -SER-
MON: Conscience. '
A man undertakes to jump across a chasm that is ten feet
wide, and jumps eight feet; and a kind sympathizer says, “What
is going to be done with the eight feet that he did jump ? ”
Well, what is going to be done with it? It is one of those
things which must be accomplished in whole, or it is not accom-
plished at all. - SERMON: “The True Value of Morality'
It is hard for a strong-willed man to bow down to a weak-
willed man.
It is hard for an elephant to say his prayers to an
ant. - SERMON: The Reward of Loving. '
When Peter heard the cock crow, it was not the tail-feathers
that crew. The crowing came from the inside of the cock.
Religion is something more than the outward observances of the
church. SERMON: (The Battle of Benevolence. '
I have heard men, in family prayer, confess their wickedness,
and pray that God would forgive them the sins that they got


## p. 1724 (#522) ###########################################

1724
HENRY WARD BEECHER
am
from Adam; but I do not know that I ever heard a father in
family prayer confess that he had a bad temper. I never heard
a mother confess in family prayer that she was irritable and
snappish. I never heard persons bewail those sins which are the
engineers and artificers of the moral condition of the family.
The angels would not know what to do with a prayer that
began,
“Lord, thou knowest that I a scold. ” Sermon:
Peaceableness. )
Getting up early is venerable. Since there has been a litera-
ture or a history, the habit of early rising has been recom-
mended for health, for pleasure, and for business. The ancients
are held up to us for examples. But they lived so far to the
east, and so near the sun, that it was much easier for them than
for us.
People in Europe always get up several hours before
we do; people in Asia several hours before Europeans do; and
we suppose, as men go toward the sun, it gets easier and easier,
until, somewhere in the Orient, probably they step out of bed
involuntarily, or, like a flower blossoming, they find their bed-
clothes gently opening and turning back, by the mere attraction
of light. — 'EYES AND Ears. '
There are some men who never wake up enough to swear a
good oath. The man who sees the point of a joke the day after
it is uttered,- because he never is known to act hastily, is he to
take credit for that? -SERMON: Conscience. )
If you will only make your ideal mean enough, you can
every one of you feel that you are heroic. — SERMON: The Use
of Ideals.
There is nothing more common than for men to hang one
motive outside where it can be seen, and keep the others in the
background to turn the machinery. - SERMON: Paul and Deme-
trius. '
Suppose I should go to God and say, "Lord, be pleased to
give me salad,” he would point to the garden and say, “There
is the place to get salad; and if you are too lazy to work for
it, you may go without. ” - LECTURE-ROOM Talks: Answers to
Prayer. '
God did not call you to be canary-birds in a little cage, and
to hop up and down on three sticks, within a space no larger
than the size of the cage. God calls you to be eagles, and to
fly from sun to sun, over continents. — SERMON: The Perfect
Manhood. '


## p. 1725 (#523) ###########################################

HENRY WARD BEECHER
1725
Do not be a spy on yourself. A man who goes down the
street thinking of himself all the time, with critical analysis,
whether he is doing this, that, or any other thing, - turning him-
self over as if he were a goose on a spit before a fire, and
basting himself with good resolutions,- is simply belittling him-
self. _' LECTURES ON PREACHING. '
Many persons boil themselves down to a kind of molasses
goodness. How many there are that, like flies caught in some
sweet liquid, have got out at last upon the side of the cup, and
crawl along slowly, buzzing a little to clear their wings! Just
such Christians I have seen, creeping up the side of churches,
soul-poor, imperfect, and drabbled. -- ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN
LiFe. )
No man, then, need hunt among hair-shirts; no
man need
seek for blankets too short at the bottom and too short at the
top; no man need resort to iron seats or cushionless chairs; no
man need shut himself up in grim cells; no man need stand on
the tops of towers or columns,- in order to deny himself. -
Sermon: Problem of Joy and Suffering in Life. '
Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, New York, 1887.
SERMON
POVERTY AND THE GOSPEL
Texts: Luke iv. 17-21, Matt. xi. 2-6
H
ERE was Christ's profession of his faith; here is the history
also of his examination, to see whether he were fit to
preach or not. It is remarkable that in both these in-
stances the most significant indication that he had, both of his
descent from God and of his being worthy of the Messiahship,
consisted in this simple exposition of the line of his preaching,
that he took sides with the poor, neglected, and lost. He empha-
sized this, that his gospel was a gospel of mercy to the poor;
and that word “poor," in its most comprehensive sense, looked
at historically, includes in it everything that belongs to human
misery, whether it be by reason of sin or depravity, or by op-
pression, or by any other cause. This, then, is the disclosure
by Christ himself of the genius of Christianity. It is his decla-
ration of what the gospel meant.


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
It is still further interpreted when you follow the life of
Christ, and see how exactly in his conduct he interpreted, or
rather fortified, the words of the declaration. His earliest life
was that of labor and poverty, and it was labor and poverty in
the poorest districts of Palestine. The dignified, educated, and
aristocratic part of the nation dwelt in Judea, and the Athens of
Palestine was Jerusalem. There Christ spent the least part of
his life, and that in perpetual discussions. But in Galilee the
most of his miracles, certainly the earlier, were performed, and
the most of his discourses that are contained bodily in the gos-
pels were uttered. He himself carried out the declaration that
the gospel was for the poor. The very miracles that Christ per-
formed were not philosophical enigmas, as we look at them.
They were all of them miracles of mercy. They were miracles
to those who were suffering helplessly where natural law and
artificial means could not reach them. In every case the mira-
cles of Christ were mercies, though we look at them in a spirit
totally different from that in which he performed them.
In doing thus, Christ represented the best spirit of the Old
Testament. The Jewish Scriptures teach mercy, the very genius
of Jewish institutions was that of mercy, and especially to the
poor, the weak, the helpless, The crimes against which the
prophets thundered their severest denunciations were crimes
upon the helpless. It was the avarice of the rich, it was the
unbounded lust and cruelty of the strong, that were denounced
by them. They did not preach against human nature in gen-
eral. They did not preach against total depravity and the ori-
ginal condition of mankind. They singled out violations of the
law in the magistrate, in the king, in rich men, everywhere,
and especially all those wrongs committed by power either
unconsciously or with purpose, cruelty upon the helpless, the
defenseless, the poor and the needy. When Christ declared that
this was his ministry, he took his text from the Old Testament;
he spoke in its spirit. It was to preach the gospel to the poor
that he was sent. He had come into the world to change the
condition of mankind. Beginning at the top ? No; beginning
at the bottom and working up to the top from the bottom.
When this view of the gospel enters into our understanding
and is fully comprehended by us, how exactly it fits in with the
order of nature, and with the order of the unfolding of human
life and human society! It takes sides with the poor; and so the


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
1727
universal tendency of Providence and of history, slowly un-
folded, is on the whole going from low to high, from worse to
better, and from good toward the perfect. When we consider,
we see that man begins as a helpless thing, a baby zero without
a figure before it; and every step in life adds a figure to it
and gives it more and more worth. On the whole, the law of
unfolding throughout the world is from lower to higher; and
though when applied to the population of the globe it is almost
inconceivable, still, with many back-sets and reactions, the tend-
ency of the universe is thus from lower to higher. Why? Let
any man consider whether there is not of necessity a benevo-
lent intelligence somewhere that is drawing up from the crude
toward the ripe, from the rough toward the smooth, from bad to
good, and from good through better toward best. The tendency
upward runs like a golden thread through the history of the
whole world, both in the unfolding of human life and in the
unfolding of the race itself. Thus the tendency of nature is in
accordance with the tendency of the gospel as declared by Jesus
Christ, namely, that it is a ministry of mercy to the needy.
The vast majority of mankind have been and yet are poor.
There are ten thousand men poor where there is one man even
comfortably provided for, body and soul, and hundreds of thou-
sands where there is one rich, taking the whole world together.
The causes of poverty are worthy a moment's consideration. Cli-
mate and soil have much to do with it. Men whose winter lasts
nine or ten months in the year, and who have a summer of but
one or two months, as in the extreme north, - how could they
amass property, how could they enlarge their conditions of peace
and of comfort ? There are many parts of the earth where men
live on the borders of deserts, or in mountain fastnesses, or in
arctic rigors, where anything but poverty is impossible, and
where it requires the whole thought, genius, industry, and fore-
sight of men, the year round, just to feed themselves and to
live. Bad government, where men are insecure in their prop-
erty, has always been a very fertile source of poverty. The
great valley of Esdraelon in Northern Palestine is one of the
most fertile in the world, and yet famine perpetually stalks on
the heels of the population; for if you sow and the harvest
waves, forth come hordes of Bedouins to reap your harvest for
you, and leave you, after all your labor, to poverty and starva-
tion. When a man has lost his harvest in that way two or three


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1728
HENRY WARD BEECHER
times, and is deprived of the reward of his labors, he never
emerges from poverty, but sinks into indolence; and that, by and
by, breeds apathetic misery. So where the government over-
taxes its subjects, as is the case in the Orient with perhaps
nearly all of the populations there to-day, it cuts the sinews and
destroys all the motives of industry; and without industry there
can be neither virtue, morality, nor religion in any long period.
Wars breaking out, from whatever cause, tend to absorb prop-
erty, or to destroy property, or to prevent the development of
property. Yet, strange as it may seem, the men who suffer
from war are those whose passions generally lead it on. The
king may apply the spark, but the combustion is with the com-
mon people. They furnish the army, they themselves become
destroyers; and the ravages of war, in the history of the human
family, have destroyed more property than it is possible to enter
into the thoughts of men to conceive.
But besides these external reasons of poverty, there are cer-
tain great primary and fundamental reasons. Ignorance breeds
poverty. What is property? It is the product of intelligence, of
skill, of thought applied to material substances. All property is
raw material that has been shaped to uses by intelligent skill.
Where intelligence is low, the power of producing property is
low. It is the husbandman who thinks, foresees, plans, and calls
on all natural laws to serve him, whose farm brings forth forty,
a hundred fold. The ignorant peasant grubs and
groans, and reaps but one handful where he has sown two. It
is knowledge that is the gold mine; for although every knowing
man may not be able to be a rich man, yet out of ignorance
riches do not spring anywhere. Ignorant men may be made the
factors of wealth when they are guided and governed by supe-
rior intelligence. Slave labor produced gigantic plantations and
estates. The slave was always poor, but his master was rich,
because the master had the intelligence and the knowledge, and
the slave gave the work. All through human society, men who
represent simple ignorance will be tools, and the men who repre-
sent intelligence will be the master mechanics, the capitalists.
All society to-day is agitated with this question of justice as
between the laborer and the thinker. Now, it is no use to kick
against the pricks. A man who can only work and not think is
not the equal in any regard of the man who can think, who can
plan, who can combine, and who can live not for to-day alone,
fifty, and


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
1729
as
but for to-morrow, for next month, for the next year, for ten
years. This is the man whose volume will just as surely weigh
down that of the unthinking man as a ton will weigh down a
pound in the scale. Avoirdupois is moral, industrial, as well as *
material, in this respect; and the primary, most usual cause of
unprosperity in industrial callings therefore lies in the want
of intelligence,- either in the slender endowment of the man, or
more likely the want of education in his ordinary and average
endowment. Any class of men who live for to-day, and do not
care whether they know anything more than they did yesterday
or last year those men may have a temporary and transient
prosperity, but they are the children of poverty just as surely as
the decrees of God stand. Ignorance enslaves men among men;
knowledge is the creator of liberty and wealth.
As with undeveloped intelligence, so the appetites of men and
their passions are causes of poverty. Men who live from the
basilar faculties will invariably live in inferior stations. The
men who represent animalism are a general fact at the
bottom.
They may say it is government, climate, soil, want of
capital, they may say what they please, but it is the devil of
laziness that is in them, or of passion, that comes out in eating,
in gluttony, in drinking and drunkenness, in wastefulness on
I do not say that the laboring classes in modern
society are poor because they are self-indulgent, but I say that
it unquestionably would be wise for all men who feel irritated
that they are so unprosperous, if they would take heed to the
moral condition in which they are living, to self-denial in their
passions and appetites, and to increasing the amount of their
knowledge and fidelity. Although moral conditions are not the
sole causes, they are principal causes, of the poverty of the
working classes throughout the world. It is their misfortune as
well as their fault; but it is the reason why they do not rise.
Weakness does not rise; strength does.
All these causes indicate that the poor need moral and intel-
lectual culture. “I was sent to preach the gospel to the poor:
not to distribute provisions, not to relieve their wants; that will
be included, but that was not Christ's primary idea, It was not
to bring in a golden period of fruitfulness when men would not
be required to work. It was not that men should lie down
on their backs under the trees, and that the boughs should
bend over and drop the ripe fruit into their mouths. No such
III-109
every side.


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
conception of equality and abundance entered into the mind of
the Creator or of Him who represented the Creator.
To preach
the gospel to the poor was to awaken the mind of the poor. It
was to teach the poor — “Take up your cross, deny yourselves,
and follow me. Restrain all those sinful appetites and passions,
and hold them back by the power of knowledge and by the
power of conscience; grow, because you are the sons of God,
into the likeness of your Father. ” So he preached to the poor.
That was preaching prosperity to them. That was teaching
them how to develop their outward condition by developing their
inward forces. To develop that in men which should make them
wiser, purer, and stronger, is the aim of the gospel. Men have
supposed that the whole end of the gospel was reconciliation
between God and men who had fallen — though they were born
sinners in their fathers and grandfathers and ancestors; to recon-
cile them with God as if an abstract disagreement had been
the cause of all this world's trouble! But the plain facts of
history are simply that men, if they have not come from ani-
mals, have yet dwelt in animalism, and that that which should
raise them out of it was some such moral influence as should
give them the power of ascension into intelligence, into virtue,
and into true godliness. That is what the gospel was sent for;
good news, a new power that is kindled under men, that will
lift them from their low ignorances and degradations and pas-
sions, and lift them into a higher realm; a power that will take
away all the poverty that needs to be taken away. Men may be
doctrinally depraved; they are much more depraved practically.
Men may need to be brought into the knowledge of God specu-
latively; but what they do need is to be brought into the
knowledge of themselves practically. I do not say that the
gospel has nothing in it of this kind of spiritual knowledge; it
is full of it, but its aim and the reason why it should be
preached is to wake up in men the capacity for good things,
industries, frugalities, purities, moralities, kindnesses one toward
another: and when men are brought into that state they are
reconciled.
When men are reconciled with the law of creation
and the law of their being, they are reconciled with God.
Whenever a man is reconciled with the law of knowledge, he
is reconciled with the God of knowledge, so far. Whenever a
man is reconciled with the law of purity he is so far reconciled
with a God of purity. When men have lifted themselves to


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
1731
that point that they recognize that they are the children of God,
the kingdom of God has begun within them.
Although the spirit and practice of the gospel will develop
charities, will develop physical comfort, will feed men, will heal
men, will provide for their physical needs, yet the primary and
fundamental result of the gospel is to develop man himself, not
merely to relieve his want on an occasion.
It does that as a
matter of course, but that is scarcely the first letter of the
alphabet. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous-
ness, and all these things [food and raiment] shall be added
unto you. ” The way to relieve a man is to develop him so that
he will need no relief, or to raise higher and higher the charac-
ter of the help that he demands.
In testing Christianity, then, I remark first that it is to be
tested not by creeds, but by conduct. The evidence of the
gospel, the reality of the gospel that is preached in schools or
churches, is to be found in the spirit that is developed by it, not
in the technical creeds that men have constructed out of it.
The biography of men who have died might be hung up in their
sepulchres; but you could not tell what kind of a man this one
had been, just by reading his life there — while he lay dead in
dust before you. There are thousands of churches that have a
creed of Christianity hung up in them, but the church itself is a
sepulchre full of dead men's bones; and indeed, many churches
in modern times are gnawing the bones of their ancestors, and
doing almost nothing else.
The gospel, changed from a spirit of humanity into a philo-
sophical system of doctrine, is perverted. It is not the gospel.
The great heresy in the world of religion is a cold heart, not a
luminous head. It is not that intelligence is of no use in reli-
gion. By no means. Neither would we wage a crusade against
philosophical systems of moral truth. But where the active sym-
pathy and humanity of loving hearts for living men, and for men
in the ratio in which they are low, is laid aside or diminished to
a minimum, and in its place is a well-elaborated philosophical
system of moral truths, hewn and jointed, — the gospel is gone.
If you go along the sea-shores, you will often find the shells of
fish — the fish dead and gone, the shells left.
And if you go
along the shores of ecclesiastical organization, you will find mul-
titudes of shells of the gospel, out of which the living sub-
stance has gone long ago. Organized Christianity — that is, the


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HENRY WARD BEECHER
institutions of Christianity have been in the first instance its
power, and in the second instance its damnation. The moment
you substitute the machinery of education for education itself,
the moment you build schools and do not educate, build colleges
that do not increase knowledge in the pupils, you have sacrificed
the aim for the instrument by which you were to gain that aim.