When the good doctor read the
Scriptures
at family prayer,
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v03 - Bag to Ber
” 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
## p. 1731 (#529) ###########################################
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
## p. 1732 (#530) ###########################################
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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.
In churches, the moment it is more important to maintain build-
ings, rituals, ministers, chanters, and all the paraphernalia of
moral education than the spirit of personal sympathy, the moment
these are more sacred to men than is the welfare of the popula-
tion round about which they were set to take care of, that very
moment Christ is dead in that place; that very moment religion
in the midst of all its institutions has perished. I am bound to
say that in the history of the world, while religious institutions
have been valuable and have done a great deal of good, they
have perhaps done as much harm as good. There is scarcely
one single perversion of civil government, there is scarcely one
single persecution of men, there is scarcely a single one of the
great wars that have depopulated the globe, there is scarcely one
great heresy developed out of the tyranny of the church, that
has not been the fruit of institutional religion; while that spirit
of humanity which was to give the institution its motive power
has to a certain extent died out of it.
Secondly, churches organized upon elective affinities of men
are contrary to the spirit of the gospel. We may associate with
men who are of like taste with ours. We have that privilege.
If men are knowledgeable and intellectual, there is no sin in
their choosing for intimate companions and associates men of like
pursuits and like intellectual qualities. That is right. If men
are rich, there is no reason why men who hold like property
should not confer with each other, and form interests and friend-
ships together. If men are refined, if they have become aesthetic,
there is no reason why they should not associate in the ealm of
beauty, artists with artists, nor why the great enjoyers of beauty
should not be in sympathy. But all these are not to be allowed
to do it at the price of abandoning common humanity; you have
no right to make your nest in the boughs of knowledge, and let
all the rest of the world go as it will. You have no right to
make your home among those who are polished and exquisite
and fastidious in their tastes, whose garments are beauty, whose
house is a temple of art, and all whose associations are of like
## p. 1733 (#531) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1733
kind, and neglect common humanity. You have no right to
shut yourself up in a limited company of those who are like you
in these directions, and let all the rest of men go without
sympathy and without care. It is a right thing for a man to
salute his neighbor who salutes him; but if you salute those who
salute you, says Christ, what thank have ye— do not even the
publicans so? It is no sin that a man, being intellectual in his
nature, should like intellectual people, and gratify that which is
divine and God-like in him; but if, because he likes intellectual
people, he loses all interest in ignorant people, it convicts him of
depravity and of moral perversion. When this is carried out to
such an extent that churches are organized upon sharp classifica-
tion, upon elective affinities, they not only cease to be Christian
churches, but they are heretical; not perhaps in doctrine, but
worse than that, heretical in heart.
The fact is that a church needs poor men and wicked men
as much as it does pure men and virtuous men and pious men.
What man needs is familiarity with universal human nature.
He needs never to separate himself from men in daily life. It
is not necessary that in our houses we should bring pestilential
diseases or pestilential examples, but somehow we must hold on
to men if they are wicked; somehow the circulation between the
top and the bottom must be carried on; somehow there must be
an atoning power in the heart of every true believer of the Lord
Jesus Christ who shall say, looking out and seeing that the
world is lost, and is living in sin and misery, “I belong to it,
and it belongs to me. ” When you take the loaf of society and
cut off the upper crust, slicing it horizontally, you get an elect
church. Yes, it is the peculiarly elect church of selfishness.
But
you should cut the loaf of society from the top down to
the bottom, and take in something of everything. True, every
church would be very much edified and advantaged if it had in
it scholarly men, knowledgeable men; but the church is strong
in proportion as it has in it something of everything, from the
very top to the very bottom.
Now, I do not disown creeds— provided they are my own!
Well, you smile; but that is the way it has been since the world
began. No denomination believes in any creed except its own.
I do not say that men's knowledge on moral subjects may not
be formulated. I criticize the formulation of beliefs from time
to time, in this: that they are very partial; that they are formed
## p. 1734 (#532) ###########################################
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HENRY WARD BEECHER
cross
me
upon the knowledge of a past age, and that that knowledge per-
ishes while higher and nobler knowledge comes in; that there
ought to be higher and better forms; and that while their power
is relatively small, the power of the spirit of humanity is rela-
tively great. When I examine a church, I do not so much care
whether its worship is to the one God or to the triune God. I
do not chiefly care for the catechism, nor for the confession of
faith, although they are both interesting. I do not even look to
see whether it is a synagogue or a Christian church — I do not
care whether it has a over the top of it or is Quaker
plain. I do not care whether it is Protestant, Catholic, or
anything else. Let read the living - the living book!
What is the spirit of the people? How do they feel among
each other? How do they feel toward the community ? What
is their life and conduct in regard to the great prime moral
duty of man, “Love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thy-
self,” whether he be obscure or whether he be smiling in the
very plenitude of wealth and refinement ? Have you a heart
for humanity? Have you a soul that goes out for men ? Are
you Christ-like? Will you spend yourself for the sake of ele-
vating men who need to be lifted up? That is orthodox. I do
not care what the creed is. If a church has a good creed, that
is all the more felicitous; and if it has a bad creed, a good life
cures the bad creed.
One of the dangers of our civilization may be seen in the
light of these considerations. We are developing so much
strength founded on popular intelligence, and this intelligence
and the incitements to it are developing such large property
interests, that if the principle of elective affinity shall sort men
out and classify them, we are steering to the not very remote
danger of the disintegration of human society. I can tell you
that the classes of men who by their knowledge, refinement, and
wealth think they are justified in separating themselves, and in
making a great void between them and the myriads of men
below them, are courting their own destruction. I look with
very great interest on the process of change going on in Great
Britain, where the top of society had all the blood, but the
circulation is growing larger and larger, and a change is gradu-
ally taking place in their institutions. The old nobility of Great
Britain is the lordliest of aristocracies existing in the world.
Happily, on the whole, a very noble class of men occupy the
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HENRY WARD BEECHER
1735
high positions: but the spirit of suffrage, this angel of God that
so many hate, is coming in on them; and when every man in
Great Britain can vote, no matter whether he is poor or rich,
whether he has knowledge or no knowledge, there must be a
very great change. Before the great day of the Lord shall
come, the valleys are to go up and the mountains are to come
down; and the mountains have started already in Great Britain
and must come down. There may be an aristocracy in any
nation, - that is to say, there may be "best men”; there ought
to be an aristocracy in every community,-- that is, an aristocracy
of men who speak the truth, who are just, who are intelligent:
but that aristocracy will be like a wave of the sea; it has to be
reconstituted in every generation, and the men who are the best
in the State become the aristocracy of that State. But where
rank is hereditary, if political suffrage becomes free and uni-
versal, aristocracy cannot live. The spirit of the gospel is demo-
cratic. The tendency of the gospel is leveling; leveling up, not
down. It is carrying the poor and the multitude onward and
upward.
It is said that democracies have no great men, no heroic
Why is it so? When you raise the average of intelli-
gence and power in the community it is very hard to be a great
man. That is to say, when the great mass of citizens are only
ankle-high, when among the Lilliputians a Brobdingnagian walks,
he is a great man.
But when the Lilliputians grow until they
get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a man as he was by
the whole length of his body. So, make the common people
grow, and there is nobody tall enough to be much higher.
men.
The remarkable people of this world are useful in their way;
but the common people, after all, represent the nation, the age,
and the civilization, Go into any town or city: do not ask who
lives in that splendid house; do not say, This is a fine town,
here are streets of houses with gardens and yards, and every-
thing that is beautiful the whole way through. Go into the
lanes, go into the back streets, go where the mechanic lives; go
where the day-laborer lives. See what is the condition of the
streets there. See what they do with the poor, with the helpless
and the mean. If the top of society bends perpetually over the
bottom with tenderness, if the rich and strong are the best
friends of the poor and needy, that is a civilized and a Christian
## p. 1736 (#534) ###########################################
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HENRY WARD BEECHER
community; but if the rich and the wise are the cream and the
great bulk of the population skim-milk, that is not a prosperous
community.
There is a great deal of irreligion in men, there is a great
deal of wickedness and depravity in men, but there are times
when it is true that the church is more dissipated than the
dissipated classes of the community. If there is one thing that
stood out more strongly than any other in the ministry of our
Lord, it is the severity with which he treated the exclusiveness
of men with knowledge, position, and a certain sort of religion,
a religion of particularity and carefulness; if there is one class
of the community against which he hurled his thunderbolts with-
out mercy and predicted woes, it was the scribes, Pharisees,
scholars, and priests of the temples. He told them in so many
words, « The publican and the harlot will enter the kingdom of
God before you. " The worst dissipation in this world is the
dry-rot of morality, and of the so-called piety that separates men
of prosperity and of power from the poor and ignoble. They
are our wards.
I am not a socialist. I do not preach riot. I do not preach
the destruction of property. I regard property as one of the
sacred things. The real property established by a man's own
intelligence and labor is the crystallized man himself. It is the
fruit of what his life-work has done; and not in vain, society
makes crime against it amongst the most punishable. But never-
theless, I warn these men in a country like ours, where every
man votes, whether he came from Hungary, or from Russia, or
from Germany, or from France or Italy, or Spain or Portugal,
or from the Orient, — from Japan and China, because they too
are going to vote! On the Niagara River, logs come floating
down and strike an island, and there they lodge and accumulate
for a little while, and won't go over. But the rains come, the
snows melt, the river rises, and the logs are lifted up and down,
and they go swinging over the falls. The stream of suffrage of
free men, having all the privileges of the State, is this great
stream. The figure is defective in this, that the log goes over
the Niagara Falls, but that is not the way the country is going
or will go.
There is a certain river of political life, and
everything has to go into it first or last; and if, in days to
come, a man separates himself from his fellows without sympa-
thy, if his wealth and power make poverty feel itself more poor
.
.
## p. 1737 (#535) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1737
and men's misery more miserable, and set against him the whole
stream of popular feeling, that man is in danger. He may not
know who dynamites him, but there is danger; and let him take
heed who is in peril. There is nothing easier in the world than
for rich men to ingratiate themselves with the whole community
in which they live, and so secure themselves. It is not selfish-
ness that will do it; it is not by increasing the load of misfor-
tune, it is not by wasting substance in riotous living upon
appetites and passions. It is by recognizing that every man is a
brother. It is by recognizing the essential spirit of the gospel,
“Love thy neighbor as thyself. ” It is by using some of their
vast power and riches so as to diffuse joy in every section of
the community.
Here then I close this discourse. How much it enrolls! How
very simple it is!
It is the whole gospel. When you make an
application of it to all the phases of organization and classifica-
tion of human interests and developments, it seems as though
it were as big as the universe. Yet when you condense it, it all
comes back to the one simple creed: “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. ” Who
is my neighbor ? A certain man went down to Jericho, and so
That tells you who your neighbor is. Whosoever has been
attacked by robbers, has been beaten, has been thrown down-
by liquor, by gambling, or by any form of wickedness; whoso-
ever has been cast into distress, and you are called on to raise
him up— that is your neighbor. Love your neighbor as your-
self. That is the gospel.
on.
A NEW ENGLAND SUNDAY
From Norwood)
I"
IS worth all the inconveniences arising from the occasional
over-action of New England Sabbath observance, to obtain
the full flavor of a New England Sunday. But for this, one
should have been born there; should have found Sunday already
waiting for him, and accepted it with implicit and absolute con-
viction, as if it were a law of nature, in the same way that
night and day, summer and winter, are parts of nature. He
should have been brought up by parents who had done the same
thing, as they were by parents even more strict, if that were
## p. 1738 (#536) ###########################################
1738
HENRY WARD BEECHER
possible; until not religious persons peculiarly, but everybody –
not churches alone, but society itself, and all its population, those
who broke it as much
as those who kept it — were stained
through with the color of Sunday. Nay, until Nature had adopted
it, and laid its commands on all birds and beasts, on the sun and
winds, and upon the whole atmosphere; so that without much
imagination one might imagine, in a genuine New England
Sunday of the Connecticut River Valley stamp, that God was
still on that day resting from all the work which he had created
and made, and that all his work rested with him!
Over all the town rested the Lord's peace! The saw was rip-
ping away yesterday in the carpenter's shop, and the hammer
was noisy enough. To-day there is not a sign of life there. The
anvil makes no music to-day. Tommy Taft's buckets and bar-
rels give forth no hollow, thumping sound. The mill is silent-
only the brook continues noisy. Listen! In yonder pine woods
what a cawing of crows! Like an echo, in a wood still more
remote other crows are answering
But even
a crow's throat
to-day is musical. Do they think, because they have black coats
on, that they are parsons, and have a right to play pulpit with
all the pine-trees ? Nay. The birds will not have any such
monopoly,– they are all singing, and singing all together, and
one cares whether his song rushes across another's or not.
Larks and robins, blackbirds and orioles, sparrows and bluebirds,
mocking cat-birds and wrens, were furrowing the air with such
mixtures as no other day but Sunday, when all artificial and
human sounds cease, could ever hear. Every now and then a
bobolink seemed impressed with the duty of bringing these
jangling birds into more regularity; and like a country singing-
master, he few down the ranks, singing all the parts himself in
snatches, as if to stimulate and help the laggards. In vain !
Sunday is the birds' day, and they will have their own demo-
cratic worship.
There was no sound in the village street. Look either way —
not a vehicle, not a human being. The smoke rose up soberly
and quietly, as if it said — It is Sunday! The leaves on the
great elms hung motionless, glittering in dew, as if they too,
like the people who dwelt under their shadow, were waiting for
the bell to ring for meeting. Bees sung and flew as usual; but
honey-bees have a Sunday way with them all the week, and
could scarcely change for the better on the seventh day.
no
## p. 1739 (#537) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1739
But oh, the Sun! It had sent before and cleared every stain
out of the sky. The blue heaven was not dim and low, as on
secular days, but curved and deep, as if on Sunday it shook off
all incumbrance which during the week had lowered and flat-
tened it, and sprang back to the arch and symmetry of a dome.
All ordinary sounds caught the spirit of the day. The shut-
ting of a door sounded twice as far as usual. The rattle of a
bucket in a neighbor's yard, no longer mixed with heterogeneous
noises, seemed a new sound. The hens went silently about, and
roosters crowed in psalm-tunes. And when the first bell rung,
Nature seemed overjoyed to find something that it might do
without breaking Sunday, and rolled the sound over and over,
and pushed it through the air, and raced with it over field and
hill, twice as far as on week-days. There were no less than
seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said: -
«On still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another,
when the day was fair, and the air moving in the right way,
from every one of them steeples, and I guess likely they've all
heard our'n. ”
“Come, Rose! ” said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour
than when Rose usually awakened — "Come, Rose, it is the Sab-
bath. We must not be late Sunday morning, of all days in the
week. It is the Lord's day. ”
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday
night, in some parts of New England, was considered almost as
sacred as Sunday itself. After sundown on Saturday night no
play, and no work except such as is immediately preparatory to
the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in good Christians. The
clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing was for-
gotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were
selected on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked
mildly. Every one spoke in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful.
The mother had on her kindest face, and nobody laughed, but
everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse smiled, and the
children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds
of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound,
as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt
Toodie, the cook (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah
Good's name), was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and
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1740
HENRY WARD BEECHER
the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens
juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter, and the corn-
bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer,
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old
clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if,
unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage
ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time. And if
he old pedant performed the task with something of an ostenta-
tious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on
official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for
the whole mansion.
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth
followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should
grow up without catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite will-
ing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of
good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be
an opposition set up-a catechism of Nature, with natural laws
for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces!
The younger children were taught in simple catechism. But
Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now mani-
festing her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and
as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the
understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon
subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible,
the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions
were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble,
and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled
forth, “They that are effectually called do in this life partake
of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits
which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. ”
«What do those words mean, Rose ? »
«Which words, pa? ”
"Adoption, sanctification, and justification ?
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.
“Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course she don't
know yet all the meaning. But that will come to her when she
grows older. ”
You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there,
like eggs, for future hatching?
## p. 1741 (#539) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1741
“Yes, that is it exactly: birds do not hatch their eggs the
minute they lay them. They wait. ”
“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting
them to some risk, is it not ? ”
It might be so with eggs, but not with the catechism. That
will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! »
« Because it is so dry ? ”
“Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and
not put notions in the children's heads. It's hard enough already
to get them through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur, who has
been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet. ”
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in anything addressed
to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was there-
fore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a
deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too
much clay with him, while nothing stuck to poor Arthur.
The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought
forth every one; old men and their feebler old wives, young and
hearty men and their plump and ruddy companions, - young men
and girls and children, thick as punctuation points in Hebrew
text, filled the street. In a low voice, they spoke to each other
in single sentences.
“A fine day! There'll be a good congregation out to-day. ”
“Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney -
have you heard ? »
“Well, not much better; can't hold out many days. It will
be a great loss to the children. ”
“Yes; but we must all die — nobody can skip his turn. Does
she still talk about them that's gone ? »
«They say not.
I believe she's sunk into a quiet way; and
it looks as if she'd go off easy. ”
Sunday is a good day for dying — it's about the only jour-
ney that speeds well on this day! ”
There was something striking in the outflow of people into
the street, that till now had seemed utterly deserted. There was
no fevered hurry; no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every
family came in groups - old folks and young children; and every
member blossomed forth in his best apparel, like a rose-bush in
June. Do you know that man in a silk hat and new black coat? .
(
## p. 1742 (#540) ###########################################
1742
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the carpenter, Mr.
Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves rolled
up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would
not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith, — does he not
look every inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved,
and dressed? His eyes are as bright as the sparks that fly from
his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children?
See what groups
of them! How ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish,
and cut clandestine capers at every chance. Others seem like
wax figures, so perfectly proper are they. Little hands go slyly
through the pickets to pluck a tempting flower. Other hands
carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they may, dressed
as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines upon
more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children ?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It
was the licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the
church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and
carryalls, — the horses already beginning the forenoon's work of
stamping and whisking the flies. More were coming. Hiram
Beers had “hitched up," and brought two loads with his new
hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few
admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.
“There's Trowbridge — he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's
I don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years.
I've
seen him sleep standin' up in singin'.
“Here comes Deacon Marble, smart old feller, ain't he ?
wouldn't think it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of
last summer's sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the
juice in him yit! Aunt Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say
she can't walk half the time — lost the use of her limbs; but it's
all gone to her tongue. That's as good as a razor, and a sight
better 'n mine, for it never needs sharpenin'.
"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses — not
fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner. ”
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs.
Cathcart and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he
dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such
awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety.
Barton alone remained sober as a judge.
over.
## p. 1743 (#541) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1743
“Here comes Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my
kind o Christians. She is a saint, at any rate. ”
«How is it with you, Tommy Taft ? ”
"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-
spike blossom, Hiram. ”
“Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday?
P'raps you mean afore it's cut ?
“Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me,
Hiram. Parson Buell '11 be lookin' for me. He never begins
till I git there. "
“You mean you always git there 'fore he begins. ”
Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton
and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon
all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in
a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in
good health.
You could not help feeling that he gazed upon
you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look
in the condition which was to him the most interesting period
of a man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he
was always at a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left
hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to
lay you out. He was one of the few men absorbed by his busi-
ness, and who unconsciously measured all things from its stand-
point.
Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould!
How's your health ? How
is business with you? ”
« Good the Lord be praised! I've no reason to complain. ”
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
“There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly,” said the critical
Hiram. "I wonder what he comes to meetin' for. Lord knows
he needs it, sly, slippery old sinner! Face's as white as a lily;
his heart's as black as a chimney fue afore it's cleaned. He'11
get his fue burned out if he don't repent, that's certain. He
don't believe the Bible. They say he don't believe in God.
Wal, I guess it's pretty even between 'em. Shouldn't wonder if
God didn't believe in him neither. ”
As soon as the afternoon service was over, every horse on
the green knew that it was time for him to go home. Some
grew restless and whinnied for their masters. Nim ble hands
soon put them into the shafts or repaired any irregularity of
harness. Then came such a scramble of vehicles to the church
## p. 1744 (#542) ###########################################
1744
HENRY WARD BEECHER
door for the older persons; while young women and children,
venturing further out upon the green, were taken up hastily,
that the impatient horses might as soon as possible turn their
heads homeward. Clouds of dust began to arise along every
outward-going road. In less than ten minutes not a wagon or
chaise was seen upon the village green. They were whirling
homeward at the very best pace that the horses could raise.
Stiff old steeds vainly essayed a nimbler gait, but gave it up
in a few rods, and fell back to the steady jog. Young horses,
tired of long standing, and with a strong yearning for evening
oats, shot along the level ground, rushed up the little hills, or
down upon the other side, in the most un-Sunday-like haste.
The scene was not altogether unlike the return from a military
funeral, to which men march with sad music and slow, but from
which they return nimbly marching to the most brilliant quick-
step.
In half an hour Norwood was quiet again. The dinner, on
Sunday, when for the sake of the outlying population the two
services are brought near together in the middle of the day, was
usually deferred till the ordinary supper hour. It was evident
that the tone of the day was changed. Children were not so
strictly held in. There was no loud talking, nor was laughing
allowed, but a general feeling sprung up around the table that
the severer tasks of the day were ended.
Devout and age-sobered people sat in a kind of golden twi.
light of meditation. The minister, in his well-ordered house,
tired with a double service, mingled thoughts both glad and sad.
His tasks were ended. He was conscious that he had manfuily
done his best. But that best doing, as he reflected upon it,
seemed so poor, so unworthy of the nobleness of the theme, and
so relatively powerless upon the stubborn stuff of which his peo-
ple's dispositions were made, that there remained a vague, unquiet
sense of blame upon his conscience.
It was Dr. Wentworth's habit to walk with his family in the
garden, early in the morning and late in the afternoon. If early,
Rose was usually his company; in the afternoon the whole family,
Agate Bissell always excepted. She had in full measure that
peculiar New England feeling that Sunday is to be kept by stay-
ing in the house, except such time as is spent at church. And
though she never, impliedly even, rebuked the doctor's resort to
his garden, it was plain that deep down in her heart she thought
## p. 1745 (#543) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1745
it an improper way of spending Sunday; and in that view she
had the secret sympathy of almost all the noteworthy villagers.
Had any one, upon that day, made Agate a visit, unless for
some plain end of necessity or mercy, she would have deemed it
a personal affront.
Sunday was the Lord's day. Agate acted as if any use of it
for her own pleasure would be literal and downright stealing.
“We have six days for our own work. We ought not ti
begrudge the Lord one whole day. ”
Two circumstances distressed honest Agate's conscience. The
one was that the incursion of summer visitors from the city
was tending manifestly to relax the Sabbath, especially after
the church services. The other was that Dr. Wentworth would
occasionally allow Judge Bacon to call in and discuss with him
topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed herself in
this wise: -
“Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do
keep it, it ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is ravel-
ing out at the end. We take it on like a summer dress, which
in the morning is clean and sweet, but at night it is soiled at
the bottom and much rumpled all over. ”
Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on
the other, in the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be
seen, great trees lying athwart the horizon and checkering the
golden light with their dark masses. Judge Bacon had turned
the conversation upon this very topic.
«I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jew-
ish more than Christian. They are days of restriction rather
than of joyousness. They are fast days, not feast days. ”
“Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or
do you think that they could be improved practically ? ”
Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian
Sunday was a day of triumph and of much social joy. It would
be well if we could follow primitive example. ”
"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling
to see our New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a
larger social liberty in each family. Much might be done to
make it attractive to children, and relieve older persons from
ennui. But after all, we must judge things by their fruits. If
you bring me good apples, it is in vain to abuse the tree as
craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree. ”
111-IIO
## p. 1746 (#544) ###########################################
1746
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning.
New England has had something at work upon her beside her
Sundays. What you call the fruit' grew, a good deal of it at
any rate, on other trees than Sunday trees. ”
"You are only partly right. New England character and
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power. Almost every cause which has worked
benignly among us has received its inspiration and impulse
largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.
"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about
us here depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one
cause that is the condition of power in every other, and that is
the Sun! And so, many as have been the influences working at
New England character, Sunday has been a generic and multi-
plex force, inspiring and directing all others, It is indeed the
Sun's day.
"It is a little singular that, borrowing the name from the
heathen calendar, it should have tallied so well with the Script-
ure name, the Lord's day — that Lord who was the Morning Star
in early day, and at length the Sun of Righteousness!
“The Jews called it the Sabbath - a day of rest. Modern
Christians call it the Sun's day, or the day of light, warmth, and
growth.
If this seems fanciful so far as the names of the day
are concerned, it is strikingly characteristic of the real spirit of
the two days, in the ancient and modern dispensation. I doubt if
the old Jews ever kept a Sabbath religiously, as we understand
that term. Indeed, I suspect there was not yet a religious
strength in that national character that could hold up religious
feeling without the help of social and even physical adjuvants.
Their religious days were either fasts or like our Thanksgiving
days. But the higher and richer moral nature which has been
developed by Christianity enables communities to sustain one day
in seven upon a high spiritual plane, with the need of but very
little social help, and without the feasting element at all. ”
That
very
well for a few saints like you and me,
Doctor, but it is too high for the majority of men. Common
people find the strict Sundays a great annoyance, and clandes-
tinely set them aside. ”
“I doubt it. There are a few in every society that live by
their sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them — a
may be
## p. 1747 (#545) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1747
dark room. No wonder they break through. But it is not so
with the sturdy, unsophisticated laboring class in New England.
If it came to a vote, you would find that the farmers of New
England would be the defenders of the day, even if screwed up
to the old strictness.
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
## p. 1731 (#529) ###########################################
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
## p. 1732 (#530) ###########################################
1732
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.
In churches, the moment it is more important to maintain build-
ings, rituals, ministers, chanters, and all the paraphernalia of
moral education than the spirit of personal sympathy, the moment
these are more sacred to men than is the welfare of the popula-
tion round about which they were set to take care of, that very
moment Christ is dead in that place; that very moment religion
in the midst of all its institutions has perished. I am bound to
say that in the history of the world, while religious institutions
have been valuable and have done a great deal of good, they
have perhaps done as much harm as good. There is scarcely
one single perversion of civil government, there is scarcely one
single persecution of men, there is scarcely a single one of the
great wars that have depopulated the globe, there is scarcely one
great heresy developed out of the tyranny of the church, that
has not been the fruit of institutional religion; while that spirit
of humanity which was to give the institution its motive power
has to a certain extent died out of it.
Secondly, churches organized upon elective affinities of men
are contrary to the spirit of the gospel. We may associate with
men who are of like taste with ours. We have that privilege.
If men are knowledgeable and intellectual, there is no sin in
their choosing for intimate companions and associates men of like
pursuits and like intellectual qualities. That is right. If men
are rich, there is no reason why men who hold like property
should not confer with each other, and form interests and friend-
ships together. If men are refined, if they have become aesthetic,
there is no reason why they should not associate in the ealm of
beauty, artists with artists, nor why the great enjoyers of beauty
should not be in sympathy. But all these are not to be allowed
to do it at the price of abandoning common humanity; you have
no right to make your nest in the boughs of knowledge, and let
all the rest of the world go as it will. You have no right to
make your home among those who are polished and exquisite
and fastidious in their tastes, whose garments are beauty, whose
house is a temple of art, and all whose associations are of like
## p. 1733 (#531) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1733
kind, and neglect common humanity. You have no right to
shut yourself up in a limited company of those who are like you
in these directions, and let all the rest of men go without
sympathy and without care. It is a right thing for a man to
salute his neighbor who salutes him; but if you salute those who
salute you, says Christ, what thank have ye— do not even the
publicans so? It is no sin that a man, being intellectual in his
nature, should like intellectual people, and gratify that which is
divine and God-like in him; but if, because he likes intellectual
people, he loses all interest in ignorant people, it convicts him of
depravity and of moral perversion. When this is carried out to
such an extent that churches are organized upon sharp classifica-
tion, upon elective affinities, they not only cease to be Christian
churches, but they are heretical; not perhaps in doctrine, but
worse than that, heretical in heart.
The fact is that a church needs poor men and wicked men
as much as it does pure men and virtuous men and pious men.
What man needs is familiarity with universal human nature.
He needs never to separate himself from men in daily life. It
is not necessary that in our houses we should bring pestilential
diseases or pestilential examples, but somehow we must hold on
to men if they are wicked; somehow the circulation between the
top and the bottom must be carried on; somehow there must be
an atoning power in the heart of every true believer of the Lord
Jesus Christ who shall say, looking out and seeing that the
world is lost, and is living in sin and misery, “I belong to it,
and it belongs to me. ” When you take the loaf of society and
cut off the upper crust, slicing it horizontally, you get an elect
church. Yes, it is the peculiarly elect church of selfishness.
But
you should cut the loaf of society from the top down to
the bottom, and take in something of everything. True, every
church would be very much edified and advantaged if it had in
it scholarly men, knowledgeable men; but the church is strong
in proportion as it has in it something of everything, from the
very top to the very bottom.
Now, I do not disown creeds— provided they are my own!
Well, you smile; but that is the way it has been since the world
began. No denomination believes in any creed except its own.
I do not say that men's knowledge on moral subjects may not
be formulated. I criticize the formulation of beliefs from time
to time, in this: that they are very partial; that they are formed
## p. 1734 (#532) ###########################################
1734
HENRY WARD BEECHER
cross
me
upon the knowledge of a past age, and that that knowledge per-
ishes while higher and nobler knowledge comes in; that there
ought to be higher and better forms; and that while their power
is relatively small, the power of the spirit of humanity is rela-
tively great. When I examine a church, I do not so much care
whether its worship is to the one God or to the triune God. I
do not chiefly care for the catechism, nor for the confession of
faith, although they are both interesting. I do not even look to
see whether it is a synagogue or a Christian church — I do not
care whether it has a over the top of it or is Quaker
plain. I do not care whether it is Protestant, Catholic, or
anything else. Let read the living - the living book!
What is the spirit of the people? How do they feel among
each other? How do they feel toward the community ? What
is their life and conduct in regard to the great prime moral
duty of man, “Love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thy-
self,” whether he be obscure or whether he be smiling in the
very plenitude of wealth and refinement ? Have you a heart
for humanity? Have you a soul that goes out for men ? Are
you Christ-like? Will you spend yourself for the sake of ele-
vating men who need to be lifted up? That is orthodox. I do
not care what the creed is. If a church has a good creed, that
is all the more felicitous; and if it has a bad creed, a good life
cures the bad creed.
One of the dangers of our civilization may be seen in the
light of these considerations. We are developing so much
strength founded on popular intelligence, and this intelligence
and the incitements to it are developing such large property
interests, that if the principle of elective affinity shall sort men
out and classify them, we are steering to the not very remote
danger of the disintegration of human society. I can tell you
that the classes of men who by their knowledge, refinement, and
wealth think they are justified in separating themselves, and in
making a great void between them and the myriads of men
below them, are courting their own destruction. I look with
very great interest on the process of change going on in Great
Britain, where the top of society had all the blood, but the
circulation is growing larger and larger, and a change is gradu-
ally taking place in their institutions. The old nobility of Great
Britain is the lordliest of aristocracies existing in the world.
Happily, on the whole, a very noble class of men occupy the
## p. 1735 (#533) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1735
high positions: but the spirit of suffrage, this angel of God that
so many hate, is coming in on them; and when every man in
Great Britain can vote, no matter whether he is poor or rich,
whether he has knowledge or no knowledge, there must be a
very great change. Before the great day of the Lord shall
come, the valleys are to go up and the mountains are to come
down; and the mountains have started already in Great Britain
and must come down. There may be an aristocracy in any
nation, - that is to say, there may be "best men”; there ought
to be an aristocracy in every community,-- that is, an aristocracy
of men who speak the truth, who are just, who are intelligent:
but that aristocracy will be like a wave of the sea; it has to be
reconstituted in every generation, and the men who are the best
in the State become the aristocracy of that State. But where
rank is hereditary, if political suffrage becomes free and uni-
versal, aristocracy cannot live. The spirit of the gospel is demo-
cratic. The tendency of the gospel is leveling; leveling up, not
down. It is carrying the poor and the multitude onward and
upward.
It is said that democracies have no great men, no heroic
Why is it so? When you raise the average of intelli-
gence and power in the community it is very hard to be a great
man. That is to say, when the great mass of citizens are only
ankle-high, when among the Lilliputians a Brobdingnagian walks,
he is a great man.
But when the Lilliputians grow until they
get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a man as he was by
the whole length of his body. So, make the common people
grow, and there is nobody tall enough to be much higher.
men.
The remarkable people of this world are useful in their way;
but the common people, after all, represent the nation, the age,
and the civilization, Go into any town or city: do not ask who
lives in that splendid house; do not say, This is a fine town,
here are streets of houses with gardens and yards, and every-
thing that is beautiful the whole way through. Go into the
lanes, go into the back streets, go where the mechanic lives; go
where the day-laborer lives. See what is the condition of the
streets there. See what they do with the poor, with the helpless
and the mean. If the top of society bends perpetually over the
bottom with tenderness, if the rich and strong are the best
friends of the poor and needy, that is a civilized and a Christian
## p. 1736 (#534) ###########################################
1736
HENRY WARD BEECHER
community; but if the rich and the wise are the cream and the
great bulk of the population skim-milk, that is not a prosperous
community.
There is a great deal of irreligion in men, there is a great
deal of wickedness and depravity in men, but there are times
when it is true that the church is more dissipated than the
dissipated classes of the community. If there is one thing that
stood out more strongly than any other in the ministry of our
Lord, it is the severity with which he treated the exclusiveness
of men with knowledge, position, and a certain sort of religion,
a religion of particularity and carefulness; if there is one class
of the community against which he hurled his thunderbolts with-
out mercy and predicted woes, it was the scribes, Pharisees,
scholars, and priests of the temples. He told them in so many
words, « The publican and the harlot will enter the kingdom of
God before you. " The worst dissipation in this world is the
dry-rot of morality, and of the so-called piety that separates men
of prosperity and of power from the poor and ignoble. They
are our wards.
I am not a socialist. I do not preach riot. I do not preach
the destruction of property. I regard property as one of the
sacred things. The real property established by a man's own
intelligence and labor is the crystallized man himself. It is the
fruit of what his life-work has done; and not in vain, society
makes crime against it amongst the most punishable. But never-
theless, I warn these men in a country like ours, where every
man votes, whether he came from Hungary, or from Russia, or
from Germany, or from France or Italy, or Spain or Portugal,
or from the Orient, — from Japan and China, because they too
are going to vote! On the Niagara River, logs come floating
down and strike an island, and there they lodge and accumulate
for a little while, and won't go over. But the rains come, the
snows melt, the river rises, and the logs are lifted up and down,
and they go swinging over the falls. The stream of suffrage of
free men, having all the privileges of the State, is this great
stream. The figure is defective in this, that the log goes over
the Niagara Falls, but that is not the way the country is going
or will go.
There is a certain river of political life, and
everything has to go into it first or last; and if, in days to
come, a man separates himself from his fellows without sympa-
thy, if his wealth and power make poverty feel itself more poor
.
.
## p. 1737 (#535) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1737
and men's misery more miserable, and set against him the whole
stream of popular feeling, that man is in danger. He may not
know who dynamites him, but there is danger; and let him take
heed who is in peril. There is nothing easier in the world than
for rich men to ingratiate themselves with the whole community
in which they live, and so secure themselves. It is not selfish-
ness that will do it; it is not by increasing the load of misfor-
tune, it is not by wasting substance in riotous living upon
appetites and passions. It is by recognizing that every man is a
brother. It is by recognizing the essential spirit of the gospel,
“Love thy neighbor as thyself. ” It is by using some of their
vast power and riches so as to diffuse joy in every section of
the community.
Here then I close this discourse. How much it enrolls! How
very simple it is!
It is the whole gospel. When you make an
application of it to all the phases of organization and classifica-
tion of human interests and developments, it seems as though
it were as big as the universe. Yet when you condense it, it all
comes back to the one simple creed: “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. ” Who
is my neighbor ? A certain man went down to Jericho, and so
That tells you who your neighbor is. Whosoever has been
attacked by robbers, has been beaten, has been thrown down-
by liquor, by gambling, or by any form of wickedness; whoso-
ever has been cast into distress, and you are called on to raise
him up— that is your neighbor. Love your neighbor as your-
self. That is the gospel.
on.
A NEW ENGLAND SUNDAY
From Norwood)
I"
IS worth all the inconveniences arising from the occasional
over-action of New England Sabbath observance, to obtain
the full flavor of a New England Sunday. But for this, one
should have been born there; should have found Sunday already
waiting for him, and accepted it with implicit and absolute con-
viction, as if it were a law of nature, in the same way that
night and day, summer and winter, are parts of nature. He
should have been brought up by parents who had done the same
thing, as they were by parents even more strict, if that were
## p. 1738 (#536) ###########################################
1738
HENRY WARD BEECHER
possible; until not religious persons peculiarly, but everybody –
not churches alone, but society itself, and all its population, those
who broke it as much
as those who kept it — were stained
through with the color of Sunday. Nay, until Nature had adopted
it, and laid its commands on all birds and beasts, on the sun and
winds, and upon the whole atmosphere; so that without much
imagination one might imagine, in a genuine New England
Sunday of the Connecticut River Valley stamp, that God was
still on that day resting from all the work which he had created
and made, and that all his work rested with him!
Over all the town rested the Lord's peace! The saw was rip-
ping away yesterday in the carpenter's shop, and the hammer
was noisy enough. To-day there is not a sign of life there. The
anvil makes no music to-day. Tommy Taft's buckets and bar-
rels give forth no hollow, thumping sound. The mill is silent-
only the brook continues noisy. Listen! In yonder pine woods
what a cawing of crows! Like an echo, in a wood still more
remote other crows are answering
But even
a crow's throat
to-day is musical. Do they think, because they have black coats
on, that they are parsons, and have a right to play pulpit with
all the pine-trees ? Nay. The birds will not have any such
monopoly,– they are all singing, and singing all together, and
one cares whether his song rushes across another's or not.
Larks and robins, blackbirds and orioles, sparrows and bluebirds,
mocking cat-birds and wrens, were furrowing the air with such
mixtures as no other day but Sunday, when all artificial and
human sounds cease, could ever hear. Every now and then a
bobolink seemed impressed with the duty of bringing these
jangling birds into more regularity; and like a country singing-
master, he few down the ranks, singing all the parts himself in
snatches, as if to stimulate and help the laggards. In vain !
Sunday is the birds' day, and they will have their own demo-
cratic worship.
There was no sound in the village street. Look either way —
not a vehicle, not a human being. The smoke rose up soberly
and quietly, as if it said — It is Sunday! The leaves on the
great elms hung motionless, glittering in dew, as if they too,
like the people who dwelt under their shadow, were waiting for
the bell to ring for meeting. Bees sung and flew as usual; but
honey-bees have a Sunday way with them all the week, and
could scarcely change for the better on the seventh day.
no
## p. 1739 (#537) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1739
But oh, the Sun! It had sent before and cleared every stain
out of the sky. The blue heaven was not dim and low, as on
secular days, but curved and deep, as if on Sunday it shook off
all incumbrance which during the week had lowered and flat-
tened it, and sprang back to the arch and symmetry of a dome.
All ordinary sounds caught the spirit of the day. The shut-
ting of a door sounded twice as far as usual. The rattle of a
bucket in a neighbor's yard, no longer mixed with heterogeneous
noises, seemed a new sound. The hens went silently about, and
roosters crowed in psalm-tunes. And when the first bell rung,
Nature seemed overjoyed to find something that it might do
without breaking Sunday, and rolled the sound over and over,
and pushed it through the air, and raced with it over field and
hill, twice as far as on week-days. There were no less than
seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said: -
«On still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another,
when the day was fair, and the air moving in the right way,
from every one of them steeples, and I guess likely they've all
heard our'n. ”
“Come, Rose! ” said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour
than when Rose usually awakened — "Come, Rose, it is the Sab-
bath. We must not be late Sunday morning, of all days in the
week. It is the Lord's day. ”
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday
night, in some parts of New England, was considered almost as
sacred as Sunday itself. After sundown on Saturday night no
play, and no work except such as is immediately preparatory to
the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in good Christians. The
clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing was for-
gotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were
selected on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked
mildly. Every one spoke in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful.
The mother had on her kindest face, and nobody laughed, but
everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse smiled, and the
children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds
of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound,
as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt
Toodie, the cook (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah
Good's name), was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and
## p. 1740 (#538) ###########################################
1740
HENRY WARD BEECHER
the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens
juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter, and the corn-
bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer,
the infection of silence had subdued everything except the clock.
Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old
clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if,
unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage
ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time. And if
he old pedant performed the task with something of an ostenta-
tious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on
official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for
the whole mansion.
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth
followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should
grow up without catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite will-
ing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of
good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be
an opposition set up-a catechism of Nature, with natural laws
for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces!
The younger children were taught in simple catechism. But
Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now mani-
festing her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and
as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the
understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon
subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible,
the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions
were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble,
and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled
forth, “They that are effectually called do in this life partake
of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits
which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. ”
«What do those words mean, Rose ? »
«Which words, pa? ”
"Adoption, sanctification, and justification ?
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.
“Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course she don't
know yet all the meaning. But that will come to her when she
grows older. ”
You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there,
like eggs, for future hatching?
## p. 1741 (#539) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1741
“Yes, that is it exactly: birds do not hatch their eggs the
minute they lay them. They wait. ”
“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting
them to some risk, is it not ? ”
It might be so with eggs, but not with the catechism. That
will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! »
« Because it is so dry ? ”
“Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and
not put notions in the children's heads. It's hard enough already
to get them through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur, who has
been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet. ”
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in anything addressed
to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was there-
fore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a
deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too
much clay with him, while nothing stuck to poor Arthur.
The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought
forth every one; old men and their feebler old wives, young and
hearty men and their plump and ruddy companions, - young men
and girls and children, thick as punctuation points in Hebrew
text, filled the street. In a low voice, they spoke to each other
in single sentences.
“A fine day! There'll be a good congregation out to-day. ”
“Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney -
have you heard ? »
“Well, not much better; can't hold out many days. It will
be a great loss to the children. ”
“Yes; but we must all die — nobody can skip his turn. Does
she still talk about them that's gone ? »
«They say not.
I believe she's sunk into a quiet way; and
it looks as if she'd go off easy. ”
Sunday is a good day for dying — it's about the only jour-
ney that speeds well on this day! ”
There was something striking in the outflow of people into
the street, that till now had seemed utterly deserted. There was
no fevered hurry; no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every
family came in groups - old folks and young children; and every
member blossomed forth in his best apparel, like a rose-bush in
June. Do you know that man in a silk hat and new black coat? .
(
## p. 1742 (#540) ###########################################
1742
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the carpenter, Mr.
Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves rolled
up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would
not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith, — does he not
look every inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved,
and dressed? His eyes are as bright as the sparks that fly from
his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children?
See what groups
of them! How ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish,
and cut clandestine capers at every chance. Others seem like
wax figures, so perfectly proper are they. Little hands go slyly
through the pickets to pluck a tempting flower. Other hands
carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they may, dressed
as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines upon
more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children ?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It
was the licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the
church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and
carryalls, — the horses already beginning the forenoon's work of
stamping and whisking the flies. More were coming. Hiram
Beers had “hitched up," and brought two loads with his new
hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few
admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.
“There's Trowbridge — he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's
I don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years.
I've
seen him sleep standin' up in singin'.
“Here comes Deacon Marble, smart old feller, ain't he ?
wouldn't think it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of
last summer's sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the
juice in him yit! Aunt Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say
she can't walk half the time — lost the use of her limbs; but it's
all gone to her tongue. That's as good as a razor, and a sight
better 'n mine, for it never needs sharpenin'.
"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses — not
fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner. ”
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs.
Cathcart and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he
dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such
awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety.
Barton alone remained sober as a judge.
over.
## p. 1743 (#541) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1743
“Here comes Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my
kind o Christians. She is a saint, at any rate. ”
«How is it with you, Tommy Taft ? ”
"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-
spike blossom, Hiram. ”
“Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday?
P'raps you mean afore it's cut ?
“Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me,
Hiram. Parson Buell '11 be lookin' for me. He never begins
till I git there. "
“You mean you always git there 'fore he begins. ”
Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton
and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon
all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in
a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in
good health.
You could not help feeling that he gazed upon
you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look
in the condition which was to him the most interesting period
of a man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he
was always at a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left
hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to
lay you out. He was one of the few men absorbed by his busi-
ness, and who unconsciously measured all things from its stand-
point.
Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould!
How's your health ? How
is business with you? ”
« Good the Lord be praised! I've no reason to complain. ”
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
“There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly,” said the critical
Hiram. "I wonder what he comes to meetin' for. Lord knows
he needs it, sly, slippery old sinner! Face's as white as a lily;
his heart's as black as a chimney fue afore it's cleaned. He'11
get his fue burned out if he don't repent, that's certain. He
don't believe the Bible. They say he don't believe in God.
Wal, I guess it's pretty even between 'em. Shouldn't wonder if
God didn't believe in him neither. ”
As soon as the afternoon service was over, every horse on
the green knew that it was time for him to go home. Some
grew restless and whinnied for their masters. Nim ble hands
soon put them into the shafts or repaired any irregularity of
harness. Then came such a scramble of vehicles to the church
## p. 1744 (#542) ###########################################
1744
HENRY WARD BEECHER
door for the older persons; while young women and children,
venturing further out upon the green, were taken up hastily,
that the impatient horses might as soon as possible turn their
heads homeward. Clouds of dust began to arise along every
outward-going road. In less than ten minutes not a wagon or
chaise was seen upon the village green. They were whirling
homeward at the very best pace that the horses could raise.
Stiff old steeds vainly essayed a nimbler gait, but gave it up
in a few rods, and fell back to the steady jog. Young horses,
tired of long standing, and with a strong yearning for evening
oats, shot along the level ground, rushed up the little hills, or
down upon the other side, in the most un-Sunday-like haste.
The scene was not altogether unlike the return from a military
funeral, to which men march with sad music and slow, but from
which they return nimbly marching to the most brilliant quick-
step.
In half an hour Norwood was quiet again. The dinner, on
Sunday, when for the sake of the outlying population the two
services are brought near together in the middle of the day, was
usually deferred till the ordinary supper hour. It was evident
that the tone of the day was changed. Children were not so
strictly held in. There was no loud talking, nor was laughing
allowed, but a general feeling sprung up around the table that
the severer tasks of the day were ended.
Devout and age-sobered people sat in a kind of golden twi.
light of meditation. The minister, in his well-ordered house,
tired with a double service, mingled thoughts both glad and sad.
His tasks were ended. He was conscious that he had manfuily
done his best. But that best doing, as he reflected upon it,
seemed so poor, so unworthy of the nobleness of the theme, and
so relatively powerless upon the stubborn stuff of which his peo-
ple's dispositions were made, that there remained a vague, unquiet
sense of blame upon his conscience.
It was Dr. Wentworth's habit to walk with his family in the
garden, early in the morning and late in the afternoon. If early,
Rose was usually his company; in the afternoon the whole family,
Agate Bissell always excepted. She had in full measure that
peculiar New England feeling that Sunday is to be kept by stay-
ing in the house, except such time as is spent at church. And
though she never, impliedly even, rebuked the doctor's resort to
his garden, it was plain that deep down in her heart she thought
## p. 1745 (#543) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1745
it an improper way of spending Sunday; and in that view she
had the secret sympathy of almost all the noteworthy villagers.
Had any one, upon that day, made Agate a visit, unless for
some plain end of necessity or mercy, she would have deemed it
a personal affront.
Sunday was the Lord's day. Agate acted as if any use of it
for her own pleasure would be literal and downright stealing.
“We have six days for our own work. We ought not ti
begrudge the Lord one whole day. ”
Two circumstances distressed honest Agate's conscience. The
one was that the incursion of summer visitors from the city
was tending manifestly to relax the Sabbath, especially after
the church services. The other was that Dr. Wentworth would
occasionally allow Judge Bacon to call in and discuss with him
topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed herself in
this wise: -
“Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do
keep it, it ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is ravel-
ing out at the end. We take it on like a summer dress, which
in the morning is clean and sweet, but at night it is soiled at
the bottom and much rumpled all over. ”
Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on
the other, in the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be
seen, great trees lying athwart the horizon and checkering the
golden light with their dark masses. Judge Bacon had turned
the conversation upon this very topic.
«I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jew-
ish more than Christian. They are days of restriction rather
than of joyousness. They are fast days, not feast days. ”
“Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or
do you think that they could be improved practically ? ”
Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian
Sunday was a day of triumph and of much social joy. It would
be well if we could follow primitive example. ”
"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling
to see our New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a
larger social liberty in each family. Much might be done to
make it attractive to children, and relieve older persons from
ennui. But after all, we must judge things by their fruits. If
you bring me good apples, it is in vain to abuse the tree as
craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree. ”
111-IIO
## p. 1746 (#544) ###########################################
1746
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning.
New England has had something at work upon her beside her
Sundays. What you call the fruit' grew, a good deal of it at
any rate, on other trees than Sunday trees. ”
"You are only partly right. New England character and
history are the result of a wide-spread system of influences of
which the Sabbath day was the type- and not only so, but the
grand motive power. Almost every cause which has worked
benignly among us has received its inspiration and impulse
largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.
"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about
us here depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one
cause that is the condition of power in every other, and that is
the Sun! And so, many as have been the influences working at
New England character, Sunday has been a generic and multi-
plex force, inspiring and directing all others, It is indeed the
Sun's day.
"It is a little singular that, borrowing the name from the
heathen calendar, it should have tallied so well with the Script-
ure name, the Lord's day — that Lord who was the Morning Star
in early day, and at length the Sun of Righteousness!
“The Jews called it the Sabbath - a day of rest. Modern
Christians call it the Sun's day, or the day of light, warmth, and
growth.
If this seems fanciful so far as the names of the day
are concerned, it is strikingly characteristic of the real spirit of
the two days, in the ancient and modern dispensation. I doubt if
the old Jews ever kept a Sabbath religiously, as we understand
that term. Indeed, I suspect there was not yet a religious
strength in that national character that could hold up religious
feeling without the help of social and even physical adjuvants.
Their religious days were either fasts or like our Thanksgiving
days. But the higher and richer moral nature which has been
developed by Christianity enables communities to sustain one day
in seven upon a high spiritual plane, with the need of but very
little social help, and without the feasting element at all. ”
That
very
well for a few saints like you and me,
Doctor, but it is too high for the majority of men. Common
people find the strict Sundays a great annoyance, and clandes-
tinely set them aside. ”
“I doubt it. There are a few in every society that live by
their sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them — a
may be
## p. 1747 (#545) ###########################################
HENRY WARD BEECHER
1747
dark room. No wonder they break through. But it is not so
with the sturdy, unsophisticated laboring class in New England.
If it came to a vote, you would find that the farmers of New
England would be the defenders of the day, even if screwed up
to the old strictness.
