======================================================================== WRITINGS OF HENRY W BEECHER by Henry W. Beecher ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Henry W. Beecher, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 142 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 0.00. Beecher, Henry W. - Library 2. 1.00. LECTURES ON PREACHING 3. 1.A 00. WHAT IS PREACHING? 4. 1.A 01. The Scope of Preaching 5. 1.A 02. The Pauline Method 6. 1.A 03. A Bit of Experience 7. 1.A 04. The Power of Personal Christian Vitality 8. 1.A 05. Sermons and Liturgies 9. 1.A 06. General Advantages of Directness 10. 1.A 07. Man-Building, the Preacher's Business 11. 1.A 08. Questions and Answers 12. 1.B 00. QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER 13. 1.B 01. Show-Sermons 14. 1.B 02. Sympathy with Men 15. 1.B 03. Personal Character of the Preacher 16. 1.B 04. Fertility in Subjects 17. 1.B 05. Style 18. 1.B 06. Qualifications of the Preacher 19. 1.B 07. Questions and Answers 20. 1.C 00. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY 21. 1.C 01. Different Classes of Hearers 22. 1.C 02. How to Meet Differing Minds 23. 1.C 03. An Easy Danger 24. 1.C 04. Demands of Variety upon the Preacher 25. 1.C 05. How to use One's own Special Forces 26. 1.C 06. Self-Training an Education 27. 1.C 07. External Hindrances 28. 1.C 08. Self-Consciousness 29. 1.C 09. Nearness to the Audience 30. 1.C 10. Questions and Answers 31. 1.D 00. THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 32. 1.D 01. Necessities of the Future 33. 1.D 02. Relation Bible Truth Christianity World 34. 1.D 03. Example of the Apostles 35. 1.D 04. Weakness of Gospel-Preaching in the Past 36. 1.D 05. Special Reasons Studying Human Nature 37. 1.D 06. The World's Advancement Thought 38. 1.D 07. How to Study Human Nature 39. 1.D 08. Metaphysical Studies 40. 1.D 09. Phrenology as a Convenient Basis 41. 1.D 10. Social Habits 42. 1.D 11. Questions and Answers 43. 1.E 00. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING ELEMENTS 44. 1.E 01. Circumstances alter cases 45. 1.E 02. Writing and Extemporizing 46. 1.E 03. Variations of Denominational Service 47. 1.E 04. The Power of Imagination 48. 1.E 05. Emotion 49. 1.E 06. Enthusiasm 50. 1.E 07. Faith 51. 1.E 08. Questions and Answers 52. 1.F 00. RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL 53. 1.F 01. The Voice 54. 1.F 02. Various Vocal Elements 55. 1.F 03. Necessity of Drill 56. 1.F 04. Health of the Voice 57. 1.F 05. Bodily Carriage Posture 58. 1.F 06. Gesture 59. 1.F 07. Study of the Bible 60. 1.F 08. Theology 61. 1.F 09. A Small Parish at First 62. 1.F 10. An Early Experience in the West 63. 1.F 11. General Hints 64. 1.F 12. Questions and Answers 65. 1.G 00. RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS 66. 1.G 01. The Nature of Illustration 67. 1.G 02. Reasons for Illustrations in Preaching 68. 1.G 03. They Assist Argument 69. 1.G 04. They Help Hearers to Remember 70. 1.G 05. They Stimulate Imagination 71. 1.G 06. The Art of Resting Audiences 72. 1.G 07. Illustrations provide for Various Hearers 73. 1.G 08. Modes of Presenting Argument 74. 1.G 09. Illustrations Bridge Difficult Places 75. 1.G 10. Rhetorical Illustrations 76. 1.G 11. They Educate the People 77. 1.G 12. Necessity of Variety 78. 1.G 13. Homely Illustrations 79. 1.G 14. Illustrations must be apt 80. 1.G 15. How to Get Information 81. 1.G 16. The Habit of Illustrating 82. 1.G 17. Questions and Answers 83. 1.H 00. HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING 84. 1.H 01. What is Health 85. 1.H 02. Health and Thought 86. 1.H 03. Health in Speaking. 87. 1.H 04. Popular Orators 88. 1.H 05. Thrust-Power 89. 1.H 06. Health as a Cheering Influence 90. 1.H 07. Healthful Views of Christianity 91. 1.H 08. Health as a Sweetener of Work 92. 1.H 09. Practical Hints 93. 1.H 10. Muscular Strength not Enough 94. 1.H 11. The Art of Eating 95. 1.H 12. Quantity of Sleep 96. 1.H 13. Badly Regulated Work 97. 1.H 14. Sleep after Work. 98. 1.H 15. Questions and Answers 99. 1.I 00. SERMON-MAKING 100. 1.I 01. The Discourses of Jesus 101. 1.I 02. Mode of the Apostles 102. 1.I 03. Characteristics of Modern Preaching 103. 1.I 04. Laboriousness of the Ministry 104. 1.I 05. Preparation of the Sermon 105. 1.I 06. Advantages Dangers of Written Sermons 106. 1.I 07. Sermon-Making 107. 1.I 08. Points Guarded in Extempore Preaching 108. 1.I 09. Ideal Sermonizing 109. 1.I 10. General Variety of Sermon Plans 110. 1.I 11. The Natural Method 111. 1.I 12. Suggestive Preaching 112. 1.I 13. Expository Preaching 113. 1.I 14. Great Sermons 114. 1.I 15. Style 115. 1.I 16. General Hints Professional Manners 116. 1.I 17. Professional Association 117. 1.I 18. Length of Sermons 118. 1.I 19. Trust your Audiences 119. 1.I 20. Summary 120. 1.I 21. Questions and Answers 121. 1.J 00. LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT 122. 1.J 01. What is Love? 123. 1.J 02. Love, the Central Power of the Ministry 124. 1.J 03. Love, Not mere Good-Nature 125. 1.J 04. Love of the Work 126. 1.J 05. The Healthfulness of Benevolence 127. 1.J 06. Love, a Power-Giving Element. 128. 1.J 07. Love Makes a Free Preacher 129. 1.J 08. Questions and Answers 130. 2.00. Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects 131. 2.01. Introduction 132. 2.02. The Immoral Woman 133. 2.03. The Potrait Galary 134. 2.04. Popular Amusements 135. 2.05. Six Warnings 136. 2.06. Industry and Idleness 137. 2.07. Gamblers and Gambling 138. S. Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories OF MAN AND SOCIETY, 139. S. Immortality 140. S. Quotes 141. S. The Theater 142. S. Twelve Causes of Dishonesty ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 0.00. BEECHER, HENRY W. - LIBRARY ======================================================================== Beecher, Henry W. - Library Beecher, Henry W. - Lectures on Preaching v1 Beecher, Henry W. - Lectures to Young Men on Various Subjects S. Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories OF MAN AND SOCIETY S. Quotes S. The Theater S. Twelve Causes of Dishonety ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 1.00. LECTURES ON PREACHING ======================================================================== LECTURES ON PREACHING. HENRY WARD BEECHER. LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; EDINBURGH; AND NEW YOKK. 1872. DELIVERED BEFORE THE Theological Department of Yale College, New Baden Conn, AS THE FIRST SERIES IN THE REGULAR COURSE OF THE "LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING." LECTURES ON PREACHING.1 HENRY WARD BEECHER.1 LONDON:1 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;1 EDINBURGH; AND NEW YOKK.1 DELIVERED BEFORE THE1 PUBLISHERS NOTICE.8 T. NELSON AND SONS.9 LONDON*, July 1872.9 LETTER.9 THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, YALE COLLEGE,9 Feb. 23, 1872.9 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.9 LEONARD BACON,10 SAMUEL HARRIS,10 GEORGE E. DAY,10 GEORGE P. FISHER,10 PREFACE.10 PREFACE.10 HENRY WARD BEECHER.11 BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 1S72.11 Chapter 1: WHAT IS PREACHING?11 January 31, 1872.11 The Scope of Preaching.12 10 WHAT IS PREACHING?13 18 WHAT IS PREACHING?14 The Pauline Method.15 WHAT IS PREACHING ] 1915 The spirit, Love. The ideal, Christ. The inspiration, the living Spirit of God!15 20 WHAT IS PREACHING?15 WHAT IS PREACHING? 2317 A Bit of Experience.17 24 WHAT IS PREACHING 117 WHAT IS PREACHING 1 2518 26 WHAT IS PREACHING?18 The Power of Personal Christian Vitality.19 Sermons and Liturgies.19 The man that preaches with power is an artist.20 But does he not do good? Yes; a great deal.20 WHAT IS PREACHING 1 3121 General Advantages of Directness.21 WHAT IS PREACHING?22 WHAT IS PREACHING 1 3322 Man-Building, the Preacher’s Business.23 34 WHAT IS PREACHING?23 WHAT IS PREACHING? 3524 Questions and Answers.24 WHAT IS PREACHING 1 3926 Your mode of presenting the truth will be imperfect.27 42 WHAT IS PREACHING <28 Chapter 2: QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER28 February 1, 1872.28 ELOQUENCE has been defined, sometimes, as the art of moving men by speech.28 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER. 4529 Show-Sermons.29 46 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER.30 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER. 4730 Sympathy with Men.31 50 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHKIi.32 Personal Character of the Preacher.33 Fertility in Subjects.35 5G QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER.35 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER. 5736 Style.36 QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION.36 Qualifications of the Preacher.37 Gi QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER.40 Questions and Answers.40 Q. Is it a good way to learn to move men by learning to move children?40 66 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER.41 And I instinctively adapt myself to him.41 You have not lost a man because he doesn’t take the truth the first time.42 Chapter 3: THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY.42 February 7, 1872.42 Different Classes of Hearers.43 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IX ORATORY. 7144 Said he, “ He must have hit one, two, three and, I guess, four!”44 How to Meet Differing Minds.45 An Easy Danger46 Demands of Variety upon the Preacher.47 THE PEllSOXAL ELEMENT IX ORATORY. 7747 How to use One’s own Special Forces.47 78 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY.48 Self-Training an Education.50 82 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY.50 PREACHING THE PREACHER’S WHOLE BUSINESS.50 External Hindrances.52 88 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY.53 Self-Consciousness.53 Nearness to the Audience.54 But crowd your audience together, and you will set them off with not half the effort.54 Questions and Answers.55 Chapter 4: THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.56 Necessities of the Future.56 Relation of Bible Truth to Christianity in the World.57 90 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.58 Example of the Apostles.58 98 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.59 Weakness of Gospel-Preaching in the Past.59 Christianity is not to be our model. We must find a better mode.59 Special Reasons for Studying Human Nature.59 100 THE STUDY OF IIUMAtf NATURE.60 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 10160 The World’s Advancement in Thought.62 You might as well be afraid that battles would rend t>63 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 10764 How to Study Human Nature.64 Metaphysical Studies.65 Phrenology as a Convenient Basis.66 112 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.66 He is like a splendid locomotive without a boiler.67 Men are like open books, if looked at properly.67 114 THE STl DY OK HUMAN NATURE.68 Social Habits.68 THE STUDY OF IITMAX X ATI* UK. 11769 Questions and Answers.69 Q. Can a minister be eminent both as a pastor and as a preacher?69 Q. Has not science demonstrated that phrenology is imperfect?70 Q. Would you recommend the study of Hebrew as a part of a theological course?70 118 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE.70 Q. How much time ought a minister to spend in examining his text in the original?70 Q. May not a man be too self-conscious in his preaching?71 120 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATUKE.71 Chapter 5: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING ELEMENTS.72 February 11, 1872.72 Circumstances alter cases.72 Writing and Extemporizing.73 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS. 12373 That is the best cat that catches the most rats.73 Variations of Denominational Service.73 124 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS.73 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS. 12775 The Power of Imagination.75 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS. 12976 130 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS.77 It is an historical picture, but it is not a live Christ.78 There is danger of a mistake being made here.79 Emotion.80 It will vary indefinitely in different persons.80 This course is bad also in the closet.81 Men often think that excitements are dangerous.82 Enthusiasm.82 Faith.83 Questions and Answers.84 144 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING-ELEMENTS.85 Q. Do you approve of the appointment of professional revivalists?85 Chapter 6: RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING.86 February 21, 1872.86 The Voice.86 Various Vocal Elements.87 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 14987 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 15188 Necessity of Drill.89 152 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING.89 Health of the Voice.90 Bodily Carriage Posture.90 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 15591 Gesture.91 SEMINARY TRAINING.91 Study of the Bible.92 Theology.93 In respect to systematic theology the same is true.93 1GO RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING.93 A Small Parish at First.94 RHETORICAL DRILL AXD GENERAL TRAINING. 1G194 An Early Experience in the West.95 162 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING.95 It was the best thing that ever happened to them.96 Having something to do in the church was a means O t596 1G4 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GKNKRAL TRAINING.96 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 16596 General Hints.97 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 16798 Questions and Answers.98 Q. How about living in those little places that don’t pay enough to live upon?98 MR. BEECHER. Live within your income.98 108 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRATNINO.98 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. 1G999 170 RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING.99 Q. Would you have a man preach while he is in the seminary?99 Q. Are not these little mean places very unfavourable for the culture of grace, &c.?99 MR. BEECH ER. They are not mean.99 Q. I think your first settlement, Lawrenceburg, was mean.100 Q. May it not be desirable to spend a year in an Eastern parish before going West?101 Chapter 7: RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.101 The Nature of Illustration.102 We have the best example of the use of illustration102 174 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.102 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 175102 Reasons for Illustrations in Preaching.102 They Assist Argument.103 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.103 They Help Hearers to Remember.104 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 179104 They Stimulate Imagination.105 The Art of Resting Audiences.105 Illustrations provide for Various Hearers.106 182 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.106 How are you going to do that? I know of no other way than by illustration.106 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 183107 It & is always the best method to adopt with a mixed audience.107 Modes of Presenting Argument.107 Illustrations Bridge Difficult Places.108 Then there is another element for you to consider.108 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 187109 Rhetorical Illustrations.110 They Educate the People.110 Necessity of Variety.110 Homely Illustrations.111 192 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.112 Illustrations must be apt.113 How to Get Information.113 194 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.113 ILLUSTRATIONS MUST BE PROMPT.113 The Habit of Illustrating.114 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 195114 Questions and Answers.115 Q. Do you think the use of these encyclopedias of illustrations is honest?115 MR. BEECHER. Why not?115 STUDENT. Because one ought to make his illustrations himself.115 I should say.115 Q. Would you advocate special services for children at times?116 Q. About how much poetry is necessary to spice a sermon?116 Q. Is it a proper thing to make an audience laugh by an illustration?116 When you are fighting the devil, shoot him with anything.117 200 RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.117 Mi?. BEKCIIER. No; unless he accompanies it very poorly.117 Q. How long would you advise a young man to preach?117 Chapter 8: HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING.118 What is Health?119 Health and Thought.120 Health in Speaking.121 A man that breaks his backbone every time he explodes a vowel, how can he do it?121 Popular Orators.121 208 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING.121 Thrust-Power.122 HEALTH. AS RELATED TO PREACHING. 209122 Health as a Cheering Influence.122 But, once more, it is impossible for a man who 1?122 He will make prayers that are almost all piteous.123 If there is anything in this world that is the pro123 210 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO P-REAC HlN + G.123 Healthful Views of Christianity.123 Health as a Sweetener of Work.124 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING. 213124 214 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING.125 Practical Hints.125 Muscular Strength not Enough.126 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING. 215126 The Art of Eating.126 Quantity of Sleep.127 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING. 219128 It is bad to do it.128 Badly Regulated Work.128 I like all fine horses, but I like the dray-horses, too.129 There is such a sense of might and power with them.129 Sleep after Work.130 Questions and Answers.131 HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING. 225131 Q. Should one do much in the way of preparing a sermon on Monday?132 22G HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING.132 Of course, I increased my general stock of knowledge.132 Chapter 9: SERMON-MAKING.133 The Discourses of Jesus.133 Mode of the Apostles.134 Characteristics of Modern Preaching.134 SERMON-MAKING. 231134 Laboriousness of the Ministry.135 232 SERMON-MAKING.135 SERMON-MAKING. 233136 Preparation of the Sermon.136 Advantages and Dangers of Written Sermons.136 Sermon-Making.136 A written sermon will be more likely to be orderly.136 Advantages of Unwritten Discourse.137 Sermon-Making.137 An unwritten sermon reaches out the warm and glowing palm, bared to the touch.138 Points to be Guarded in Extempore Preaching.138 238 SKRMOX -MAKIXG.139 Ideal Sermonizing.139 240 SERMON-MAKING.140 General Variety of Sermon Plans.140 SERMOX-MAKIXO. 241140 242 SERMON-MAKING.141 As it is, sermons are too often cast in one mould.141 SERMON-MAKING. 243141 If it were possible, never have two plans alike.142 The Natural Method.142 Suggestive Preaching.143 Expository Preaching.143 I regard the Bible as the noblest book of nature that SERMON-MAKING. 247144 Great Sermons.145 250 SERMON-MAKING.145 Style.146 General Hints Professional Manners.147 25G SERMON-MAKING.149 Professional Association.149 Length of Sermons.149 Trust your Audiences.150 258 SERMON-MAKING.150 Summary.150 Questions and Answers.151 ME. BEECHER. No general rule can be given.151 About one third written to two thirds unwritten.151 But be sure that you know how to preach.151 Q. What do you think of the benefit of using books of sermon plans?151 X.151 Chapter 10: LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.151 It inspired evidently and vividly every part of his life.152 What is Love?152 Love, the Central Power of the Ministry.153 Love, Not mere Good-Nature.154 260 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY.154 Love of the Work.156 The Healthfulness of Benevolence.156 Love, a Power-Giving Element.157 I feel provoked when I see how young Christians^158 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY. 273158 Simple as he is, poor as he is, thin as he is, unsatis159 274 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY.159 THE SUSTAIN IXU 1 oWEll OF LOVE.160 I would better surfer in his place than let him suffer.161 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY. 277161 LOVE, THE KEY-XOTE OF PULPIT-WORK.161 278 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY.161 If you preach justice alone, you will murder the/161 Love Makes a Free Preacher.162 Some ministers seem to feel that men are total!}*162 282 LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE MINISTRY.164 Questions and Answers.164 Q. Would you have us preach on the subject of the heart belli”164 Q. Would you preach “ He that believeth not shall be damned “?164 MR. BEECHER. Would I?164 STUDENT. Yes. sir.164 Practise loving men, if you want to have the power of love.165 MR. BEECHEH. No; you might as well take an icicle to warm an invalid’s bed with.165 Q. Was not Jonathan Edwards, when preaching the justice of God, moved by love?165 Punishments follow the violations of natural law.166 But Nature is blind. It makes no discriminations.166 It takes no account of motives. It has no palliations and no pity.166 LECTURES ON PREACHING.166 HENRY WARD BEECHER.166 FOURTH THOUSAND.167 FAMILIAR TALKS ON THEMES OF GENERAL CHRISTIAN167 EXPERIENCE. By HI-XKY WARD BEECHHR. One Volume. Post Svo.167 Price 35. 6d.167 P. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.167 PUBLISHERS NOTICE. ABOUT thirty-five years ago Mr. Beecher grouped his “Six Lectures to Young Men,” and allowed them to be published for the benefit of a young friend who was about beginning business; and although more than fifty thousand copies of that book have been printed, until recently it brought no income to its author. Since that time, in one way and another, various books from Mr. Beecher’s pen have been issued by different publishers, and, while welcomed by the reading public, have been treated by their author with more or less indifference. The “Lectures to Young Men,” two series of “ Star Papers,” “ Fruit, Flowers, and Farming,” “ Eyes and Ears,” “ Royal Truths,” “ Norwood,” “Lecture-Room Talks,” and other works, are widely known, but have hitherto been printed in different cities, in varying styles, by separate houses. The American house having in hand the publication of the regular authorized weekly reports of Mr. Beecher’s Sermons (issued thus far in six uniform octavo volumes), and of his most elaborate and important literary work, the “ Life of Jesus the Christ,” have thought it due to him that his works should be gathered together by them, and as many as could conveniently be put forth in the size and style of the present book should be issued in a “ Uniform Author’s Copyright Edition.” This edition will be issued in Great Britain by the undersigned. In pursuance of this design, the “ Lectures on Preaching” are herewith presented to the public, to be followed at brief inter vals by others of Mr. Beecher’s works. T. NELSON AND SONS. LONDON*, July 1872. LETTER. THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, YALE COLLEGE, Feb. 23, 1872. REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. DEAR Sir, Allow us to express our high estimation of the Lectures on Preaching given by you in the Marquand Chapel to the students of this department. We value them for the views which they give of eloquence in general, and of that elo quence in particular which seeks to save men by the exposition and application of the gospel. We value them for their stimu lating and inspiring effect on the hearers, and for the high ideal which they hold up before ministers and students for the ministry. We cannot but hope that in some form of publica tion they will have a wider usefulness, not only among students preparing for the ministry, but among preachers of the gospel in all the churches. It is with great satisfaction that we look forward to the enjoyment of other courses from you in successive years. The Lyman Beecher Lectureship, which was founded by your parishioner, Mr. Sage, and of which you are so fitly the in cumbent, promises to exceed in usefulness our highest expecta tions. Yours truly, LEONARD BACON, (Lecturer on Church Polity, d-c.) SAMUEL HARRIS, (Prof, of Systematic Theology.) GEORGE E. DAY, (Prof, of Hebrew and Biblical Theology.} JAMES M. HOPPIN, (Prof, of Homiletics and the Pastoral Charge.) GEORGE P. FISHER, (Prof, of Ecclesiastical History.} TIMOTHY DWIGHT, (Prof, of Sacred Literature.) PREFACE. IN 1871, Mr. Henry W. Sage, of Brooklyn, New York, contributed the funds necessary to found a Lectureship on Preaching in the Divinity School at Yale College, New Haven, Conn. In honour of my father, it was styled the LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING. As this title implies, it was the design of the donor and of the Theological Faculty to secure a more perfect preparation of young men for preaching, as the highest act of the Christian ministry, by providing for them, in addition to their general and professional studies, a course of practical instruction in the art of preaching, to be given by those actively engaged in the practice of it. At the request of both the Founder and the Theological Faculty, I consented to serve as Lecturer in this course for three consecutive years. Since each class, however, passes through a three years course, it was deemed desirable that the lectures should not be condensed into a single course of twelve, to be repeated in substance each year, but that they should be so enlarged and divided as to give to each year its separate and distinct topics. I have therefore considered in this, the first year, chiefly the personal elements which bear an import ant relation to preaching. PREFACE. The second year will deal with the auxiliary forces and external implements by which the preacher pre pares the way for the sermon, or gathers up its fruit, the conduct of public service, of prayer-meetings, and of social gatherings of every kind; the function of music in public worship; the methods of dealing with new fields of labour; the direction of church work in old communities in short, a consideration of social and religious machinery as connected with preaching. I purpose to discuss during the third year the method of using Christian doctrines, in their relations to individual dispositions and to the wants of communities. It will therefore be seen that this volume contains only one division of the whole course of lectures. The discourses here given were wholly unwritten, and were familiar conversational addresses, rather than elaborate speeches. I have not been able to revise the reporter’s notes, or to correct the proofs of the printer. If any are offended by literary in felicities, it may placate them to know that I am more annoyed than they can be. The phonographic report of the lecture on “ Sermon-Making,” when prepared for the press, unaccountably disappeared, and was never regained. I was obliged to dictate a new lecture in the best way I could. Those who heard the course may by this circumstance explain the difference between what they read and what they remember to have heard. HENRY WARD BEECHER. BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 1S72. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 1.A 00. WHAT IS PREACHING? ======================================================================== Chapter 1: WHAT IS PREACHING? January 31, 1872. DO not propose, in the few lectures which I shall give in this place, and which hardly deserve to be dignified by the name of lectures, to make them other than familiar conversations. This Lectureship is not to be confounded with a regular Professorship of pastoral theology. Such a professorship is already founded in your Divinity School, and amply and ably served. This Lecture ship is an auxiliary to it; but even that only in one regard, namely, the element of Preaching. When one takes charge of a parish he assumes the care of several departments, which, though intimately related, are yet in nature quite distinct. In his social relations, visiting from house to house, he is a pastor. In the management of the affairs of the church, the appointment and conduct of the subordinate meetings, he is an administrator, or more like what in civil government is termed an executive. But besides this, he is to teach and inspire men from the platform or pulpit; and that is what we mean distinctively by Preaching. The design of this Lectureship is not to supersede the instructions given already by the incumbent of the chair of Pastoral Theology, but to intensify one portion of his teachings by bringing in from the field those who are actively engaged in the work of preaching, that you may derive from them the results of their observation and experience. For I believe that it is the wish and purpose of this Institution to send out preachers, not merely good managers, good pastors, but good preachers. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 1.A 01. THE SCOPE OF PREACHING ======================================================================== The Scope of Preaching. A preacher is a teacher; but he is more. A teacher brings before men a given view, or a department of truth. He expends his force upon facts or ideas. But a preacher assumes or proves facts and truths as a vehicle through which he may bring his spirit to bear upon men. A preacher looks upon truth from the constructive point of view. He looks beyond mere knowledge to the character which that knowledge is to form. It is not enough that men shall know. They must be. Every stroke of his brush must bring out some element of the likeness to Christ which he is seeking to produce. He is an artist, not of forms and matter, but of the soul. Every sermon is like the stroke of Michael Angelo’s chisel, and the hidden figure emerges at every blow. A teacher has, doubtless, an ulterior reference to practical results; but the preacher, not indifferent to remote and in direct results, aims at the immediate. “ Now! Now! “ is his inspiration. “ Cease to do evil, at once. Turn toward good immediately. Add strength to every excellence, and virtue to virtue, now and continually.” The effect of his speech upon the souls of men is his objective. It is this moral fruit in men’s souls for which he plants his truth, as so much seed. Change the illustration and adopt the architectural figure, so much employed by the Apostle Paul, of rearing a building. When a master-builder goes to the forest for material, he does not take trees of any and every kind, and then put them together at haphazard, or so as to accommodate his building to the form of the trees. The trees must conform to the house that is to be. The builder carries in his eye the future house, and selects his trees from the wood by the known wants of the house: this one for a sill, that one for a corner-post, others for beams, and so on. Thus all truths, all sermons, are merely subordinate material and instruments; the preacher’s real end is to be found in the soulbuilding that is going on. He is an artist of living forms, of invisible colours; an architect of a house not built with hands Jesus Christ, the foundation. There is another element which discriminates a preacher from a teacher. Moral truths may become personal, as physical or scientific truths cannot. Number, weight, dimension, have no relation to a speaker’s personal feelings or those of his hearers; but hope, fear, joy, love, faith, have. A preacher is, in some degree, a reproduction of the truth in personal form. The truth must exist in him as a living experience, a glowing enthusiasm, an intense reality. The word of God in the Book is a dead letter. It is paper, type, and ink. In the preacher that word becomes again as it was when first spoken by prophet, priest, or apostle. It springs up in him as if it were first kindled in his heart, arid he were moved by the Holy Ghost to give it forth. He is so moved. The preacher is one who is aiming directly at the ennobling of his hearer. He seeks to do this partly by the use of truth existing as a philosophy or by ordinary facts, but yet more by giving to such truth the glow and colour and intensity which are derived from his own soul. If one may so say, he digests the truth and makes it personal, and then brings his own being to bear upon that of his hearers. All true preaching bears the impress of the nature of the preacher. “Christ in you.” The truth is that which is represented in the historical- Jesus Christ, but it is that truth “in you,” or as it exists in each man’s distinctive personality, which must make it a living force. Of course, in such a view, all preaching is to find its criterion of merit in the work performed in men’s hearts, and not in any ideal excellence of the sermon. The sermon is only a tool, and the work which is accomplished by it is to measure its value. No man is to preach for the sake of the sermon, nor for the sake of “the truth/ nor for the sake of any “system of truth; “but for the sake of the hearts and lives of the men that listen to his words. How aimlessly does he preach who has no thought of men, but who sympathizes only with his own cogitations! How yet more foolish is he who has a certain round of topics which he calls his “system,” and which he serves out almost mechanically to meet his contract with the society which employs him! It is hardly an imaginary case to describe one as approaching the Sabbath-day somewhat in this way, “O dear me, I have got to preach! I have beat out pretty much all there is in that straw, and I wonder what I shall preach on next; “ and so the man takes the Bible and commences to turn over the leaves, hoping that he will hit something. He looks up and down, and turns forward and back ward; and, finally, he does see a light, and he says, “I can make something interesting from that.” Interesting, why? For what purpose? What, under heaven, but that he is a salaried officer, expected to preach twice on Sunday, and to lecture or hold the prayer-meeting in the middle of the week; and the time has come round when, like a clock, it is his business to strike, and so he does strike, just as ignorantly as the hammer strikes upon the bell! He is following out no intelligent plan. He is a perfunctory preacher, doing a duty because appointed to that duty. What would you think of a physician in the household who has been called to minister to a sick member of some family, and who says, “Well, I will leave something or other; I don’t know. What shall I leave?” and he looks in his saddle-bags to see what he has yet got the most of, and prescribes it with no directions the father, mother, and children may all take a little, and the servants may have the rest. Another physician, and a true one, comes, and the mother says, “Doctor, I have called you in to prescribe for my child.” He sits down and studies the child’s symptoms; traces them back to the supposed cause; reflects how he shall hit that case, what remedial agents are supposed to be effective, what shall be the form of administration, how often. He considers the child’s temperament and age, and adapts himself to the special necessity of the individual case. Do you suppose a man can deal with so subtle a thing as the human soul without any thought, skill, sagacity in adaptation? can take a sermon, and throw its contents over the congregation, and let everybody pick out of it what he can find each man left to take his share? Can this be done in a ministry and accomplish any good? Yes, in God’s providence, some good is done even in this way. Paul said that the “ foolishness of preaching” would do a great deal of good; and there is so much foolish preaching that it would be strange if some of it did not do some good, here or there. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 1.A 02. THE PAULINE METHOD ======================================================================== The Pauline Method. But preaching must come back to what it was in the apostolic times. It must come back to the conditions under which those men were so eminent for their success in winning souls. If you want to be a preacher to your fellows, you must become a “Fisher of men,” your business is to catch them. The preacher’s task is first to arouse; secondly, on that aroused moral condition to build, and continue building until he has completed the whole. The thing that a preacher aims at all the while is reconstructed manhood a nobler idea in his congregation of how people ought to live, and what they ought to be. To be sure, you will find in the New Testament that there is a great deal more in the preaching of the apostles than this. There was a great deal that was incidental; a great deal that belonged to the extrication of Christians from the Jewish thraldom; a great deal that belonged to the peculiarities of the time, and which can be transferred to our time by adapting, not adopting. If you will look through the New Testament with your eye on that point, you will find that Paul the greatest of all preachers, I take it aimed all the way through, and certainly Peter, in his famous sermon on the day of Pentecost, aimed, at reconstructed manhood. Consider attentively Paul’s idea of the work of Christian ministers, as given in his letter to the Ephesian assembly of Christians (Eph 4:11-16, inclusive). The end, Manhood. The means, Truth. The spirit, Love. The ideal, Christ. The inspiration, the living Spirit of God! This being the aim of true preaching, there is but one question more to be added that is, by what instrument, by what influence, are you to reach it? The ideal of a true Christian preacher I do not mean that no man is a Christian preacher who does not live up to this ideal, for we are all imperfect, but the ideal toward which every man should strive is this, to take the great truths of the Lord Jesus Christ’s teachings, and the love of God to the human race, and make them a part of his own personal experience; so that, when he speaks to men, it shall not be he alone that speaks, but God in him. To quote texts to men is good for some purposes; but that is not preaching. If it were, then you would better read the Bible altogether, without note or comment, to men. The reason why reading the truths that are just as plainly stated there has some times so much less effect than stating them in your own way, is, that the truth will gain a force when it becomes a part of you that it would not have when merely read as a text. Look, for instance, at what Paul did when he preached. He was consumed with the love of Christ. He was made restless with the intensity of his feeling; and wherever he went he did not preach Christ as John would. He did not preach Christ as Peter would. He preached Christ as Christ had been revealed to him and in him. It was the Pauline conception of the Lord Jesus Christ that Paul preached. You may say that Christ is one and the same, and whoever preaches him, it must be substantially the same thing. You might just as well say that the sun is one and the same, and that, therefore, what ever flower shows the sun’s work must look the same. But, when you look at the flowers, you will see some red, some blue, some yellow, some humble, some high, some branching. Endless is the work the sun creates; but every one of the things which it creates, reflects its power and teaches something about it. It takes the experience of a thousand men brought into one ideal, to make up the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ. You may read what Paul wrote about him, you may read what was written by John or Peter or James or Matthew, and the impression produced by either of these is fragmentary; it is presenting some things out of the infinite, and it cannot produce a conception of the infinite in the minds of men. When under the gospel men are made preachers, God works in them a saving knowledge of himself, gives them a sense of the sympathy between God and man, of the spiritual love which appeals from the infinite to the mortal; and then says to them, “ Take this revelation of Jesus Christ in you, and go out and preach it.” Tell what God has done for your soul, not in a technical way, but in a large way; take the truth revealed in you, and according to the structure of your understanding, your emotive affections, the sentiments of your own soul, filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, go and preach to men for the sake of making them know the love of Christ Jesus, and you will have a power in you to make that preaching effective. There is a place for knowledge, purely as such; but that which you want to effect is, from the consciousness of your own nature to describe the love of God, not in the abstract conception, but experimentally, just as it has been felt by you, so as to produce a longing for the love of God in your hearers. It will be imperfect. There are no perfect preachers in the world. The only perfect men in this world are the doctors of divinity, who teach systematic theology. They know every thing, all of it, and I envy them. But men that preach take only so much of the truth as they can hold; and, generally speaking, preachers don’t hold a great deal. They are all partialists. One of the most beautiful things I read in the life of Paul is in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, in which, when he has expressed his raptures in giving the everlasting exposition of love, he says, “ After all, we are only fragmentary creatures; we only see bits and spots: now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face; now I know in part- I know only portions of things but then shall I know as I am known.” He felt how empty he was; and yet what a creature was that Paul! What a magnificent moving spirit the man was! But when he spoke about himself in that epistle, written late in his life, he felt that he was not a full man; that he could not represent or reflect the whole of the Lord Jesus Christ. No man can; no hundred men can. It is your office as preachers to take so much of the truth of Christ Jesus as has become digested and assimilated into your own spiritual life, and with that, strike! with that, flash! with that, burn men! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 1.A 03. A BIT OF EXPERIENCE ======================================================================== A Bit of Experience. I remember the first sermon I ever preached. I had preached a good many sermons before, too. But I remember the first real one. I had preached a good while as I had used my gun. I used to go out hunting by myself, and I had great success in firing off my gun; and the game enjoyed it as much as I did, for I never hit them or hurt them. I fired oflf my gun as I see hundreds of men firing off their sermons. I loaded it, and bang! there was a smoke, a report, but nothing fell; and so it was again and again. I recollect one day in the fields my father pointed out a little red squirrel, and said to me, “ Henry, would you like to shoot him?” I trembled all over, but I said “ Yes.” He got down on his knee, put the gun across a rail, and said, “ Henry, keep perfectly cool, perfectly cool; take aim.” And I did, and I fired, and over went the squirrel, and he didn’t run away either. That was the first thing I ever hit; and I felt an inch taller, as a boy that had killed a squirrel, and knew how to aim a gun. I had preached two years and a half at Lawrenceburg, in Indiana (and some sporadic sermons before that), when I went to Indianapolis. While there, I was very much discontented. I had been discontented for two years. I had expected that there would be a general public interest, and especially in the week before the communion season. In the West, we had protracted meetings, and the people would come up to a high point of feeling; but I never could get them beyond that. They would come down again, and there would be no conversions. I sent for Dr. Stowe to come down and help me; but he would not come, for he thought it better for me to bear the yoke myself. When I had lived at Indianapolis the first year, I said: “There was a reason why when the apostles preached they succeeded, and I will find it out if it is to be found out.” I took every single instance in the Record, where I could find one of their sermons, and analyzed it, and asked myself: “What were the circumstances? who were the people? what did he do?” And I studied the sermons until I got this idea: That the apostles were accustomed first to feel for a ground on which the people and they stood together a common ground where they could meet. Then they heaped up a large number of the particulars of knowledge that belonged to everybody; and when they had got that knowledge, which every body would admit, placed in a proper form before their minds, then they brought it to bear upon them with all their excited heart and feeling. That was the first definite idea of taking aim that I had in my mind. “Now,” said I, “I will make a sermon so.” I remember it just as well as if it were yesterday. First, I sketched out the things we all know. “You all know you are living in a world perishing under your feet. You all know that time is extremely uncertain; that you cannot tell whether you will live another month or week. You all know that your destiny, in the life that is to come, depends upon the character you are forming in this life.” And in that way I went on with my “You all knows,” until I had about forty of them. When I had got through that, I turned round and brought it to bear upon them with all my might; and there were seventeen men awakened under that sermon. I never felt so triumphant in my life. I cried all the way home. I said to myself, “Now I know how to preach.” I could not make another sermon for a month that was good for anything. I had used all my powder and shot on that one. But, for the first time in my life, I had got the idea of taking aim. I soon added to it the idea of analyzing the people I was preaching to, and so taking aim for specialties. Of course that came gradually and later, with growing knowledge and experience. Young man, when you get a parish, don’t be discouraged for the first ten years, no matter how poor your work. There is no trade that requires so long an apprenticeship as preaching; and yet there is no trade to which they admit a man so soon, or in which he learns so fast. It is easier to study law and become a successful practitioner, it is easier to study medicine and become a successful practitioner, than it is to study the human soul all through to know its living forms, and to know the way of talking to it, and coming into sympathy with it. To make the truths of God and the divine influences a part of your daily, enthusiastic experience, and to bring to bear out of your treasury what is needed here or there, that requires a great deal of experience and a great deal of study. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 1.A 04. THE POWER OF PERSONAL CHRISTIAN VITALITY ======================================================================== The Power of Personal Christian Vitality. This living force, then, of the human soul, brought to bear upon living souls, for the sake of theirtransformation, being the fundamental idea, I think it will be interesting to you for me to state more at large the fact, that not only was this the apostolic idea of preaching, but it was the secret of the power of the first Christian Church for many hundred years. It is historically true that Christianity did not in its beginning succeed by the force of its doctrines, but by the lives of its disciples. It succeeded first as a light; in accordance with the Master’s command, “Let your light so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Make religion attractive by the goodness that men see in you; be so sweet, so sparkling, so buoyant, so cheerful, hopeful, courageous, conscientious and yet not stubborn, so perfectly benevolent and yet not mawkish or sentimental; blossoming in everything that is good, a rebuke to everything that is mean or little, make such men of yourselves that everybody who looks upon you may say, “ That is a royal good fellow; he has the spirit that I should like to lean upon in time of trouble, or to be a companion with at all times.” Build up such a manhood that it shall be winning to men. That is what the early Christians did. It was not by doctrinal subtleties that they over came philosophy. The heathen world found that the lowest class of people, the people least likely to attain the serious heights of philosophy, were developing traits that neither persecution, neglect, nor opprobrium could change; so that after a while it began to be proverbial, that Christian men were more beautiful livers than anybody else. It was the beauty of Christian life that overcame philosophy, and won the way for Christian doctrine. Again, we are to seek to preach, not simply by our own personal experience, but by bringing together one and another in the Church, and having the whole life of the Church so beautiful in the community that it shall be a constant attraction to win men unceasingly to us and our influence. This was what Christ commanded, what the early Church did; and the world will be converted, not until the whole body of Christians become in this sense preachers. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 1.A 05. SERMONS AND LITURGIES ======================================================================== Sermons and Liturgies. In view of the statements I have made, I wish to discriminate between the two great Church bodies that exist. We are apt to divide the Christian world into the Protestant and Catholic. I prefer to divide it into the Evangelical and the Hierarchical. They are sharply distinguished by various other things, but by nothing more, it seems to me, than by this, that the Hierarchical body, in all its various forms, relies for its success upon the administration of ordinances and systems of worship; while the Evangelical body relies substantially for its success upon the living force of man upon man. Both hold to the indispensableness of divine power; but one believes that power to work chiefly through church ordinances, the other believes that it works through living men. Wherever you shall find the altar and the sacrifice wherever you shall find robes, candles, and liturgies wherever you shall find piled high instrumentalities of this kind sermons shrink, and sermonizers are fewer and fewer. Where the Church looks for power in external forms, preaching tends to decay. On the other hand, where the ordinances arc very few, and yet the Church has life, the pulpit thrives and waxes strong. The man in the pulpit is the only thing the Presbyterian and Congregationalist have to rely upon; but when you consider that preaching means the power of living men upon living men, you will see that they who have strength in the pulpit have the very heart of the matter. There is just as much difference between the man who is a mere administrator of ordinances which Paul thanked God he had not much to do with, for he had not been sent to baptize but to preach the gospel, and the administration of ordinances with him was one thing, and the preaching of the gospel an entirely different thing there is just as much difference between the man who administers ordinances and the man who preaches the gospel, as there is between the man who prints a chromo and the man that paints the picture which the chromo prints. The man that strikes out the original plan upon the canvas and brings it to perfection is an artist. But the man who takes fifteen stones, every stone carrying one colour, and from them prints the chromo, may produce a perfect picture, but after all lie is nothing but the mechanician, putting the ink on the paper, while the stone does all the work. The man that preaches with power is an artist. He is a living creature. But the man that merely comes to administer ordinances on Sundays or saints days, who goes through a regular routine, is nothing but the engineer who runs the machine. But does he not do good? Yes; a great deal. Is not the world better with him than it would be without him? Yes; a great deal better. Yet how much better it would be if you could have both if the man could be a living creature, to say what he has got in him, and then carry that along, and confirm it, and build it up by institutional influences. Preaching arouses, gathers material, prepares the way; institutions come in to consolidate and keep. There is a reason why different Churches and different men succeed as they do. For example, take a Presbyterian, or an Orthodox Congregational Church, in which the minister is an acute and eminent thinker; he runs all to thought. He will indoctrinate his people, educate them, build them up disproportionately in their minds, and that is about all. Things will stand steadily, grow slowly, and develop but little. Right alongside of him there is a man with strong, emotive, vitalizing life; a man who is not so much after thoughts as he is after the people, or after bait to catch the people with. He means men, first, and last, arid all the while. Systems to him are beautiful if they will act like a net to catch folks, and good for nothing if they do not. High doctrines to him are valuable, just in proportion as they give position from which to throw stones upon the besiegers round about. It is power over men that he wants. He is not necessarily less a teacher; but what a vitality he will give to his Church! How strongly it will swell! How it will grow! What an effect it will produce in the community! It is the living force within him that does it. It is the manhood in him; it is the Spirit of God dwelling in him that is the occasion of such a success. There is no Church, in my experience, more successful than the Methodist Church in the West. I worked beside that Church for fifteen years, and saw the whole operation, and knew the men that were in the Church. They were not men largely equipped with theology. I knew Elder Havens when he began to preach. He knew so little, had so little culture, that he had to count the chapters to tell what chapter it was, and then count the verses to tell what verse it was; yet afterwards he became no mean scholar. I knew hundreds of men there that were stammerers in learning. Yet, on the whole, they had eminent power. They did no institutional work; but they had zeal, fervour, personal feeling; and by that, little as their know ledge was, small as was the area of the thoughts they brought to bear, they transformed communities. They were real preachers. They had the right idea of preaching, and they succeeded in spite of their ignorance. Their personal experience was very strong, and their feelings were outspoken, demonstrative. They brought to bear the truth of God in their souls upon the masses of mankind, and the effect corresponded to the cause. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 1.A 06. GENERAL ADVANTAGES OF DIRECTNESS ======================================================================== General Advantages of Directness. This view also will discriminate between sermons, those which seek direct effects definitely aimed at, and those that are institutional sermons. There are sermons for preaching, and there are sermons also for teaching and confirming. I do not say you should not preach these secondary sermons; but if that is the whole style of your ministry, you will not be so successful, although you may slowly advance. Every man ought to preach two kinds of sermons: one for direct power on men’s minds and hearts, and the other for their broadening in knowledge; but of this last class, less and less in our time, because the people have so many other sources of knowledge, and so many other training influences are going on in the community. No man ought to go into the pulpit with the direct kind of sermon without having a definite reason why he selected one subject rather than another, and why he put it in one form rather than another. The old fashioned way of sermonizing affords us some amusement; but they did a great deal of good with those queer, regulation old methods of first, second, third, and then the subdivisions. I remember that, in my boyhood, the moment a man announced his text, I could tell pretty nearly as well as he could how he would lay it out, because I knew he must proceed according to certain forms. It seems to me that the highest conception of a sermon is, that it is a prescription which a man has made, either for a certain individual, or for a certain class, or for a certain state of things that he knows to exist in the congregation. It is as much a matter of prescription as the physician’s medicine is. For instance, you say: “In my congregation there has been a good deal of affliction, which I think I ought to comfort. Now, of all ways of comforting, how shall I do it? Shall I show the hand of God in all his administration? What will that do? That mode of consolation will raise people up into the conception of God; “but those that cannot rise so high will fall short of it, and not get it. Or, I can show them how afflictions will elevate the soul; and that will have another range. Or, it may be that I will not say a word about that, but strike a blow that exhilarates men and lifts them up, in dependent of any allusion to troubles; I may strike a chord to awaken the courage of men. What subject can I take which will most successfully sound that chord? “ And so you look for your subject. You know what you are after the whole time. It is exactly like the watchmaker, who has opened your watch and discovered that something is wrong. He turns to his bench and pokes around among his tools, but cannot find what he wants; he looks everywhere for it, and at last, there it is, and he takes it and uses it, for it is the only instrument exactly fitted to do just the thing he wanted to do in that watch. Now, in preaching to a congregation there are living men to reach; and there is a particular way of doing it that you want to get at. You search for it in the Bible; and you make your sermon to answer the end. This is psychological preaching, drawing from your own gradually augmenting intelligence and experience, which will make you skilful in the ends you want to effect. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: 1.A 07. MAN-BUILDING, THE PREACHER'S BUSINESS ======================================================================== Man-Building, the Preacher’s Business. I will add only one thing more, for I shall resume this subject; and that is, that I have participated with a great many in one experience. I have been under the penumbra of doubt. I look upon the progress of physical science and see the undermining influences that are going on. I see that probably Churches as they are now constituted will not stand, and that a vast amount of what is called technical theology will have to undergo great mutations. I know there are many minds in the darkness of cloud who ask, Is there a God? or, Is it a Pan theistic God? or, Is there a revelation? Can there be an inspiration in this world? The whole of this reacts on the community, so that a young man who is thinking about preaching may say to himself, “I will not go into a profession which seems likely to be overthrown before long; where, in a few years, all my employment will drop out of my hands, scepticism is prevailing to such an extent.” Young gentlemen, I want to tell you my belief upon that point. True preaching is yet to come. Of all the professions for young men to look forward to, I do not know another one that seems to me to have such scope before it in the future as preaching. I mean this. There is one fact that is not going to be overturned by science; and that is the necessity of human development, and the capability there is in man of being opened up and improved. If there is one thing that can be substantiated more clearly than another, it is that the development indicated by Christianity is right along the line of nature. Men walk from the fleshly up to the spiritual. If there can be one thing shown to be more true than another, it is that Christianity is walking toward spiritual love as the polar star, the grand centre, If there is one thing in this world more worthy of being worked than another, it is the human soul. And if there is one business better worth a man’s thought than another, it is a profession that under takes to educate men along this common line, of nature and Christianity together, and lift them up from basilar conditions and methods to the coronal (heights where understanding, moral sentiment, taste,) imagination, and love are intermingled. That is the business of the preacher. It is not to grind a Church. It is not to turn a wheel. It is not to cuff about the controversies of theology. It is a living work, building- work. If you are to be true preachers, you are to be man-builders; and in the days yet to come there is to be no labour so worthy of a man’s ambition as that of building men worthily, that at last you may present them spotless before the throne of God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: 1.A 08. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Now for questions, if you want to ask any Q. In keeping an eye upon the congregation, and looking forward to a ministry which may be for years, would you not think best to follow in the general system of thought which we call Calvinistic? Can we pass by the teachings of the schools and construct our own theology? Or shall we have for a background, for a corner-stone, if you please, of all our systems of thought and preaching, that system which is called Calvinistic? Mr. BEECHER. I admire the discretion with which you put that question. If you had asked me whether you ought to follow that system which is Calvinism, I should say, No. But if you ask whether you ought to follow that system which is called Calvinism, I say it is very well to follow that; for I have noticed what that which is called Calvinism may be defined to be. For instance, I consider myself Calvinistic, you know; and in this way: I believe what John Calvin would have believed if he had lived in my time and seen things as I see them. My first desire is to know what is true; and then I am very glad if John Calvin agrees with me; but if he don t, so much the worse for him! While I accept the work that God did by him in the interpretation and in the systematization of truth and I shall have a good deal to say about Calvinism, and in favour of Calvinism, before I get through, in respect to its doctrines and its historic work yet it seems to me that I have the same Lord Jesus Christ that John Calvin had, the same Paul, the same John, and nothing that hinders me ill any way from looking right into their hearts and forming my own idea of what they were and how they felt, just as he did; with the additional advantage that I have in the light of hundreds of years unfolding of the Christian Church which he had not; for he constructed his system under the drippings of the old Roman hierarchy. Besides, John Calvin had an inordinate share of intellect and not half his share of heart. Have I answered sufficiently? Q. If yon wore requested to preach on Election and Predestination in a Church whose members held the old faith on these points, how would you meet that request? MR. BEECHEH. I should preach it as I find it in the New Testament. I should not ask the catechisms, which are helps to those whom they help. I should take it as I find it in the NCAV Testament, that God has a plan in the world; that he works according to laws; and that natural laws are divine decrees. I very frankly admit that those truths can be stated in a way so as to be very offensive and discouraging; but I thankfully believe that they can be stated in another way so as to be the foundation and groundwork of hope and courage. What ever else you do, don’t slam the door of possibility in any man’s face. Don’t hold up any of the truths of the gospel in such a way that the man who looks at them shall say it is not possible to be saved. The teaching of Christ and the Apostles was that God wanted all men to be saved, and made overtures to them; that there is a possibility of every man’s being regenerated by the power of the Holy Ghost. Build up such a spiritual superstructure that every little child shall feel it to be easier to live a Christian life than an ungodly life. Q. If you went into a neighbourhood where Universalism or Spiritualism prevailed, would you preach against them or pass them by? MR. BEECHER. I cannot answer that question precisely, it would depend on so many considerations; the first of which might be how far the preacher were himself infected with it. Secondly, what class of the community was infected. If the thinking class, and the influential, three or four families, I might take one course; but if it was only the ignorant, and those that had no influence upon society, I might take another course. That is a theme which I shall take up more fully by-and-by, in speaking of entering a new community; but I am quite willing to consider the question now, for I do not fear to exhaust the subject. I recollect hearing my father say that when he went to East Hampton and began to preach there, he was surrounded by the influence of French infi delity, and the leading men of that community were infidels. Said he, “ I did not undertake to argue with them. I preached one or two great sermons, to show them I had big guns and was not afraid of them; and after that I preached right to their consciences; and the result was that a great revival of religion came up there; and after that I never heard anything about infidelity.” One of the most affecting little things came to my knowledge the other day. There was one man in that congregation who was never converted, who never gave up ostensibly his infidelity; although he loved my father very much indeed, yet he never seemed to bo brought into the kingdom during his time there. There was one little child, Harriet, born into our family, which after a short time fell asleep. This little baby was the only thing we left behind in moving from the place. So this man, twenty or twenty-five years after father had gone away, said one day to his wife, “ I cannot bear to have that little child of Dr. Beecher’s left there all alone; “and he had the child taken up, and put it in his own ground, where his wife now lies on one side and he upon the other, and the little baby snugly gathered in their bosoms there. Such was the effect produced upon his mind by my father’s preaching and example; and although he did not outwardly come into the community of the faith, the impression never wore off, and I should not wonder if he were in heaven. Q. If you wont into a neighbourhood in which there were petty troubles among families, would you preach against such things? MR. BEECHEU. Generally speaking, meddling with families is dangerous business; and as it is dangerous personally, so it is dangerous pulpitly; inasmuch as you would instantly, for the most part, produce sides, and they would take your sermon and turn it into artillery to fire at each other, backward and forward. No; if you want to cure one malign feeling, recollect that our feelings act, as it were, in poles; that there is an antagonistic feeling. If a child cries, the nurse, who is a better philosopher than many wiser heads, makes the child laugh. She makes up faces, makes herself grotesque; the child struggles against it for a while, but finally bursts out laughing, and that moment the crying and the anger are all gone. Two opposite feelings can not coexist. If anger is up, good-nature is down. If you want to get anger down, don’t try to push it down that won’t do; but go to the other end and pry up good-nature. Q. Going into a small place, where there are few educating influences, would not you preach a fair proportion of educating sermons? MR. BEECHEB. Is not the arousing influence of the revival system an educating one? Is there any education that proceeds so fast as that which takes place under a warm and newly developed moral feeling? Men in the ordinary stage are like robins eggs in the nest; you cannot feed them. Let the robin sit on them a little while, and by-and-by there will be nothing but four mouths, and as fast as you put in worms they will gulp them. To educate man in the cold and natural state is just like feeding eggs. Warm them, and give them life, and they will eat. Q. You speak of presenting the truth as a man thinks it and feels it and lives it, himself. Is there a danger connected with that of being too egotistical in our preaching, so that when we present a truth as we feel it and think it, men will say, “ Here is a man thatprofesses to have a great deal deeper thoughts, and a great deal deeper feelings than we have,” and an antagonistic feeling will be aroused against us? How can that be overcome? MR. BEECHER. You will never preach so wisely or so well, if you preach continuously, as to guard against all these dangers. You cannot help yourself. If a surgeon were ten times as skilful as he is, and he had to probe a wound, he could not probe it so that it would be a luxury to the patient. If anything is to be cut off, or tied up, or changed radically, changed in such a way that the pride must come down, it will cause pain. It is not easy to take the yoke or the burden of Christ, in the taking of it; it is only after you have got your neck accustomed to it that the yoke is easy and the burden is light. No matter how wisely or well you put it, there will be trouble, and it will be just in proportion to the disturbance you make. And the disturbance will be according to the wisdom and the love which you manifest. No man is such a master of his business that he can go into a community and preach, saying to himself, “This is ideally perfect.” Your mode of presenting the truth will be imperfect. Your partialisms are full of danger. For instance, if you are a quiet man, you will have a tendency to preach so as not to arouse any feeling. On the other hand, if you are pugnacious and energetic, your sermons will be apt to be full of lances and thrusts. There is a great deal about a man’s personality that has got to be educated. If one is frank, genial, warm-hearted, and if he is going to be a minister, and pulls down his face and says, “ Now I must walk with the utmost precision,” and he begins to walk just so, and to administer just so, thinking that coldness and sanctity have some peculiar relation to each other, he does violence to his nature. When God made him warm-hearted and gushing, he gave him a power with which to do his work. Take your strongest point and make the most of it. The modifications and limitations of this will come up for more remark hereafter. Q. Don’t you think it is a good plan to preach a variety of sermons, intellectual and emotional? MR. BEECHER. Never two alike, if you can help it. I heard described the other day a style of preaching which was likened to the way they are said to build ships down in Maine. They build them down there by the mile; and when they have an order they cut off so much, round up a stern and a bow, and send it. Thus some sermons seem to have been built by the mile. There seems to be no earthly reason why the preacher should begin in one place rather than another, or why he should stop in one place rather than another. He could preach ten hours, if not ordered to stop; and wherever he stops he is ready to begin again; and so to go on until the judgment-day. That kind of iteration is the most hurtful of all things. A man keeps a boarding-house, and the boarders like bacon for breakfast. So he gives them bacon on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, arid Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, until by-and-by one of them comes to him and says, “Mr. Jacobs, we like bacon pretty well, but lately we have got tired of it; we should like something else.” “Well, what will you have?” 11 Let us have pork and beans.” So he gives them pork and beans on Monday, pork and beans on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and keeps feeding them on pork and beans until they protest again. Now, everybody gets stale on any one thing. Seven teen sermons on the doctrine of retribution as it is found in nature, rather tire a man out. Mrs. Stowe said, when she returned from Germany, that she really enjoyed the German church singing until they reached the eighteenth or nineteenth stanza, but she generally got tired then; and it is about so with preaching. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: 1.B 00. QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER ======================================================================== Chapter 2: QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER February 1, 1872. ELOQUENCE has been defined, sometimes, as the art of moving men by speech. Preaching has this additional quality, that it is the art of moving men from a lower to a higher life. It is the art of inspiring them to ward a nobler manhood. In thinking about the preparation for the Christian ministry, we are apt to regard the sermon as the chief thing; and certainly, in the whole series of instruments, it does rank highest, for the power of the man, all that he has been doing collaterally, culminates in that. After all, there is a world of encouragement for men that cannot preach. If a preacher is a true man (and a true man spreads out and covers with himself all times and all places), he preaches not only while he is in the pulpit; but just as much when he is conversing with a little child upon the side-walk, when he is in a social company, or when he is out on a sportive or picnic occasion with his people. A true minister is a man whose manhood itself is a strong and influential argument with his people. He lives in such relations with God, and in such genuine sympathy with man, that it is a pleasure to be under the unconscious influence of such a mind. Just as, lying on a couch in a summer’s evening, you hear from a neighbouring house the low breathing of an instrument of music, so far away that you can only hear its palpitation, but cannot discern the exact tune that is played, and are soothed by it and drawn nearer to hear more; thus the true Christian minister is himself so inspiring, so musical, there is so much of the divine element in him, rendered home like by incarnation with his disposition, brought down to the level of man’s understanding, that wherever he goes little children want to see him, plain, people want to be with him; everybody says when he comes, “Good! “ and everybody says when he goes away, “ I wish he had stayed longer; “ all who come in contact with him are inclined to live a better life. Manhood is the best sermon. It is good to fill the minds of people with the nobleness and sweetness of the thing itself to which you would fain draw them. “ Go preach “ was no more authoritative than “ Let your light so shine that men, seeing your good works, shall glorify your Father.” There is no form of preaching that can afford to dispense with the preacher’s moral beauty. He may be as homely as you please, physically as awkward as you please but you will find in the true preacher somewhere an element of beauty; for God works always toward beauty, which is one sign of perfection, so that, though riot an essential element, beauty is still a sign and token of the higher forms of creation. I endeavoured to impress you yesterday with the idea that preaching is the exertion of the living force of men upon living men for the sake of developing in them a higher manhood. I say a higher man hood rather than a higher life, because I do not wish to separate a Christian life as something distinct from the movement of the whole being. Men are not like musical organs of many stops, one of which is Religion, as something separable and distinct from the rest of their nature. Religion is harmonized human nature. It includes every element which manhood includes. It is wholesomeness of soul. It is man hood, on a higher plane. It includes the physical, the social, the intellectual, the aesthetic, the moral, the spiritual. The whole man working in harmony with the laws of his condition, that is the New Testament idea of a Christian man. And that which we undertake to do by preaching, whether in its technical or special form, by the delivery of a sermon or in its collateral and more diffusible forms by social intercourse, is to mould and shape men into a nobler manhood, Jesus Christ being the highest ideal and exemplar. Our ministry is effectual in proportion as we do that, and deficient in the proportion in which we fail to do it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: 1.B 01. SHOW-SERMONS ======================================================================== Show-Sermons. A good many young men, beginning to preach, feel that they don’t know what to do. They naturally fall hack upon their note-hooks, upon the development of some system of truth. They undertake to present to their people topic after topic based upon great gospel themes. And of course they can do no better than that in the beginning. Still, that is rather preparing to preach than preaching. It is like a man who is practising with his rille at a target that he does not see, who hits by accident if he hits, rather than by deliberate aim. You cannot expect a man to do better until he has learned. It is no easy thing for one to be in such familiar pos session of the great moral truths revealed in the Bible, and in such familiar knowledge of men’s natures and dispositions, that he can take of the one and lit it to the other almost by intuition. But in tuition is only a name for superior habit. No one should be discouraged in the beginning of his ministry, therefore, if he finds himself running short of subjects; preaching a great deal and accomplishing but very little; having comparatively a light hold upon truths, and not being able by these truths to grapple men effectually. Every one has an ideal in his mind. He thinks of Whitefield; and of Jonathan Edwards, with the man pulling at his coat-tails and trying to stop that terrible burst of statement and denunciation that was crushing the congregation. Every young man who is aspiring wants to do great things, and to preach great sermons. Great sermons, young gentlemen, ninety-nine times in a hundred, are nuisances. They are like steeples without any bells in them; things stuck up high in the air, serving for ornament, attracting observation, but sheltering nobody, warming nobody, helping nobody. It is not these great sermons that any man should propose to himself as models. Of course, if now and then in legitimate, honest, and manly work, you are in the right mood, and are brought into a state of excitement of which a great sermon is the result, preach it, and don’t be afraid. But great sermons will come of themselves, when they are worth anything. Don’t seek them; for that of itself is almost enough to destroy their value. I do not say this for the purpose of abating one particle of your studiousness, or the earnestness with which you labour. I do not undertake to say that there may not be some indulgence at times in that direction; that is to say, if you have written a sermon that has done good, it may do good again. But I do say that, generally speaking, show-sermons are the temptation of the devil. They do not lie in the plane of common, true Christian, ministerial work. They are not natural to a man whose heart is moved with genuine sympathy for man, and who is inspired in that sympathy by the fire of the Spirit of God. There is a false greatness in sermons as well as in men. Vanity, Ambition, Pedantry, are demons that love to clothe themselves in rhetorical garments, like angels of light! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: 1.B 02. SYMPATHY WITH MEN ======================================================================== Sympathy with Men. In speaking of bringing to bear upon men a living force for their exaltation in the spiritual life, I want to call your attention to the very natural substitutes that men take for this. I know men of great learning I could mention their names, and you would recognize them as men of great ability in their pastoral lives men of the greatest breadth of thought, and really and interiorly men of profound emotion; but their ministry has never been very fruitful; that is, they have never moved either the multitudes, or, very largely, the individuals, of the community where they have been. I have thought I saw the reason of it in this: that their sympathy ran almost exclusively toward God. They were on God’s side altogether. They were always vindicating God. They were upholding the divine government. And they produced, if I may say so, the feeling that they were God’s attorneys, that they were special pleaders on that side. I would not say that a man should not be in sympathy with God, but it must be remembered that God himself is in sympathy with sinful and erring men, that he broke down all the brilliance and glory of the heavenly estate that he might mingle himself among them; and no preacher is the true agent of God, or really takes sides with God, who does not sympathize with men, but who simply holds up the majesty and sternness and power and glory of the divine government. I have seen men who all the while produced the impression, GOD GOD GOD; there was nothing in them that breathed of gentleness, sweetness, or sympathy the very things that characterized Christ, and which were in him the interpretation of the real interior Godhead; those things were absent from their ministry; and, if you will not misunderstand it, I would say that they failed because they had too exclusive a sympathy with God. Then I have seen another class of men who were so constructed and educated that they had an intense sympathy with ideas, with organized thought religious system, or philosophy; who studied profoundly, who constructed ably, who had much that was instructive in their work. But after all, while everybody felt the strength of their sermons, almost nobody was moved or changed by them. And I have seen ministers with not one quarter of this equipment really lift and inspire a congregation, producing an effect which, with a proper following up, might have been permanently crystallized into life and. disposition. There should be in you a strong sympathy with the intellectual elements of the ministry; but it should never overlie, and certainly should not absorb or impede, the more legitimate sympathy you are to have with men themselves. Reflect for one moment what must have been the state of mind of the man who wrote such a thing as this, “ For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ.” Paul was intensely proud, sensitive as a thermo meter is to heat; and you will see that under all the sweetness, the efflorescence of the Christian life, there is still the principle of egotism, “ For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it wore appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honour able, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are the off scouring of all things unto this day.” You will recollect other passages in which he said that to the Jew he became a Jew, that he might win Jews; and to those without law as without law, that he might bring them all to God. There never was such a manifestation of the willowiness of a man of absolute steel in disposition. He was one of stern personal identity; and yet, by the love of Christ and by the sympathy he had with men, he said or would have said, had he spoken in modern English “ I know how to tit myself to every sinuosity and rugosity of every single disposition with which I have to deal; you cannot find me a man so deep or so high, so blunt or so sharp, but I would take the shape of that man’s disposition, in order to come into sympathy with him, if by so doing I could lift him to a higher and a nobler plane of life.” When I see men standing in the royalty of ordination, who have been made golden candlesticks of grace, who feel what is called “ the dignity of their profession/ and move up and down in life, neatly receiving the praise and deference of everybody round about them, and requesting men who pass to look upon God’s ordained ministers, I think by contrast of Paul, with that diffusiveness that he gave himself, that universal adaptation of himself, who mothered everybody, wherever he went. There is not a thing so menial in the kitchen, there is not a thing so distasteful in the nursery, there is not a thing so offensive to every sense, that the mother does not say, over her sick child, “ Now let me do it; should the child die, it would be a grief to think that any body did these things but me.” The mother makes haste to do those most offensive things for her darling child because she loves it. And so the true man has that vital sympathy with men, that there is nothing that he would not become or do, if by so doing he could get hold of them and make better men of them, that, as Paul says, he may present them faultless before God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: 1.B 03. PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE PREACHER ======================================================================== Personal Character of the Preacher. Your work, therefore, as a Christian minister, let me say, as the first point I want to make this after noon, in addition to what I said yesterday, requires that you should, first of all, see to the elevation of character of the man that preaches. He it is who ought to blossom. You cannot become a good minister simply by being expert in theology. You cannot without it, either; theology must be practically or technically learned. But you cannot be a true preacher with this equipment alone. A dictionary is not literature, though there is no literature without the contents of the dictionary in it. You have got yourself to bring up to the ideal of the New Testament. A part of your preparation for the Christian ministry consists in such a ripening of your disposition that you yourselves shall be exemplars of what you preach. And by an exemplar I do not mean simply that you must be a man who does not cheat his neighbour, or who unites in him self all the scrupulosities of the neighbourhood; but a minister ought to be entirely, inside and out, a pattern man; not a pattern man in abstention, but a man of grace, generosity, magnanimity, peaceableness, sweetness, though of high spirit and self-defensory power when required; a man who is broad, and wide, and full of precious contents. You must come up to a much higher level than common manhood if you mean to be a preacher. You are not to be a needle to carry a thin thread, and sew up old rags all your life long. That is not the thing to which you are called. You are called to be men of such nobleness and largeness and gentleness, so Pauline, and so Christlike, that in all your intercourse with the little children, and with the young people of your charge, you shall produce a feeling that they would rather be with the minister than any gentleman in the state always fresh, always various, always intent on the well-being of others, well understanding them and their pleasures and sympathies, promoting enjoyment, promoting instruction, promoting all that is noble in its noblest form and purest Christlikeness that is what it is your business to be. Now, with that disposition and tendency well established in yourselves, and with sympathy established between yourselves and your parishioners, my young friends, you will never lack for sermons. If your sermons are the reproductions simply of systematic theology, you will lack for them, thank God! You may have sermons on theology, on technical theology; do not suppose that I am undervaluing them, I am only undervaluing the idolatry of them. By theology I understand simply the philosophy of religion accurate thinking, systematic, articulated thinking; and that I believe in its place. But this I say, that there is no theology in the world that is anything more than an instrument. It is a mere tool to work with, an artillery to fight with. Sermons are mere tools; and the business that you have in hand is not making sermons, or preaching sermons, it is saving men. Let this come up before you so frequently that it shall never be forgotten, that none of these things should gain ascendancy over this prime controlling element of your lives that you are to save men. And the first thing you have to do is to present to them what you want them to be. That is, if you are to preach to them faith, the best definition you can give of faith is to exercise it. If you wish to teach them the nature of sympathy, take them by the hand. Talk with the young men, and let them get acquainted with you; and they will soon find out what sympathy means. If you would explain what true benevolence is, be yourselves before them that which you want them to understand and imitate. What does the apostle tell us? “Ye are our epistles, known and read of all men,” said Paul; and he could say it, and so could the whole primitive Church, and so can we yet to-day. If it were a good thing to do, I could pick out to-day the examples from my church, and say, “ This is what I mean by zeal tempered with prudence; that is what I mean by the sweet forbearance of love; if you would see what disinterested kindness is, see there; “ and the rest would all say, “ Amen.” That is certainly the law of the pew, and what is the law of the pew ought to be the law of the pulpit. Christian ministers are to be, not men that pray four times a day, and wear black clothes and white cravats and walk with the consciousness that the whole universe is looking upon them. A minister is a live man. He is a large-hearted man. If any where else he is deficient, he cannot be deficient in heart. Some one asked me yesterday, What was to be, regarded as a proper call to the ministry? I reply, The possession of those qualities which make a good minister, good sense, good nature, good health, and downright moral earnestness. It is signally true, however, in this matter, “ that many are called, but few are chosen.” We need more manhood and less professionalism. Scholarship is good for little that does not enrich manhood. It is the man that is in you that preaches. When God calls he begins early, and calls through your parents. “ Before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Be sure that it is you that is called. It is evident that in many cases some one else was meant when certain persons heard a call. When God calls very loud at the time you are born, standing at the door of life, and says, “ Quarter of a man, come forth! “ that man is not for the ministry. “ Half a man, come forth! “no; that will not do for a preacher. “ Whole man, come! “ that is you. The man must be a man, and a full man, that is going to be a true Christian minister, and especially in those things which are furthest removed from selfishness and the nearest in alliance with true divine love. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: 1.B 04. FERTILITY IN SUBJECTS ======================================================================== Fertility in Subjects. Sympathy with your people, insight of their condition, a study of the moral remedies, this will give endless diversity and fertility to your subjects for sermons. He that preaches out of a system of theology soon runs his round and returns on his track. He that preaches out of a sympathy with living men will sooner exhaust the ocean or the clouds of water, than his pulpit of material. It is true that subjects must be studied; that principles must be traced, that facts must be collected and arranged, that books must be studied, that systems must be understood. But all this is far back of preaching. It is general preparation. Out of the stores thus accumulated one must select for sermons, on the principle that a physician selects for remedies for the sick, or stewards provide food for the household, with an eye on the persons to be treated. The wants of your people must set back into the sermon, and give to it depth, direction, and current. Preaching is sometimes word brooding; sometimes it is a flash of light to those in darkness; sometimes a basket of golden fruit to the hungry, a cordial to the comfortless, all to all, just as Christ is All in All! You will very soon come, in your parish life, to the habit of thinking more about your people and what you shall do for them than about your sermons and what you shall talk about. That is a good sign. Just as soon as you find yourself thinking, on Monday or Tuesday, Now, here are these persons, or this class,” you run over your list and study your people, “ what shall I do for them (“ you will get some idea what you need to do. Sometimes it is to call men from their sins; sometimes to repress the malign; sometimes to encourage hope in the faint-hearted; sometimes to instruct the understanding; sometimes to broaden men’s knowledge, and move them off of their prejudices. There are a thousand things to do. A preacher is a carpenter, building a house. You ought to know, as the house goes up, what you shall do next. Or, if it be built, and you are to furnish the house, you are to determine what is to be its furniture, and how distributed. You will know that this room is not lighted, or that room is not warmed. Wherever you go among your people, you will, to use the mercantile figure, “ be taking account of stock.” That will suggest an endless number of subjects, and these subjects will turn you back to the New Testament to see what you can find there; and that will send you back to Nature, where you will see what is in God’s other great revelation. In this way you will grow fertile. You will not be troubled in looking for subjects on which to write sermons; your only trouble will be to find opportu nities for delivering sermons. I know that some men are more fertile than others; but a sympathetic study of human life is a remedy for uniform theology. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: 1.B 05. STYLE ======================================================================== Style. The effect of this notion of preaching from sympathy with living men rather than from sympathy with any particular system of thought upon the preacher’s style will be very great. I have often heard ministers in private conversation, and said to myself, “ Would to God you would do so in the pulpit! “ But the moment they are in the pulpit they fall into their scholastic, artificial style, which runs through the whole ministerial life. A man will talk to you naturally, and say, “ I do wish you would come down to-night; the young people had the promise of your coming, and why won’t you come? “sweet, natural, pleading, persuasive. Yet he will go into the desk, where prayer is to be made in a persuasive tone, and he will begin addressing the Lord with a drawling, whining falsetto in voice, and a worse falsetto in morals. He has thrown him self out of his proper self into a ministerial self a very different thing! A man will stop you in the street and discourse with you there, and be just as limber and affable in his sentences, just as curt and direct and crisp and simple in conversational vernacular as any one; and yet in the pulpit, two-thirds of what he has to say will be Latin periphrases woven together; three members on one side the sentence-pivot, balanced by three members on the other, and that recurring all the time. This style is false to everything but books. It may be all in sympathy with them; but no man in earnest, talking to his fellow-men with a purpose, falls into that artificial style. The man who preaches from the heart to the heart can hardly help preaching so that there shall be a naturalness in his style, and that will be the best style for him. I have known men who would be excellent ministers, if it were not, first, for their lives; secondly, for their theology; and thirdly, for their style. One other point. I was asked yesterday if I would say a few words as to “the call.” I have already indicated a word as to the call for the min istry. Practically, it acts in this way. Young men are sometimes brought up to it, as I was. I never had any choice about it. My father had eight sons. Only two of them ever tried to get away from preaching; and they did not succeed. The other six went right into the ministry just as naturally as they went into manhood. Therefore, as far aspersonal experience is concerned, I have nothing to say. I have observed, however, in classes in college, and elsewhere, that where young men have not been brought up to believe all through their childhood that they were to be ministers, they generally have the question brought to their minds in some serious mood, whether they ought to go into the law, or into medicine, or to be civil engineers, or whether they ought to go into the ministry. They think about it a good while, and at last it is borne in upon them, without any special reason, that they had better preach; and they resolve to do it. These are young men who ordinarily cannot form judgments; they drift. When you look beyond this number, what are some of the elements that fit a man for the life of a true Christian minister? I say, first, the preacher ought to be a man who is fruitful in moral ideas, has a genius for them, as distinguished from every other kind of ideas. We know what it is to have a genius for arithmetical or mathematical ideas, for musical ideas, or for aesthetic or art ideas. A tendency in the direction of moral ideas, whether developed or susceptible of being developed, is a prime quality. A second quality fitting a man for the Christian ministry, is the power of moving men. If a man is cold and unsympathetic, perhaps he may be able to make himself over; but if he cannot, he had better not go into the ministry. It will be a hard task for such a one. But a man that has quick sympathy, apprehensiveness of men, intuition of human nature, has eminent qualifications for a minister. Every merchant, who is a true merchant, has to know how to deal with his customers. The moment they come into the store he reads them. A good jury lawyer must have the same aptitude. We are all the time obliged to use these qualities the knowledge of men, the power of managing men. A real master of men, when one draws near to him, forms a judgment of the new-comer just as instinctively and as quickly as of a locomotive or a horse. (Do you ever see a fine horse go by and not take his points? Then your education has been neglected.) A minister who I walks down a whole street and sees nobody, who? only looks inside of himself, is but half a minister. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: 1.B 06. QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PREACHER ======================================================================== Qualifications of the Preacher. Self-absorption is permissible once in a while; but the aptitude to deal with men, to incite the springs of human thought and feeling, the knowledge of how to move men, that is to be maintained in power only by incessant practice and observation; but if you have that in connection with the genius for moral ideas, you have two qualifications. A third qualification is what I may call living l)ij faith, the sense of the infinite and the invisible; the sense of something else besides what we see with the physical eyes; the sense of God, of eternity, and of heaven. If I were asked what had been in my own ministry the unseen source of more help and more power than anything else, I should say that my mother gave to me a temperament that enabled me to see the unseeable and to know the unknowable, to realize things not created as if they were, and oftentimes far more than if they were, present to my outward senses. The rain comes out of the great ether above. You see nothing of it to-night, though it is there, and descends to-morrow on the grass and the flowers; so out of the invisible realm of the spirit within which you are living under the crystal line dome of eternity, populous with love and law and truth, you will have a sense of the vastness and magnitude of the sphere in which you are working which will descend upon your life with fructifying power. Another thing: you should have good health; and a fair portion of common sense, which is the only quality that I think never is increased by education; that is born in a man, or, if it is not, that is the end. But if, with those other qualities, you have good sense and good vigorous health, -and withal are of a good social disposition, you have the qualifications out of which a minister can be fashioned. There is one thing more. I do not think that any man has a right to become a Christian minister who is not willing and thankful to be the least of all God’s servants and to labour in the humblest sphere. If you would come into the Christian ministry, hoping to preach such a sermon as Robert Hall would have preached, you are not fit to come in at all. If you have a deep sense of the sweetness of the service of Christ; if the blood of the redemption is really in your heart and in your blood; if you have tasted what gratitude means, and what love means, and if heaven is such a reality to you that all that lies between youth and manhood is but a step toward heaven; if you think that the saving of a single soul would be worth the work of your whole life, you have a call, and a very loud call. A call to the ministry is along the line of humility, and love, and sympathy, and good sense, and natural aspirations toward God. I recollect when I returned from the first revival in which I ever worked. I had been at Indianapolis between one and two years, and there had been no revival (and I had never been in one since I was a boy). I went out, on Brother Jewett’s call, from Indianapolis to Terre Haute; and I worked there three weeks in a revival until my heart was on fire; and it rained a stream of prayer all the way home from Terre Haute to Indianapolis. It was like an aurora borealis, I have no doubt, ray upon ray, for that whole distance, if angels could have seen it. It was in that feeling all the way, “ Lord, slay me if thou wilt; but I will be slain, or will have life and salvation among my people.” On Sunday I gave notice that I would preach every night that week. We had a dingy lecture-room in my church that would hold about two hundred people. I preached Monday night, and we had a storm; Tuesday night it rained again, and when I called upon any who were awakened to remain, no one stayed; and I said, “ It makes no difference; if the Lord wishes it to be SO; I do! “ On Wednesday night I preached again, with more power, and called for inquirers at the close. One poor little thin servant-girl stopped! She smelt of the kitchen, and looked kitchen all over. When I dismissed the congregation, my first feeling, I know, as I went toward her, was one of disappointment. I said to myself that after so much work it was too bad. It was just a glance, an arrow which the devil shot at me, but which went past. The next minute I had an overwhelming revulsion in my soul; and I said to myself, “ If God pleases, I will work for the poorest of his creatures. I will work for the heart of a vagabond, if I am permitted to do it, and bring him to Christ Jesus.” I felt it; and I thanked God that night for that girl’s staying. He paid me the next night, for two of my sweetest children not my own, but they were like my own to me stopped on the next night, and after that the work went on. If, therefore, you feel willing to work for Christ’s sake, for the sake of eternity, for the love that you have for the intrinsic sweetness of the work of the ministry, the moulding of men and making them better and helping them upward; if this is itself sweet and pleasant to you if you are moved to do it in low places, without renown, and are willing to take your crown hereafter for it you are called, and there is no doubt about it. But if you want only this, to be very eloquent men, and to watch the eloquence of others; or if you want to have a big church, with a big salary behind it, and if that is your call to the ministry, stay away. You may be called, but it was not the Lord that called you; it was the devil. Don’t come from pride, but come from a love for the work; and then, let me tell you, your work will be music. I hear ministers talk about their cares and their burdens.” There are cares and bur dens, but no more than there are discords in Beethoven’s symphonies; and your work will be as sweet and as musical as his symphonies are. Working for men! There is nothing so congenial. It is the only business on earth that I know of, excepting the mother’s business, that is clean all the way through; because it i,s using superior faculties, superior knowledge, not to take advantage of men, but to lift them up and cleanse them, to mould them, to fashion them, to give them life, that you may present them before God. I am done, unless you wish to ask questions. I am open to-day and every day for them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: 1.B 07. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. How shall one get the power of adaptation of one s-self to others, and how shall he increase it V MR. BEECHER. If you were taking drawing les sons, and attempting to portray the human face, Imt with so little success as to make it very doubtful what you were trying to do; and if you should look up to your teacher and say to him, “ How shall I increase my ability to draw faces?” what would he say to you? “ Practice that will do it.” Preaching is in one sense an art; not in the ignoble sense. It is a thing to be learned, both in general principles and in practical details. It is learned by some, as every trade is, much more easily than by others. It is learned by continuous trying and practising. A young minister ought not to be discouraged if he works three or four years in a parish before he really begins to get the control of things. Q. Is it a good way to learn to move men by learning to move children? MR. BEECHER. Yes; any way; not merely with children, but with everybody else. You are all of you in society. You have class-mates, room-mates. You can begin practising a good deal of the ministry now. Suppose in a thing in which you have been accustomed to make your room-mate give up to you, after this you give up to him. Suppose you take some of the familiar scriptural texts, “ Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of another;” “ In honour preferring one another;” test yourselves by that. See if you can in all cases give up, one to another; give those around you the advantage of every opening, and hold yourselves back. Try all these tests. These arc admirable principles; and if you do not learn adaptation by practising the Christian virtues, then I am mistaken. What is minister? It is servant; serving men in love is ministering. Q. What is the occasion of the tendency toward short pastorales in churches nowadays? MK. BEECHER. Largely, I think, the divine mercy toward the parish. I do not mean by that that I consider a short pastorate a desirable thing, provided the conditions of long pastorates are complied with; but if a man has only a little in him, and is not going to have any more, I think his removal is a great mercy to his parish. When the cup is empty, it would better be removed and another one filled and brought in its place. Where one has breadth where he will give himself to the work of the ministry, in public and in his study both if the study and the street work into each other all the way he has a true ministry, and he has that in him which will last. A long pastorate has some advantages that cannot be over-estimated. But shallow men, who are sometimes called broad men, ought to have short pastorates. If -you take the Erie Canal, and, without increasing the amount of water, remove one bank to a distance of half a mile, you will broaden it very much, but you will have perhaps only a quarter of an inch depth of water. A great many men spread themselves out, and broaden in that way, and grow shallower and shallower. Such men soon evaporate. Q. Some of us expect to spend several months of this summer in preaching. Would you encourage us to preach in the revival style the very first thing, and keep on right through? ME. BEECIIEK. If you mean by the revival style, that which is addressed exclusively to the feelings, I should say No, not in all cases. You may be thrown among a set of mountain men, where your preaching will he a great deal more out of the pulpit than in it. Paul, you know, wove tent-cloth; and I have no doubt that when he sat down with the common people and worked with them, he was preparing to preach to them. The first thing you want in a neighbourhood is to get enrapport with the people. You want to get their confidence, to induce them to listen to you. It is a part of the intuition of a true preacher to know how to get at men. He looks at a man as Hobbs looked at a lock, who always asked himself, “ How can I pick it?” When I see a man I instinctively divide him up, and ask myself, How much has he of the animal, how much of the spiritual, and how much of the intellectual? And what is his intellect, perceptive or reflective? Is he ideal, or apathetic, or literal? And I instinctively adapt myself to him. There is no mystery about this; it is simple enough. You all adapt yourselves in just that way. You never treat an ox in any other way than as an ox. You never treat it as if it were a horse. But that same process by which you adapt yourselves unconsciously to the more apparent and superficial aspects of nature can be carried further; you can adapt yourself to the disposition of another, and know how to take him, where to take him, what will offend, and what will not offend. Q. How would you influence a contrary man who stayed away from church for a month? MB, BEECHEE. Very likely you laboured with him too long. There are a great many ways. There is no one way of working upon men. You must try them. In fact, you have got to try men as you try fish. You put on one fly, and when you cast, the trout don’t rise. You whip it hither and thither a little while and try it. Perhaps it is the wrong time of day. You change the fly and try again. You come another hour of day; and if he won’t rise, you come to-morrow and try again, and by-and-by you will catch him; but very likely it will be by what you do not look for at all, and he will bite, and you hook him unexpectedly. You are not to suppose you can bring men down as you would go into the woods to fell a tree. Some men require a good deal of diplomacy and management, and it takes a good deal of time. How long was it before the Lord himself managed you? How long God’s providence waits for us! Many arc the influences brought to bear upon us before we are subdued. You must not be in a hurry or impatient. You have not lost a man because he doesn’t take the truth the first time. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: 1.C 00. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY ======================================================================== Chapter 3: THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN ORATORY. February 7, 1872. SHALL talk to you to-day on the general subject of Personalism, as affecting your success in reaching men with the truth, including various modes of bringing your selves to hear on others, from the pulpit, and the helps and hindrances in doing so, both on the mental and spiritual side, and on the physical or material side. No man ever preaches, all the time thinking of producing specific effects, without very soon being made conscious that men are so different from each other that no preaching will be continuously effective which is not endlessly various; and that not for the sake of arresting attention, but because all men do not take in moral teaching by the same sides of their minds. I remember when it was the custom, and it was supposed a proper thing to do, for ministers to hold up a regular system of moral truth, sermon by sermon, and chapter by chapter, until the received average views of the day had been spread out before the congregation; and then it was hoped that a Divine Sovereignty would apply these truths to men’s hearts. Experience ought to have shown them that there is a class of hearers in every intelligent community that will never be led except through their reason. They will require that the path he laid down for them, and that they sec it before they follow. They will not be content to receive the truth in any other mode than by the idea form. If they cannot get it in one church, they will go to another; and if still they cannot find it, they will go nowhere. Yet, if you shape your preaching, as often literary men in the pulpit are accustomed to do, to the distinctively intellectual men in the community, you will very soon fill them full and starve the rest of your congregation; because, right alongside of them, there are natures just as noble as theirs, but not accustomed to receive their food through the mouth of reason, except in an incidental and indirect way. We all use our reason, more or less, in all processes; but then there are a great many persons who want the truth presented in emotive forms. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: 1.C 01. DIFFERENT CLASSES OF HEARERS ======================================================================== Different Classes of Hearers. The hard reasoner says, “ No tears for me; don’t colour your preaching; I want it pure as the beams of light, and as transparent; and the calmer and more inexorably logical its propositions, and the more mathematical its proof, the better I like it.” But there are in any community probably six to one who will watch for the emotional and impassioned part of the sermon, saying, “ That is the preaching I want; I can understand what I feel.” They are fed by their hearts. They have as much light to 1)0 led by their hearts as the others have to be fed by their reason. You should strive, in setting the table in your church, wherever you may be, to do as the hotel proprietor does. He never says to himself, “ What dish do I like best -. that will I put on the table; “ or, “ What dishes do Lawyer A. and Physician B. like best?” He spreads his tables for the benefit of the community at large--- something for everybody; and he docs wisely. The man who means to catch men, and to catch all of them, must prepare bait for those that bite purely by the understanding,_and just as much bait for those that bite largely by their emotions. Ill it there is another class. I recollect my dear old father talking about persons that worshipped God in clouds, and saw the hand of God in beauty. He would say, “ It is all moonshine, my son, with no doctrine nor edification nor sanctity in it at all, and I despise it.” I never knew my father to look at a landscape in his life, unless he saw pigeons or squirrels in it. I have seen him watch the stream, but it was invariably to know if there were pickerel or trout in it. He was a hunter, every inch; but I never could discern that he had an aesthetic element in him, so far as relates to pure beauty. Sublimity he felt. Whatever was grand he appreciated very keenly. I do not think that he ever looked at one building in his life except the Girard College. When he came suddenly upon that, and it opened up to him, he looked up and admired it; and I always marvelled at that, as a little instance of grace in him. That is laughable to you, I have no doubt; and since these addresses are the most familiar of “all talks, I will give you a little more of my amusing experience with him at home. When he became an old man, he” lived six months in my family, and became during that time much interested in the pictures hanging on the walls of the house. One which particularly attracted his attention, and with which he was greatly pleased, represented a beautiful lake, with hunters ensconced behind trees, shooting at ducks on the lake. He would look at that picture every day; and I, not thinking of the sportsmen, but only of the charming landscape, said to myself, “ Well, it is good to see him breaking from the spell of some of his old ideas, and, now that he has become old, to see these fine gifts growing and coming out to behold him ripening into the {esthetic element in this way.” One day I stood behind him, as he was looking at the picture, unconscious of my presence. Said he, “ He must have hit one, two, three and, I guess, four!” Now, it is not strange that a person should, under such circumstances, having no appreciation of the beautiful in his nature, laugh to scorn the idea that beauty could ever lead a man to God, or bring him within the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ, or in cline him to climb from a selfish to a spiritual life; but, I tell you, there is many a mouth that requires to be fed by the aesthetic element. . It is not a vain thing to hear men say that they feel more like worshipping in music than in any other thing. The best organist in America for extemporaneous music is Mr. John Zundel. When ho was converted, and came into the church, he said to me one morning: “It seems that everything in the world is new. Last night I prayed, but not as you do.” I asked him what he meant, and he answered, “I do not speak my prayers.” “ Well,” asked I, “how do you pray?” “On the piano always,” said he. That was true. He would sit down at his piano, when in a worshipping mood, shut his eyes, and pray with his fingers. I did not wonder at it when I heard his music. When I entered the first gallery of any magnitude in Europe, it was a revelation to me; I was deeply affected. It was at the Luxembourg. I had never imagined such a wealth of glory. The sense of exhilaration was so transcendent that I felt as if I could not stay in the body. I was filled with that supersensitiveness of supernal feeling which is true worship; and I never seemed to myself so near the gate of heaven. I never felt capable of so nearly understanding my Master; never in all my life was I conscious of such an earnestness to do his work, and to do it better than I did, as while under the all-pervading influence of that gallery of beauty. I find a great many persons who say, “I do not much enjoy going to church, but if I am permitted to wander out into the fields, along the. fringes of the forests, and to hear the birds sing, to watch the cattle, and to look at the shadows on the hills, I am sure it makes me a better man.” Some others, like my dear old father, would say, “ That is all moon shine; there is nothing in it, no thought, no truth, and no doctrine of edification.” But there is truth in it. There are minds that open to spiritual things through that side of their nature more readily and easily than through any other. This should be recognized. Then there is another class. There are a great many persons who are keenly sensitive on the side of irnagination, and they never really receive any thing as true, until the fact or principle is, as it were, enveloped in a little haze. They need the mystic element. They do not want sharp outlines. There is something in mystery which is attractive to them. And yet some preachers insist that truth should be set before all men in its most accurate and exact form. You might just as well attempt to reduce the clouds to triangles and circles, in order to mathematically demonstrate their beauty to the eye of an artist. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: 1.C 02. HOW TO MEET DIFFERING MINDS ======================================================================== How to Meet Differing Minds. Now, in order to reach and help all these varying phases of your congregation, you must take human nature as you find it, in its broad range. Under stand this, that the same law which led the apostle to make himself a Greek to the Greeks, and a Jew to the Jews, and to put himself under the law with those who were under the law; and that same everlasting good sense of conformity in these things, for the sake of taking hold of men where they can be reached, and lifting them up, requires you to study human nature as it is, and not as people tell you it ought to be. If a man can be saved by pure intellectual preaching, let him have it. If others require a predominance of emotion, provide that for them. If by others the truth is taken more easily through the imagination, give it to them in forms attractive to the imagination. If there arc still others who demand it in the form of facts and rules, see that they have it in that form. Take men as it has pleased God to make them; and let your preaching, so for as concerns the selection of material, and the mode and method by which you are presenting the truth, follow the wants of the persons themselves, and not simply the measure of your own minds. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: 1.C 03. AN EASY DANGER ======================================================================== An Easy Danger Too often men find a certain facility in themselves in single directions, and they confine their preaching to that particular line. The consequence is, their congregations are very soon classified. One sort of a preacher gets one sort of people, and another sort gets another sort of people, instead of all churches having some of every kind of mind in them. They become segregated and arranged according to ministers. That is very bad for the churches. It is a good thing for a village that it has but one church for all the people; where the rich and poor, the cultured and the unlettered, have to come together and learn to bear with each other. This is a part of that discipline and attrition which smooths and polishes men, and makes them better, if there is grace to do it. But in the cities you will find that churches are classified; and in the city of New York I can point out to you many a church in which there are almost no poor, plain people, but the great body are people of wealth, culture, and refinement, and the pulpit is invariably high-toned, perfectly pure in language, clear and methodical in discourse, always proper so proper, in fact, that it is almost dead for want of life, for want of side branches, for want of adaptation and conformity to human nature as it is. It is under such circumstances, where a man follows a single groove in himself or in his congregation, and does it because he learns to work easier so, year by year, and it is really on that account, that preaching becomes narrowed down, and very soon wears out. It has been asked here why pastors change so often. Preachers are too apt to set the truth before their congregations in one way only whichever one they find they have the greatest facility for; and that is like playing on one chord men get tired of the monotony. Whereas, preaching should be directed to every element of human nature that God has implanted in us to the imaginative, to the highly spiritual, to the moral, to that phase of the intellectual that works up and toward the invisible, and to the intellectual that works down to the material and tangible. He is a great man who can play upon the human soul! We think him a great artist who can play on an organ with sixty stops, combining them infinitely, and drawing out harmony and melody, marching them through with grand thought to the end of the symphony; that indicates a master, we think. It does; but what organ that man ever built does not shrink in comparison with the one that God built, and called man? Where you have before you a whole congregation or a whole community, and all their wants and needs are known, and you are trying to draw out of them a higher and nobler life, what an instrument you have to play upon, and what a power it is when you have learned it, and have the touch by which you can play so as to control its entire range and compass! There is nothing more sublime in this world than a man set upon lifting his fellow-men up toward heaven, and able to do it. There arc no sensations in this world comparable with those which one has whose whole soul is aglow, waking into the consciousness of this power. It is the divine power, and it is all working up toward the in visible and the spiritual. There is no ecstasy like it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: 1.C 04. DEMANDS OF VARIETY UPON THE PREACHER ======================================================================== Demands of Variety upon the Preacher. There is another question which I have barely hinted at, and that is, in attempting to address the truth in different forms to men, so as to meet the wants of a whole community, must not a man be universal, like Shakespeare? How can you expect men, taking them as they are, to do this ( My reasoning is this: It is not to be supposed that men will do it in perfection, that they will do it at once, or that they will ever more than approximate to the ideal. I shall have occasion to repeat every time I speak to you this thing, you have got to learn your business. It will take years and years before you are expert preachers. Let nobody puff you up by saying you are able preachers, be cause you can preach three or four good sermons. You have three or four tunes; that is all. You are not practised workmen until you understand human nature, and know how to touch it with the divine truth; until you comprehend the divine truth in so many of its bearings upon the human soul that you can work with tolerable facility from the truth that is in Jesus to that which is in man; and, quite as often, can reverse the process. That is the study. You have not begun your education yet. You arc but getting ready to study when you begin to preach. If you preach for five years, and find that your work is slow, and much of it obscure, and does not produce the results aimed at, do not be discouraged. The work is so great that you need not be ashamed, after working for years, to find that you are still an apprentice and not a journeyman. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: 1.C 05. HOW TO USE ONE'S OWN SPECIAL FORCES ======================================================================== How to use One’s own Special Forces. The question, then, comes up, How far shall a man conform to the strong tendencies of his own nature? One man is himself very imaginative, and not a reasoner; or he finds himself possessed of a judicial mind, calm, clear, but not enthusiastic; while an other finds himself an artist, as it were, with a mind expansive and sensitive, seeing everything iridescent, in all colours. Can these men change their own endowments? Or how can one conform to the endowment of the other? A minister says: “ I am naturally very sensitive to the praise and opinion of men. When I speak I can’t get rid of the feeling of myself. I am. standing l>eforc a thousand people, and I am all the time thinking about myself, whether I am standing right, and what men are thinking of me. I can’t keep that out of my mind.” What is such a man to do? Tan he change his own temperament? On the other side, there are men who say: e< I don’t care what people think of me; I wish I cared more. I am naturally cold, somewhat proud and sell-sustained. People talk about sympathy and a warm side toward men, but I never feel any of that. I do what is right, if the heavens fall, and go on my way. If people like; it, I am glad; and if they don t, that is their look-out.” How can you change that disposition? How can a man alter the laws that are laid down for him? Well, in one sense, he cannot change at all. You can make just as many prayers, write just as many resolutions, and keep just as long a journal as you please, recording the triumphs of grace over your approbativeness, and when you are screwed down in your coffin, you will have been no less of a praise loving man than when you were taken out of the cradle. That quality grows, and it grows stronger in old age than at any other time. You will find that men get over some things in time: they be come less and less imaginative; they become less severe as they grow older; but, if vanity is a part of their composition, old age only strengthens it, and they grow worse and worse as they grow in years. In general, too, if a man has a strong will, I do not think he loses any of it as he gets along through life. It becomes fixed, firm as adamant. But it is not necessary that you should change much. Go and look at Central Park. Before the artistic hand of the landscape-gardener began to work upon its surface, there were vast ledges of rock in every direction, and other obstructions of the most stubborn character. Now if, when the engineer came to look over the land for the purpose of laying it out into a beautiful park, he had said, “ How under the sun am I going to blast out those rocks?” he would have had a terrible time of it, and would have been blasting until this day. Instead of that, however, he said, “ I will plant vines around the edges of the rocks and let them run up over. The rocks will look all the better, and the vines will have a place to grow and display their beauty. In that way I will make use of the rocks.” So it is with your own nature. There is not a single difficulty in it which you cannot make use of, and which, after that, would not be a power for good. Suppose you are conscious, in your disposition, of approbativeness. Do you think you are more sensitive than thousands of God’s best ministers have been? But perhaps you love the praise of men more than the praise of God. The thing for you to do, then, is to train your approbativeness, so that, instead of delighting in the lower types of praise those which imply weakness and which unman you will strive after those which rise steadily higher and higher in the things which are of God. Now it is not your fault that you have the element of approbativeness, but it is your fault that you suffer it to feed on despicable food. Train it to desire approbation for things that are noble and just, for doing intensely whatever is disinterested among men, and for things that other men cannot do. Task yourselves as men should do, and not like boys or puling girls. Have such a conception of man hood in Christ Jesus that you would scorn praise for things that are less than noble. Strike a line through the head, and seek praise for things that are represented above the line and not below it. You cannot find a more beautiful or illustrious instance of the transformation of a great constitutional faculty than in Paul, the fiercely proud and arrogant, the man that was originally made for a persecutor. For, the moment the summer of Christ’s love drew near and shone on him, he be came a changed man. Although he moans and yearns in his teachings, and his letters are full of self-consciousness, yet it is all extremely noble. It is beautiful. I would not take a single “I” out of Paul’s epistles; and yet you might take scores out of every one of them, and they would scarcely be missed, there are so many. Where was there a man whose pride was more regal than his? and what a power it was, and how he used it for Christ’s sake! In regard to strong constitutional peculiarities, I would say, therefore, that you cannot eradicate them, and that you should not try to change them very much. You can regulate and discipline every one of your emotive powers; but do not try to quench them. Do not crucify anything. Do not crucify your passions. Do not crucify any basilar instinct. There is force in it, if you know how to use it as a force, in the propulsion of moral feeling and moral ideas. You may be naturally ambitious; you will be ambitious to the day of your death. Do not attempt to take away your constitutional endowment, only train it to things which are consonant with divine sympathy and with true life. Make it work, not for yourself, but for others, and it will be a power that you need not be ashamed of. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: 1.C 06. SELF-TRAINING AN EDUCATION ======================================================================== Self-Training an Education. This whole necessity of self-use is provided as a school of education for every man, and especially may it be made efficient in the dissemination of the gospel. He who gives his whole life-force to the work of converting men unto Christ, will find, I think, that for a long time he scarcely will need anybody to tell him what to do and what to be. You must go into a parish and say to yourself, “There is not a man, woman, or child within the bounds of this parish to whom I am not beholden. I am to bring the force of my whole soul to bear upon these persons. I am to get thoroughly acquainted with them. I am to make them feel my personality. I am to prepare them to hear me preach by gaining their confidence outside of the church and pulpit.” You must meet them in their every-day life, in their ruggedness and selfishness. You will find one man spoken of as a laughing stock in one neighbourhood, and another as an odious man in another. Nobody can be a laughing-stock or odious to you. You arc like physicians who attend the inmates of an hospital; it matters not to them from what cause the patients are lying hurt and wounded there. Sick men belong to the physician’s care, and he must take care of them. Do not pick out the “beautiful and good, or those who suit you. Select from your parish the men who need you most, and if you cannot be patient with them, if you can not bring your soul to be a sacrifice for others and bear with them, how can you make them understand what Jesus Christ did for the world? You have got to do that same thing right over again at home, with the members of your church, with the outcast and with the wanderer. You must be, if I may say so, little Christs. You must make a living sacrifice of yourself again and again, against your instincts humbling your pride, holding in desires, submitting to things you do not like, and doing things which are repugnant to your taste, for Christ’s sake and for man’s sake; learning to love to do it; and so interpreting, by your personality, what it means for Jesus Christ to have made a sacrifice of himself for the salvation of the world. What else did the apostle mean by saying, “Christ in you “? And if he promises to abide in you, how can he abide in you in any other sense than that? PREACHING THE PREACHER’S WHOLE BUSINESS. The next point I wish to make with you is, that if you are to be preachers in any such sense as this which I have explained to you, preaching will have to be your whole business. Now, in a small way, everybody preaches; but if you are going to professional preachers, if you will make that your life calling, it is not probable that there is one of you who was built large enough to do anything more than that. It will take all that you have in you, and all your time. I do not think a man could run a locomotive-engine, paint pictures, keep school, and preach on Sundays to any very great edification. A man who is going to be a successful preacher should make his whole life run toward the pulpit. Perhaps you will say, “Arc you not, yourself, doing just the other thing? Don’t you edit a paper, and lecture, and make political speeches, and write this, that, and the other thing? Are you not studying science, and are you not an fait in the natural enjoyments of rural life? “Well, where a man stands in the pulpit, and all the streams run away from the pulpit down to those things, the pulpit will be very shallow and very dry; but when a man opens these streams in the neighbouring hills as so many springs, and all the streams run down into the pulpit, he will have abundant supplies. There is a great deal of difference, whether you are working in the collaterals toward the pulpit, or away from the pulpit. You can tell very quickly. If, when a man comes back from his garden, his lectures, his journeys, and his aesthetic studies, or from his scientific coteries and stances, he finds himself less interested in his proper work, if the Sabbath is getting to be rather a burdensome day to him, and it is irksome to be preaching, he must quit one or other of those things. The streams run from the pulpit instead of into it. But if, when a man feels lie is called to be an architect of men, an artist among men, in moulding them; when one feels that his life-power is consecrated to transforming the human soul toward the higher ideal of character for time and eternity, he looks around upon the great forces of the world and says to them, “ You are my servants; “ to the clouds, “Give me what you have of power;” to the lulls, “ Briii”“ me of your treasures; “ to all that is beautiful, “ Come and put your garment upon me;” and to all that is enjoyable, “Fill me with force and give abundance to the fulness of my feeling”- if a man makes himself master of the secrets of nature that he may have power and strength to do his W0 rk then he is not carrying on three or four kinds of business at the same time, He is carrying 011 one business, and he collects from a hundred the materials and forces by which he does it. That is right. It will do you no hurt, but will benefit you, if you will make yourself familiar with public affairs. But you must not let public affairs settle down on you and smother you. You must keep yourself abreast of science; but you must be surer of your faith than science is of its details. You must see to it that you are the master of every thing, and not it the master of you. If music is more to you than your duties, it is dangerous; but it ought to be a shame to you that it is dangerous. If genial society and the flow of social merriment is sweet to you, and it seduces you from your work, it is perilous; but it is a shame that these things should so easily overcome you. You ought to build yourselves on a pattern so broad that you can take all these things along with you. They are the King’s; and you have a right to them. You have a right to be a child with children; the best fellow among young men. You have a right to all manly recreations, but you must see to it that you are stronger than the whole of them. You have a right to feel like other men, and to take part in all their interests, but you must be larger than them all. You must feel that you are charged with the realities of the great world that is hanging over our heads and, my God, such a world! that never says any thing; that keeps silence above us, while the destinies of the ages have been rolling onward; and where there are such things going on, that I marvel no sound ever drops down to us. But if a man lives and has seen Him that is invisible, and It that is invisible, all these lower things are open books unto him; and, instead of weakening, they become elements of strength and power. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: 1.C 07. EXTERNAL HINDRANCES ======================================================================== External Hindrances. A man may spend one half the strength of his life trying to overcome obstacles that interpose between himself and men, which is absolutely unnecessary. I told Brotherston’s in his church edifice that, with all his splendid success, I thought one full third of his life was spent in overcoming the natural resistance of that church structure to the gospel; not be cause it was beautiful, for I think a beautiful church is a help, but because it was constructed on the principle of isolation or wide separation, as though a man should sit one side of a river and try to win a mistress on the other side, bawling out his love at the top of his voice. However she might have been inclined, one such shout would be too much for tender sentiment. Churches are built now on the same principle as they formerly were, in the days of the founders of the old cathedrals. Then the services turned on the effect of music, and the production of awe by the shimmering lights, by the dimness and vagueness. They turned on the presentation of gorgeous apparel and all kinds of things for the eye to behold; but there was very little preaching, very little. Because they built their churches on a cruciform plan, we who have revolutionized old theories, who believe that a church is a household, and that a preacher has a personal influence upon men, and is not a mere machine build our churches just like them. You will see, in every cultivated community, churches built for modern preaching purposes on mediaeval principles. We will take the church in New York called the Broadway Tabernacle. In it there arc two lines of columns which hide a range of six pews, on each side straight from the pulpit clear through to the corner of the church, where the men and women cannot see the preacher on account of these architectural adjuncts which run up to the ceiling and make the church so beautiful. There the people can sit and look at the columns during the whole of the sermon time. In Dr. Storrs’s church in Brooklyn* there was formerly a space of from fifteen to twenty feet between the pulpit and the pews. It has been changed. But formerly you could see the minister only down to his chest. He stood in that box, stuck up against the wall, and then came a great space, like the desert of Sahara; and over on the other side of it began to be his audience. Before he can fill such a space the magnetic influence of the man is all lost. He has squandered one of the best natural forces of the pulpit. That is not the worst of it. When a man is made by God he is made all over, and every part is necessary to each and to the whole. A man’s whole form is a part of his public speaking. His feet speak, and so do his hands. You put a man in one of these barrelled pulpits, where there is no responsibility laid upon him as to his body, and he falls into all manner of gawky attitudes, and rests himself like a country horse at a hitching-post. He sags down, and has no consciousness of his awkwardness. But bring him out on a platform, and see how much more manly he becomes, how much more force comes out! The moment a man is brought face to face with other men, then does the influence of each act and react upon the other. I have seen workmen talking on the street, stooping, laughing, and slap ping their hands on their knees. Why, their very gestures were a good oration, although I did not hear a word that was said. A man who speaks right before his audience, and without notes, will speak, little by little, with the gestures of the whole body, and not with the gestures of one finger only. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: 1.C 08. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ======================================================================== Self-Consciousness. No man will speak long with any interest when he thinks about himself. You may have the very best of sermons, but if your boot pinches or you have a painful corn, you will think about the boot and about the corn, and not about the sermon. A man needs to be brought out of himself as much as possible. You must relieve him from all manner of external embarrassment. Put a man where he is liable, as I have been, standing on the head of a barrel at a political meeting, to go through, and what will he think of? Now, on a little narrow platform one catwalk backward and forward, to be sure, bat if he go toward the edges ever so little, he is in fear of stumbling off. Yet even that is better than a box-pulpit. What has that to do with preaching? What do you want with it? What is it for? This evil is not confined to pulpits merely, but to all places where a speaker has to address a large body of men. I think the matter so important, that I tell the truth, and lie not, when I say that I would not accept a settlement in a very advantageous place, if I was obliged to preach out of one of those old-fashioned swallow s-nests on the wall. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: 1.C 09. NEARNESS TO THE AUDIENCE ======================================================================== Nearness to the Audience. The next point you should look to is to have your pews as near as possible to the speaker. A preacher must be a man among men. There is a force call it magnetism, or electricity, or what you will in a man, which is a personal element, and which flows from a speaker who is enrapport with his audience. This principle should be utilized in the work of preaching. I do not say that Jonathan Edwards could not have preached under the pulpit disadvantage. He could have preached out of any thing. But there are not many men like Jonathan Edwards. The average man needs all the extraneous advantages he can press into his service. People often say, “Do you not think it is much more inspiring to speak to a largo audience than a small one? “ No, I say; I can speak just as well to twelve persons as to a thousand, provided those twelve are crowded around me and close together, so that they touch each other. But even a thou sand people, with four feet space between every two of them, would be just the same as an empty room. Every lecturer will understand what I mean, who has ever seen such audiences and addressed them. But crowd your audience together, and you will set them off with not half the effort. Brother Day, the son of old President Day, of Yale College, was one of my right-hand men in founding the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn; and -being a civil engineer, and the church having voted to build, he went into my study with me to plan the edifice. He asked me what I wanted, in the first place, and how many people I wanted the church to seat. I told him. “ Very good,” he said; “ and how do you want them located? “ “I want them to surround me, so that they will come up on every side, and behind me, so that I shall be in the centre of the crowd, and have the people surge all about me.” The result is, that there is not a better constructed hall in the world for the purposes of speaking and hearing than Plymouth Church. Charles Dickens, after giving one of his readings in it, sent me special word not to build any other hall for speaking; that Plymouth Church was perfect. It is perfect, because it was built on a principle, the principle of social and personal magnetism, which emanates reciprocally from a speaker and from a close throng of hearers. This is perhaps the most import ant element of all the external conditions conducive to good and effective preaching. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: 1.C 10. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. REV DR. BACON. Would you recommend the hanging of one or two architects by court-martial y MR. BEECHER. I do not know that a court martial would be the proper tribunal by which to try them, but I would at least make them recite the Westminster Catechism every morning as a punishment. Architects, however, do a great deal of good work. They certainly help, by the exterior of churches, to beautify our towns and villages. But there is a certain thing that I never found an architect to be wise about ventilation. I never knew anybody else who was. There is no difficulty in ventilating a house when there is nobody in it. The difficulty is to have a house full of people, and then to ventilate it. How can you get fresh air into a room, after letting out the bad air? Draughts will be caused, and people will take cold. That question architects have never been able to solve. In reference to prayer-meetings, this lecture has a bearing which I may as well mention here. One of the great difficulties with them ordinarily is that people are so separated as to lose the whole social element. You will notice that after a prayer-meeting which has been very dull, and very stiff, and very proper has been closed, and the brethren gather around the stove, they commence talking socially among themselves, and then it is that the real conference-meeting begins. One deacon says, “ Brother So-and-so, when you were speaking on such a topic you said so and so.” He goes on, and makes quite an effective little talk, but you could not have dragged it out of him with an ox-team during the meeting; and so one and another will speak up and join in, and they will get warmly interested in their discussion. Around the stove was the real meeting. The other was the mere simulacrum of a meeting. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: 1.D 00. THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE ======================================================================== Chapter 4: THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. MY impression is that preachers are quite as well acquainted with human nature as the average of well-informed citizens, but far less than lawyers, or merchants, or teachers, or, especially, politicians. The preachers of America have been, I think, as intelligent and successful as any that ever lived. As a body of men they have been upright, discreet, and wise in the general management of the affairs of Christian churches. As a body they have, in their personal and administrative or pastoral relations, been, on the whole, sagacious in matters pertaining to human nature. Nevertheless, preachers, both English and American, have not preached to man’s nature as it is. It is true that in the applications of sermons, particularly such as are known in America as revival sermons, much knowledge of human nature is shown, and efficient use is made of it. But, in a larger generalization, it may be said that there have been but two schools of preachers. One may be called the ecclesiastical school, in which term I include the whole body of men who regard the Church on earth as something to be administered, and themselves as channels, in some sense, of divine grace to direct the flow of that divine institution. Ecclesiastical preachers are those who administer largely and preach incidentally, if one might say so. There is also the dogmatic school of preachers, or those who have relied upon a pre-existing system of truth which has been founded before their day and handed down from generation to generation, and who apparently proceed upon the supposition that their whole duty is discharged when they have made a regular and repetitious statement of all the great points of doctrine from time to time. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: 1.D 01. NECESSITIES OF THE FUTURE ======================================================================== Necessities of the Future. Now, the school of the future (if I am a prophet, and I am, of course, satisfied in my own mind that I am!) is what may be called a life school This style of preaching is to proceed, not so much upon the theory of the sanctity of the Church and its ordinances, or upon a pre-existing system of truth which is in the Church somewhere or somehow, as upon the necessity for all teachers, first, to study the strengths and the weaknesses of human nature minutely, and then to make use of such portions of the truth as arc required by the special needs of man, and for the development of the spiritual side of human nature over the animal or lower side the preparation of man in his higher nature for a nobler existence hereafter. It is a life school in this respect, that it deals not with the facts of the past, except in so far as they can be made food for the present, and factors of the life that now is; but rather studies to understand men, and to deal with them face to face and heart to heart; yea, even to mould them as an artist moulds his clay or carves his statue. And in regard to such a school as that, while there has been much done incidentally, the revised procedure of education yet awaits development and accomplish ment; and I think that our profession is in danger, and in great danger, of going.under, and of working effectively only among the relatively less informed and intelligent of the community; of being borne with, in a kind of contemptuous charity, or altogether neglected, by the men of culture who have been strongly developed on their moral side not their moral side as connected with revealed religion, but as connected rather with human knowledge and worldly wisdom. The question, then, comes up, Do men need this intimately practical instruction? and if so, must there be to meet it this life school of preachers? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: 1.D 02. RELATION BIBLE TRUTH CHRISTIANITY WORLD ======================================================================== Relation of Bible Truth to Christianity in the World. But I am asked, “ Have we not, in the truth as it has been revealed in Jesus Christ, everything that is needed? If a man take the Gospels, and the life and sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and preach these, is he not thoroughly furnished to every good work, and does he need to go outside of the Bible? “Yes, he does, for no man can take the inside of the Bible if he does not know how to take the outside, The kingdom of God and of truth, as it is laid down in the New Testament, is a kingdom of seeds. They have been sown abroad, and have been growing and developing in the world; and, whereas, when they were initiated they were but seminal forms, now they have spread like the banyan-tree. And shall I go back and talk about acorns after I have learned about oaks? Shall I undertake to say that the Infinite Truth that is in Jesus Christ is, all of it, comprised in the brief and fragmentary histories that are contained in the four Evangelists; that human life has been nothing; that there is no providence or inspiration in the working of God’s truth among mankind; no purposed connection between the history of the world for eighteen hundred years, vitalized by the presence of the Holy Ghost and those truths in the New Testament? All that Christianity has produced is a part of Christianity. All that has been evolved in human existence you may find as germ-forms in the Bible; but you must not shut yourselves up to those germ-forms, with stupid reverence merely for the literal text of the gospel. It is the gospel alive, the gospel as it has been made victorious in its actual conflict with man’s lower nature, that you are to preach. What Christ is you are to learn, indeed, with all reverence, from the historic delineation of his sacred person and life; but also you are to read him in the suffering human heart, in the soul triumphant over suffering, in the self-sacrifice of the mother for her child, in the heroic father, in every man and woman who has learned from Christ some new development of glorious self giving for noble purposes. These are the commentaries expounded to you, through which you shall be able to know Christ vitally. All human nature that has been impregnated with a knowledge of Christ is the Bible commentary which you have to read in order to know who Christ is, and to learn that he is not shut up in the Gospels alone. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: 1.D 03. EXAMPLE OF THE APOSTLES ======================================================================== Example of the Apostles. It is said that ministers ought not to know any thing but “ Jesus Christ and him crucified,” 1m’t that, is said in a different manner from that of the apostle. He did not say, “ I preach nothing but the historical Christ and him crucified.” He said that he put the whole dependence of his ministry upon the force that was generated from Christ and him crucified; and not upon his own personal power, presence, or eloquence. He relied upon the living presence of Almighty God, as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. He depended upon moral power; and it is a perversion to say that men are to preach nothing but the literal, textual Christ, or the literal, textual four Gospels, or the literal, textual Epistles; for all of life is open to you. You have a right to preach from everything, from the stars in the zenith to the lowest form of creation upon earth. All things belong to you, for you are Christ s. The earth is the Lord s, and the fulness of it. The Lord is our Father, and therefore we are heirs. It is also said, “ Are we wiser than the apostles were? “ I hope so. I should be ashamed if we were not. “Are we better preachers than they were? “ Yes; we ought to be better preachers in our time than they would be. They were adapted to their times, admirably; but I think it is as much a misapplication of things to bring down literally the arguments of the apostles from Jerusalem to our times, as it would have been, were it possible, to carry back all the scientific knowledge, and all the developed political economy which we now have, and preach them in old Jerusalem, within the Temple. We should be barbarians to them, and they would be comparative barbarians to us. Adaptation to the times in which we, live, is the law of Providence. The apostles were adapted to their times. We must be similarly adapted not in a passive, servile way, but in a living, active way, and by taking an interest in the things which men do now. What did the apostles preach? Did they not preach like Jews to Jews, and Greeks to Greeks? They had liberty, and they took the things they found to be needful in their time, to the people to whom they ministered. The following of the apostolic example is not to pursue, blindly, their external forms, but to follow the light of their humanity and that of the gospel. This was the example they set: Whatever tended to elevate men from the lower to the higher sphere, the apostles thought lawful for them to employ in their ministry. You may ask if they did not understand human nature without all the study that I am recommending. I think that they did understand a great deal of human nature. It does not follow, however, that you should not attempt to understand as much, and more, than they did; for such an argument as that would really be not only against a more scientific basis of knowledge of human nature for the modern preacher, but against all development of every kind, against all growth, against all culture and all refinement. You must not pattern yourselves on the antique models, altogether, except in principle. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: 1.D 04. WEAKNESS OF GOSPEL-PREACHING IN THE PAST ======================================================================== Weakness of Gospel-Preaching in the Past. It is said by some, “Has not Christianity been preached by plain men, who did not understand so very much about human nature, in every age of the world?” It has; and what have eighteen hundred years to show for it? To-day three-fourths of the globe is heathen, or but semi-civilized. After eighteen hundred years of preaching of the faith under the inspiration of the living Spirit of God, how far has Christianity gone in the amelioration of the condition of the race? I think that one of the most humiliating things that can be contemplated, one of the things most savoury to the scorner, and which seems the most likely to infuse a sceptical spirit into men, is to look at the pretensions of the men who boast of the progress of their work, and then to look at their performances. I concede that there lias been a great deal done, and there has been a great deal of preparation for more; but the torpors, the vast retrocessions, the long lethargic periods, and the wide degeneration of Christianity into a kind of ritualistic mummery and conventional usage, show very plainly that the past history of preaching Christianity is not to be our model. We must find a better mode. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: 1.D 05. SPECIAL REASONS STUDYING HUMAN NATURE ======================================================================== Special Reasons for Studying Human Nature. We need to study human nature, in the first place, because it illustrates the divine nature, which we are to interpret to men. Divine attribute corresponds to our idea of human faculty. The terms are analogous. You cannot interpret the divine nature except through some knowledge of human nature. There are those who believe that God transcends men, not simply in quality and magnitude, but in kind. Without undertaking to confirm or deny this, I say that the only part of the divine nature that we can understand is that part which corresponds to ourselves, and that all which lies outside of what we can recognize is something that never can be interpreted by us. It is not within our reach. Whatever it may be, therefore, of God, that by searching we can find out, all that we interpret, and all that we can bring, in its moral influence, to bear upon men, is in its study but a higher form of human mental philosophy. Now, let us see what government is. It is the science of managing men. What is moral government? It is moral science, or the theory upon which God manages men. What is the management of men, again, but a thing founded upon human nature? So that to understand moral government you are run right back to the same necessity. You must comprehend that on which God’s moral government itself stands, which is human nature. But, again, the fundamental doctrine on which our labours stand is the need of the transformation of man’s nature by the Divine Spirit. This is altogether a question of psychology. The old theological way of stating man’s sinfulness, namely, “Total Depravity,” was so gross and so undiscriminating, and was so full of endless misapprehensions, that it has largely dropped out of use. Men no longer arc accustomed, I think, to use that term as once they did. That all men are sinful, is taught; but “what is meant by sinful?” is the question which immediately comes back. Instantly the schools begin to discuss it. Is it a state of the fibre of the substance or the soul? Is it any aberration, any excess, any disproportion of natural elements? Wherein does the fault lie? What is it? The moment you discuss this, you arc discussing human nature. It is the mind you are discussing. In order to know what is an aberration, you must know what is nor mal. In order to know what is in excess, you must know what is the true measure. Who can tell whether a man is selfish, unless he knows what is benevolent? Who can tell whether a man has departed from the correct idea, unless he has some conception of that idea? The very foundation on which you stand to-day necessitates knowledge of man as its chief basis. Consider, too, how a minister, teaching the moral government of God, the nature of God, and the condition of man and his necessities, is obliged to approach the human soul. Men are sluggish, or are so occupied and filled with what are to them important interests, that, ordinarily, when a preacher comes into a community, he finds it either slumbering, or averse to his message, or indifferent to it; and, in either case, his business is to stimulate the moral nature. But how shall he know the art of stimulating man’s moral nature who has never studied it? You must arouse men and prepare them to be moulded. How can you do it if you know nothing about them? A man who would minister to a diseased body must have an accurate knowledge of the organs, and of the whole structure of the body, in a sanitary condition. We oblige our physicians to know anatomy and physiology. We oblige them to study morbid anatomy, as well as normal conditions. We say that no man is prepared to practise without this knowledge, and the law interferes, or does as far as it can, to compel it. Now, shall a man know how to administer to that which is a thousand times more subtle and important than the body, and which is the exquisite blossom of- the highest development and perfection of the human system, namely, the mind in its modern development shall he assume to deal with that, and raise and stimulate it, being ignorant of its nature? A man may know the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, he may know every theological treatise from the day of Augustine to the day of Dr. Taylor, and if he does not under stand human nature, he is not fit to preach. Suppose a man should undertake to cut off your leg because he had been a tool-maker. He had made lancets, probes, saws, and that sort of thing, all his life; but he had never seen a man’s leg amputated, and did not know exactly where the arteries or veins lie. Suppose he should think that making surgeons tools fitted him to be a surgeon; would it (The surgeon must know his tools and how to handle them, but he must know, too, the system on which he is going to use them. And shall a man, charged with the care of the soul, sharpen up his understanding with moral distinctions and learned arguments, and know all about the theories of theology from Adam down to our day, and yet know nothing of the organism upon which all these instrumentalities are to be used? Shall he know nothing about man himself? The student who goes out to his work with a wide knowledge of theology and no knowledge of human nature, is not half fitted for his duty. One reason why so many succeed is, that although they have no formal instruction in human nature, they have learned much in the family, and in the school, and by other in direct methods, and so have a certain stock I might say an illegitimate stock of knowledge, but one which was not provided in the system of their studies. If I might be allowed to criticize the general theological course, or to recommend anything in relation to it, I should say that one of the prime constituents of the training should be a study of the human soul and body from beginning to end. We must arouse and stimulate men, and seek to bring them into new relations with truth, with ourselves, and with the community. Every man has a right to go to you, if you are a minister who has aroused him to a sense of his relations with God, and say to you: “ Now, my circumstances and temptations are thus and so: give me some sort of a chart for my future guidance.” But how can you, if you know nothing about human nature? You leave him to fumble his way along the best he can. There is no special chart for him at your hands. Every man has to run his ship in a channel peculiar to himself. There never were two men in the world that could follow each other like two ships being piloted into New York harbour. No two men are alike; therefore, each man has to adapt to himself that which is brought to him for his own special use and improvement. What many men need is that their minister shall be able to form such an analysis of their nature that he can suggest where such a development should be repressed, and where another should be stimulated, and tell the man how to use himself, socially as well as morally. Shall a man be born like a little child into the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and then be left to shift for himself as men mostly are, after being admitted into the church and talked to for a few weeks after the revival has spent its force? Shall they be left to return to their own uninstructed devices, and find their way, during the rest of their lives, as best they can? Thanks to the real intelligence of the community and to the heads of families, there is a great deal of progress made in this direction; but how far it arises from a true ideal of preaching and the administration of the truth in the hands of wise preachers, I cannot say, How few ministers are there who can really comfort men, and how much need of comforting there is in this world! How the office of comforter has fallen into disuse! How much nobler woman is than man in the administration of this gospel-gift from Jesus Christ! Woman is ordained to perform many things much better than man, on account of her superior delicacy of organization and keenness of perception. Woman is a better instructor, from her very make and education, and as the moulder and trainer of children in the household is by far man’s superior. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: 1.D 06. THE WORLD'S ADVANCEMENT THOUGHT ======================================================================== The World’s Advancement in Thought. There is another consideration that we cannot blink, and that is, that we are in danger of having the intelligent part of society go past us. The study of human nature is not going to be left in the hands of the Church or the ministry. It is going to be a part of every system of liberal education, and will be pursued on a scientific basis. There is being now applied among scientists a greater amount of real, searching, discriminating thought, tentative and experimental, to the whole structure and functions of man and the method of the development of mental force, than ever has been expended upon it in the whole history of the world put together. More men are studying it, and they are coming to results, and these results are starting, directly or indirectly, a certain kind of public thought and feeling. In religion, the psychological school of mental philosophers are not going to run in the old grooves of Christian doctrine; they are not going to hold the same generic ideas respecting men. And if ministers do not make their theological systems conform to facts as they are, if they do not recognize what men arc studying, the time will not be far distant when the pulpit will be like the voice crying in the wil derness. And it will not be “ Prepare the way of the Lord/ either. This work is going to be done. The providence of God is rolling forward a spirit of investigation that Christian ministers must meet and join. There is no class of people upon earth who can less afford to let the development of truth run ahead of them than they. You cannot wrap your selves in professional mystery, for the glory of the Lord is such that it is preached with power through out all the length and breadth of the world, by these investigators of his wondrous creation. You cannot go back and become apostles of the dead past, drivel ling after ceremonies, and letting the world do the thinking and studying. There must be a new spirit infused into the ministry. Some men are so afraid that, in breaking away from the old systems and original forms and usages, Christianity will get the go-by! Christianity is too vital, too really divine in its innermost self, to fear any such results. There is no trouble about Christianity. You take care of yourselves and of men, and learn the truth as God shows it to you all the time, and you need not be afraid of Christianity; that will take care of itself. You might as well be afraid that battles would rend t> the sky, or that something would stop the rising and setting of the sun. The power of divine love and mercy is not going to be stopped, and will certainly not be stopped by the things that are true. You cannot afford to shut your eyes to the truths of human nature. Every Christian minister is bound to fairly look at these things. Every scientific man who is studying human nature is bound to open his eyes and ears, and to study all its phenomena. I read that Huxley refused to attend a stance of Spiritualists. He said, contemptuously, that it was a waste of time, and gave expression to other sentiments of disdain. I am not an adherent of the spiritual doctrines; I have never seen my way clear to accept them. But phenomena which are wrap ping up millions of men and vitally affecting their condition are not to be disdained by scientific men, whose business it is to study phenomenology of all kinds. No scientific man can rightly refuse to examine them. He may say that he has no time to do it, and that some other man must investigate them. That would be right. All men cannot do all things. But to speak of anything of this kind with contempt is not wise. I am not afraid to look at this thing, or anything. I am not afraid that we are going to have the New Testament taken away from us. We must be more industrious in investigation, more honest in deduction, and more willing to take the truth in its new fulness; and we must be imbued with that simplicity in faith and truth which we inculcate in our people. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: 1.D 07. HOW TO STUDY HUMAN NATURE ======================================================================== How to Study Human Nature. With this general statement of the necessity of the study of the human nature and mind in its structure and functions, I will pass on to the next point, which is the way in which this study is to be prosecuted. How are we going about it? In the first place, you must study facts, scientifically. I think that such works as Bain s, while criticizable in many directions, are nevertheless works of very great interest, as showing a wise tendency in the investigation of the mind of man, the founding of mental philosophy upon physiology. I do not commend the system in all its particulars, but I speak of its tendency, which is in the right direction. I would say the same, also, of Herbert Spencer’s works. There is much in him that I believe will be found sovereign and noble in the final account of truth, when our knowledge of it is rounded up. There was never a field of wheat that ripened which did not have a good deal of straw and husk with it. I doubt not but Herbert Spencer will have much straw and husk that will need to be burned. Nevertheless, the direction he is moving in is a wise one, which is the study of human nature, of the totality of man. It was believed once that man did not think by the brain, I believe that notion has gone by. Most men now admit that the brain is the organ of the mind. It is held that it cannot be partitioned off into provinces, and that there are no external indications of its various functions. I shall not dispute that question with you. It is now generally conceded that there is an organization which we call the nervous system in the human body, to which belong the functions of emotion, intelligence, and sensation, and that that is connected intimately with the whole circulation of the blood, with the condition of the blood as affected by the liver and by aeration in the lungs; that the manufacture, of the blood is dependent upon the stomach. So a man is what he is, not in one part or another, but all over. One part is intimately connected with the other, from the animal stomach to the throbbing brain; and when a man thinks, lie thinks the whole trunk through. Man’s power comes from the generating forces that are in him, -namely, the digestion of nutritious food into vitalized blood, made fine by oxygenation; an organization by which that blood has free course to run and be glorified; a neck that will allow the blood to now up and down easily; a brain properly organized and balanced; the whole system so compounded as to have susceptibilities and recuperative force; immense energy to generate resources, and facility to give them out; all these elements go to determine what a man’s working power is. And shall a man undertake to study human nature, everything depending upon his know ledge of it, and not study the prime conditions under which human nature must exist? I have often seen young ministers sit at the table, and even those of sixty years of age, eating out of all proportion, beyond the necessities of their systems; and I have seen, on the other hand, ministers who ate below the necessities of their systems, under a vague impression that sanctifying grace wrought better on an empty stomach than on a full one. It seems to me that all divine grace and divine in struments honour God’s laws everywhere; and that the best condition, for grace in the mental system is that in which the human body is in a perfect state of health. That is a question which every man can best settle for himself. Some men under-sleep, and some over-sleep; some eat too much, and some too little. Some men use stimulants who do not need them, while others avoid them who need them, and would be better for their use. There is a vast amount of truth relative to the individual that is not studied by the minister, though it ought to be, as to the incoming and the outflow of force. Some clergymen prepare themselves to preach on Sunday by sitting up very late on Saturday night, and exhausting their vitality, thus compelling them selves to force their overtasked powers to extra ordinary exertion to perform their Sabbath duties; which entails upon them the horrors of Blue Mon day, the result of a spasmodic and drastic excitement. It is, and it ought to be, a purgatory to them. You must study yourselves as men. Is there no self-knowledge that can be acquired, so that a man shall know how to be merciful to his beast? You see that whatever relates to the whole organization of the human body and its relations to health and to perfect symmetry must be studied; for all these relations are intimate, and concern both your own working powers and the material among men that you will have to work on. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: 1.D 08. METAPHYSICAL STUDIES ======================================================================== Metaphysical Studies. In studying mental philosophy after this fashion I would not have you ignore metaphysics. The perceptions of those subtle relations, near and remote, specific and generic, that obtain among spiritual facts of different kinds, I understand to be metaphysics; and that, I suppose, must be studied. I think it sharpens men, and renders them familiar with the operations of the human mind, if not carried too far, and gives them a grasp and penetration that they would not get otherwise. It is favourable to moral insight, when developed in connection with the other sides of human nature. While I say that you ought to study mental philosophy with a strong physiological side to it, I do not wish it to be understood that I decry mental philosophy with a strong metaphysical side to it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: 1.D 09. PHRENOLOGY AS A CONVENIENT BASIS ======================================================================== Phrenology as a Convenient Basis. There is one question beyond that. The importance of studying both sides of mental philosophy for the sake of religious education, is one point; but when the question comes up how to study mental philosophy, I do not know anything that can compare in facility of usableness with phrenology. I do not suppose that phrenology is a perfect system of mental philosophy. It hits here and there. It needs revising, as, in its present shape, it is crude; but, nevertheless, when it becomes necessary to talk to people about themselves, I know of no other nomenclature which so nearly expresses what we need, and which is so facile in its use, as phrenology. Nothing can give you the formulated analysis of mind as that can. Now let me say, particularly, a few things about this, and personally, too. I suppose I inherited from my father a tendency or intuition to read man. The very aptitude that I recognize in myself for the exercise of this power would indicate a pre-existing tendency. In my junior college year I became, during the visit of Spurzheim, enamoured of phrenology. For twenty years, although I have not made it a special study, it has been the foundation on which I have worked. Admit, if you please, it is not exactly the true thing; and admit, if you will, that there is little form or system in it; yet I have worked with it much as botanists worked with the Linna^an system of botany, the classification of which is very convenient, although an artificial one. There is no natural system that seems to correspond to human nature so nearly as phrenology does. For example, you assume that a man’s brain is the general organ of the spiritual and intellectual functions. I see a man with a small brow and big in the lower part of his head, like a bull, and I know that that man is not likely to be a saint. All the reasoning in the world would not convince me of the contrary; but I would say of such a man, that he had very intense ideas, and would bellow and push like a bull of Bashan. Now, practically, do you suppose I would commence to treat with such a man by flaunt ing a rag in his lace? My first instinct in regard to him is what a man would have if lie found himself in a field with a wild bull, which would be to put himself on good manners, and use means of conciliation, if possible. On. the other hand, if I see a man whose forehead is very high and largo, but who is thin in the back of the head, and with a small neck and trunk, I say to myself, That is a man, probably, whose friends arc always talking about how much there is in him, but who never does anything. He is a man who has great organs, but nothing to drive them with. He is like a splendid locomotive without a boiler. Again, you will see a man with a little bullethead, having accomplished more than that big-headed man, who ought to have been a strong giant and a great genius. The bullet-headed man has outstripped the broad-browed man in everything he undertook; and people say, Where is your phrenology?” In reply, I say, “Look at that bullet-headed man, and see what he has to drive his bullet-head with!” His stomach gives evidence that he has natural forces to carry forward his purposes. Then look at the bigheaded man. He can’t make a spoonful of blood in twenty-four hours, and what he does make is poor and thin. Phrenology classifies the brain regions well enough, but you must understand its relations to physiology, and the dependence of brain-work upon the quantity and quality of blood that the man’s body makes. You may ask, “ What is the use of knowing these things?” All the use in the world. If a person comes to me, with dark, coarse hair, I know he is tough and enduring, and I know that, if it is necessary, I can hit him a rap to arouse him; but if I see a person who has fine silky hair, and a light complexion, I know that lie is of an excitable temperament, and must be dealt with soothingly. Again, if I see one with a large blue watery eye, and its accompanying complexion, I say to myself that all Mount Sinai could not wake that man up. I have seen men of that stamp, whom you could no more stimulate to action, than you could a lump of dough by blowing a resurrection trump over it. Men are like open books, if looked at properly. Suppose I attempt to analyze a man’s deeds; I can do it with comparative facility, because I have in. my eye the general outline of the man’s disposition and mental tendencies. A deed is like a letter stamped from a die. The motive that directs the deed is like the matrix that moulds the stamp. You may know the mould from the impression made by the stamp. You must know what men are, in order to reach them; and that is a part of the science of preaching. If there is any profession in the world that can afford to be without this practical know ledge of human nature, it certainly is not the profession of a preacher. While I urge the study of man from the scientific side, let me say also that this study is not enough, and that what we need is not simply this elementary analytical knowledge. We must study human nature for constructive purposes also. That is the difference between a true preacher and an incompetent one. The lawyer must study human nature, in order to get at the facts of his case; the merchant, for the sake of his own profits; the politician, for the sake of carrying out certain political ends: but these do not imply that men are to he made better or worse. A minister studies human nature for the purpose of reyenemtiny men. We study men as florists do flowers, when they wish to change them from simple blossoms into rare beauties. The object of the florist is to make them larger, to enhance their colour or fragrance, or Whatever other change is desired. It is to make more out of human nature than we originally find in it, that we are studying it and training it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: 1.D 10. SOCIAL HABITS ======================================================================== Social Habits. You must be familiar with men; and you are fortunate if you have been brought up in a public school. There is a good deal of human nature learned by boys among boys, and by young men among young men. That is one of the arguments in favour of large gatherings of young men. A man who has struggled out from between the stones of the farm, and has fought his way through the academy, with the pity of everybody a pity which might well be spared, because it was God’s training has a fine education for practical life, because he knows men. The study of man is the highest of sciences. Besides this general knowledge we are to have, we should take kindly to individual men, for the very purpose of studying them. Now, I take great delight, if ever I can get a chance, in riding on the top of an omnibus with the driver, and talking with him. What do I gain by that? Why, my sympathy goes out for these men, and I recognize in them an element of brotherhood that great human element which lies underneath all culture, which is more universal and more important than all special attributes, which is the great generic bond of humanity between man and man. If ever I saw one of those men in my church, I could preach to him, and hit him under the fifth rib with an illustration, much better than if I had not been acquainted with him. I have driven the truth under many a plain jacket. But, what is more, I never found a plain man in this world who could not tell me many things that I did not know before. There is not a gate-keeper at the Fulton Ferry, or an engineer or deck-hand on the boats, that I am not acquainted with, and they help me in more ways than they know of. If you are going to be a minister, keep very close to plain folks; don’t get above the common people. There is no danger that you will lose your sympathy with culture and refinement, as some people seem to fear. There is no danger that you will lose your purity and sensitiveness. There will be nothing incompatible in this course with the performance of your professional duties as a preacher. Good-heartedness and good, plain, hearty sympathy with men, will help everything in you which ought to be helped, and diminish those things which ought to be diminished. Study human nature by putting yourself in alliance with men. Sec how a mother, that best of philosophers in practical matters, under stands every one of her children, and the special differences between them all; and docs she not carry herself with true intuition as to their daily needs, mid with the interpreting philosophy of sensitive love? She is the best trainer of men, and has the best mental philosophy, so far as practical things arc concerned. There is but one other point. While you study men scientifically, in regard to the fundamental elements of human nature, and again by sympathies and kindly relations to individuals to learn them well, you must be much among them, generally. You must act with men. Learn to be needful to them and to use them. A minister who stays in his study all the week long, and makes his appearance only in his pulpit to preach, may do some good, of a certain sort; but the preacher must be a man among men. Keep out among the people. I do not mean to say that you ought to make a great many pastoral visits, but that society men, women, and children, of all sorts ought to he your continual and familiar acquaintances. Books alone are not enough. Studying is not enough. There is a training for you in the actual daily contact with men, of mind with mind, which will keep you down, and you will not have so much professional pride. You will find many men abler than you, and a good many men who are better qualified to teach grace to you than you are to teach them. You will often find how very superficial has been your teaching to men. No man will find a better study than where the drooping heart is laid bare to him, or where the eve rnashing intelligence is acting in his presence. There you can see what your work has been, and what it is to be in the future. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: 1.D 11. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. Can a minister be eminent both as a pastor and as a preacher? MR. BEECHER, Yes. It will depend, however, upon how large his pastorate is, and how much he undertakes to do. A man may not be able to take a large care of individual souls, and yet study in such a way as to be able to meet the exigencies of a city pulpit, or any labour of that kind which requires exceeding freshness and newness; he must make an average. He must keep up his pulpit, but at the same time he must keep up his knowledge of human nature, and if he can have no substitute or assistant he must do pastoral work. I do very little of it myself, but have many assistants, and the work is done. Q. Has not science demonstrated that phrenology is imperfect? MR. BEECHER I do not know that science lias demonstrated it. Those who are best acquainted with it are conscious that with some crudenesses it contains a great many elements of truth, and that it is one of the tendencies in the right direction; and when the knowledge of the human mind shall be finally made clear, I think it will be found that much has been owing to phrenology. Q. Would you recommend the study of Hebrew as a part of a theological course? 118 THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. MR. BEECHER. There are a great many who are naturally called to scholarship, and who should educate themselves with a view to contribute to the learning of the day. A man who has that turn of mind is wise to study Hebrew. Some study of it is beneficial in other respects. I do not think that the amount of study required in our theological seminaries will hurt anybody. You need not scoff at any part of the study as if it were a surplusage. There is nothing that is taught here that you will not thank God for in the course of your life. You can save yourselves a vast amount of trouble here after by faithful study now. Q. How much time ought a minister to spend in examining his text in the original? Mil. BEECHER. Well, just as much as is necessary to get the real spirit of the text, and that will depend upon yourself. If I should conclude to study my text from the Old Testament, in Hebrew, I think it would take me most of the week to ascertain what it was! I get along better with the New Testament. QUESTION BY DR. BACON. How far should a preacher imitate the example of Christ, and give utterance to truths which are disagree able to the hearer? MR. BEECHER. No rule whatever can be given in regard to that. Whatever provocation arises from the preacher’s manner or untowardness, of course, is blameworthy in him. If he will speak truths meet for persons to hear, let him learn “ speaking the truth in love.” Instruct in meekness those who oppose you, for peradventure God shall give them repentance. And if you are speaking the truth, it is essential that those who hear you believe you are sincere before you can work with them. But manner is much. In the early abolition days two men went out preaching, one an old Quaker, and another a young man full of fire. When the Quaker lectured, everything ran along very smoothly, and he carried the audience with him. When the young man lectured, there was a row, and stones, and eggs. It became so noticeable that the young man spoke to the Quaker about it. He said, “ Friend, you and I arc on the same mission, and preach the same things; and how is it that while you are received cordially I get nothing but abuse?” The Quaker replied: “I will tell thee. Thee says, If you do so and so, you shall be punished, and I say, My friends, if you will not do so and so, you shall not be punished. “They both said the same things, but there was a great deal of difference in the way they said it. Q. Is it not true that Spurgeon is a follower of Calvin? and is ho not an eminent example of success V MR. BEECHER. In spite of it, yes; but I do not know that the camel travels any better, or is any more useful as an animal, for the hump on its back. Q. May not a man be too self-conscious in his preaching? MR. BEECHER. Yes, but every preacher must watch his own tendencies, and labour to counteract the excess of them. In astronomy, they have always to make an equation of corrections. Every man has his own equation. The different nervous activities of men make a difference in the observations of different astronomers. Every great astronomer has his own personal equation, which is generally known. That must be calculated for, in using his observations. So, every minister ought to have his personal equation, and he ought to use it himself all the time. One man says, “I am inclined by nature to take the cautious and the fearful view. “ Now. he must take pains to look on the hopeful side of everything? Another man says, “ I am inclined to benevolent views,” and he must strive to bring out the conscience element. You see the application. Q. What proportion of (ho study of human nature ought to ho found in books, novels. MK. BEECHER. You can give no proportion, as you can in a physician’s prescription, for the simple reason that men learn with different facilities. Some men will learn more in six months from free intercourse with people than other men will learn in six years. There is nothing in this world that will take away from a man the responsibility of finding out things for himself. The principle being given, you must find out what you yourself need in the different methods of working and the proportions of them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: 1.E 00. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING ELEMENTS ======================================================================== Chapter 5: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING ELEMENTS. February 11, 1872. is somewhat difficult to reduce to any thing like precision many of the directions which I shall attempt to give you, young gentlemen, because your course will be determined so much by circumstances, that what might be true at one time would not be true at another. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: 1.E 01. CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES ======================================================================== Circumstances alter cases. For instance, in regard to preaching, the field into which you go will have very much to do with it, both as to its manner and the preparation you will make for it. A man set in an uncultivated field in the far West, among the rude pioneers, would, both inwardly and outwardly, use a different method from that which he would employ in an old and cultivated community where the Church had been organized for a long time, and wher the men and women had been well instructed drilled, indeed in casuistical and doctrinal theology, its principles and truths. You would not think of preaching elaborate sermons in doctrinal sequence, going among people who had been utterly unused to any such course as this. In a new community good sense would teach you at once, and if it did not, necessity would very quickly teach you that you could not preach as you would in the old pulpit. My early ministry was spent in the West, and I had the opportunity of seeing, time and again, ministers from parishes in the East coming out into the scattered populations of the West, made up from every quarter of the world; and it was an edifying spectacle to the amazement, the gradual awakening, the chagrin, the confusion, the embarrassment, the glimpse of hope, the putting out of the new method, the readaptation, and, finally, the successful issue of these new ministers into their new work; for they had to be acclimated, not in body alone, but in preaching as well. So I say that what would help you on the supposition that you were to settle in the East might be of very little importance to you if you were going to settle West, in Montana, for instance, or in Texas, at the South. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: 1.E 02. WRITING AND EXTEMPORIZING ======================================================================== Writing and Extemporizing. Then, again, different personal temperaments and habits may have very much to do with your mode of preaching; and the ever-open question comes up, “ Shall I write my sermons, or shall I extemporize?” That depends, to a very considerable extent, upon a man’s temperament. If he be extremely sensitive and fastidious by nature, and withal somewhat secretive and cautious, it would frequently be almost impossible for him to extemporize with fluency. Sometimes men are so oppressed under the influence of an audience that they cannot possibly think in its presence. Drill and long habit may alter this; but still, if it is rooted in a man’s nature, he may never conquer it. And after all, the real thing for him to do is to preach; and whether he write his sermon or speak it without writing, let him see that he trains himself to do his work. This question is the same as asking, “Is it best for a man who is going hunting to take out cartridge-shells already loaded for his gun, or shall he take loose ammunition and load with powder and shot, according to circumstances, every time he is going to shoot? “ Now, that is a fair question, and there is a great deal to be said on the subject. But, after all, the man who goes where the game is, always finding it and bringing it home with him, is the best hunter; and I care not whether he carry fixed or loose ammunition. That is the best cat that catches the most rats. And in your case that will be the best form of sermon that does the work of a sermon the best. If you can do best by writing, write your sermons; and if you can do better by not writing, do not write them. This merely by way of illustrating the difficulty there is in giving specific directions in matters of preaching. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: 1.E 03. VARIATIONS OF DENOMINATIONAL SERVICE ======================================================================== Variations of Denominational Service. There is another modifying circumstance that comes in, and that is the Church economy through which you undertake to administer. You go out into a community, and find it already organized. Some of you will very possibly officiate in the Episcopal Church, while others of you will find yourselves in the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or Congregational Churches, and some even, perhaps, in the Roman Catholic Church. Now you may ask, What difference docs the Church make? Is not man the same, no matter what Church he is in? But really there are two great Churches: those who believe that God works O by the power of the truth, and according to the great natural laws; and those who believe, in addition to this, that he works through a Church organization of a definite character, which has in it certain specified and ordained channels. And, in point of fact, in proportion as Churches or parishes are organized according to -this last belief will the O 3 amount of preaching be less. There is less of it for the obvious reason, that the Church economy requires so much time and labour in other directions. You have to keep going the great organism in which grace inheres, and you worship by means of certain forms, ordinances, sacraments, and persons, all of whom are, in a sense, sacred; and you are obliged to give a great deal of your attention and care to the administration of that economy. You will find in the Episcopal Church and I do not say whether it is best or not that the average duration of the sermon is twenty or twenty-five v minutes, the service occupying an hour and a half or two hours, not one-eighth of which is occupied in preaching. They depend upon the reading of the Scriptures, upon their musical services, and upon their forms of prayer, the sermon being but a minor thing among many considered more import ant. On the other hand, Churches like the Presbyterian, the Baptist, and the Congregational have 110 liturgy, and no elaborate Church service; they are obliged to emphasize that which they have, and the sermon becomes the chief thing in such denominations. That is the power they hold in their hand, and if they cannot wield that, they can wield nothing; for besides that there is very little, I am sorry to say, that is effectual in the work of their ministry and that is the weak spot in our scheme. Although there is a great deal of preaching in the Methodist Church (as developed under Wesleyan teachings), yet you will take notice that that is not all. While they preach a. great deal, and put an emphasis upon it, yet, after all, they expect the main work to be done otherwise. When the preaching is over, they have a rousing good time in the social meeting, singing and praying, and then it is expected that men will be caught and brought into the church. You will find that generally, in. New England, they have run to preaching. Why? Because they had nothing else to run to. The pulpit was made everything of, and the whole economy of the Church was barren outside of that. There was very little of singing, and what there was did not always minister to grace. The praying was sometimes most helpful, and sometimes not so much so; but after the reading of the Scriptures (and that, in my childhood, was not very much indulged in parish churches), the main thing was preaching. Now, if one goes into a community where the sermon is everything, and other things are almost nothing, of course his preaching will be very different from what it would IDC were he to go into an Episcopal or a Methodist Church, where there is a large economy besides preaching, on which the minister depends for success in his labours. A”*ain “O you may have to build up a community. Or you may have to arouse them to loosen up the earth, and, as it were, take soil there, where the ground has been ploughed and worn out and abandoned, like old Virginia’s soil. Or you may have to take new prairie soil and break it up yourself. All these things will determine your style of preaching. So, then, when you go away from here into your field of labour, you will find that it is only a very little of what you have heard in the seminary that you can immediately apply. You must do things according to some principle of common-sense, aside from what you may have learned here. All these lessons that you arc being taught in the seminary are of a great deal more importance to you than you believe now. You will think better of your theological training twenty years hence than to-day, perhaps. But, after all, mother-wit and a patient finding out of your road from day to day are going to teach you in the last instance, and they will be your best teachers. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: 1.E 04. THE POWER OF IMAGINATION ======================================================================== The Power of Imagination. Yet, despite all these necessary differences, there are certain important elements that enter into all ministries. And the first element on which your preaching will largely depend for power and success, you will perhaps be surprised to learn, is Imagination, which I regard as the most important of all the elements that go to make the preacher. But you must not understand me to mean the imagination as the creator of fiction, and still less as the factor of embellishment. The imagination in its relations to art and beauty is one thing; and in its relations to moral truth it is another thing, of the most substantial character. Imagination of this kind is the true germ of faith; it is the power of conceiving as definite the things which are invisible to the senses of giving them distinct shape. And this, not merely in your own thoughts, but with the power of presenting the things which experience cannot primarily teach to other people’s minds, so that they shall be just as obvious as though seen with the bodily eye. Imagination of this kind is a most vital element in preaching. If we presented to people things we had seen, we should have all their bodily organism in our favour. My impression is, that the fountain of strength in every Christian ministry is the power of the minister himself to realize God present, and to present him to the people, No ministry can be long, various, rich, and fruitful, I think, except from that root. We hear a great deal about the breadth of the pulpit, and about the variety of the pulpit, and about carrying the truth home to men’s hearts. I have said a great deal to you about it, and shall say more. I claim that the pulpit has a right and a duty to discuss social questions, moral questions in politics, slavery, War, peace, and the intercourse of nations. It has a right to discuss commerce, industry, political economy; everything from the rooftree to the foundation-stone of the household, and everything that is of interest in the State. You have a duty to speak of all these things. There is not so broad a platform in the world as the Christian pulpit, nor an air so free as the heavenly air that overhangs it. You have a right and a duty to preach on all these things; but if you make your ministry to stand on them, it will be barren. It will be rather a lectureship than a Christian ministry. It will be secular, and will become secularized. The real root and secret of power, after all, in the pulpit, is the preaching of the invisible God to the people as an ever-present God. The preacher, then, must have the greatness of the God-power in his soul; and when he is himself inspired with it and filled with it so familiarly that always and everywhere it is the influence under which he looks out at man, at pleasure, at honour, and at all the vicissitudes of human life still standing under the shadow of God’s presence, he has the power of God with man when he conies to speak of the truths of the gospel as affecting human procedure. This power of conceiving of invisible things does not only precede in point of time, but it underlies, and is dynamically superior to, anything else. Now, imagination is indispensable to the formation of any clear and distinct ideas of God the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost. For myself, I am compelled to say that I must form an ideal of God through his Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is in dispensable to me. My nature needs to fashion the thought of God, though I know him to be a Spirit, into something that shall nearly or remotely represent that which I know. I hold before my mind a glorified form, therefore; but, after all the glory, whatever may be the nimbus and the effluence around about it, it is to me the form of a glorified man. And I therefore fashion to myself, out of the spirit, that which has to me, as it were, a divine presence and a divine being namely, a divine man. But now come the attributal elements, the fashioning of the disposition; and not only that, but a fashioning of the whole interior. I bring to you some day the face, in miniature, of one very beautiful. You look upon it, and say, “ Who is that? “ I describe the person and give you the name. You say, “ It is a beautiful face.” But you do not, after looking at it, feel that you are acquainted with the person. Now I will take you home with me and introduce you to the friend whose name belongs to this picture; but still you would not feel that you knew her. You salute her morning and evening, converse with her, and take part in the social festivities. You admire her tact, her delicacy, and her beauty. You say the acquaintance opens well. She seems to you very lady -like and attractive. On the Sabbath-day the Bible-class assembles, and you go there with your friend. In the recitations and the low-toned conversations she shows great knowledge and moral feeling, a bright intellect, and marvellous discrimination. But, still, you do not feel that you know her. Then you fall sick, and experience that delicious interval just after a severe illness, which one sometimes has, the coming dawn after a long night, heralding the morning of returning health. In that time the hours are to be filled up, and she becomes a ministering angel unto you. She is full of resources for your comfort. You notice the wisdom of her management, the power she has to stimulate thought, to play with the imagination, and to cheer the heart. I am not now speaking of one to whom you are to be affianced. It is not for you; only you are making the acquaintance of one whose portrait you had seen, but nothing more. And by thus living in communion with you, she has affected you, little by little, in such a manner that it has been brought home to you; and you say, “ I have found a friend! “ Well, who was she? Did you know her when you first saw her portrait? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ when you merely see his portrait, as it were, in the Evangelists? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ when you simply range through his words of wisdom, and take them, germ-words as they are, with all the fulness that you can? No, not until you have been intimate with him, and have had your hearts lifted up in their noblest elements into that serener air through which God only communicates. It is not until you have been in this atmosphere, not only on the Lord’s day, but on the intervening days. It is not until, by the Holy Spirit, you have been made sensitive in every part, and the Lord Jesus Christ becomes chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely. It is not until you have the power to transfuse Jesus Christ into your whole life that you know him, until there is something in the morning dawn that brings you the thought of him, in the hush of the evening, at noon time, in the budding and springing of the trees, in the singing of the birds, when you sit listless on the grass in the summer, in the retreats of man, in the cities and towns, with the fertile power of suggestion and association by which you feel that the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. When you know him in all the boundless domain of nature, every thing speaks to you of your Lord Jesus Christ. Just so, in your father’s house, every room speaks to you of your mother who is gone, every stair in the staircase, every sound of the bell, every tick of the clock, and everything under the roof, bring back to you her memory. It is not until Jesus Christ fills the soul full, and he is yours, born into you, made familiar, rich, and various, touching something in every part of your nature, and spreading out over all the things around about you, that you have the imagination to conceive of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you have a living conception of him, which you can teach and present to others. But this imagination is required still more vividly in the second step, namely, the power to throw out your conceptions before others, and such a preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ as shall bring him home to your hearers. How will you undertake to do this? You will have little children to deal with. You will have persons of great practical sense, but of very little imagination, if any. You will have persons of a wayward, coarse temperament, and again others of a fine, sensitive nature. You will have those who take moral impressions with extreme facility, and who understand analogies and illustra tions; and you will have others who understand nothing of this kind. These persons you must imbue with a sense of Christ’s presence with them. This is the prime question in your ministerial life, how to bring Jesus Christ home to men, so that he shall be to them what he is to you. You may present Christ to them historically and far be it from me to say that you must not put great emphasis upon the historical study of Christ but you must remember that Christ, as he was eighteen hundred years ago, interpreted by the letter, is not a living Christ. It is an historical picture, but it is not a live Christ. Thence must you get your materials, out of which to make the living faith. Many a minister believes that after he has been delivering a series of sermons on the life and times of Christ, he has been preaching Christ. He has been merely preaching about him, not preaching him. There is many a minister who has been preaching the philosophy of Christ, that is, a view of Christ in which, with infinite refinements and cultured arguments, he makes him one of the persons in the Trinity, who is jealous for his service, jealous for his honour, exactly discriminating where the line of infinity comes down and touches the line of finity, and pugnacious all along that line, and then thinks that he has been preaching Christ. Some ministers think that they have been preaching Christ when they have been discoursing about the relations of Christ to the law, the nature of his sufferings, how it was necessary that he should suffer, what the effect of his suffering was upon the universe, and what was the nature of the effect of his suffering upon divine law, and on the divine sense of justice. They work out of the life and times of Christ, and out of his sufferings and death, a theory of Atonement, or, as it is called, a “ Plan of Salvation,” and present that to men, and then they think they have presented Christ. Now, I am not saying that you should not discuss such themes, but only that you should not suppose in so doing you have been preaching Christ. You cannot do it in that way. To preach Christ is to make such a presentation of him as shall fill those who hear you. They must be made to conceive it in them selves, and he must be to them a live Saviour, as he is to you. One of the noblest expressions of Paul is where he exclaims, “Christ who died, yea, rather, who liveth,” as if he bounded back from the thought of speaking about Christ as dead. He is one who liveth again and reigneth in the heavens over all the earth. There is danger of a mistake being made here. You might ask me if you ought not to preach atonement. Yes. Ought you not, also, to preach the nature, sufferings, and death of Christ? Yes, provided you will not suppose you understand more than you really do on these subjects. There is much in that direction that may contribute to instruction; but it seems to me that what you need, what I need, and what the community needs, is that, in a world full of penalty, where aches, pains, tears, sighs, and groans bear witness to divine justice where, from the beginning, groanings and travailings have testified that God is an avenger there shall be brought out from this discouraging background the truth of the gospel, that God loves mankind, and would not that they die. He is the God that shall wipe away the tears from every eye. He is the God that shall put out with the brightness of his face the light of the sun and of the moon. He shall put his arm around about men, and comfort them as a mother her child. That is the love of God in Christ Jesus. With this we would stimulate men when they are sluggish, would develop their better natures, give them hope in a future life, cheer them onward in the path of duty, and give them confidence in immortality and eternity; for in God we live and move, and have our being. The imagination, then, is that power of the mind by which it conceives of invisible things, and is able to present them as though they were visible to others. That is one of its most transcendent offices. It is the quality which of necessity must belong to the ministry. The functions of the preacher require it. In godly families it was, formerly, the habit to discourage the imagination, or to use it only occasionally. They misconceived its glorious functions. It is, I repeat, the very marrow of faith, or that power by which we see the invisible and make others see it. It is the power to bring from the depths the things that are hidden from the bodily eye. A ministry enriched by this noble faculty will not and cannot wear out, and the preacher’s people will never be tired of listening to him. Did you ever hear anybody say that spring has been worn out? It has been coming for thousands of years, and it is just as sweet, just as welcome, and just as new, as if the birds sang for the first time; and so it will be for a thousand years to come. These great processes of nature that are continually recurring can not weary us. But discussions of the systems of theology will. Men get accustomed to repetitions of the same thoughts; but there is something in the love of God and Jesus Christ, and in the application of these things to the human soul, that will give an ever-varying freshness to a ministry which occupies itself with the contemplation and teaching of this law of love, and applying the knowledge to all the varying wants and shifting phases of the congregation. Even though you are forty years in one parish, you will never have finished your preaching, and you will not tire your people. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: 1.E 05. EMOTION ======================================================================== Emotion. The next element that I shall mention is the power of Feeling, There is a great deal of natural emotion in New-Englanders, but much of it is sup pressed. It is not the habit of people in our Eastern States to show feeling nearly as much as in the South, nor as much as in the West. The New Testament, however, is Oriental; and the Orientals always had, and showed, a great deal of emotion. The style of the apostles procedure shows that they had a great deal of fervency, which is only another term for emotional outplay. If a man undertake to minister to the wants of his congregation purely by the power of feeling, without adequate force in the intellect, there are valid objections to that; but every man who means to be in affinity with his congregation must have feeling. It cannot be helped. A minister without feeling is no better than a book. You might just as well put a book, printed in large type, on the desk, where all could read it, and have a man turn over the leaves as you read, as to have a man stand up, and clearly and coldly recite the precise truth through which he has gone by a logical course of reasoning. It has to melt somewhere. Somewhere there must be that power by which the man speaking and the men hearing are unified; and that is the power of emotion. It will vary indefinitely in different persons. Some will have much emotion, and some but very little. It is a thing to be striven for. Where there is relatively a deficiency, men can educate themselves and acquire this power. Now one of the great hindrances to the exhibition of true Christian feeling in the pulpit is that which I hear called the “dignity of the pulpit.” Men have been afraid to lay that aside, and bring them selves under the conditions necessary for the display of emotion. Now and then they will have a sublime, religious tone of feeling at a revival. But, after all, there is a vast amount of feeling playing in every man’s mind, which is a very able element in preaching. It may be intense, earnest, pathetic, or cheerful, mirthful, and gratifying, and is the result of love to God and God’s creatures. If a man desires to preach with power, he must have this element coming and going between him and his hearers; he must believe what he is saying, and what he says must be out of himself, and not out of his manuscript merely. If a man cannot be free to speak as he feels, but is thinking all the time about the sacredness of the place, it will shut him up. He will grow critical. I think the best rule for a man in society and it is good for the pulpit too is to have right aims, do the best things by the best means you can find, and then let yourself alone. 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 the other thing turning himself over as if he were a goose on a spit before a fire, and basting himself with good resolutions is simply belittling himself. This course is bad also in the closet. There is a large knowledge of one s-self that every man should have. But a constant study of one’s own morbid anatomy is very discouraging and harmful. It is the power of being free and in dependent in their opinions that men want, and they must get it in some way or other. Having right aims, be manly; know that you mean right, that you will do right by the right way; then let go, and do not be thinking of yourself, if you can help it, from sunrise to sunset. A man must go into the pulpit with this spirit. Let him know what he wants, and let him be able to say, “ God knows what sends me here to-day.” Let his heart be right with God. When he is working for men and among them, if it is best for him to write, let him write; but it is better, for the most successful work, that he should not stand up and recite merely. You know what you can do only when the sacred lire is upon you. You have no time then for analyzing the effect upon yourself in any minute way. Many men go into the pulpit fresh from the mirror, cravatted and in perfect toilet, with the sanctity of the place weighing upon them, and every thing complete and proper. They know if there is the slightest aberration; and under all this there is a profound self-consciousness. They are shocked if any man, in such a place, does that which creates the slightest discord with their awful solemnity, or breaks the sanctity of the pulpit. Now, according to my own principles, when a man is a messenger of God, and knows that men are in danger, and believes that he is sent to rescue them, he must be lost in the enthusiasm of that work. Do you suppose he can stop his feelings from being manifested by any system of pulpit routine? If he is naturally correct and makes no mistakes, so much the better, for I do not think that mistakes are desirable; but there may be a “propriety” in his preaching that will damn half his congregation, or there may occasionally be almost an “ impropriety “that will hurt nobody, and, accompanied with the right manner will save multitudes of men. If it is for anything, it is to save men that you are going into the ministry. If you do not go for that, you would better stay out. Men often think that excitements are dangerous. Yes; everything is dangerous in this world. From the time that a man is born into the world until he leaves it, it is always possible that there might be danger coupled with everything he does. There is a danger that your feeling may be too boisterous, or of too coarse a nature, or that it will not be adapted to the wants of the congregation; all these things are to be taken into consideration. But there is no danger from excitement that is half so fearful as the danger of not feeling and not caring. The want of feeling is a hundred times more dangerous than any excitement that you can bring to bear upon a community. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: 1.E 06. ENTHUSIASM ======================================================================== Enthusiasm. There is another force which I desire to speak of, and that is the element of Enthusiasm. This is not feeling, because pure emotion may or may not be accompanied by enthusiasm. There is in all enthusiasm a certain outburst and glow. You may have enthusiasm and feeling; or, it may be, enthusiasm and imagination; or, it may be, enthusiasm and reason. In almost all communities enthusiasm stands before everything else in moving popular assemblies. A preacher who is enthusiastic in everything he does, in all that he believes, and in all the movements of his ministry, will generally carry the people with him. He may do this with out enthusiasm, but it will be a slow process, arid the work will be much more laborious. If you have the power of speech and the skill of presenting the truth, and are enthusiastic, the people will become enthusiastic. People will take your views, because your enthusiasm has inoculated them. Very often you will see a man of great learning go into a community and accomplish nothing at all; and a whipster will go after him with not as much in his whole body as his predecessor had in his little finger, yet he will revolutionize everything. You may say that a community aroused by enthusiasm alone will just as quickly relapse into their former state. Yes; but I do not counsel enthusiasm alone. The mistake is in permitting any such relapse. It is the same as though you ploughed a field and then left it for the rain to level again. You must not only plough it, but sow seed, harrow, and till it. Yet it is essential that the field should be ploughed. So it is with a community. Mere enthusiasm will do nothing permanent; but its work must be followed up by continual and fervent preaching, and by indoctrination of the truths of the gospel. I repeat, therefore, that enthusiasm is an indispensable element in a minister’s work among men, to bring them to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: 1.E 07. FAITH ======================================================================== Faith. The other element that I wish to discuss is Faith, in the sense of belief. I do not mean now by faith what I did in the other instance, namely, the realization of the invisible, but the believing spirit which you must have, the conviction of what you teach. A man who does not believe what he is preaching will very seldom make his people believe it; and, therefore, I say, if your minds are much in doubt in respect to the grounds or the great truths of Christianity, and if you are thinking about that all the time, you will never be preachers. You must get rid of that feeling. You can get over it by bringing yourselves to deal with the wants of men, and accustoming yourselves to practical life. There is no study like mixing with men, and helping them. There is nothing that will make you believe in God so much as trying to be like God yourselves to your fellow-men, nor anything that will bring Christ so near to you as trying to do what Christ did by giving up your will for your people, and conforming yourself to their dispositions, and presenting to them everything you have realized in respect to the great doctrines of Christianity. I do not understand how men can preach these doctrines who are occupied all the week in raising questions of doubt. There is abroad a habit of mind which is called “ constructive criticism “ by philosophers, which is now prevalent in Germany, and somewhat so in England, and is even throwing its shadow upon our own land, and exciting men’s minds. A man under that influence is, as it were, congealed, and loses his electrical power, by which only a man preaches with any effect. There was something almost omnipotent and altogether triumphant in the expression, “ I know in whom I believe.” A man who is the very embodiment of conviction, and who pours it out upon people so that they can see it and feel it, can preach. He can make men believe things that are true, and even those that are not true such as that ordinances arc indispensable which are not indispensable. He can do almost everything with people, for he really believes his own doctrine. See Roman Catholic priests go into a community, and there are many of them that might be our exemplars in piety and self-denial, and with that intense faith and zeal which have made them martyrs among savages, see them labour among the people, and lead them into the fold of the Roman Church. That is largely the result of the Faith-power. If you are going to preach, do not take things about which you are in doubt to lay before your people. Do not prove things too much. A man who goes into his pulpit every Sunday to prove things gives occasion for people to say, “ Well, that is not half so certain as I thought it was.” You will, by this course, raise up a generation of chronic doubters, and will keep them so by a little drilling in the nice refinement of doctrinal criticism. You can drive back from the heart the great surges of faith with that kind of specious argument, and even the true witness of the Spirit of God in men may be killed in your congregation by such doubting logic. Do not employ arguments any more than is necessary, and then only for the sake of answering objections and killing the enemies of the truth; but in so far as truth itself is concerned, preach it to the consciousness of men. If you have not spoiled your people, you have them on your side already. The Word of God and the laws of truth are all conform able to reason and to the course of things that now are; and, certainly, everything that is required in a Christian life, repentance for sin and turning from it, the taking hold of a higher manhood, the nobility and disinterestedness of man, goes with God’s Word and laws naturally. Assume your position, there fore; and if a man says to you, “ How is it you are so successful while using so little argument? “ tell him that is the very reason of your success. Take things for granted, and men will not think to dispute them, but will admit them, and go on with you and become better men than if they had been treated to a logical process of argument, which aroused in them an argumentative spirit of doubt and opposition. Remember, then, Imagination, Emotion, Enthusiasm, and Conviction are the four foundation-stones of an effective and successful ministry. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: 1.E 08. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. Suppose a man does not have the enthusiasm of which you have spoken, what is he to do? MR. BEECHER. Do the best he can, and stop. I think it would be a very wholesome thing in a man’s parish life, if once in a while, upon finding that he was not making much of a sermon, he should frankly confess it, and say, “ Brethren, we will sing.” Q. Suppose a man tries to work himself up to a feeling of enthusiasm by action arid increased emphasis, can he be successful V MR. BEECHER. In regard to that, I will mention a circumstance that occurred to my father. I recollect his coining home in Boston one Sunday, when I was quite a small boy, saying how glad he was to get home, away from the church; and he added, “It seems to me I never made a worse sermon than I did this morning.” “ Why, father,” said I, “ I never heard you preach so loud in all my life.” “That is the way,” said he; “always holloa when I haven’t anything to say!” But how far a man may assume the language of feeling and he may sometimes, in order to its production is a fair question, though one I do not now wish to discuss. There is some difference in the questions put by gray hairs and those put by young men, I notice. [The questioner was an elderly man.], I am sure of one thing, and that is, where a man is naturally cold he is not as well adapted to the office of preaching as an enthusiastic man. I would say to such a man, “Put yourself in that situation in which sympathy naturally flows; then provide a mould for it, and it will fit the mould first or last.” It is just like the cultivation of right feeling in any direction. One of my parishioners will say to me, “I have no benevolence, but you preach that I ought to give. What shall I do? “I say to him, “ Give, as a matter of duty, until you feel a pleasure in doing it, and the right feeling will come of itself.” So, in addressing a congregation, a man may use the language of a feeling for the sake of getting and propagating the feeling. Indeed, when it comes to preaching, I think it would be a great deal better to act as though you had the feeling, even if you had not, for its effect in carrying your audience whither you wish to carry them. Q. Do you approve of the appointment of professional revivalists? ME. BEECHER. Yes, if I employ them. If they employ me, I do not like it. The term “professional revivalist” is a fortunate one. I have known a great many of these persons, and a great many that did not do much good. Others I have known who have done a great deal of good. I do not see why, if a man has received from God the gifts of arousing people, and bringing them to see and acknowledge the great moral truths of Christianity, he should not be employed as a revivalist, under judicious administration. He should be employed by others always, so as to work into the hands of the pastors, so as to unite the church, and not to divide it. There are difficulties in the “evangelist system,” but there are benefits in it also; and in many cases, and in many parts of the country, it would seem almost indispensable to the growth of the churches. In churches that maintain a regular organization, and are alive and active, I do not see the need of professional revivalists; but where they are run down and in scattered neighbourhoods, I would certainly advise the use of such instrumentalities. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: 1.F 00. RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL ======================================================================== Chapter 6: RHETORICAL DRILL AND GENERAL TRAINING. February 21, 1872. [HERE is, in certain quarters, a prejudice existing against personal training for preaching, in so far as it is affected by postures, gestures, and the like. There is a feeling abroad in regard to it, as though it would make a dramatic art out of that which should be a sacred inspiration. Men exclaim, “ Think of Paul taking lessons in posturing and gesticulation, or of St. John considering beforehand about his robes and the various positions that he should assume! “ They say, “ Let a man who is called of God go into his closet, if he would prepare; let him be filled with his subject and with the Holy Ghost, and he need not think of anything else.” But suppose a man should stutter, and you should tell him to go into his closet and be filled with the Holy Ghost, would it cure his stuttering? Suppose a clergyman is a great, awkward, sprawling fellow, do you suppose he can pray himself into physical grace? You do not think that the call of the Divine Spirit is a substitute for study and for intellectual preparation. You know that a man needs academical or professional education in order to preach his best. But the same considerations that make it wise for you to pass through a liberal education, make it also wise for you to pass through a liberal drill and training in all that pertains to oratory. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: 1.F 01. THE VOICE ======================================================================== The Voice. It is, however, a matter of very great importance what end you seek by such training. If a man is attempting to make himself simply a great orator, if his thought of preaching is how to present the most admirable presence before the people, and how to have tones that shall be most ravishing and melting, and if he consider the gesture that is appropriate to this and that sentence, in short, if he studies as an actor studies, and as an actor properly studies, too, he will make a great mistake; for what are the actor’s ends are but the preacher’s means. On the other hand, as a man’s voice is that instrument by which the preacher has to perform his whole work, its efficiency is well worthy of study. For instance, the voice must be elastic, so that it can be used for long periods of time without fatigue; and the habitual speaker should learn to derive from it the power of unconscious force. There is just as much reason for a preliminary systematic and scientific drill of the voice as there is for the training of the muscles of the body for any athletic exercise. A man often has, when he begins to preach, a low and feeble voice: each one of his sentences seems like a poor scared mouse running for its hole, and every body sympathizes with the man as he is hurrying through his discourse in this way, rattling one word into the other. A little judicious drill would have helped him out of that. If his attention can be called to it before he begins his ministry, is it not worth his while to form a better habit? A great many men commence preaching under a nervous excitement. They very speedily rise to a sharp and hard monotone; and then they go on through their whole sermon as fast as they can, never letting their voices go above or below their false pitch, but always sticking to that, until everybody gets tired out, and they among the rest. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: 1.F 02. VARIOUS VOCAL ELEMENTS ======================================================================== Various Vocal Elements. If a man can be taught in the beginning of his ministry something about suppleness of voice and the method of using it, it is very much to his advantage. For example, I have known scores of preachers who had not the slightest knowledge of the explosive tones of the voice. Now and then a man falls into it “by nature,” as it is said; that is, he stumbles into it accidentally. But the acquired power of raising the voice at will in its ordinary range, then explosively, and again in its higher keys, and the knowledge of its possibilities under these different phases, will be very helpful. It will help the preacher to spare both himself and his people. It will help him to accomplish results almost unconsciously, when it has become a habit, that could not be gained in any other way. There are a great many effects in public speaking that you must fall into the conversational tone to make. Every man ought to know the charm there is in that tone, and especially when using the vernacular or idiomatic English phrases. I have known a great many most admirable preachers who lost almost all real sympathetic hold upon their congregations because they were too literary, too periphrastic, and too scholastic in their diction. They always preferred to use large language, rather than good Saxon English. But let me tell you, there is a subtle charm in the use of plain language that pleases people, they scarcely know why. It gives bell-notes which ring out suggestions to the popular heart. There are words that men have heard when boys at home, around the hearth and the table, words that are full of father and of mother, and full of common and domestic life. Those are the words that afterward, when brought into your discourse, will produce a strong influence on your auditors, giving an element of success; words which will have an effect that your hearers themselves cannot understand. For, after all, simple language is loaded down and stained through with the best testimonies and memories of life. Now, being sure that your theme is one of interest, and worked out with thought, if you take language of that kind, and use it in colloquial or familiar phrases, you must adapt to it a quiet and natural inflection of voice, for almost all the sympathetic part of the voice is in the lower tones and in a conversational strain, and you will evoke a power that is triumphant in reaching the heart, and in making your labours successful among the multitudes. But there is a great deal besides that. Where you are not enforcing anything, but are persuading or encouraging men, you will find your work very difficult if you speak in a loud tone of voice. You may fire an audience with a loud voice, but if you wish to draw them into sympathy and to win them by persuasion, and are near enough for them to feel your magnetism and see your eye, so that you need not have to strain your voice, you must talk to them as a father would talk to his child. You will draw them, and will gain their assent to your propositions, when you could do it in no other way, and certainly not by shouting. On the other hand, where you arc in eager exhortation, or speaking on public topics, where your theme calls you to denunciation, to invective, or anything of that kind, the sharp and ringing tones that belong to the upper register are sometimes well nigh omnipotent. There are cases in which, by a single explosive tone, a man will drive home a thought as a hammer drives a nail; and there is no escape from it. I recollect, on one occasion, to have heard Dr. Humphrey, President of Amherst College, who certainly was not a rhetorician, speaking in respect to the treatment of the Indians. He used one of the most provincial of provincialisms, yet it came with an explosive tone that fastened it in my memory; and not only that, but it gave an impulse to my whole life, I might say, and affected me in my whole course and labour as a reformer. It was the effect of but a single word. He had been describing the shameful manner in which our government had broken treaties with the Indians in Florida and Georgia, under the influence of Southern statesmanship. He went on saying what was just and what was right, and came to the discussion of some critical point of policy which had been proposed, when he suddenly ceased his argument, and exclaimed, “ The voice of the people will be lifted up, and they shall say to the government, YOU SHAN’T!” Now, “ shan’t” is not very good English, but it is provincial, colloquial, and very familiar to every boy. It carried a home feeling with it, and we all knew what it meant. He let it out like a bullet, and the whole chapel was hushed for the moment; and then the rustle followed which showed that the shot had struck. It has remained in my memory ever since. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: 1.F 03. NECESSITY OF DRILL ======================================================================== Necessity of Drill. All these various modes of drilling the voice are very important. They give the power to use it on a long strain without tiring it; to use it from top to bottom, so as to have all the various effects, and to know what they are; and to make it flexible, so that you have a ready instrument at your will. These are very important elements to a man who is going to be a preacher. You say, “ Yes; I suppose a man ought to take some lessons in regard to these things, but he need not make it a study.” I beg your pardon, gentlemen; don’t touch it unless you are going to make thorough work of it. No know ledge is really knowledge until you can use it with out knowing it. You do not understand the truth of anything until it has so far sunk into you that you have almost forgotten where you got it. No man knows how to play a piano who stops and says, “ Let me see: that is B, and that is D,” and so on. When a man has learned and mastered his instrument thoroughly, he does not stop to think which keys he must strike; but his fingers glide from one to the other mechanically, automatically, almost in voluntarily. This subtle power comes out only when he has subdued his instrument and forgotten himself, conscious of nothing but the ideas and harmonies which he wishes to express. If you desire to have your voice at its best, and to make the best use of it, you must go into a drill which will become so familiar that it ceases to be a matter of thought, and the voice takes care of itself. This ought to be done under the best instructors, if you have the opportunity; if not, then study the best books, and faithfully practise their directions. It was my good fortune, in early academical life, to fall into the hands of your estimable fellow-citizen, Professor Lovell, now of New Haven; and for a period of three years I was drilled incessantly (you might not suspect it, but I was) in posturing, gesture, and voice-culture. His manner, however, he very properly did not communicate to me. And manner is a thing which, let me here remark, should never be communicated or imitated. It was the skill of that gentleman that he never left a manner with anybody. He simply gave his pupils the knowledge of what they had in themselves. After ward, when going to the seminary, I carried the method of his instructions with me, as did others. We practised a great deal on what was called “ Dr. Barber’s System,” which was then in vogue, and particularly in developing the voice in its lower register, and also upon the explosive tones. There was a large grove lying between the seminary and my father’s house, and it was the habit of my brother Charles and myself, and one or two others, to make the night, and even the day, hideous with our voices, as we passed backward and forward through the wood, exploding all the vowels, from the bottom to the very top of our voices. I found it to be a very manifest benefit, and one that has remained with me all my life long. The drill that I underwent produced, not a rhetorical manner, but a flexible instrument, that accommodated itself readily to every kind of thought and every shape of feeling, and obeyed the inward will in the outward realization of the results of rules and regulations. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 56: 1.F 04. HEALTH OF THE VOICE ======================================================================== Health of the Voice. In respect to the preservation of the voice, there is but little to be said except this: that a good, healthy man, who maintains wholesome habits, keeps his neck tough, treats his head and chest daily with cold affusions, and does not exhaust himself unnecessarily in overstrained speech, should not find it difficult to maintain his voice in a healthy condition, and that through life. I will not go into that obscure subject of ministers bronchitis. I never had it, and therefore know nothing of it, for which I thank God. If you have it, or are threatened with it, it is rather for your physician than for an unskilled person to give you directions about it. But, generally, a healthy body and a careful prudence in the exercise of the voice will, I think, go far to make you sound speakers during the whole of your lives. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 57: 1.F 05. BODILY CARRIAGE POSTURE ======================================================================== Bodily Carriage Posture. It is not necessary that a man should stand awkwardly because it is natural; it is not necessary that a man, because he may not be able to stand like the statue of Apollo, should stand ungracefully. He loses, unconsciously, a certain power; for, al though he does not need a very fine physical figure (which is rather a hindrance, I think), yet he should be pleasing in his bearing and gestures. A man who is very beautiful and superlatively graceful sets people to admiring him; they make a kind of monkey-god of him, and it stands in the way of his usefulness. From this temptation most of us have been mercifully delivered. On the other hand, what we call naturalness, fitness, good taste, and propriety, are to be sought. You like to see a man come into your parlour with, at least, ordinary good manners and some sense of propriety; and what you require in your parlour, you certainly have a right to expect in church. One of the reasons why I condemn these churns called pulpits is, that they teach a man bad habits; he is heedless of his posture, and learns bad tricks behind these bulwarks. He thinks that people will not see them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 58: 1.F 06. GESTURE ======================================================================== Gesture. So with gestures. There are certain people who will never make many gestures, but they should see to it that what they do make shall be graceful and appropriate. There are others who are impulsive, and so full of feeling that they throw it out in every direction, and it is, therefore, all the more important that their action shall be shorn of awkwardness and constrained mannerism. Now and then a man is absolutely dramatic, as, for instance, John B. Gough, who could not speak otherwise. It is unconscious with him. It is inherent in all natural orators; they put themselves at once, unconsciously, in sympathy with the things they are describing. In any of these situations, whether you are inclined to but little action or a great deal, or even to dramatic forms of action, it is very desirable that you should drill yourselves and practise incessantly, so that your gestures shall not offend good taste. This, too, is a very different thing from practising before a mirror, and it is a very different thing from making actors of yourselves. It is an education that ought to take place early, and which ought to be incorporated into your very being. SEMINARY TRAINING. I will pass on now to some suggestions in respect to your seminary course. I know very well how impatient and eager many students are to get rid of the two or three years training which is required in the seminary. A man who is naturally a scholar loves to procure knowledge, because it is a luxury for him to study. He will probably be an overstudious man, and will need to be checked rather than stimulated to greater activity. But those who are impatient of study, and are longing to go into the field, and who want to pray and converse with impenitent sinners and bring them into the Kingdom, will often say, “ What do you suppose Latin and Greek have got to do with that; can’t we begin the work without any such laborious preparation as this? “ I know what the feeling is; I have seen it displayed very often. If you will read the familiar correspondence of General Sherman during the war, which was published by the War Department, you will see that, months and months before his great march, he was studying the country through which he was about to go, its resources, its power of sustaining armies, its populousness, the habits of the people, in short, everything that belonged to it, in every relation, and all the questions that could possibly arise in regard to it. He had discussed them on both sides and on two or three hypotheses, so that when he started upon his famous march he had really gone over the country in advance, and made himself the military master of its features and character. He was possessed of all the knowledge necessary to enable him to grapple with any event that might take place. He was prepared for any of two or three different lines of action. Now, you have a campaign that is a great deal longer than his, and an enemy that is a great deal harder to fight; and you must make diligent preparation. You must lay up all the know ledge you can, now, and form habits of earnest study that shall make your whole after-life’s work comparatively easy. You will have enough direct action when you get into the field; and it behooves you now to do whatever you can to abbreviate your future labours. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 59: 1.F 07. STUDY OF THE BIBLE ======================================================================== Study of the Bible. In the first place, the whole science of interpretation, the whole study of the Word of God and all the developments that are either based upon it or nearly touch it, will be a world of advantage to you. I had the good fortune to be under Professor Stowe in my theological training. Those who have gone through a course with him need not be told how much knowledge he has, nor his keen and crystal line way of putting that knowledge. The advantages which I derived from his teaching, his way of taking hold of Scripture, the knowledge I got of the Book as a whole, are inestimable to me. These I got while pursuing my studies in the seminary. In looking over my old note-books, which I filled independently of my course there, but which were partly in consequence of it and partly from teaching in the Bible-class, I found I had gone then very nearly through the New Testament with close and careful study, and had formed an intimate acquaintance “with it, before I began to preach regularly. In the early years of my ministry I engaged in a great amount of exegetical study and interpretation of the Word of God, having one service every week which was mainly devoted to that work. Now, the preliminary acquisition of the power to do that will abbreviate your after-work more than you can tell. Do not believe that your enthusiasm will be a light always burning. You must have oil in your lamps. Study and patient labour are indispensable even to genius. God may have given you genius, but unless he has also given you industry, the genius will leak away, unused, wasted, without profit. Inspiration, intuition, and all the efflorescence of genius, are divine gifts; yet there must be some material for them to work upon. You cannot have a flame unless there is something that will feed combustion; you cannot study too much while in the seminary, preparing for the field of your future labours. It will neither cumber you nor hinder you. It will facilitate your work at every step. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 60: 1.F 08. THEOLOGY ======================================================================== Theology. In respect to systematic theology the same is true. It is very desirable, I think, that every preacher should have not merely gone through a system, but that he should have studied comparative theology. He ought to study that system on which he expects to base his ministry; and it is also desirable that he should take cross- views of differing systems of theology > for & variety of reasons. You may think you are going to preach some particular system, but most of you will not, even if you try. You may take your teachers views of theology and preach them for a while, but they will not suit you long. Every man who is fit to preach will, before many years, begin to have an outline of his own theology very distinctively marked out. But it is always necessary to know what other men have thought, to practise close thinking, to be drilled in sharp and nice discrimination, and to have a mind that is not slatternly and loose, but which knows how to work philosophically. You are to meet men who know how to think, if you do not. You may be called to take a parish in which the lawyer, the doctor, and two or three retired gentlemen will know a great deal more than you do, and will turn up their noses whenever you undertake to preach a sermon. You cannot afford to have a man in your parish accuse you of being a boy in the pulpit. Every man who preaches from year to year has a system. He may not have “ the current one. It may not be Calvin after the manner of Edwards, nor Calvin according to Dwight, nor Calvin as it is taught at Princeton, nor yet Arminianism. It may be this, that, or the other, of the various shades, or a new shade of his own. So that you must form the mental habit of looking at all presentations of truth. You will observe that it is not necessary for a minister to give lectures in theology to his people, however much he may know, though there might be worse things than that. You might have an occasional familiar lecture on special points of theology, and indoctrinate your people with them. But your sermons must be philosophical in principle and thoroughly thought out. You must acquire the habit of thinking, of looking at truth, not in isolated and fragmentary forms, but in all its relations; and of using it constantly as an instrument of producing good. You see I do believe in the science of theology, though I may not give my faith to any particular school of it, in all points. But no school can dispense with a habit of thinking according to the laws of cause and effect, for that is absolutely necessary. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 61: 1.F 09. A SMALL PARISH AT FIRST ======================================================================== A Small Parish at First. In your first settlement, young gentlemen, remember the parable. When you are invited to a feast, take not the highest seat, but take rather the lowest place, so that it shall be said to you, Friend, go up higher.” When a young man is just going out, and is beginning to preach, and men find great hopes in him, one of the worst things that can befall him is to think himself an uncommon man, a man of prospects, and to have it whispered here and there, “ Oh, he will shake the world yet! “ These things are very mischievous to a young man, especially if they lead him to start at a faster pace than he can well maintain. One of the most common mistakes a young man makes is in thinking that he must have a place large enough for his talents he does not know where to bestow his goods! If there is an opportunity to take a small country place he will take it “just temporarily,” but he has his eye on four or five calls, which he thinks are very likely to come to him. This conceit is very deleterious. When you enter upon the work of the ministry it is very desirable that you should take a small and humble sphere, even if you afterward are called to a large one. You should begin at the bottom. In the first place, you cannot develop so well in any other way the needful creative and administrative faculties. If I were Pope in America, besides a hundred other things that would be done, I would send every young man that was anxious to preach into the extreme West, and I would make him think that he was never coming back again. He should work there for ten years, then I think he might begin to be ready for a larger place, or an older church. I would not let him know my future plans for him; but he should think he was going to remain there, and do his work, One especial advantage of a small parish is that you are obliged to do your work by knowing every person in the community, studying every one of them, and knowing how to impress and manage them by your personal influence and the power of the gospel. Every young minister, too, ought to have a parish where he shall have some time to study, where he shall not be hurried and worried with extra meetings, with excitements and with various distractions. When you first begin to preach you have a raw, untrained nervous system, which cannot bear so much as it can afterward. A man’s brain gets tough by exercise. I can now go through an amount of brain-work that would have killed me outright in the first years of my ministerial life. I can trace the gradually accumulating power of endurance of brain excitement. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 62: 1.F 10. AN EARLY EXPERIENCE IN THE WEST ======================================================================== An Early Experience in the West. It was my lot at first to be placed in a village with a mere handful of inhabitants in one of the Western States. I conceive it to be one of the kind nesses of Providence that I was sent to so small a place. 1 had but one male member in the church, and I wished him out all the time I was there. (Let me illustrate by personal allusions, if you please; for I do not know why you ask ministers from active parishes to advise you, unless they should tell you something of their experience.), practised public speaking from the time of my sophomore year in college. I was addicted to going out and making temperance speeches, and holding conference meetings, so that I acquired considerable confidence, being naturally very diffident. When I went to the seminary I still kept up that habit, practising whenever I had the opportunity. At the end of my three years seminary course six months of which, however, were diverted to editorial work, a loss of time to my studies which was afterwards made up I went to a small town in Indiana, the last one in the State towards Cincinnati, on the Ohio river. It had perhaps rive or six hundred inhabitants. It had in it a Methodist, a Baptist, and this Presbyterian church to which I went. The church would hold, perhaps, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred people. It had no lamps and no hymn-books. It had nineteen female members; and the whole congregation could hardly raise from $200 to $250 as salary. I took that field v and went to work in it. Among the earliest things I did was to beg money from Cincinnati to buy side-lamps to hang up in the church, so that we could have night service. After being there a month or two I went to Cincinnati again, and collected money enough to buy hymnbooks. I distributed them in the seats. Before this the hymns had been lined out. I recollect one of the first strokes of management I ever attempted in that parish was in regard to these hymn-books. Instead of asking the people if they were willing to have them, I just put the books into the pews; for there are ten men that will fight a change about which they are consulted, to one that will fight it when it has taken place. I simply made the change for them. There was a little looking up and looking around, but nothing was said. So after that we sang out of books. Then there was nobody in the church to light the lamps, and they could not afford to get a sexton. Such a thing was unknown in the primitive simplicity of that Hoosier time. Well, I unanimously elected myself to be the sexton. I swept out the church, trimmed the lamps and lighted them. I was, literally, the light of that church. I didn’t stop to groan about it, or moan about it, but I did it. At first the men folk thereabout seemed to think it was chaff to catch them with, or something of that kind; but I went steadily on doing the work. After a month or so two young men, who were clerks in a store there, suggested to me that they would help me. I “didn’t think I wanted any help; it was only what one man could do.” Then they suggested three or four of us taking one month each, and in that way they were worked in. It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Having something to do in the church was a means of grace to them. It drew them to me and me to them. None of them were Christian young men; In it I consulted them about various things, and by-and-by I brought a case to them. I said, “Here is a young man who is in great danger of going the wrong way, and losing his soul. What do you think is the best means of getting at him? “ It made them rather sober and thoughtful to be talking about the salvation of that young man’s soul, and the upshot was that they saved their own. They very soon afterward came into the Spirit, and were converted, and became good Christian men. Now, while I was there I preached the best sermons I knew how to get up. I remember distinctly that every Sunday night I had a headache. I went to bed every Sunday night with a vow registered that I would buy a farm and quit the ministry. If I have said it once 4, I have said it five hundred times, that I spoilt a good farmer to make a poor minister. I said a great many extravagant things in my pulpit, and preached with a great deal of crudeness. I preached a great many sermons which, after six months, I would not have preached again. I frequently did as many young men do shaped into a general truth that which was truth only under certain circumstances, and with a particular class of people. I was a great reader of the old sermonizers. I read old Robert South through and through; I saturated myself with South; I formed much of my style and my handling of texts on his methods. I obtained a vast amount of instruction and assistance from others of those old sermonizers, who were as familiar to me as my own name. I read Barrow, Howe, Sherlock, Butler, and Edwards particularly. I preached a great many sermons while reading these old men, and upon their discourses I often founded the framework of my own. After I had preached them, I said to myself, “That will never do; I wouldn’t preach that again for all the world.” But I was learning, and nobody ever tripped me up. I had no Board of Elders ready to bring me back to orthodoxy. I had time to sow all my ministerial wild oats, and without damage to my people, for they knew too little to know whether I was orthodox or not. And it was, generally, greatly to their advantage, because people are very much like fishes. Whales take vast quantities of water into their mouths for the sake of the animalcule it contains, and then blow out the water, while keeping in the food. People do pretty much the same. They don’t believe half that you say. The part that is nutritious they keep, and the rest they let alone. This early ministerial training does not hurt them, but it is invaluable to a young man who is getting the bearings of his new station, and learning how to handle the ship that God has given him to sail. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 63: 1.F 11. GENERAL HINTS ======================================================================== General Hints. After faithful and constant practice in such a place as this, you will after a very little time begin to make fewer and fewer mistakes, and you will be able to bear more and more work. You will be able to do more creative work after this preparation, and to make the most of your resources. You will also learn how to handle men and things, and you will be determined upon success in your work; in other words, it will make a man of you. Let me tell you one secret: that a strong country church is a position of very much more influence than nineteen out of twenty city churches. City churches are more nearly like wells than anything else. They have their own little circle, and outside of that nothing. Country churches are like rivers. They are collected from far-distant regions, and run a great way. Then again, in a city, three or four churches only are conspicuous and popular, and the rest are comparatively unknown. Keep out of the city as long as you can. Do not aspire to so-called great churches and great places. Go into rural neighbourhoods. Begin your ministry with the common people. Get seasoned with the humanity and sympathies which belong to men; mix with farmers, mechanics, and labouring men; eat with them, sleep with them; for, after all, there is the great substance of humanity. You will get it in its purest and simplest forms there. You will have time to grow and strengthen yourselves. Your bodies will grow wholesome. Your brains will grow strong. Your nervous system will get tough, so that if ever God opens the door and calls you to a more difficult sphere, you can till it, and do twice as much work with more certainty and with more success than if called to the larger place in the beginning of your ministry. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 64: 1.F 12. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. How about living in those little places that don’t pay enough to live upon? MR. BEECHER. Live within your income. There was a Mr. Bushnell, quite as famous in his way, in Ohio, as Horace Bushnell was in Connecticut, although of different make. He was a man like Paul, insignificant in presence, small, and weak eyed, and, I believe, now is blind entirely. He was a man who, besides having a heart consecrated to God and humanity, was also fearless, brave, and enterprising. There was a little settlement be low Cincinnati, called Cleves. The people there had driven out every minister they had had. The Methodists tried it, and if they cannot stick, you may say it is a tough place. They had to abandon that neighbourhood. Bushnell determined that the gospel should be preached there, and thither he went; and it was at a time, too, when it was enough to burn a man to have it known that he was an abolitionist. Bushnell went there and preached, and took no pains to hide the fact in the neighbourhood that he was an abolitionist, although he was so near Kentucky, which was just over the river. He could not get a man in that region who would take him to board. Finally, he found an old cabin that was abandoned by some negroes. He daubed it over with mud, and fixed it up so that it would shelter him. He went into the place, lived in it, cooked for himself, took care of himself, and preached to this people. At first they wouldn’t go to hear him. He started out after them. He went into the fields and talked with them. He said, “ Now, I will tell you, you may just as well come to church; if you won’t come where I preach, I shall go to you.” They began to admire the man’s pluck. “He is a little fellow,” they said, “but he is so courageous! They had threatened him with everything; but they finally began to listen to him. The first man that came was an infidel. He had been made an infidel by the teachings of Christian Churches and ministers that the Bible justified slavery. lie was a man of groat benevolence and great justice, and he said, “If Christianity teaches that, I will never be a Christian.” When he heard of a minister who denounced slavery, and proved from the Bible that it was unjust, he said, “ I want to hear that man.” When he found what manner of man he was, he joined himself to the new-comer. He was converted, and became an active Christian man. The result was, that Bushnell very soon gathered up a little church, and they had prayer-meetings and other Christian gatherings in the neighbourhood, which effectively began the work of regenerating it. Now I want to know what success Bushnell would have met with if he had put on a broadcloth coat, and had questioned and paltered with the people, saying, “How much salary will you give me? “ or if he had asked himself, “ Is it my duty to settle down there? “ I believe that the Word of Christ is the best charter of every Christian minister, “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” There is nothing that makes salary so fast as not to care for it, and to put your whole life and soul into the work of God’s ministry, so that men feel to the bottom of their hearts that there is a man who has got hold of them. No man will starve. I do not mean by that that there is to be no consideration for the future, but I mean to say that a generous trust in the people and an earnest devotion to work will insure a man all the support that he needs. Q. Would you advise a young man to settle immediately upon leaving the seminary, especially in going West? Yes; the quicker you get to work after you are through your studies the better. People sometimes say, “ Do you think it would be better for me to go to Edinburgh and take a course there?” or, “ How would it be if I should go to Germany?” Well, if you are going to be a critical student, a professor, or if you are going to compile a dictionary or take a chair in a theological seminary if your life is going to be a scholar’s life, in contradistinction from a preacher’s life I should say that a post-seminary course is advisable. But if you are going to be working among men, do not delay your work one unnecessary moment after getting through your seminary course. An academical education is some what exclusive in its character, and tends to foster a class-spirit. You are separated from the people, and are kept out of the ordinary run of human life; you are, as it were, made monks of. If you are fit for your work, the sooner you get into real business in the field the better for you. Q. Would you have a man preach while he is in the seminary? I should say, Yes. The habit of bringing your minds to bear on other people, in a moral point of view, ought to be kept up all the way through, from beginning to end. A habit of thinking of other people’s welfare, labouring for it, and accumulating the material by which you will accomplish it, carrying your heart warm all the time, is a good thing for a man who is going to preach and to be a minister of Christ. Q. Are not these little mean places very unfavourable for the culture of grace, &c.? MR. BEECHER. They are not mean. Q. I think your first settlement, Lawrenceburg, was mean. MR. BEECHER. No; it was not. It was a good place to train a yoting minister. We are all sinful. My church was sinful, and its pastor was. There were various degrees of sinners all the way through. But that little town had one woman in it thatredeemed the place; and if I had the making of a Catholic calendar, I would enroll her as a saint. Old Mother Rice taught me more practical godliness than any one else, except my own father. She was a labouring-woman, the wife of an old, drunken, retired sea-captain. They were so poor that they had to live above a cooper’s shop, with loose planks for a floor, which wabbled as you walked over them, and through which you could see the men at work below. Her husband would abuse her and swear at her. But there was never any person in distress in the town that Mother Rice did not visit. No case of sickness occurred that she did not consecrate the chamber with her presence. There was nobody who was discouraged and needed comfort that did not experience her kind offices. She was one of the sweetest, gentlest, and serenest of women. This place was like the mud and rubbish brought up by the diver, which yet contains a beautiful pearl. This woman would have redeemed that town from being mean, even if it had had no other good thing in it. You can always find goodness and nobility by looking for it. A STUDENT. I know something about the Bushnell of whom you have spoken, and although he is a man whom everybody regards with respect, yet he is not a man who comes up to your idea of what a minister should be. MR. BEECHER. I only mentioned his name to illustrate how a man will succeed by going into the lowest and most hardened community with a consecrated spirit, with courage, and with a determination to succeed. I do not hold him up as a model minister throughout his whole ministerial life by any means. THE SAME STUDENT. I simply brought up his name in this connection to show the difficulty there is connected with going West, into these little places, in regard to culture. You hold that we ought to have a certain grace and ease of bearing. It seems to mo that that kind of a place is very undesirable for such training. MR. BEECHER. Then carry it there. That should be part of a minister’s influence out there. The theory that lies behind every other is, that a minis ter is a little Christ; that he teaches men about Christ, by acting the life of Christ over again right before them, with the same humiliation, self-denial, and self-sacrifice that Jesus Christ displayed when on earth among men. Now this, as a model, is so high that we shall all fall short of it; but it is an ideal that will do you a great deal of good to keep in your mind if you are going to set yourself up before your fellow-men as teachers and preachers of the life that is reserved for God’s people. You must be to them what Christ was in his time to those around him. Did you ever read Park man’s “ History of the Jesuits,” in relation to their missions in Canada among the Northern Indians? That book ought to be read by every Protestant clergyman, and especially by those who think there is no piety in the Catholic Church. No matter how erroneous their teaching may be, they displayed some of the sweetest and noblest traits of self-devotion ever recorded in the pages of history in their missionary work among the Indians. They went among them in their rudest estate, lived in their smoky huts, were derided, hooted at, and contemned, year after year. They were men of culture and refinement, and men who had earned at home a world-wide reputation; yet they lived in these wigwams without a single convert, and were willing to live forty years there, faithful in labour, and then die without a sign of success. They rebuke us in our missionary work. Q. May it not be desirable to spend a year in an Eastern parish before going West? Mr. BEECHER. No, sir! -You will never go West if you do. If you go West and endure hard ships, like a good soldier, you will gradually become worthy to occupy an easier post when you shall be called to one. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 65: 1.G 00. RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS ======================================================================== Chapter 7: RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. BELIEVE it was Locke who inveighed against Illustrations as the enemies of truth, as leading men astray by latent or supposed analogies; and yet I apprehend that the strictest and most formal processes of logical reasoning have led just as many men astray as ever illustrations did. You can perplex people, and you can, with great facility, make ingenious issues with illustrations; but so you can with every thing else. They are liable to misuse, but no more than any other instrument of persuasion. If a man knows truth and loves it, if he is earnest in the inculcation of it, and if he never allows himself to state for truth that which he does not thoroughly believe to be true, the processes which he employs, whether analogies, causal reasoning, or illustrations the most poetical, will participate in the honesty of the man; and there is little risk that any one part will bemistaken more than an}- other. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 66: 1.G 01. THE NATURE OF ILLUSTRATION ======================================================================== The Nature of Illustration. We have the best example of the use of illustration in the history of the education of the world from time immemorial. Experience has taught that not only are persons pleased by being instructed through illustration, but that they are more readily instructed thus, because, substantially, the mode in which we learn a new thing is by its being likened to something which we already know. This is the principle underlying all true illustrations. They are a kind of covert analogy, or likening of one thing to another, so that obscure things become plain, being represented pictorially or otherwise by things that are not obscure and that we are familiar with. So, then, the groundwork of all illustration is the familiarity of your audience with the thing on which the illustration stands. Now and then it will be proper to lay down and explain with particularity the fact out of which an illustration is to grow, and then to make the fact illustrate the truth to be made clear. The speaker will, for instance, undertake to explain, the isochronism of a watch, and having done this so that the audience will understand it, he may employ the watch in that regard as an illustration. But, generally, the subject-matter of an illustration should be that which is familiar to the minds of those to whom you are speaking. It is not my province to go into the theoretical nature of the different kinds of illustration, of metaphors, similes, and what not; that you have learned in another department, both in your academical and collegiate courses. But I hope to give you some practical hints as to the manner of using these things. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 67: 1.G 02. REASONS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING ======================================================================== Reasons for Illustrations in Preaching. The purpose that we have in view in employing an illustration is to help people to understand more easily the things that we are teaching them. You ought to drive an audience as a good horseman drives a horse on a journey, not with a supreme regard for himself, but in a way that will enable the horse to achieve his work in the easiest way. An audience has a long and sometimes an arduous journey when you are preaching. Occasionally the way is pretty steep and rough; and it is the minister’s business, not so much to take care of himself, as, by all the means in his power, to ease the way for his audience and facilitate their understanding. An illustration is one of the means by which the truth that you teach to men is made so facile that they receive it without effort. I know that some men- among whom, I think, was Coleridge justify the obscurities of their style, saying that it is a good practice for men to be obliged to dig for the ideas which they get. But I submit to you that working on Sunday is not proper for ordinary people in church, and obliging your parishioners to dig and delve for ideas in your sermons is making them do the very work you are paid a salary to do for them. Your office is to do the chief part of the thinking and to arrange the truth, while their part is to experience the motive power, and take the incitement toward a better life. In this work, whatever can make your speech touch various parts of the mind in turn will be of great advantage to your audience, and will enable them to perform their rugged journey with less fatigue and with more pleasure. An illustration is never to be a mere ornament, although its being ornamental is no objection to it. If a man’s sermon is like a boiled ham, and the illustrations are like cloves stuck in it afterward to make it look a little better, or like a bit of celery or other garnish laid around on the edge for the mere delectation of the eye, it is contemptible. But if you have a real and good use for an illustration, that has a real and direct relation to the end you are seeking, then it may be ornamental, and no fault should be found with it for that. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 68: 1.G 03. THEY ASSIST ARGUMENT ======================================================================== They Assist Argument. Look a little at the result to be accomplished by facile and skilful illustrations. In the first place, they are helpful in all that part of preaching which is naturally based upon pure reasoning, and which is somewhat obscure to minds not trained in philosophical thought. There ought to be in every sermon something that shall task your audience somewhat as it tasked you; otherwise you will not compass some of the noblest themes that lie in the sphere of your duty. But pure ratiocination addresses itself to but a very small class of the community. There are very few men who can follow a close argument from beginning to end; and those who can are trained to it, it being an artificial habit, though, of course, some minds are more apt for it than others. But the theme must be very familiar, and the argument must be largely a statement of facts, for most audiences to understand it. If you go one step beyond this, into philosophy or metaphysics, so called, as you must do sometimes, you will be in danger of leaving half your audience behind you. Illustrations, while they make it easier for all, are absolutely the only means by which a large part of your audience will be able to understand at all the abstruse processes of reasoning. For a good, compact argument, without illustrations, is very much like the old-fashioned towers that used to be built before artillery was invented; they were built strong, of stone, all the way up above a ladder’s reach without a door or a window-slit. The first apartment was so high that it was safe from scaling, and then came a few windows, and very narrow ones at that. Such were good places for beleaguered men, but they were very poor places to bring up a family in, where there were no windows to let in the light. Now an illustration is a window in an argument, and lets in light. You may reason without an illustration; but where you are employing a process of pure reasoning and have arrived at a conclusion, if you can then by an illustration flash back light upon what you have said, you will bring into the minds of your audience a realization of your argument that they cannot get in any other way. I have seen an audience, time and again, follow an argument, doubt fully, laboriously, almost suspiciously, and look at one another, as much as to say, “ Is he going right? until the place is arrived at, where the speaker says, “ It is like/ and then they listen eagerly for what it is like; and when some apt illustration is thrown out before them, there is a sense of relief, as though they said, “ Yes, he is right.” If you have cheated them, so much the worse for you; but if your illustrations are as true as your argument, and your argument true as the truth itself, then you have helped them a great deal. So that, as a mere matter of help to reason, illustrations are of vast utility in speaking to an audience. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 69: 1.G 04. THEY HELP HEARERS TO REMEMBER ======================================================================== They Help Hearers to Remember. Then they are a very great help in carrying away and remembering the things your audience have heard from you; because it is true from childhood up (and woe be to that man out of whom the child has died entirely!) that we remember pictures and parables and fables and stories. Now, if in your discourses, when taking a comprehensive view of truth, you illustrate each step by an appropriate picture, you will find that the plain people of your congregation will go away, remembering every one of your illustrations. If they are asked, “Well, what was the illustration for? “ they will stop and consider: “ What was he saying then? “ They will fish for it, and will generally get the substance of it. “Oh, it was this: he was proving so and so, and then he illustrated it by this.” They will remember the picture; and, if they are questioned, the picture will bring back the truth to them; and after that they will remember both together. Whereas all except the few logically trained minds would very soon have forgotten what you had discoursed upon, if you had not thus suitably seasoned it. Your illustrations will be the salt that will preserve your teachings, and men will remember them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 70: 1.G 05. THEY STIMULATE IMAGINATION ======================================================================== They Stimulate Imagination. The effect of illustrations upon ideality is very great. They bring into play the imaginative faculty, which is only another name for ideality. The sense of the invisible and of the beautiful are combined in ideality. Now all great truth is beautiful. It carries in it elements of taste and fitness. The “ beauty of holiness “ we find spoken of in the Word of God, and this is a beauty that does not belong to anything material. God is transcendently a lover of beauty, and all the issues of the Divine Soul are, if we could see them as he sees them, beautiful, just as self-denial and love are beautiful, and as purity and truth and all good things are beautiful. It is not, therefore, in the interest of truth that a man should sift it down to the merest bare nuggets of statement that it is susceptible of; and this is not best for an audience. It is best that a truth should have argument to substantiate it, and analysis and close reasoning; yet when you come to give it to an audience you should clothe it with flesh, so that it shall be fit for their understandings. In no other way can you so stir up that side of the mind to grasp your statements and arguments easily, and prepare it to remember them. You cannot help your audience in any other way so well as by keeping alive in them the sense of the imagination, and making the truth palpable to them, because it is appealing to the taste, to the sense of the beautiful in imagery as well as to the sense of truth. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 71: 1.G 06. THE ART OF RESTING AUDIENCES ======================================================================== The Art of Resting Audiences. It is a great art to know how to preach as long as you want to, or have to, and yet not tire your audience, especially where you have been preaching many years in the same place. For my own part I do not think that a very long sermon is adapted to edification; but a man ought to be able to preach an hour, and to hold his audience too. He cannot do it, however, if his sermon is a monotone, either in voice or thought. He cannot do it unless he is interesting. He cannot possibly hold his people unwearied, when they have become accustomed to his voice, his manner, and his thoughts, unless he moves through a very considerable scale, up and down, resting them; in other words, changing the faculties that he is addressing. For instance, you are at one time, by statements of fact, engaging the perceptive reason, as a phrenologist would say. You soon pass, by a natural transition, to the relations that exist between facts and statements, and you are then addressing another audience,- namely, the reflective faculties of your people. And when you have concluded an argument upon that, and have flashed an illustration that touches and wakes up their fancy and imagination, you are bringing in still another audience, the ideal or imaginative one. And now, if out of these you express a sweet wine that goes to the emotions and arouses their feelings, so that one and another in the congregation wipes his eyes, and the proud man, that does not want to cry, blows his nose, what have you done? You have relieved the weariness of your congregation by enabling them to listen with different parts of their minds to what you have been saying. If I were to stand here on one leg for ten minutes, I should be very grateful if I were permitted to stand on the other a little while. If I stood on both of them, perfectly erect, I should be glad to have the opportunity of resting more heavily on one, and taking an easy position. In other words, there is nothing that tires a man so much as standing in one posture, stock still. By preaching to different parts of the minds of your audience, one part rests the others; and persons not wearied out will listen to long sermons and think them very short. It is a good thing for a man to preach an hour, and have his people say, “Why, you ought not to have stopped for an hour yet.” That is a compliment that you will not get every day, and you ought to be very grateful when you do get it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 72: 1.G 07. ILLUSTRATIONS PROVIDE FOR VARIOUS HEARERS ======================================================================== Illustrations provide for Various Hearers. The relation of illustrations to a mixed audience is another point which deserves careful consideration. I have known ministers who always unconsciously sifted their audience, and preached to nothing but the bolted wheat. Now, you have got a little fine flour in your congregation, and more poor flour; then you have the Graham flour, which is the wheat ground up husk and all; and then you have all the unground wheat, and all the straw, and all the stubble. You are just as much bound to take care of the bottom as you are of the top. True, it is easier, after you have fallen into the habit of doing it, to preach to those people who appreciate your better efforts. It is easier for you to preach so that the household of cultured and refined people will love to sit down and talk with you on this subtle feeling, and about that wonderful idea you got from the German poet, and so on. But that is self-indulgence, half the time, on the part of a pastor. He follows the path that he likes, the one in which he excels, and he is not thinking of providing for the great masses that are under his care. You are bound to see that everybody (jets sonictiling every time. There ought not to be a five year-old child that shall go home without something that pleases and instructs him. How are you going to do that? I know of no other way than by illustration. I have around my pulpit, and sometimes crowding upon the platform, a good many of the boys and girls of the congregation. I notice that, during the general statements of the sermon and the exegetical parts of it, introducing the main discourse, the children are playing with each other. One will push a hymn-book or a hat toward the other, and they will set each other laughing. That which ought not to be done is, with children, very funny and amusing. By-and-by I have occasion to use an illustration, arid I happen to turn round and look at the children, and not one of them is playing, but they are all looking up with interest depicted on their faces. I did not think of them in making it, perhaps, but I saw, when the food fell out in that way, that even the children were fed too. You will observe that the children in the congregation will usually know perfectly well whether there is anything in the sermon for them or not. There always ought to be; and there is no way in which you can prepare a sermon for the delectation of the plain people, and the uncultured, and little children, better than by making it attractive and instructive with illustrations. It & is always the best method to adopt with a mixed audience. And that is the kind of audience for which you must prepare yourselves, too. It is only now and then that a man preaches in a college chapel, where all are students. You are going into parishes where there are old and young and middle-aged people, where there are working men and men of leisure, dull men and sharp men, practised worldlings and spiritual and guileless men; in fact, all sorts of people. And you are to preach so that every man shall have his portion in due season; and thatportion ought to be in every sermon, more or less. You will scarcely be able to do it in any other way than by illustration. If God has not given you the gift by original endowment, strive to attain it by cultivation. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 73: 1.G 08. MODES OF PRESENTING ARGUMENT ======================================================================== Modes of Presenting Argument. Then there is another thing. You are to carry the thoughts in your sermon as the air or theme is carried in some musical compositions. Certain of the finest chorals will have the air carried through out, sometimes by the soprano, sometimes by the contralto, sometimes by the tenor, and sometimes by the bass. So with your argument; it must be borne by different parts of your sermon. Some times it must l)o put forward by an illustration, sometimes by an appeal to the feelings, sometimes by a process of reasoning, and sometimes by the imagination. Your argument is not to be all one stereotyped expression of thought. Frequently a speaker will make a statement, and then laboriously lay out the track from that statement clear over to the next point, thus using up precious time. But there is such a thing as striking at once to a man’s conscience by bounding over the whole logical process, abbreviating both space and time, and gaining conviction. What do you want? You do not want an argument for the sake of an argument. You do not want a sermon that is as perfect a machine as a machine can be, unless it does something. You want the people; and the shortest and surest way to get them is the best way. When you are preaching a sermon which has been prepared with a great deal of care, and are laying down the truth with forcible arguments, you will often find that you are losing your hold on the attention of your people by continuing in that direction. But coming to a for tunate point, strike out an illustration which arouses and interests them leave the track of your ar gument, and never mind what becomes of your elaborate sermon, and you will see the heavy and uninterested eyes lighting up again. “ But,” you say, “ that will make my sermon unsymmetrieal.” Well, were you called to preach for the sake of the salvation of sermons? Just follow the stream, and use the bait they are biting at, and take no heed of your sermon. You will find it almost impossible to carry for ward the demonstration of a truth in one straight course and yet make it real to a general audience. You must vary your method constantly, and at the same time through it all you can carry the burden of your discourse so that it shall be made clear to the whole of your audience. An argument may as well go forward by illustration as by abstract statement; sometimes it will go better. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 74: 1.G 09. ILLUSTRATIONS BRIDGE DIFFICULT PLACES ======================================================================== Illustrations Bridge Difficult Places. Then there is another element for you to consider. Illustrations are invisible tactics. A minister often hovers between the “ ought to do,” and the “ how to do.” He knows there is a subject that ought to be preached about; and yet, if he should deliberately preach on that topic, everybody would turn around and look at Mr. A, who is the very embodiment of that special vice or fault or excellence. There are many very important themes which a minister may not desire to preach openly upon, for various reasons, especially if he wish to remain in the parish. But there are times when you can attain your object by an illustration pointed at the topic, without indicating whom you are hitting, but continuing your sermon as though you were utterly unconscious of the effect of your blow. When I was settled at Indianapolis, nobody was allowed to say a word on the subject of slavery. They were all red-hot out there then; and one of the elders said, “ If an abolitionist comes here, I will head a mob to put him down.” I was a young preacher. I had some pluck; and I felt, and it grew in me, that that was a subject that ought to be preached upon; but I knew that just as sure as I preached an abolition sermon they would blow me up sky high, and my usefulness in that parish would be gone. Yet I was determined they should hear it, first or last. The question was, “ How shall I do it?” I recollect one of the earliest efforts I made in that direction was in a sermon on some general topic. It was necessary to illustrate a point, and I did it by picturing a father ransoming his son from captivity among the Algerines, and glorying in his love of liberty and his fight against bondage. They all- thought I was going to apply it to slavery, but I did not. I applied it to my subject, and it passed off; and they all drew a long breath. It was not long before I had another illustration from that quarter. And so, before I had been there a year, I had gone over all the sore spots of slavery, in illustrating the subjects of Christian experience and doctrine. It broke the ice. You may say that that was not the most honour able way, and that it was a weakness. It may have been so; but I conquered them by that very weakness. If you find that it is necessary to do a thing, make up your mind to do it. If you cannot accomplish it in the very best way, do it by the next best, and so on; but see to it that it is done by the best means at your command. Go to the bottom of it, and work at it until you attain the desired result. Thus, in using an illustration pointed at a certain fault or weakness among your people, as I have done a thousand times (and I speak within bounds), never let it be known that you are aiming at any particular individual. Sometimes a person will say to me, “There is great distress in such a family, and they will be in your church; can’t you say something that will be useful to them? “ If I were to bring that case right before the congregation, in all its personal details, it would scandalise the Church, and repel the very people whom I wanted to help. But suppose, while I am preaching, I imagine a case of difference between husband and wife, who are, perhaps, hard, suspicious, and unforgiving toward each other, and I take the subject of God’s forgiveness, and illustrate it by the conduct of two couples, one of which stands on a high and noble plane, and the other on a low, selfish plane. They do not suppose that I know anything about their difficulty, because, when I am hitting a man with an illustration, I never look at him. But such a man or woman will go home, and say, “Why, if somebody had been telling him of my case, he could not have hit it more exactly.” They take it to heart, and it is blessed unto them. I have seen multitudes of such cases. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 75: 1.G 10. RHETORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS ======================================================================== Rhetorical Illustrations. You may go down to the brook under the willows and angle for the trout that everybody has been trying to catch, but in vain. You go splashing and tearing along, throwing in your pole, line and all. Do you think you can catch him that way? No, indeed; you must begin afar oft and quietly; if need be, drawing yourself along on the grass, and perhaps even on your belly, until you come where through the quivering leaves you see the flash of the sun, and then slowly and gently you throw your line around, so that the fly on its end falls as light as a gossamer upon the placid surface of the brook. The trout will think, “ That is not a bait thrown to catch me; there is nobody there,” and he rises to the fly, takes it, and you take him. So there are thousands of persons in the world that you will take if they do not know that you are after them, but whom you could not touch if they suspected your purpose. Illustrations are in valuable for this kind of work, and there is nothing half so effective. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 76: 1.G 11. THEY EDUCATE THE PEOPLE ======================================================================== They Educate the People. I notice that in a prayer-meeting which has grown up under a minister who illustrates, all the members of the church illustrate too. They all begin to see visions, and to catch likenesses and resemblances. This becomes a habit, and it is to them a pathfinder or a starfinder, as it were. It leads men to look at truth, not only in one aspect, but in all its bearings, and to make analogies and illustrations for themselves, and thus brings them into the truth. By this means you bring up your congregation to understand the truth more easily than you would by any other method. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 77: 1.G 12. NECESSITY OF VARIETY ======================================================================== Necessity of Variety. But to continue illustrations for any considerable time, you must draw them from various sources. To do this you must study the natural world, the different phases of human society, and the life of the household, in moral colours. These are inexhaustible sources from which to draw the needful instruction. If you are preaching to pedants, you may properly enough illustrate by the ancient classics; but if you are preaching to common people you must not confine yourself to that course, although it is allowable, once in a while, to use some illustration drawn from the heroes of ancient history and mythology. But what may be called scholarly illustrations are not generally good for the common people. They may serve to impress the more ignorant with a sense of your knowledge, but that is not what you are called to preach for. That would be a poor business. In the development of this faculty of illustration it is necessary to know the philosophy of it. All illustrations, to be apt, should touch your people where their level is. I do not know that this art can be learned; but I may suggest that it is a good thing, in looking over an audience, to cultivate the habit of seeing illustrations in them. If I see a seaman sitting among my audience, I do not say, “ I will use him as a figure/ and apply it person ally; “but out of him jumps an illustration from the sea, and it comes to seek me out. If there be a watchmaker present that I happen to recognize, my next illustration will very likely be from horology; though he will be utterly unconscious of the use I have made of him. Then I see a school-mistress, and my next illustration will be out of school-teaching. Thus, where your audience is known to you, the illustration ought not simply to meet your wants as a speaker, but it should meet the wants of your congregation it should be a help to them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 78: 1.G 13. HOMELY ILLUSTRATIONS ======================================================================== Homely Illustrations. You must not be afraid to illustrate truths in an undignified manner. Young gentlemen, where you cannot help yourselves, you have a right to be dignified; but this cant and talk about dignity is the most shabby and miserable pretence of pride and of an artificial culture. There is nothing so dignified as a man in earnest. It is that which approves itself to the moral consciousness of every hearer. If, besides that, you are naturally graceful and handsome, and your thoughts flow in a certain high order, so much the better; but if they do not, and you assume the pretence of it, and put on the mask of these things without having the inward soul, you are base. Now, in respect to truth, do not be ashamed to explain it by homely illustrations. Do not be ashamed to talk to the miller about his mill, or to the ploughman about his plough, and about the grubs that are under it, and about every part of it. If you are going to be a master in your business, you must know about all these things yourself. Having eyes, you must see; having ears, you must hear; and having a heart, you must understand. A minister ought to be the best informed man on o the face of the earth. He ought to see everything, inquire about everything, and be interested in every thing. You may ask, “ Shall I treasure up illustrations? “ Yes; if that is your way, you may do so; if not, you will very soon find it out. You must know what is the best method for yourself. You cannot pattern on anybody else. Imitations are always poor stuff. You must find out the thing meant for you, and then do the best you can. You must be faithful in the place where God put you, and for which you are equipped. A minister is not a man to know books alone. He must know books, and study them profoundly. You must be conversant with the thoughts and deeds of the noble minds of every age of the world. There is much for you in history and in libraries, in the discourse of your equals, in the conversation of scholarly men. But this fact ought you not to overlook nor to neglect, that you are God’s shepherds, for the sheep and for the lambs as well. You ought to know about the woman’s spinning-wheel, about the weaver’s loom and every part of it. You ought to know about the gardener’s thoughts, his ambitions and feelings. You ought to know what is done in the barn, in the cellar, in the vineyard, and everywhere. You ought to know and understand a naturalist’s enthusiasm when he finds a new flower or a new bug, that ecstasy is almost like a heaven of heavens to the apocalyptic John! You must study men, women, and children, their weaknesses and their strong sides. You must live among men, and be sentient and conscious of what they are, and what they think about. And when you come to preach, it is for you to draw an illustration in the range where your hearers live, whether it be high or low; and you must change them continually, providing now for some, and now for others. But they must always be on a level with your audience, so that they will surge back and draw your hearers to you. You must bring people to yourself, and not wait for them to come. As well might a new bucket of white oak, newly hooped, the very best bucket to be had, expect that water shall come up from the well to its level, while it simply hangs over the well-curb; it must go down to the water and bring it up. You must go down to your people. There must be a place where your yarn is joined on to their yarn, and it must be joined in one common thread. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 79: 1.G 14. ILLUSTRATIONS MUST BE APT ======================================================================== Illustrations must be apt. Let me say to you, that, in using illustrations, you must be sure to make them always apposite. If you should undertake to “ work ship “ in an audience where there is a good old sea-captain, and you should make a mistake, and speak as though the taffrail was the rudder, he would feel contempt for you. If I should hear a politician say that Job said, “ Every tub must stand upon its own bottom,” I should laugh at him, and his illustration and quotation would not do me much good. When you are talking about matters that men know about, you must know just as much as they do. Never let a man in your congregation detect you in an in accuracy if you can help it. If you speak about making wine, be sure you know about making it. (To do that, it is not necessary that you should know how to drink it, however!) Therefore, always be learning. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 80: 1.G 15. HOW TO GET INFORMATION ======================================================================== How to Get Information. There are two points about learning. In the first place, never ask a question, if you can help it; and secondly, never let a thing go unknown for the lack of asking a question, if you cannot help it. Think it out first. Dig it out, study it, go around it, question yourself, and get it out. If you really cannot, then turn and ask somebody. See every thing, and see it right, and use it as you go along. A man’s study should be everywhere, in the house, in the street, in the fields, and in the busy haunts of men. You see a bevy of children in the window, and you can form them into a picture in your mind. You may see the nurse, and the way she is dressed. You try to describe it. You look again, and make yourself master of the details. Byand-by it will come up to you again itself, and you will be able to make an accurate picture of it, having made your observation accurate. Little by little, this habit will grow, until by-and-by, in later life, you will find that you command respect by your illustrations just as much as by arguments and analogies. ILLUSTRATIONS MUST BE PROMPT. Then, again, while elaborate allegories and fables are very good things, and may be used with discretion, illustrations, so called, ought always to be clean, accurate, and quick. Do not let them dawdle on your hands. There is nothing that tires an audience so much as when they have to think faster than you do. You have got to keep ahead of them. Do you know what it is to walk behind slow people and tread on their heels? How it tires and vexes one! You know how people are vexed with a preacher who is slow and dilatory, and does not get along. He tires people out, for though he may have only six or seven words of his sentence completed, they know the whole of it; and what is the use, then, of his uttering the rest? With illustrations, there should be energy and vigour in their delivery. Let them come with a crack, as when a driver would stir up his team. The horse does not know anything about it until the crack of the whip comes. So with an illustration. Make it sharp. Throw it out. Let it come better and better, and the best at the last, and then be done with it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 81: 1.G 16. THE HABIT OF ILLUSTRATING ======================================================================== The Habit of Illustrating. In regard to the gift of illustrating, and the education of it, it is the same as with all other things. Some men are born mathematicians; and whatever they do, that will be the strongest impulse in their intellectual natures. Other men are a little less endowed in that direction, and others still less; but almost everybody has enough of the arithmetical faculty on which to build an education. It is so also in poetry and in music. You are educable. In regard to illustration, you will find persons who are instinctively given to it Many of you will find it natural to you. But do not be discouraged, even when it is natural, if you do not at once succeed. Why should you succeed before you learn the rudiments of your art? Why should you be able to run before you can walk? Practise by yourselves to imaginary audiences; make illustrations, and use them; train yourselves to it. If once or twice on every Sabbath-day you can make a fitting illustration, and see that you have gained ground by it, take courage, and you will improve day by day and year by year. I can say, for your encouragement, that while illustrations are as natural to me as breathing, I use fifty now to one in the early years of my ministry. For the first six or eight years, perhaps, they were comparatively few, and far apart. But I developed a tendency that was latent in me, and educated myself in that respect; and that, too, by study and practice, by hard thought, and by a great many trials, both with the pen, and extemporaneously by myself, when I was walking here and there. What ever I have gained in that direction is largely the result of education. You need not, therefore, be discouraged if it does not come to you immediately. You cannot be men at once in these things. This world is God’s anvil, and whatever is fit for the battle has been beaten out on that anvil, and it has felt the fire before it has felt the blow. So that whatever you would get in this world that is worth having, you must work for. Do not be cast down. Be brave, industrious, disinterested, simple, and truehearted. Whatever God means to give you for your usefulness will certainly come to you. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 82: 1.G 17. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. Do you think the use of these encyclopedias of illustrations is honest? MR. BEECHER. Why not? STUDENT. Because one ought to make his illustrations himself. I should say. MR. BEECHER. That is purely a question with yourself. If a man says he would rather take the pains and time to work out his illustrations himself, he has a perfect right to do so. It is just the same question that comes up in everything else. “ Do you think a man ought to copy pictures, or to study from nature?” One school will tell you one thing, and another school another thing. It is simply a matter of preference. I should not borrow my illustrations a great while if I could help it; but if you find that you accomplish your designs in preaching, and at the same time improve yourself by practising in that way, it is allowable. Q. Is it best to give your illustrations extemporaneously, even when the sermon is written? MR. BEECHER. Yes, and no. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Some of your carefully written-out illustrations would die between your at tempting to remember and attempting to originate. There is nothing worse than to get into the place where those two processes meet. You will hear a person say, “I have either to read my sermons, or else make brief notes and not read at all.” The difficulty is, that if you have your notes well written out, and then look up from them and undertake to extemporize, you will be extemporizing, as it were, with one eye, and thinking of what is in your notes with the other; so that you will really rest on neither, but go down between the two processes. No man can extemporize until he cuts the cord that holds him to his sermon. You cannot extemporize while you are thinking of anything other than the impulse which is carrying you on. Q. Would you advocate special services for children at times? MR. BEECHER, Yes. It is a very excellent plan indeed. I think every parish should have a periodical service for children. Dr. Storrs has had a regular series of discourses for his children, and it has been one of the most excellent features of his ministry in Brooklyn. Q. About how much poetry is necessary to spice a sermon? MR. BEECHER. Of quotations, I should say, gene rally, none. Of poetical treatment and illustration, it “depends.” Poetry, you know, is not a thing that you can measure and put in by quantity. If your theme suggests illustrations which are poetical, take and use them; but to determine that you will have a definite quantity of them will kill inspiration in the very egg. Q. Is there not danger of getting into a loose way of sermonizing, by not preparing your illustrations beforehand, but just taking them as they strike you in the pulpit? MR. BEECH ER. Yes; and there is danger of get ting into too severe a habit, if you prepare in the other way. There is danger an} way. You can not prepare in any way so that you can say to your self, “Now I am sure of success; I need not <nve O myself any further responsibility.” For, if there is a working man on earth, it is the man who under takes to preach continually and steadily to an or dinary congregation. Let me say to you, gentlemen, Never be frightened because you have preached a bad sermon; but, at the same time, never, under any circumstances whatever, preach a bad sermon on ] mi-pose, or by negligence or carelessness. If you are not in a good condition for work, if you are sick, never apologize, but do the best you can, even though knowing you are doing it very poorly. That is not a pleasant experience, as I can bear witness. Preach the best you can, under the circumstances, without apology. If you are preaching to but six people, do the best thing you can do. Do it always and everywhere. Q. Is it a proper thing to make an audience laugh by an illustration? MR. BEECHER. Never turn aside from a laugh any more than you would from a cry. Go ahead on your Master’s business, and do it well. And remember this, that every faculty in you was placed there by the dear Lord God for his service. Never try to raise a laugh for a laugh’s sake, or to make men merry as a piece of sensationalism, when you are preaching on solemn things. That is allowable at a picnic, but not in a pulpit where you are preaching to men in regard to God and their own destiny. But if mirth comes up naturally, do not stifle it; strike that chord, and particularly if you want to make an audience cry. If I can make them laugh, I do not thank anybody for the next move; I will make them cry. Did you ever see a woman carrying a pan of milk quite full, and it slops over on one side, that it did not immediately slop over on the other also? Q. If a man “ slops over “ on some occasions, is he not liable to “ slop over “ continually? MR. BEECHER. Not long in one place, if he does it continually. If you take the liberty, however, from what I have said, to quote stale jokes, if you make queer turns because they will make people laugh, and to show you have power over the congregation, you will prove yourselves contemptible fellows. But if, when you are arguing any question, the thing comes upon you so that you see a point in a ludicrous light, you can sometimes flash it at your audience, and accomplish at a stroke what you were seeking to do by a long train of argument; and that is entirely allowable. In such a case do not attempt to suppress laughter. It is a part of the nature that God gave us, and which we can use in his service. When you are fighting the devil, shoot him with anything. Q. Would not a man, under such circumstances. l>e in danger of overturning just what ho was trying to accomplish? Mi?. BEKCIIER. No; unless he accompanies it very poorly. If a minister is earnest and honest, and a man of God, if he bears about him the savour of the heavenly world and the benevolence of this life, his people will know it. If you know the difference between a man who is in earnest and one who is merely playing, do you suppose the people will respond to the superficial and lower qualities, and not to the greater and nobler ones in a true preacher? Q. How long would you advise a young man to preach? Mr. BEECHER. As long as he can make his people take this sermon. That is very much like asking how long a coat you should have made for people, in general. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 83: 1.H 00. HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING ======================================================================== Chapter 8: HEALTH, AS RELATED TO PREACHING. has been, in recent times, a great deal more information diffused among the common people on the subject of health than formerly, and men live more wholesomely, and all the processes of society are in better accordance with the laws of life. Men have more intelligent ideas of what to avoid and what to seek. There is one relation, however, to which I shall more particularly confine myself to-day, which has been largely left out of the popular consideration, and that is the relation of health to brain- work. If you take a full stem of wheat in harvest- time, and shake out all the kernels of wheat, what is left is chaff and straw. So, if you take from a man his brain-power, all that is left of him is chaff and straw; that is, it is nothing but animal. All there is of a man lies in the nerve and brain-power; and while the business of life is to take care of the bone and muscle, the stomach, the liver, the lungs, and the heart, that is only because this is the way to take care of that which is, after all, the sovereign, and for which all these other things are merely servants and messengers and purveyors. It is the brain-power, or the mental power as expressed through the brain, that causes man to surpass the lower creations around him. Now, it is not very difficult for a man to live in the enjoyment of good health who is born with a good constitution, which he has not in youth drained and sapped, and who has come into a noble and virtuous manhood, and into a profession that will keep him within proper bounds of exertion. But you must remember that you are going to be under iire. Let a man be in the midst of a desperate naval engagement, where the shot and shell are filling the air, and the splinters flying thick as hail, he will find it is not so easy to pass unscathed. Let a man be in the midst of an awakened community, where all the members of two hundred families have a right to go to his fire and light their torches; where he is obliged to preach Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, and Saturday, and twice on Sunday; where he is visited by all; where he must preside at prayer-meetings and social gatherings; and where he has to be a perpetual fountain, out of which so many different hydrants are drawing their supplies, then to keep one’s health is a very different thing. There are few men in the ministry who live at one half their competency or power. They do not know how to make their machines work at a high rate of speed, with great executive energy, without damage to themselves. It is an art to be healthy at all; but to be healthy when you are run at the top of your speed all the time is a great art indeed. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 84: 1.H 01. WHAT IS HEALTH ======================================================================== What is Health? Let me tell you that when I speak of health I do not mean merely not being sick. I divide people into, first, the sick folk; secondly, the not-sick folk; thirdly, the almost-healthy folk; and fourthly and they are the elect the folk that are healthy. What I mean by "health" is such a feeling or tone in every part of a man’s body or system that he has the natural language of health. What is the natural language of health? Look at four-months-old puppies, and see. Look at kittens, and see. Look at children, from the time they are three or four or five years old. Look at young men, when they are at school and at the academy. They cannot eat enough, nor holloa enough, nor run enough, nor wrestle enough. They are just full. It is buoyancy. It is the insatiable desire of play and of exertion. The nature of the human constitution, in a state of health, is to be a creative instrument or agent; and the necessity in a man to be creating outside of himself is one of the noblest tokens of health. When one has been kept at work and under the yoke, he has played off his surplus energy in the various channels of his business activities. We do not expect a man to bound and caper about, for the simple reason that he has other legitimate channels to work off his steam in. But let him get a vacation, He goes to the White Mountains. He has three or four days of uncaring rest and nights of long sleep, and then lie awakes to the stimulus of the mountains. "Well," he says, " I feel like a boy again;" which is only another way of saying, " I feel my health." His system is not perverted. He is rested in all his parts, and that vast amount of energy and vitality which he generates, hut which in the city was worked off in professional labours and social relations, is now being collected again the measure of the instrument is filled, and it pours over. A man in health is a fountain, and he Hows over at the eye, at the lip, and all the time, by every species of action and demonstration. I have often seen what are called over-shot wheels, where they have a very small and weak stream. They get a wheel of large diameter, and the buckets are made in a peculiar form, sloping from the mouth up. Then comes a little trickling stream which pours down into the big buckets its slow accumulation of water-weight, and it begins to turn the wheel very moderately and gradually, and so it goes. That is about the condition in which average men are working, with just enough power to turn an over shot wheel. But if you have a great, full, strong stream, the mere impact of which on the wheel is enough to turn it, then the wheel is made under shot, and the water comes dashing against the breast and bottom of it, and around it goes promptly and rapidly. The miller says, " What do I care? I have got the whole stream. There is no use in economizing my water; I will let it now/ and the water runs all the time. There are very few men that can afford to run on an under-shot wheel. Al most all men are economists of their resources, because they have not this real high health. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 85: 1.H 02. HEALTH AND THOUGHT ======================================================================== Health and Thought. As to the direct bearing of this bodily condition 011 your coming duties, let me say, first, men in a high state of health invariably see more sharply the truth that they are after. They see its relations and its fitness. They have a sense of direction, combination, and of the power of relations of truth to emotion. The old-fashioned way of preparing a sermon was where a man sat down with his pipe, and smoked and " thought," as he called it, and after one or two or three hours his wife saying to everybody in the meantime, " Dear man, he is up-stairs studying; he has to study so hard! "- in which he has been in a muggy, fumbling state of mind, he at last comes out with the product of it for the pulpit. It is like unleavened bread, doughy, dumpy, and heavy, hard to eat, and harder to digest. There has been nothing put in it to vitalize it. But when a man is in a perfect state of health, no matter where he goes, he is sensitive to social influence and to social wants. He discovers men’s necessities instinctively. He is very quick to choose the instrument by which to minister to those necessities, so that when he goes to his study he has something to do, and he knows what it is. He is accurate in his thinking. Is there no difference in the varying moods of the draughtsman? Take him with a bilious headache. Do you suppose lie can make his strokes so that every line of his drawing shall express thought? Some people say, " Why, there are times when I can do more in a day than in a week at other times; " which is true, be cause at those periods the system is in a perfect condition of health. Suppose you could have that condition always, what workers you would be! How it would sharpen your comprehension of the various relations of truth, and with what ease could you see and handle them! For all these things are largely dependent upon health. You cannot drudge them out. Men are said to have genius. What is genius but a condition of fibre, and a condition of health in fibre? It is nothing in the world but automatic thinking. And what is automatic thinking? It is thought that thinks itself, instead of being run up or worried up to think. Whoever thinks without J thinking is, in fact, a genius. In music, it is said that it "makes itself." In arithmetic or mechanics the demonstration " comes " to you. You do not think it out, except automatically. Real thinking ought to be automatic action, and almost unconscious. Under such circumstances your intuitions and your sudden automatic thinking, nine times out of ten, will be true; and when you send slow-footed logic afterward to measure the footsteps and the way over which your thoughts have travelled, logic will come back and report, " Well, I did not believe it; but he was right, after all." So, then, for sharpness and accuracy and complexity of thinking, in which much of your life ought to lie, you require the best conditions of health in the system by which you think. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 86: 1.H 03. HEALTH IN SPEAKING. ======================================================================== Health in Speaking. The next step is where you come to speak what you have thought. You know how beautifully some men write, and how poorly they deliver; how well they prepare their materials, and yet their materials when prepared are of no force whatever. They are beautiful arrows of silver; golden tipped are they, and winged with the feathers of the very bird of paradise. But there is no bow to draw the arrows to the head and shoot them strongly home, and so they all fall out of the sheath down in front of the pulpit or platform. People say, "Those sermons are lit to be printed/ and they are fit for nothing else. They are essays. They are sections of books. But what the preacher wants is the power of having something that is worth saying, and then the power of saying it. He is to hold the light up so that a blind man cannot help feeling that it is falling on his orbs. He needs to put the truth in such a way that if a man were asleep it would wake him up; and if he were dead, it would give him resurrection for the hour. A man that breaks his backbone every time he explodes a vowel, how can he do it? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 87: 1.H 04. POPULAR ORATORS ======================================================================== Popular Orators. Who are the speakers that move the crowd men after the pattern of Whitefield, what are they? They arc. almost always men of very large physical development, men of very strong digestive powers, and whose lungs have great aerating capacity. They arc men of great vitality and recuperative force. They are men who, while they have a sufficient thought power to create all the material needed, have preeminently the, explosive power by which they can thrust their materials out at men. They are catapults, and men go down before them. Of course you will find men now and then, thin and shrill voiced, who are popular speakers. Sometimes men are organized with a compact nervous temperament and are slender-framed, while they have a certain concentrated earnestness, and in narrow lines they move with great intensity. John Randolph was such a man. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 88: 1.H 05. THRUST-POWER ======================================================================== Thrust-Power. I desire to call your attention to this force-giving power, that which lends impetuosity, that which gives what I might call limgc to a man’s preaching. Why should you waste your time every Sunday morning and night, without being conscious of having done anything? You can afford to do it occasionally, as there is wastage in all systems; but a man who goes on preaching when there is no evidence of accomplishment is like a windmill that the boys put on the top of a house; it goes around and around, but it grinds nothing below. Preaching is business, young gentlemen. It means the hardest kind of work. There is nothing else in this world that requires so many resources, so much thought, so much saga city, so much constant application, so much freshness, such intensity of conception within, and such power of execution without, as genuine preaching. Ministers sometimes think they do their duty by resting chiefly on their faithful pastoral labours, but they do not half bring out the preaching-power, when they rely on the indirect and social influences that are connected with it. One should help the other. You arc to bring out the preaching-element, if it is in you; for, in this age, preaching is almost everything. This is pre-eminently the talking age. A preacher must be a good talker, arid must have something in him that is worth talking about. People say, " Show me a man of deeds, and not of words." You might as well say, " Show me a field of corn; I don’t care about clouds and rain." Talking makes thought and feeling, and thought and feeling make action. Show me a man of words who knows how to incite noble deeds! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 89: 1.H 06. HEALTH AS A CHEERING INFLUENCE ======================================================================== Health as a Cheering Influence. But, once more, it is impossible for a man who 1? an invalid to sustain a cheerful and hopeful ministry among his people. An invalid looks with a sad eye upon human life. He may be sympathetic, but it is almost always with the shadows that arc in the world. He will give out moaning and drowsy hymns. He will make prayers that are almost all piteous. It may not be a minister’s fault if he be afflicted and ill, and administers his duties in mourning and sadness, but it is a vast misfortune for his people. If there is anything in this world that is the product, of wholesome, healthy souls, it is the hope giving and joyful comforter. If there was ever a system of joy and hop:- in the world, prefigured by the prophets, and afterward characterized by the Sun of Righteousness, it is that ardent and hope-inspiring gospel that you are to preach. You are not sent out to tell of the dungeon and the pit, the shackle and the yoke except as redeemed by the power of Jesus Christ into rest and peace. And the very product of the gospel which you are to carry to mankind is hope and cheer. It is good news. You rind men struggling with cares. They stand where a dozen ways meet, in utter perplexity, and they want the best advice you can give. Your Sunday ought to bring this witness from your flock every single month of your ministry: "If it had not been for the refreshment that I got on Sundays I never could have carried my burdens." The sweetest praises that ministers can ever have are from the house of trouble, from men in bankruptcy, from men hunted by perverse fortune almost to the bounds of suicide. They come to you, and say, " Sir, it was the cheer and comfort of your preaching that helped me through, or I never could have endured it." That will be better than any guerdon and any compliment. We are sent to men that are cheerless, men in distress, men who are burdened; and we have no business to have any other ministry than that which is based on the sweet teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must learn ardour and fervour from St. Paul’s interpretation of them. We must tell of love, hope, courage, and the cheering prospect of a blessed immortality. What business have you to turn all this into a minor symphony? But you cannot do otherwise, unless you keep your selves healthy, cheerful, hopeful, and buoyant. You must call in to your assistance all the help you can derive from the highest conditions of bodily health. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 90: 1.H 07. HEALTHFUL VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY ======================================================================== Healthful Views of Christianity. Then there is a relation of this question in another direction. I think the minister of a parish, who has been there for five years, ought to impress upon the young people of his parish the practical idea, that to be a Christian is to be the happiest person in the world. Men say, " Let us have our enjoyment here, and have a good time; then, when we have had it, and tasted what there is to be tasted, we had better be pious." That is about the idea of it, It is a gloomy and dismal thing; but, to a certain extent, we are to blame for this false notion. Now it seems to me that we ought to make known what is unquestionably the truth, namely, that Christianity aims only at a nobler style of manhood, and at a better and happier style of living. Christianity means friendship carried up into a sphere where by the natural man you could never elevate it. It means the purest enjoyments of earth as well as heaven. It means that life shall blossom like Aaron’s rod. And every man who is a true Christian is one who has lived up to the measure of his competency, in a bright and joyful life, compared with which all other lives are low and ignoble. The Apostle Paul, after going through a long line of exhortations to virtue, finally wound up l>y saying, " Whatever is lovely and of good report, think on these things." A true minister, in order to inspire his congregation with this noble conception of a Christian character and a Christian life, must have something in him. He cannot go around with lead in his shoes, nor yet in his head. He cannot drudge and complain. A man of God ought to strike men among whom he moves as being more manly than anybody else; certainly, never less. You should bear in mind that you are twice ordained, once, when your mother laid her hand in love upon your just born head, after giving you your organization and nature; and again, by the Holy Ghost, later in life, to give you a fuller development. If you are not a man, what business have you in the ministry? You have mistaken your vocation. You may do to make some other things, but you will not be a maker of men. It takes a man to refashion men. You cannot do it unless you have some sort of vigour, vitality, versatility, moral impulse, and social power in you. And if you have these things, how they will win! How men will want to come to you: They tell me that the pulpit is losing its power; that religion is going under, and that science is to rule. I will put genuine manly religion against all the science in the world. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 91: 1.H 08. HEALTH AS A SWEETENER OF WORK ======================================================================== Health as a Sweetener of Work. I have seen a great deal of life, and on all of its sides. I have seen the depths of poverty, and I have seen competency. I have seen the extremity of solitariness and the crowds of a city, both at home and abroad. I have seen what art has done, and whatever is to be seen in the wilderness. I have had youth and middle age, and now I am an old man. I have seen it all, and I bear witness that, while there are single moments of joy in other matters that perhaps any a man up to the summit of feeling, yet, for steadfast and repetitious experience, there is no pleasure in this world comparable to that which a man has who habitually stands before an audience with an errand of truth, which he feels in every corner of his soul and in every fibre of his body, arid to whom the Lord has given liberty of utterance, so that he is pouring out the whole manhood in him upon his congregation. Nothing in the world is comparable to that. It goes echoing on in you after you get through. Once in a while I preach sermons that leave me in such a delightful state of mind that I do not get over it for two days; and I wonder that I am not a better man. I feel it all day, Sunday and Monday, and there is not an organ in the world that makes music so grand to me as I feel in such supreme hours and moments. But I am conscious how largely the physical element of healthfulness enters into this experience. When I am depressed in body and heavy in mind, I do not get it. You cannot expect either these exceptional, higher consummations, or the strong, steady flow of a joyful relish for your work, unless you cultivate a robust and healthful manhood. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 92: 1.H 09. PRACTICAL HINTS ======================================================================== Practical Hints. I will now suggest to you some practical directions, which are very largely the result of my personal experience, and which may be profitable to you. You must excuse any egotism I may exhibit. As I understand it, these lectures are nothing but a branch of the regular chair of Pastoral Theology, and I am to explain here in its practical form that which, in its philosophical form, Professor Hoppin gives you in his instructions at other times. Experience is always egotism, and that is what I am here to give you. To begin with, I will say that I had this advantage, that my father was a dyspeptic. From my earliest childhood I noticed the great watchfulness and skill with which he took care of himself, and now and then he dropped words of advice. When I went into the ministry, I remembered some of his maxims and some of his incidental utterances. They led me to think about caring for my own health; I did not know much about it, but I thought about it. I "watched " it, as the engineers say on the road. A good engineer watches both the engine and the road. And now, as the result of between thirty and forty years of incessant preaching, I give you these hints in regard to the care of your health. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 93: 1.H 10. MUSCULAR STRENGTH NOT ENOUGH ======================================================================== Muscular Strength not Enough. When I first began I had an impression that if I had good bone and muscle, I should be all right. I very soon learned that it was possible for a man to take too much exercise, and that a man could be built up physically at the expense of his brain. You are sufficiently acquainted with aquatic and other sports to know that you may over-train a man, so that he is carried beyond his highest power. Now, if you undertake, as scholars, very violent exercise, according to the exaggerated idea of muscular Christianity, you will very soon use up all the vitality of your system in the bone-and-muscle development, and it will leave you, not better, but less fitted for intellectual exertion. Yet there must be enough care given to bone and muscle to furnish a good platform, on which your artillery is to stand. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 94: 1.H 11. THE ART OF EATING ======================================================================== The Art of Eating. Next comes the stomach. In regard to that, everybody feels that he must not be a glutton nor a gormand, but there is very little discrimination and very little observation as to the quantity and quality and the times and seasons of eating. Preachers may be divided into two great classes, the sanguineous class, who cannot eat much if they are going to think or speak; and the class who have the extreme nervous temperament, who cannot speak or work unless they do eat. On Sunday morning, when I wake, my first thought is, that it is Sunday morning; and the very idea of it takes away my appetite. I go down, drink a cup of coffee, and eat an egg and half a slice of toast. That is all I can eat. There is just enough to sustain my system. Then I preach, and if I have not done very well, I am hungry; but if I have done very well, I cannot eat much dinner. That is hecause there is a reaction of the nervous influence of the system. The whole system is working so much by the brain and the nerves that the stomach does not crave anything. Just as great grief, or fear, or any other extreme passion, takes away appetite, so does active preaching. Ordinarily, I take but a moderate dinner on Sunday. Supper with me is at five o clock in the afternoon, and I usually take a cup of tea and a small piece of cracker. That is all I can take. Then I go to my evening work, and when I get through, I sometimes am satisfied to take nothing but an orange, which I eat to give my stomach something to do until morning, and to keep it from craving for often a fit of craving will give one a nightmare as quickly as overfeeding will. At other times I feel a strong appetite, and then I eat. Per haps once out of five Sundays I eat more just after preaching, morning or evening, than I do all the rest of the day put together. The system indicates it, and therefore I am not harmed by it. It does not disturb my sleep, and digestion goes on perfectly. Now the point I take is, not that you shall follow this, but that you shall find out, accurately, in regard to your own eating, what obstructs and what does not obstruct your mental operations. If you go to your study after a hearty breakfast, and you find it takes you from eight o clock to eleven before you really get into your work, you may be pretty sure that you have overloaded your stomach, and that the energies of your system have been so busy in the work of digestion that you could not call them off to do 1 train-work. But if you get up from the table after a comparatively light meal, which requires but little digestion, and when you go into your study find that you can apply yourself at once to your labour, it is because you have eaten in due proportion to the needs of your system. Eating is to the work of the human body just what the firing up of an engine is to travelling. Eating is a means to an end. It is not a habit nor a social custom merely. It is not a question of luxury. Do men eat stupidly, and simply because they are hungry? You eat to make working force; and as the engineer keeps his eye all the time on the steam-gauge to know the number of pounds of pressure, and to regulate it to the various conditions of going up or down grade or on a level, and to the number of passengers he is carrying, so does a man eat, or so ought he to eat, all the time gauging himself. You have, in fact, to eat much or little, according to the work you have to do. When you come back from a journey, you must be careful not to overwork yourself, and not to cat too much. If you are in regular harness and are working, you ought to know what you shall cat. Your business is to eat so that you can think and work, and not for self-indulgence only. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 95: 1.H 12. QUANTITY OF SLEEP ======================================================================== Quantity of Sleep. The same holds good in respect to sleep. Many men, going into the ministry, have broken down from want of sleep. I will say a few things on that point. In the first place, sleep, that was reckoned involuntary, like many other involuntary things, can, to a certain extent, be brought under the dominion of habit and the will. There is no doubt but that the human will is the strongest power in this world next to death. A man who says, " By the grace of God I WILL," and who feels it in his bones, in his muscles, and in his whole being, can do almost anything. Now it may seem a little singular, but it is true, that if you are possessed of a very nervous organization you will need less sleep than if you are of a phlegmatic temperament. If a man is dull, lethargic, and slow, eight or nine hours of sleep is necessary for him. But, if he is nervous, lithe, thin, quick, vividly sensitive, so that he is all the time letting out sparks somewhere, he will require but from five to seven hours sleep. That seems very strange, but it is just as simple as anything can be. Sleep is an active operation, during which the process of assimilation goes on. Now, the nervous man eats quickly, works quickly, and sleeps quickly. He does just as much work while he is sleeping six hours as the lethargic man does in seven or eight. A man who is slow and plethoric, who, takes a breath before every word, and who never has a quick motion, can never sleep quickly. He will be an hour in doing up as much work in his sleep as another man will do in forty minutes. The temperament acts throughout. Never gauge the duration of your sleep by the time any one else sleeps. Some men will tell you that John Wesley had only so much sleep, Hunter, the great physiologist, so much, and Napoleon so much sleep. When the Lord made you, as a general thing, he did not make Napoleons. Every man carries within himself a Mount Sinai, a revealed law, written for himself separately. You must administer sleep to yourselves according to your temperament, your constitution, and your wants. Something you may know presumptively, but principally you must learn by experience. Sometimes when men get into hard work, they are apt to sleep too much. Others, again, are inclined to sleep too little. Let me say to you here, that of all dire mistakes among young gentlemen, night study is the greatest. There may be some of you that can carry that out well. Some men are so tough that nothing will seem to affect them detrimentally. But I think that more than eighty percent, of ministers who indulge in night study abbreviate their lives, weaken their tone, and take away from themselves the fulness of their power. It is bad to do it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 96: 1.H 13. BADLY REGULATED WORK ======================================================================== Badly Regulated Work. It is especially bad for a preacher to prepare his sermons on Saturday night. It is bad for a man to keep his brain at the top of its power from early on Saturday to late at night, so that he sleeps in a fiery dream of sermon. For then, he preaches on Sunday; and there are two days in which the brain is unintermittingly imr^letcd and stimulated. It is hot and feverish. Then, worse than all, comes what is called " Black Monday," a day upon which the minister throws oft" everything, and thus completely unstrings the bow. You must give yourselves intervals of rest and playtime. But never let an excitement have such a rest that you run clear down. The way to cure an excitement is to meet it with another one. If you have preached all the week, and are keyed up very high, and you say to yourself, " Now I must rest," and you rest a day, hut still the nervous excitement continues; and Sunday you call again upon your brain, which gives the response, you will, perhaps be carried over Monday; but by Tuesday you begin to come down, and you think the earth is not so bright as it formerly seemed. You begin to think that you have mistaken your vocation, and that you will turn farmer. Then you have gone down as far as you ought. Some begin to see the blue devils at that point. You must meet tire with fire. A new excitement, brought in from another quarter, however, and of a different nature, will meet the old one, and on the ashes of the past you will build up a new flame. I have sometimes had a whole month of undertone, because I let go and ran clear down, not knowing then how to meet one excitement with another, and thus carry myself along healthily. For the Sabbath-day, it seems to me that while it is important that you should train for thought and matter, it is only second in importance that you should train also for condition. Now, no man who studies during the last part of the week so that he comes to Sunday with only the refuse of what he has in him, making it his weakest day, can come up to the requirements of his duty. He is kept in a continual state of excitement, passing from one strain to another without interval. No man is wise who does it. Saturday should be a play-day. I make it a day, not of laziness, but of genial, social, pleasurable exhilaration. I go up street and see pleasant people. I go and look at pictures. I have a great many sources of enjoyment that many of you could not enjoy. I love to sec horses. I like to go on the street and see the different teams go by. I like to stand on the ferry-boat and see the splendid horses come on witli their great loads. I like a Dexter. I like all fine horses, but I like the dray-horses, too. There is such a sense of might and power with them. They are almost as interesting as a locomotive engine the finest thing man ever created, unless it be a watch. I like to go to Tiffany s. I ask, " What are your men doing to-day? " " Well," says Tiffany, " we will go down and see." We go down to the afoliers, watch the workmen silver-plating and engraving, and talk with them. It is a good thing for you to live close to common people, plain folks and working-men. It keeps you near to humanity as distinguished from artificiality and conventionalism. After I get home I enjoy myself quietly in the evening, and when Sunday comes I am impieted. I have fresh blood; and without training for condition, I have it. I feel like a race-horse. Some times I cannot wait for the time to come for me to go into the pulpit. I long to speak. But this result cannot be attained by studying yourselves up, and coining into church on Sunday quite dry and desiccated. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 97: 1.H 14. SLEEP AFTER WORK. ======================================================================== Sleep after Work. People have often asked me how I managed to sleep after preaching. Generally, I do not have any difficulty in getting to sleep. I can always sleep after a good sermon, and even bad ones do not keep me awake long. You must remember that the reason why a man cannot sleep after excitement is because his brain is gorged with blood. The blood is the stimulus which works the brain, and the brain draws to itself all the blood it can get. I always know whether my brain has been doing its work well or not. If I find my hands and feet warm, I say generally that the product of my thought is not worth much; and I begin to think there has been a waste of brain-material. But if my hands and feet grow chilly, and I have to wrap up all over, on account of the blood, which is the working force, being drawn away from the extremities to the brain, I know that the thinking power has been busy, has probably worked to some effect. You must deal with yourselves on this theory; whatever will distribute the blood to every part of your system will relieve the brain, and you will be able to go to sleep. In the first place, do not talk after preaching on Sun day nights. Do not go home and have a good time over what you have seen and heard. Many a minister uses himself up more by the after-piece than he does by the main performance. It is sweet to talk when you are in such fine condition! Everybody is there pouring out compliments upon you. But they are wasting you. You are like the cocoon of a silk worm, which they are unwinding, and in so doing they take the life out of you. You never get through your work. I owe what I know of horticulture to the study I gave it at short intervals, when I was preaching every day for two years, and twice on Sunday, besides doing revival and other work. I got out of the State Library of Indiana four or five volumes of Loudon’s works on agriculture and horticulture. I read them. There was a charm in reading even the names of the plants in the catalogues, although there was nothing very stimulating in it. It was like Webster’s Dictionary, where the connection is broken at every word, and yet it is intensely interesting to read. In that way I let myself down quietly, and then I could go to sleep. But suppose I cannot go to sleep? I get up from bed, and walk about the room without dressing my self. That is, I take an air-bath, and, if need be, I throw up the window, and keep on walking, not until I am chilled, but until I am pretty nearly chilled. The moment that any part of the human body is attacked, the vital forces rush to that part to repair any loss that may have taken place. If you take cold, the vital forces instantly attempt to establish the equilibrium. Bring cold to bear upon your body, and the vital forces instantly send out the blood to the part where the cold is, to restore the warmth, and that relieves the system. The blood ceases to be dammed up in the brain and in the large vessels. But suppose I cannot sleep then; what is to be done? I say to myself, " Now, you have- </ot to go to sleep; and the sooner you give up, the better it will be." So I walk into the bath-room, and turn on a little water, just enough to put my feet and ankles into; and it is very rare indeed that the obstinacy of my system resists that. This operation brings the blood down to the feet, and I can almost always get to sleep. If I cannot, I timi on a little more water and sit down in it. All this is treating one s-self physiologically, medically, so to speak, without medicine. It is treating one s-self according to correct principles for the sake of procuring sleep. If you do not sleep, first or last, your audience will; and therefore it is necessary that you should sleep for them, that they may keep awake to hear what you may have to say. More than that, when a man has gone through the paroxysm of the week, which is Sunday, it is necessary that he should, as soon as possible, be put into a state to go to work again. Therefore you should eat as you would lire an engine; and sleep, remembering that out of sleep comes the whole force of wakefulness, with the power you have in it. There are many other points that I had in mind, but I have already taken so much of your time that I will not detain you longer, but will merely await your questions. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 98: 1.H 15. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q, Will yon say a word as to the number of hours a man should spend in his study? How many hours a day, at the maximum? MR. BEECHEH. There is no absolute rule that can be given in all cases. I should think, however, that, at the maximum, a man can do as much in four hours work during the day as he needs to do. But it must be work. You can sometimes collect materials for your work, although you do not feel like working. You can ascertain the negative, if you cannot create the positive. Sometimes a man will study a whole day to find out that he cannot do a thing that he was counting on. But I do not think that any man can originate matter, and pursue a course of severe fruitful study, for more than four hours a day. I do not believe that he can average that. I think that ministers often attempt to study too much. If they would concentrate their power, and use it regularly, they would get out much more than by spreading it over so much ground. Q. Should one do much in the way of preparing a sermon on Monday? MR, BEECHER. No; unless he is going to preach on Monday night. Saturday and Monday ought to be inclined planes, the former a very inclined plane up to Sunday, and the latter an inclined plane away from it. There are a great many things that a man can do on Monday, which are necessary to be done, but he should not gorge his brain on that day. Q. Ought a man to prepare his sermons on Sunday morning, and make a practice of it? MR. BEECHER. If the Lord showed him that that was the best way of doing it, he should. I do not know whether you mean to be personal or not, but that is my habit. When I went to Lawrenceburg, I went thinking that I would do the best I could. I had the vague general instructions that are given, to " lay deep foundations, to study thoroughly, and to bring," as old Dr. Humphrey used to say, " nothing but the beaten oil into the sanctuary. I felt that this was connected with regular and incessant study during all the week. I tried to study so. I succeeded in studying, but I could not succeed in using what I had. On Sunday I could not do anything with what I had so laboriously dug out during the week. Of course, I increased my general stock of knowledge. Sometimes 1 would find that after working a subject up all the week, something else would take possession of me on Saturday, and I would have to preach it on Sunday to get rid of it. I felt ashamed and mortified, and began to fear I was on the way to superficiality. I made many promises, that, if God would help me, F would make my sermons a long time beforehand. I kept on making promises and breaking them, and the older I grew the worse I grew; and finally, in spite of prayers and resolutions, I had to give it up and prepare my sermons mostly on Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. But then you must recollect that this was accompanied by another habit, that of regular study and continual observation. I do not believe that I ever met a man on the street that I did not get from him some element for a sermon. I never see anything in nature which does not work toward that for which I give the strength of my life. The material for my sermons is all the time following me and swarming up around me. I am tracing out analogies, which I afterward take pains to verify, to see whether my views of certain truths were correct. I follow them out in my study, and see how such things are taught by others. These things I do not always at the time formulate for use, but it is a process of accumulation. Now, by the peculiar temperament given to me, I am able, out of this material, when Sunday comes and I know what I want to do with my congregation, to bring up some instrument to do it with, some view of truth that will include in it a great many of the results reached long before by the practice I have been describing, and which are crystallized ready for use. In that way I make my sermons. Another man begins his on Tuesday, and he would be untrue to himself if he followed any other plan. Every man must find out the way he is to work. I would advise no young man to follow my method. It hap pens to be my way, but it is very likely not to be yours. You can find out, by trying, which is the best way for you to work. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 99: 1.I 00. SERMON-MAKING ======================================================================== Chapter 9: SERMON-MAKING. NOTHING could well be more unlike the preaching of the apostolic times than that which exists in the regular and organized churches of the modern days in Christendom. I often wonder that there has been no sect formed upon the basis of preaching. The Church has been divided in reference to baptism, seeking a literal imitation of the primitive practice. It is organized and reorganized on the question of organization. The world has been full of contending sects upon matters of exact interpretation of doctrine. Almost the only possible point on which a sect could be built, that has been left unoccupied, is the sermon. Why have we not had sects declaring that we must preach sermons precisely after the patterns of the apostolic sermons? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 100: 1.I 01. THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS ======================================================================== The Discourses of Jesus. The discourses of our Lord were in form, method, and genius, eminently Jewish. He was regarded by the common people as a superior Rabbi. He certainly adopted methods that were then current, of teaching, and illustrating his teaching by parables, questioning the multitude, and receiving questions in return, moving from place to place, gathering his audience as he went, in short, doing as his countrymen did, and differing from them only in the superior manner of doing it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 101: 1.I 02. MODE OF THE APOSTLES ======================================================================== Mode of the Apostles. The early preaching of the apostles was confined to a very narrow circle. They were Jews. They were preaching to Jews. The point to which every thing tended was, that Jesus Christ was to stand in the place of the old Mosaic law. Their arguments were scriptural and national. We have but little evidence that they preached in any such systematic manner as has grown up in Churches since their time. Already they found a system of morality, a system of public worship, and a general development of public truth. It was their business to concentrate all these elements around the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, in him to establish a new centre of in fluence, and from him to derive a living force such as could not proceed from the dry formulas of the law. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 102: 1.I 03. CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN PREACHING ======================================================================== Characteristics of Modern Preaching. The pulpit, as it has come down to us, has had an extraordinary history. For one reason and another it has, in many periods of time, been almost the exclusive source of knowledge among the common people. Before books were either plenty or cheap; before the era of the newspaper, the magazine, or the tract; before knowledge was poured in, as now, from a hundred quarters, an era almost flooded with it, the people imbibing it, so to speak, through the very pores of their skin, the pulpit was the school, the legislative hall, the court of law; in short, the university of the common people. By change of circumstances, many elements of success in one age cease to be operative in another. Preaching will be proper or improper, wise or successful, in proportion as it adapts itself to the special want of the different peoples and the different classes of people in any one time. It may be said, in general, that the length and breadth of topics will be in inverse ratio to the civilization and refinement of the people; that is to say, the pulpit in a rude neighbourhood, where the knowledge of the people will mainly be derived from it, must cover a broader ground, and must instruct the people in a hundred different things which in civilized and refined communities they learn from other sources. As refinement increases, how ever, the tax laid upon a minister’s resources augments immeasurably. In order to maintain authority and influence, he must riot be behind his own auditory. If knowledge is increasing among his people, every year will require him to develop new resources. I do not think there is any profession that demands so much of a man as that of the Christian ministry. Besides the double oration on Sunday, the prayer meeting, the conference meeting, and various other forms of neighbourhood meetings, are drawing incessantly upon him. He is the root and trunk through which a thousand leaves are drawing sap. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 103: 1.I 04. LABORIOUSNESS OF THE MINISTRY ======================================================================== Laboriousness of the Ministry. The lawyer has the facts of his case made up and brought to him. He is aroused by direct antagonisms. He is striving for an end which may be gained or lost in the compass of a few hours or a few days. Every tiling is real, visible, near, and stimulating to him. But the Christian minister, from week to week, and through years, if his minis try be long in the same place, must discourse on themes high, recondite, and infinite in variety, and find his incitement either in the general affection which he has for his people, or in the special fascination of the truths which he preaches. His mind derives stimulation wholly from internal sources, and he gets but little help from externals. In the silence of his study, or in his solitary walks, he devises his own plans; and although his sermons are aimed at certain external conditions, at particular classes of men, or special wants, yet in the course of years it becomes difficult, week after week, to educate the same people in the same general direction, without repetition of one s-self, without growing formal, or falling into dull didactics. When I consider the steady pull which the pulpit makes upon the Christian minister, I marvel not that sermons are so poor, but that they are so good; and I think that neither the pulpit nor the ministry have any thing to fear from a just comparison of their results with those of any other learned profession in society. This necessity of preparing every week fresh matter becomes, to unfruitful minds, an excessive taxation, and drives men to all manner of devices; and, even at the “best, it is no small burden for a man to carry through the year his pack of sermons, born or unborn. While men are stimulated in the seminary to the higher conceptions of the duty of preaching, while newspapers are criticizing, and hungry and fastidious audiences grow more and more exacting in their demands, few there are who O consider or sympathize kindly with the necessities that are laid upon young men and upon old men, to bring forth an amount of fresh and instructive matter, such as is produced in no other profession under the sun. We do not desire to have preaching made less thorough or less instructive, but it is desirable that it should be less burdensome. Many and many a minister is a prisoner all the week to his two sermons. Into them he has poured his whole life, and when they are done there is little of him left for pastoral labours and social life. Few men there are who are up borne and carried forward by their sermons. Few men ascend, as the prophet did, in a chariot of fire. The majority of preachers are consciously harnessed, and draw heavily and long at the sermon, which tugs behind them. In every way, then, it is desirable that preaching should be made more easy, that men should learn to take advantage of their own temperament, and that they should learn the best plans and methods. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 104: 1.I 05. PREPARATION OF THE SERMON ======================================================================== Preparation of the Sermon. And first let me speak of written and unwritten discourses. No man can speak well, the substance of whose sermons has not been prepared beforehand. Men talk of “extemporaneous preaching,” but the only part that can properly be extemporaneous is the external form. Sometimes, indeed, one may be called to preach oft-hand extempore and may do it with great success; but all such sermons will really be the results of previous study. The matter must be the outgrowth of research, of experience, and of thought. Most preachers have intuitional moments, are, so to speak, at times inspired; but such moments are not usual, and no true inspiration is based upon ignorance. It is not, therefore, a question whether men shall depend upon the inspiration of the moment for their matter, since all who ever speak well must, in some way, have prepared for it; but whether, having something to teach, they shall reduce their instruction to writing, or give it forth unwritten. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 105: 1.I 06. ADVANTAGES DANGERS OF WRITTEN SERMONS ======================================================================== Advantages and Dangers of Written Sermons. Many considerations have been urged for and against written and unwritten sermons; and there are advantages in both kinds, and both have their disadvantages; so that a true system would seem to require sometimes one mode, and sometimes the other. My own experience teaches me that my sermons should sometimes be written, but more often unwritten. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 106: 1.I 07. SERMON-MAKING ======================================================================== Sermon-Making. A written sermon will be more likely to be orderly. It can contain a greater variety of material than one will be apt to carry in his memory, or to introduce with skill in an extemporaneous discourse. It may abound with liner lines of thought, employ a more skilful analysis, and deal with more subtle elements. It may be made more compact, move in straighter lines, and with cleaner execution. But, 011 the other hand, it is liable to be uttered with stale fervour. It is likely to be devoid of freshness, to lack naturalness, by the substitution of purely literary forms, and to be deficient in How and power. This will be especially true of the sermons of mercurial, versatile men, whose feelings and thoughts, endlessly changing, cannot long fit themselves to the mould of the sermon in which they have been expressed, so that, whatever may have been the inspiration of the composing hour, the delivery will be artificial. Cautious natures men who think slowly and express them selves with a sort of fastidious conscientiousness will find the written form of sermon adapted to their nature. The responsibility of preaching is very much alleviated, in tender and sensitive minds, by the consciousness that the sermon is all prepared, and that little or nothing is left to the contingencies of the hour of speaking. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 107: 1.I 08. POINTS GUARDED IN EXTEMPORE PREACHING ======================================================================== Points to be Guarded in Extempore Preaching. In considering the relative merits of written and unwritten sermons, we ought not to make ourselves partisans, and select all the good points of one sys tem and put them over against all the weak points of the other. It should be admitted that some men of a given temperament will do better by writing, although better yet might have been done by the unwritten sermon if they had, or had trained in themselves, the ability to execute it. Written sermons undoubtedly tend to repress the power of many native speakers. Most men can be trained to think upon their feet, but by disuse many lose the power God has given them. And for such, or for those who in any way miss the right education, the written sermon will be the best. The temptation to slovenliness in workmanship, to careless and inaccurate statements, to repetition, to violation of good taste, in unwritten sermons, are only arguments for a more conscientious preparation beforehand. No man can preach well, except out of an abundance of well- wrought material. Some sermons seem to start up suddenly, soul and body, but in fact they are the product of years of experience. Sermons may flash upon men who are called in great emergencies to utter testimony, and the word may grow in their hand, and, their hearts kindling, their imagination taking lire, the product may be something that shall create wonder and amazement among all that hear. It is only the form, like the occasion, that is extemporaneous. No man preaches except out of the stores that have been gathered in him. As it is possible for a written sermon to be utterly unstudied, unscholarly, repetitious, and inane; so, on the other hand, it is possible for an unwritten sermon to be ripe, condensed, methodical, logical, swift-moving from premise to conclusion, and entirely consonant with good taste. But such sermons never proceed from raw, unthinking men; they are never born of ignorance. And let me say here, that, while nothing is more admirable than what may be called intuitions, nothing more effective than sudden outbursts of impassioned oratory, these can never be expected from mere nature. Though a man be born to genius, a natural orator and a natural reasoner, these endowments give him but the outlines of himself. The filling up demands incessant, painstaking, steady work. Natural genius is but the soil, which, let alone, runs to weeds. If it is to bear fruit and harvests worth the reaping, no matter how good the soil is, it must be ploughed and tilled with incessant care. All must work. To some it is laborious and dull like an ox’s tread; to others it is life, like the winged passage of the bird through the air; but each, in his way, must labour. The life of a successful minister may be cheerful, yea, buoyant. His work may seem the highest exercise of liberty. It may be impassioned, facile, and fruitful, remunerating him as it goes on; nevertheless, there must be incessant work. That is not alone work which brings sweat to the brow. Work may be light, unburdensome, as full of song as the merry brook that turns the miller’s wheel; but no wheel is ever turned without the rush and the weight of the stream upon it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 108: 1.I 09. IDEAL SERMONIZING ======================================================================== Ideal Sermonizing. It is not, then, a question between prepared and unprepared sermons. It is a question, simply, whether it is best to prepare your sermons by writing, or so to prepare them that they are held in solution in your own mind. Which is the better of these will depend largely upon your own position in society, upon the special work it is appointed you to perfom, upon your own temperaments and attainments. But, considered ideally, he who preaches unwritten sermons is the true preacher; however much you may write, the tendency of all such mechanical preparation should be towards the ideal of the unwritten sermon; and throughout your early training and your after labour, you should reach out after that higher and broader form of preaching. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 109: 1.I 10. GENERAL VARIETY OF SERMON PLANS ======================================================================== General Variety of Sermon Plans. Now for the next important point. Much of the effectiveness of a discourse, as well as the ease and pleasure of delivering it, depends upon the plan. Let me earnestly caution you against the sterile, conventional, regulation plans, that are laid down in the books, and are frequently taught in the semin aries. There is no one proper plan. You are not like a bullet-mould made to run bullets of the one unvarying shape. It is quietly assumed by the teachers of formal sermonizing that a sermon is to be unfolded from the interior, or from the nature of the truth with which it deals. That this is one element, and often the chief element, that determines the form of the sermon, is true; but it also is true, that the object to be gained by preaching a sermon at all will have as much influence in giving it proper plan as will the nature of the truth handled perhaps even more. Nay, if but one or the other could be adopted, that habit of working which shapes one’s sermons from the necessities of the minds to which it is addressed is the more natural, the safer, and the more effective. Consider how various are the methods by which men receive truths. Most men are feeble in logical power. So far from being benefited by an exact concatenated development of truth, they are in general utterly unable to follow it. At the second or third step they lose the clew The greatest number of men, particularly uncultivated people, receive their truth by facts placed in juxtaposition rather than in philosophical sequence. Thus, a line of fact or a series of parables will be better adapted to most audiences than a regular unfolding of a train of thought from the germinal point to the fruitful end. The more select portion of an intelligent congregation, on the other hand, sympathize with truth delivered in its highest philosophic forms. There is a distinct pleasure to them in the evolution of an argument. They rejoice to see a structure built up, tier upon tier, and story upon story. They glow with delight as the long chain is welded, link by link. And if the preacher himself be of this mind, and if he receive the commendations of the most thoughtful and cultured of his people, it is quite natural that he should fall wholly under the influence of this style of sermonizing; so he will feed one mouth, and starve a hundred. In this way it is, and especially in large cities, that congregations are sifted by a certain process of elective affinity. Those will come to the church who like the style of the sermon, and those will drop out who have no sympathy with it; and thus we have churches of emotion, churches of taste, and churches of philosophical theology; whereas each pulpit should give somewhat of everything. The emotions of some men arc roused through the inspiration of the intellect mainly; “but there arc others whose intellect, although it may he the channel through which the incitement flows, is not itself roused to its fullest activity until the feelings come to inspire it. We hear much of preaching to the understanding and of preaching to the feelings, and it is discussed which is the better way; but in some men you cannot reach the understanding until you have reached the feelings, and in others you cannot reach the feelings until you have taken pos session of the understanding. A minute study of the habits of men’s minds will teach the preacher how to plan his sermon so as to gain entrance. As it is, sermons are too often cast in one mould. Week after week, month after month, year after year, when the text is announced, every child in the congregation almost, as well as the minister him self, can tell that it will be divided into “ First,” “Second,” and “Third,” together with, “Then certain practical observations.” But what would be thought of one who should seek to enter every house upon a street or in a city with a single key, fitted to but one kind of lock? The minister is the “strong man,” armed in a better sense than that of the parable, and it is his business to enter every house, to bind the man of sin, and to despoil him. But every door must be entered by a key that fits that door. The minister is a universal, spiritual burglar. He enters, not to despoil good, but evil. He enters, not to take possession, but to dispossess evil. He enters, not to deprive men of their valuable effects, but to restore to them that which their Father left for their inheritance, and which has been withheld from them by the Adversary. He must seek entrance, in every case, where God has put the door. In some men there is a broad and double open door, standing in the front and inviting entrance. The familiar path in other cases is seen to wind around to the side door. There be those industrious drudges who never live out of their kitchens, and if one would find them in ordinary hours, he must e engo around to the back door. If one lives in the cellar, he must be sought through the cellar. It is this necessity of adaptation to the innumerable phases of human nature that reacts upon the sermon, and determines the form which, it shall take. If it were possible, never have two plans alike. It may be well, to-day, to preach an intellectual theme 1 >y an analytic process; but that is a reason why, 011 the following Sunday, an intellectual theme should be treated by a synthetic process. If you have preached the truth by the ways of statement and proof, you have then a reason for following it with a sermon that assumes the truth, and appeals directly to the moral consciousness. A didactic sermon is all the stronger if it follows in strong contrast with a sermon to the feelings. If you have preached to-day to the heart through the imagination, to-morrow you are to preach to the heart through the reason; and so the sermon, like the flowers of the field, is to take on innumerable forms of blossoming. When you have finished your sermon, not a man of your congregation should be unable to tell you, distinctly, what you have done; but when you begin a sermon, no man in the congregation ought to be able to tell you what you are going to do. All these cast-iron frames, these stereotyped plans of sermons, are the devices oi the devil, and of those most mischievous devils of the pulpit, formality and stupidity. I ======================================================================== CHAPTER 110: 1.I 11. THE NATURAL METHOD ======================================================================== The Natural Method. It is a good thing to select your text and unfold precisely its meaning and its. context, and then to deduce from it certain natural lines of thought. But this is only one way. A descriptive sermon, an argumentative sermon, a poetical sermon, and a sermon of sentiment, have, severally, their own genius of form. I need not tell you that variety is, in the best sense of that term, the “ natural” method. In nature a few elements, by various permutations and combinations, produce infinite varieties, endless contrasts, and constant changes. Nature is always fresh, and never stales upon the taste. Besides all this, every preacher will find that something is to be allowed for the way in which his own mind works. A man naturally inclined to mysticism has his whole temperament arrayed against the anatomical method of sermonizing. The man of a dry intellectual nature, who sees all things cold, clear, and colourless, cannot imitate the man whose mind lives under an arch of perpetual rainbows. So then, because the plans of sermons must be affected by the nature of the truth itself, by the nature of the man himself, and, above all, by the ends sought in the sermon and the nature of the people to whom the sermon is addressed, you will perceive the absurdity of attempting any one method of laying out a sermon, and the wisdom of seeking endless diversity of method as well as of subject. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 111: 1.I 12. SUGGESTIVE PREACHING ======================================================================== Suggestive Preaching. A respectable source of failure is conscientious thoroughness. It is true that it is the office of the preacher to furnish thought for his hearers, but it is no less his duty to excite thought. Thus we give thought to breed thought. If, then, a preacher elaborates his theme until it is utterly exhausted, leaving nothing to the imagination and intellect of his hearers, he fails to produce that lively activity in’s their minds which is one of the best effects of right v preaching they are merely recipients. But under a true preaching the pulpit and the audience should be carrying on the subject together, one in outline, and the other, with subtle and rapid activity, filling it up by imagination, suggestion, and emotion. Don’t make your sermons too good. That sermon, then, has been overwrought and overdone which leaves nothing for the mind of the hearer to do. A sermon in outline is often far more effective than a sermon fully thought out and delivered as a completed thing. Painters often catch the likeness of their subject when they have sketched in the picture only, and paint it out when they are finishing it; and many and many a sermon, if it had been but sketched upon the minds of men, would have conveyed a much Letter idea of tlic truth than is produced by its elaborate painting and filling up. This is the secret of what is called “ suggestive preaching,” and it is also the secret of those sermons which are called “good, but heavy.” There are no more thorough sermons in the English language, and none more hard to read, than those of Barrow, who was called an unfair preacher, because he left nothing for those to say that came after him. You must be careful not to surfeit people; leave room for their imagination and spirit to work. Don’t treat them as sacks to be filled from a funnel. Aim to make them spiritually active self-helpful. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 112: 1.I 13. EXPOSITORY PREACHING ======================================================================== Expository Preaching. Without unfolding and commenting upon the ordinary modes of sermonizing, I pass on to say that a much larger use should be made of expository preaching than has been customary in our churches. It is an admirable way of familiarizing the people with the very text of Scripture. There is an authority, which every audience recognizes, in the word of God as delivered in the sacred Scripture, which does not belong to ordinary human teaching. Above all, the Bible is the best example in literature of the admirable mingling of fact, illustration, appeal, argument, poetry, and emotion, not in their artificial forms, but conformably to nature. The Bible is sometimes spoken of as a “revelation” in contradistinction to nature; but this is done by those who degrade nature, and regard it as something low and imperfect. I regard the Bible as the noblest book of nature that has ever existed in life. Its very power is in that it is an exposition of nature wider and deeper than any that philosophy has attained to; that is one reason why the Bible is found, as philosophy progressively ascertains the truths of nature, to conform to them with singular adaptation; and that is a reason, too, why the Bible becomes more and more powerful as it is better interpreted and its innermost meaning is made clear by the discoveries of men in the great field of natural science. The Bible is like a field in which is hidden gold. Men who have ploughed over and over the surface and raised perishable crops there from have failed to find and secure that very precious ore which is its chief value. It will surprise one to see what wealth and diversity of topics will come up for illustration in discussion by means of expository preaching. A thousand subtle suggestions and a thousand minute points of human experience not large enough for the elaborate discussion of a sermon, and yet, like the little screws in a watch, indispensable to the right action of the machinery of life can be touched and turned to advantage in expository preaching. There are many topics which, from the excitement of the times and from the prejudice of the people, it would be difficult to discuss topically in the pulpit, yet, taken in the order in which they are found in Sacred Writ, they can be handled with profit, and without danger. The Bible touches all sides of human life and experience, and scriptural exposition gives endless opportunities of hitting folks who need hitting. The squire can hardly stamp out of church for a “ Thus saith the Lord.” While exegetical and expository preaching have elements in them which attract and satisfy the scholar and the thinker, they, at the same time, by a strange harmony in diversity, have just that disconnectedness and variety of topic in juxtaposition which seem best suited to the wants of uncultivated minds. I know an eminent pastor in Ohio who, probably, never in his life preached any other sermon than an expository one. The Bible in his hands, Sunday after Sunday, was his only sermon. During a lorn? pastorate he went through the Book from beginning to end, and often, and the fruit of his ministry justified his method. It was proverbial that no people were more thoroughly furnished with know ledge, with habits of discrimination in thought, or were more rich in spiritual feeling. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 113: 1.I 14. GREAT SERMONS ======================================================================== Great Sermons. There is one temptation of which I have spoken to you before; but I must be allowed to give you a special and earnest caution on the subject of “ great “ sermons. The themes you will handle are often of transcendent greatness. There will be times continually recurring, in which you will feel earnestly the need of great power; but the ambition of constructing great sermons is guilty and foolish in no ordinary degree. I do not believe that any man ever made a great sermon who set out to do that thing. Sermons that are truly great come of themselves. They spring from sources deeper than vanity or ambition. When the hand of the Lord is laid upon the heart, and its energies are aroused under a divine inspiration, there may then be given forth mighty thoughts in burning words; and from the formative power of this inward truth the outward form may be generated, perfect, as is the language of a poem. Perhaps I should have said show sermons, rather than great sermons, sermons adapted to create surprise, admiration, and praise, sermons as full of curiosities as a peddler’s pack, which the proud owners are accustomed to take in all their exchanges and travellings as their especial delight and reliance. Often they are baptized with fanciful names. There is the “ Dew upon the Grass” sermon, and the “ Trumpet” sermon, and the sermon of the “Fleece,” and the “Dove and Eagle” sermon, and so on. Such discourses are relied upon to give men their reputation. To construct such sermons, men oftentimes labour night and day, and gather into them all the scraps, ingenuities, and glittering illustrations of a lifetime. They are the pride and. the joy of the preacher’s heart; but they bear the same relation to a truly great sermon as a kaleidoscope, full of glittering bits of glass, bears to the telescope, which unveils the glory of the stellar universe. These are the Nebuchadnezzar sermons, over which the vain preacher stands, saying, “ Is not this great Babylon that I have builded for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? “ Would to God that these preachers, like Nebuchadnezzar, might go to grass for a time, if, like him, they would return sane and humble! A sermon is a weapon of war. Not the tracery enamelled upon its blade, not the jewellery that is set within its hilt, not the name that is stamped upon it, Lut its power in the day of battle, must be the test of its merits. No matter how unbalanced, how irregular and rude, that is a great sermon which has power to do great things with the hearts of men. No matter how methodical, philosophic, exquisite in illustration, or faultless in style, that is a poor and weak sermon that has no power to deliver men from evil and to exalt them in goodness. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 114: 1.I 15. STYLE ======================================================================== Style. Style is only the outside form which thoughts take on when embodied in language. Style, then, must always conform to the nature of the man who employs it; as the saying goes, “ Style is the man.” In general, it may be said, that is the best style which is the least obtrusive, which lets through the truth most nearly in its absolute purity. The truths of religion, in a simple and transparent style, shine as the sunlight on the fields and mountains, revealing all things in their proper forms and natural colours; but an artificial and gorgeous style, like a cathedral window, may let in some light, yet in blotches of purple and blue that spot the audience, and produce grotesqueness and unnatural effects. It is desirable that the preacher should have a copious vocabulary, and a facility in the selection and use of words; and to this end he should read much, giving close attention to the words and phrases used by the best authors, not for servile copying and memorizing, but that these elements may become assimilated with his own mind, as a part of it, ready for use when the need comes. He should also have an ear for strong and terse, but rhythmical sentences, which flow without jolt and jar. Above all other men, the preacher should avoid what may be called a literary style, as distinguished from a natural one; and by a “ literary style,” technically so called, I understand one in which abound these two elements the artificial structure of sentences, and the use of words and phrases peculiar to literature alone, and not to common life. Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile under standing of the truth. Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don’t whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want to tingle. A good fireman will send the water through as short and straight hose as he can. No man in his senses would desire to have the stream ilow though coil after coil, winding about. It loses force by length and complexity. Many a sermon has its sentences curled over it like locks of hair upon a beauty’s head. I have known men whose style was magnificent when they were once thoroughly mad. Temper straightened out all the curls, and made their sentences straight as a lance. It is a foolish and unwise ambition to introduce periphrastic or purely literary terms where they can possibly be avoided. Go right ahead. Don’t run round for your meaning. Long sentences may be good, but not twisting ones. Many otherwise good sermons are useless because they don’t get on. They go round, and round, and round, and always keep coming back to the same place. There is a charm in some styles, an unwearying freshness and sweetness, which men find it difficult to account for. I think, upon analysis, it may be found that such styles are based upon vernacular words and home-bred idioms. At Pentecost every man heard in his own tongue wherein he was born. Use homely words those which people are used to, and which suggest many things to them. The words that we heard in our childhood store up in them selves sweetness and flavour that make them precious all our life long afterwards. Words borrowed from foreign languages, and words that belong espe cially to science and learning and literature, have very little suggestion in them to the common people. But home-bred words, when they strike the imagination, awaken ineffable and tremulous memories, obscure, subtle, and yet most powerful. Words register up in themselves the sum of man’s life and experience. The words which, from the cradle to the grave, have been the vehicles of love, trust, praise, hope, joy, anger, and hate, are not simply words, but, like paper, are what they are by virtue of the thing written on them. He who uses mainly the Anglo Saxon vocabulary, giving preference to the idioms and phrases which are homely, will have a power which cannot be derived from any other use of human language. Such language is an echo in the experience of men; and as a phrase in a mountainous country, when roundly uttered, goes on repeating itself from peak to peak, running in alternate reverberations through the whole valley, so a truth runs through all the ranges of memory in the mind of the hearer, not the less real because so extremely rapid and subtle as to defy analysis. The words them selves, full of secret suggestions and echoes, multiply the meaning in the minds of men, and make it even more in the recipient than it was in the speaker. Words are to the thought what musical notes are to the melodies. As an instance of contrasted style, let one read the immortal allegory of John Bunyan in contrast with the grandiose essays of Dr. Johnson. Bunyan is to-day like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in season; his leaf shall not wither. Johnson, with all his glory, lies, like an Egyptian king, buried and forgotten in the pyramid of his fame. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 115: 1.I 16. GENERAL HINTS PROFESSIONAL MANNERS ======================================================================== General Hints Professional Manners. There are a few cautions which may be worth considering. Avoid a professional manner. There is no reason why a clergyman should be anything but an earnest Christian gentleman. I shall not quarrel with the preacher who employs a symbolic dress for some special religious reason; but no man should dress himself simply for the purpose of saying, “ I am a preacher.” The highest character in which a preacher can stand is that of simple Christian manhood. It is not the things in which he differs from his follow-incn by which he will gain power. It is by the things in which he will be in sympathy with them. There is great significance in that sentence, “It behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.” It is not a man’s business, then, to separate himself, by dress or by manner, -from the common people. It is his humanity, and his sympathy with their humanity, it is his sameness with them, both in weaknesses and in sins, in aspirations and partial attainment, that give him his power. The power of a preacher is the power of a brother among his brethren. It always seems to me, therefore, that the putting on of a professional dress is the hiding of one’s power. Walk into your pulpit as you would enter an ordinary room. Don’t go there thinking of yourself, your coat, your hair, your step. Don’t go there as a “man of God.” Never be a puppet most of all, a religious puppet. I abhor the formal, stately, and solemn entrance of a man whose whole appearance seems to call upon all to see how holy he is, and how intensely he is a minister of the gospel. Nor can I avoid a feeling of displeasure akin to that which Christ felt when he condemned prayers at the street corners, when I see a man bow clown himself in the pulpit to say his prayers, on first entering. Many men sacrifice the best part of themselves for what is called the dignity of the pulpit. They are afraid to speak of common things. They are afraid to introduce home matters; things of which men think and speak, and in which, every day, a part of their lives consist, arc thought not to be of enough dignity for the pulpit. And so the interests of men are sacrificed to an idol. For when the pul pit is of more importance than the joys and the sorrows, the hopes and the fears, the minute temptations and frets of daily life, it has become an idol, and, to feed its dignity, bread is taken from the mouths of the children and of the common people. There are few things that have power to make men good or bad, happy or unhappy, that it is not the duty of the pulpit to handle. This superstition of dignity has gone far to make the pulpit a mere skeleton. Men hear plenty from the pulpit about everything except the stubborn facts of their every day life, and the real relation of these immediate things to the vast themes of the future. There is much about the divine life, but very little about human life. There is much about the future victory, but very little about the present battle. There is a great deal about divine government, but there is very little about the human governments under which men are living, and the duties which arise under those governments for every Christian man. There is a great deal about immortality and about the immortal soul, but very little about these mortal bodies, that go so far to influence the destiny of the immortal souls. A sermon, like a probe, must follow the wound into all its intricate passages. Nothing is too minute for the surgeon or for the physician; nothing should be too common or too familiar for the preacher. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 116: 1.I 17. PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION ======================================================================== Professional Association. Beware of an exclusive association with your kind. It is a good thing for ministers to meet together to cheer and instruct each other, but there is danger that they will fall into such exclusive professional sympathy that they will see everything from a ministerial stand-point. It would he of great value to ministers if they saw all the themes that they discuss with the eyes of common men of the wicked and the abandoned, of the weak and the strong, of the learned and the unlearned, of working-men, of meditative women, and of little children. On every theme which the preacher handles is turned the thought of ten thousand men in the community around him. It were worth his while to reap their harvest-fields as well as his own. But, chiefly, this universal sympathy with humanity is valuable because it produces a larger sympathy and a more generous manhood, and reinvigorates those elements in the preacher which ally him to his kind, and from which he is to derive one great element of success. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 117: 1.I 18. LENGTH OF SERMONS ======================================================================== Length of Sermons. One word as to the length of sermons. That never should be determined by the clock, but upon broader considerations short sermons for small subjects, and long sermons for large subjects. It does not require that sermons should be of any uniform length. Let one be short, and the next long, and the next intermediate. It is true that it is bad policy to fatigue men; but shortness is not the only remedy for that. The true way to shorten a sermon is to make it more interesting. The object of preaching is not to let men out of church at a given time. The length and quality of a sermon must be determined by the objects which it has in view. Now you cannot discuss great themes in a short compass, nor can you by driblets by sermons of ten or twenty minutes train an audience to a broad consideration of high themes. There is a medium. A minister ought to be able to hold an audience for an hour in the discussion of great themes; and the. habit of ample time and ample discussion, even if occasionally it carries with it the incidental evil of weariness, will, in the long run, produce a nobler class of minds and a higher type of education than can possibly belong to the school of dwarfed sermonizers. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 118: 1.I 19. TRUST YOUR AUDIENCES ======================================================================== Trust your Audiences. Do not undervalue the capacity of the common people. Children, even, will follow discussions with interest which seem to be far above their heads. Before I was ten years old, I remember that discussions on the subject of fore-ordination, free-will, and decrees, held mo with a perfect fascination. The Bible was made for common people, and the themes that are in it are comprehensible by common people; and those sermons which cannot be under stood with profit by the common people of your congregation will probably be of little profit to any body, not even to yourself. While there is a principle of adaptation to be observed and applied, it should he remembered that the great bulk of a minister’s work does not consist in the unfolding of abstruse problems or mysteries, but the themes which he mainly handles are those which appeal to the great moral instincts and to that fundamental common sense belonging to all men. You need not fear to carry an elaborate argument down to the common people. You need not fear to address a sermon of emotion and homely application to the most cultivated audience. Let a man preach in the city as he would in the country. Let a man preach in the country as he would in the city. Preach before a cultivated audience as you would before an audience of farmers, and preach before a congregation of farmers as you would before a congregation of students. It is true that, as I have already explained, you must vary your discourses from week to week for purposes of adaptation; but the great subject-matter is common to all men. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 119: 1.I 20. SUMMARY ======================================================================== Summary. The most effective sermonizing, then, and that which is to be aimed at in general, is the unwritten, rather than the written; the plans must be of constant variety as adapted to the truth preached, the end to be gained, the audience to be affected, and the temperament of the preacher; the sermon should be rather suggestive than exhaustive in treatment, exposition of the Bible holding a large place in your scheme, and show - sermons utterly avoided; simplicity of style, both in language and manner, is the shortest road to success; and the earlier the preacher learns by association and sym pathy with his people to interest them in him and his work, and to give them always the best that he can do, the sooner will he get upon them the hold by which he shall draw them toward God and the higher life. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 120: 1.I 21. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. What would you suggest as to the proportion of written and unwritten sermons to be preached through one’s ministry? ME. BEECHER. No general rule can be given. About one third written to two thirds unwritten. But be sure that you know how to preach. Q. What do you think of the benefit of using books of sermon plans? MR. BEECHER. They will help you when you know how to use them; that is, when you don’t need them. Before that time don’t smother your self with them. Q. What do you think of the propriety or advisability of what is called sensational preaching? MR. BEECHER. I am for it, or against it, according to what you mean by it. If it aims at a low, temporary success by mere trickery, I don’t believe in it; but if you mean preaching which produces a sensation, I do. The legitimate use of real truth is all right, no matter how much people get stirred up; the more the better. In this matter you will not err if you are up toparin manliness, neither above it nor below. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 121: 1.J 00. LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT ======================================================================== Chapter 10: LOVE, THE CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. KNOW of no single passage of Scripture that gives, with so much detail, the apostle’s idea of the ends and instrumentalities of the Christian minister, as that contained in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, a few verses of which I will read to you, because there is one sentence there that will contain the thought of to-day. “ And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, rnaketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” I purpose, this afternoon, to speak to you on the love-principle as the central power in the work of a Christian minister. “ Speaking the truth in love,” is the expression, and it is still stronger in the original than in our version, because we have no word signifying “ to truth.” We say “ to speak the truth.” Literally, it is truthing it in love. No one, it seems to me, can have read attentively the teachings of the apostle, and entered into the spirit in which he worked, without having seen under all his feelings and experiences the influence of this immense love-principle. In him it took on a more enthusiastic form than it did in the Saviour. It was, as one might say, more a novelty with him. It was the eternal state of the Saviour, widely diffused and developed, and like a native atmosphere, such as envelops the whole earth. In the apostle it seems more like an intense or concentrated inspiration. It was news to him, indeed, and good news. It inspired evidently and vividly every part of his life. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 122: 1.J 01. WHAT IS LOVE? ======================================================================== What is Love? I think it is extremely difficult to give any definition of it. We may point to some men and say they come nearer to it, as exemplars, than others. It is not so much a faculty, or power, as it is a certain condition of the whole spirit, made up of the contribution of several different elements of the mind”, having relations to things superior and to things inferior. It is the religious principle, which, when you have it as the ground and root of your ministry, includes, primarily, love to God. And by the term “God” we understand whatever is conceived of as superhuman in excellence and in wisdom. God is infinite. No man can crystallize God. If he does, his God becomes an idol not bigger than the man. God is infinite and formless. When he is really thought of, it is by the contribution of some of the highest and best of human qualities, out of which and over which something flames up before the imagination that is higher than the reach of human experience. The germ may have been derived from observation or experience, but we recompose these nobler attributes of the soul, clothe them with form, and call that God, knowing all the time that we cannot measure him, but that this process of thought and feeling reveals and inspires in us some sense of that quality which we mean when we speak of the divine attributes. But the true sense of God does not stop there. It includes the feeling of love to wards this divine being, which is spoken of in the New Testament, and the most glorious choral and symphony of which lies in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. Such a love embraces all that is human, all creatures who have the power of being happy or miserable, and it has a yearning sympathy and desire for their good. It includes, also, a nearness, a sweetness, and a desire towards men, not so much that they should love us, for that is confined more nearly to the reciprocating passions of men, friendship, for instance, which is a specialty under this generic head, and is a part of it, though essentially it involves an element of self. But the charity, or love, of the New Testament is the going out of thought, of feeling, and of sympathy towards others, and towards whatever can receive benefit from us. It is the state of the Creator, and I suppose that it is the state of those most like him, who dwell close to him. It is the wish that whatever we are thinking of, or saying, or doing, may make some one better and happier. It is genial. It ought to be full of cheer, courage, hope, and it is full of bounty and blessings. It means happiness, and as happiness is greater in proportion as it rises from the lower range of susceptibilities to the higher moral qualities, those who desire to confer happiness intelligently will do so by making men capable of being happy; that is, by enriching and developing their higher nature. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 123: 1.J 02. LOVE, THE CENTRAL POWER OF THE MINISTRY ======================================================================== Love, the Central Power of the Ministry. You will find all the way through the letters of the Apostle Paul how much he relied upon the inspiration of love, how much it was the working power of his ministry. It seems to me that this is the distinctive quality that ought to belong to every Christian minister. It is the underlying force by which all his special faculties should be inspired. Where this exists in great power, it will give a peculiar colour and quality to every attribute of the mind. Even the most formal acts of reasoning will have a certain glow imparted to them. The sharpest discriminations made by conscience, the requisitions of the most fastidious taste, the impulses of fear, the stress of indignation and of anger itself, will all receive a tone and quality from love which will make them doubly powerful and doubly beneficent. I do not believe that any other temper than that of love will carry a minister through his whole work with so little wear and tear, with so much inward satisfaction. Indeed, it is the element by which he interprets at once God and man. It is only when we put ourselves, according to the measure of our power, into the same relations towards man that God sustains, that we are susceptible of intuitions of divine mercy and pity, or can form any conception of how- the amazing power of God may act benefi cently, through the atmosphere of divine love, to wards things mean, selfish, and hateful. There is only one pass-key that will open every door, and that is the golden key of love. You can touch every side of the human heart and its every want; that is, if you can touch it at all; and if you have the power to bestow anything, love gives facility of access, the power of drawing near to men, the power of enriching thought, of weakening their hungry desires and appetites, the power to thaw out the winter of their souls and to prepare the soil for the seed and growth of the better life. A minister who has pure intellection only to offer to his people is like one who would in winter drag a plough over the frozen ground. He marks it, but he does not furrow it. He who has to make the seed of truth grow in living men into living forms must have power to bring summer to men’s hearts, light and heat; and then culture, whether it be by the plough or the harrow, by the hoe or the spade, will do some good. It is this summer-power of love, first, middle, and last, that every teacher and Christian preacher ought to seek. It is this that you ought to seek in the closet, in meditation, and in intercourse one with another. You must have a heart so alive and full of genial, sympathizing love that you feel yourself related to everything on the globe that lives and has the power of enjoyment. How this noble conception has been felt by the old minis ters of New England! No man can read the writings of Jonathan Edwards, of Hopkins, and others of that school, without seeing how they were filled with this sense of doing for others, and the desire to confer blessings upon universal sentient being. Their system was, in many respects, very imperfect, but, after all, the ideal was in their mind. They had a true conception of the all-pervading power of love in the hearts of men, which ought to be the very centre, out of which the whole ministry is to grow. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 124: 1.J 03. LOVE, NOT MERE GOOD-NATURE ======================================================================== Love, Not mere Good-Nature. A great many persons, when you say such things as these, feel at once “ That is rny doctrine. I do not believe in these always dry, metaphysical men, arguing and arguing and arguing.” Another man says, “ That is my idea about it. I do not like these men who are always combative. I like a mild, meek, and lowly man.” But I do not mean any such thing as that. I do not mean these lazy, sunshiny, good-natured men, who have no particular opinions, and who would about as soon have things go one way as another; who are without sharp and discriminating thought, have no preferences, no indignation, no conscience, no fire. I do not believe in any such men. I like to see a man who has got snap in every part of him, who knows how to think and to speak, and to put on the screw, if that is his particular mode of working. This sweet and beneficent heart-quality that I am speaking of is the atmosphere in which every other faculty works, and which is generic to them all. It is Christian sympathy, benevolence, and love. Do you not suppose that love has anger? There is no such anger as that which a mother’s love furnishes. Do you suppose that when she sees the child that is both herself and him whom she loves better than herself, the child in whom her hope is bound up, the child that is God’s glass through which she sees immortality, the child that is more to her than her own life, doing a detestable meanness, that she is not angry and indignant, and that the child does not feel the smart of physical advice? Do you not suppose that the child knows what anger is? I tell you there is no such indignation possible as the indignation that means rescue, help, hope, and betterment. You might as well say that a summer shower has no thunder as to say that love has no anger. It is full of it, or may be. Has love no specialty or discrimination in removing error, nor any continuing, intense regard for specific and exact truth? God has it, and we are like him. We are his children, and know it by that. Love is simply that which overhangs all these powers, which gives them quality and direction, and gives to us a larger power through these lower instruments. And so a man who is purely intellectual, without any special sympathy or love, cannot deal rightly in moral truth. He may in physical truth, because that is not at all a question of influence; but all moral truth and with that you have mainly to deal is truth that springs out of experience. Un less you have love, you cannot go right by pure intellect; while the intellect working in an atmosphere of love can rarely go wrong in moral things. You cannot long go right where it is the sense of beauty alone that you are appealing to. He who preaches mainly to taste and the sense of the beau tiful he who sees God especially in forms and colours and sounds, and all the sweet elements of grace in the world has one portion of the truth, but he is apt to run out, through feebleness, into sentimentality. He lacks that strength, that power, and that continuity which come from the real divine love-temperament. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 125: 1.J 04. LOVE OF THE WORK ======================================================================== Love of the Work. Now it is to the use of this principle in a few directions that I shall ask your attention this after noon. First, for your own soul’s sake, you cannot afford to be ministers if your work is not love-work, if it is a burden to you, if your parishes are to you what a bound boy is to the fanner, a nuisance rather than a help, and, on general principles of humanity, to be got along with in the best way possible. If you are carrying your work in that way, you have no business where you are. He who takes the wants of a community into his keeping he who undertakes to teach the young, to comfort the old in the midst of their earthly sorrows, and to solve all those endless problems that are coming up day by day must love his work and his people, and be conscious that his heart goes out to them and yearns for them, as, in the last days of winter, we yearn to hear the singing of the birds, and watch for the trees to put forth their odorous buds, and spread their fragrance through the air. How we do long for spring and summer, and for their sweetness! The preacher ought to stand to his work all the time longing for the development of men as we do for flowers, and as the vintner does for the time of the grape. When you have this love, how patient it will make you, and how easy it will make the hard tasks of your ministry! How full of suggestion it will be! How it will bring sermons out of people, and how it will multiply the occasions of bounty! What a discernment of clear interpretation there is through the medium of sympathy and benevolence, and how it carries its own reward with it! Some men work from a sense of duty and bet ter that than nothing; others work from various motives; but the best motive of all is love of the work. Having that, you cannot help working. Why do birds sing? Because the song is in them, and if they did not let it forth they would split; it must come out. It is the spontaneity and the urgency of this feeling in them that impels their utterance. Why should men work, or visit, or preach? Because their hearts want some outlet, some vent, to give expression to the feeling of ear nest sympathy that is in them. Where a man has this strong and large benevolence, he will always be busy, and pleasantly busy. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 126: 1.J 05. THE HEALTHFULNESS OF BENEVOLENCE ======================================================================== The Healthfulness of Benevolence. And more than that, let me tell you there is nothing that enables a man to last so long as the qualities which naturally are trained into this spirit of true, sympathetic beneficence. All the acerb feelings grind the enamel off. All men who work under a sense of responsibility men who hear the crack of Conscience’s whip all the time, and all those who are inspired by the Protean forms of fear easily wear out. The kindly feelings of man’s nature have nourishment in them. They are not stimulants alone. They carry nutriment, and a man who is working good-naturedly, with the sweetness of hope and with the facility of courage all the time, can work weeks and months without breaking down; nay, he grows fat on work. I hold that there is nothing so wholesome or so medicinal as brain-work, rightly directed. While a man may exhaust his nervous system by excessive brain- work, a moderate and reasonable practice of it is beneficial. You all know that ministers are the longest livers. I do not mention that to prove that they are the greatest brain-workers; but a man who works under a high form of positive benevolence, which brings cheer and hope, can work longer and with less fatigue, and he can continue under intense excitement longer and with less wear and tear, than under any other stimulus. I have often been asked by what secret I retain health and vigour under labours multiform and continuous. I owe much to a good constitution inherited from my parents, not spoiled by youthful excesses or weakened by over-study; much also to an early acquired knowledge of how to take care of myself, to secure invariably a full measure of sleep, to regard food as an engineer does fuel (to be employed economically, and entirely with reference to the work to be done by the machine); much to the habit of economizing social forces, and not wasting in needless conversation and pleasurable hilarities the spirit that would carry me through many days of necessary work; but, above all, to the possession of a hopeful disposition and natural courage, to sympathy with men, and to an unfailing trust in God; so that I have always worked for the love of working. I have cast out the grinding sense of responsibility as uncongenial to the faith and trust which belong to a Christian life. I have studiously refused to entertain anxieties. I have put in all the forces which I possessed, as a farmer puts in his labour and his seed, and I have left the germination, and the weather, and the future harvest, to the providence of God. In general, I have never performed my work but once, whereas many others perform theirs three times first, by anticipation; then, in realization; and afterwards, by rumination. In general, however, it may be said that a hopeful, trusting, and loving disposition carries health and restores men from fatigue more rapidly than any other. The acerb feelings are corrosive. The saccharine emotions are nourishing and enduring. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 127: 1.J 06. LOVE, A POWER-GIVING ELEMENT. ======================================================================== Love, a Power-Giving Element. But there are other things. No I _^e_caii_jlejd with the hearts of men as he ought, unless he has the sympathy which is given by- love** I have always been struck with the apostle’s notion as to quality and quantity of feeling. If he charges you to be hopeful, it is to be very hopeful. It is not enough for you to be right. You must be very largely right; each particular good must be carried up to its ideal form. Thus, we are not only to be fruitful, but we must abound in fruitfulness, as a vine, bearing so much that clusters have to be cut away to make room for those that remain. We do not know what Christian qualities are until we see them in their larger forms. Suppose we knew nothing about apples except as we had seen them grown in Siberia, what could we say about pound pippins? Suppose you only sec those poor, mean, and barren qualities that often are called Christian experiences, what would you know about the depths, the beauty, the freshness, and the power that are in a true man, who is built after the model of Jesus Christ, who is conscious of his strength, who is free, who is profuse, generous, and abundant? God is in him; and men sec God more nearly than they can by their own meditation, when they see a man like that. You may have benevolence as a pale stream; of moonbeams shining into your study window, and^ you may sit and write your thin sermons in the light of that pale, speculative benevolence, but it will not do. When our Master was approaching the last part of his life, when the cloud threatening the future was already over him, when he stood near to the grave, he said to his disciples, in that moment of preternatural anguish, “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” It always filled me with admiration that Christ not only had peace for himself, but enough to share with his disciples, “My peace I give unto you.” Brethren, every quality that goes to make manhood you must have in excess, as the brooks have their treasures, making haste to empty themselves, to give room for that which is coming on behind. You must have enough benevolence, not only for yourselves, but for your congregation also, to pervade and to fill them. This is what you ought to live for, and this is what is meant by living a godly life, producing not ideas alone, not arguments only, but living, loving manhood, doctrine in living forms. It is what men ought to seek for in their closet and in their daily conversation. I feel provoked when I see how young Christians often try to build themselves up into a Christian 1) life by social meetings, so called. They get into an uncomfortable room; they sit stiff and dumb. Some one opens a Bible, and reads a chapter; then some body turns around, kneels down, and makes a prayer; then another chapter, and then they sing. They all have an awful responsibility, and all wish they felt something. They get up, look solemn, and go out. They move off regularly, methodically, and mechanically to their several businesses; and that is trying to grow in grace! You might just as well expect to make a shady forest in your garden with the bean-poles you had cut and set out in the spring, as to make a Christian man by such a course as that. It lacks juice, and its juice lacks sugar. There is no grace, there is no reality to it. There is nothing in! it that God loves, and certainly you do not like it. When the power of the Holy Ghost comes clown upon men, they grow up into such experiences as those which ring so grandly through the cathedral of the Bible. You arc called to liberty, to a larger life. You are called to more manliness, to love, to fervour, to joy! What you need, to make your ministry successful in dealing with men, is that wonderful power which a true, large, and fruitful benevolence gives. Here is a little penurious whipster of a man, as it were, made up of that which was left, a mere biscuit after the loaf. You hear the neighbours say he is “ the smallest specimen of a man in this neighbourhood.” But if you, a minister of Christ’s gospel, look upon him, there is that in him which ought to make your heart yearn and swell towards him. Christ died for him, and eternity has registered his name. Simple as he is, poor as he is, thin as he is, unsatisfactory as lie is, though he were “but a sand-bank among rich soils, it is for you to find a way of culture that shall bring forth some beauty out of the very barrenness of his nature. Your heart should sympathize with him in such a way that you can say, “ I will add to him what he lacks; I will shine into him and warm him, I will brood over him and will help him. I will do it myself.” Lay down your life for him. Give him something of your life. Then, again, there is a suspicious man, who is always seeing people’s faults. He rejoices in ini quity, and carries it as a peddler does his pack. He likes to sit down in the corners and retail it. Nothing is so spicy to him. He smacks his lips over it. He comes to you and says, “ You have heard about the old deacon up there,” and so on. He goes around the village. He is a turkey-buzzard among men, picking up carrion and feeding on it. Everybody despises him and hates him, except the man who loves. lie feels like a physician going into an hospital and finding a patient there who is a mass of disease. If he were searching for a painter’s model, he would not look at such a man. But, going there as a healer, he will try what he can do to relieve the sick man. You can manage these morally f diseased men if you only love them. It is your | business to strike such warmth into a bad man as to make him believe that you are working for his good. You must make him “ cotton “ to you and be glad to see you, so that he will lay aside his deviltry when you go near him. Probably he will not believe in you at first, and may suspect there is some deceit in it all. He will watch you, and will “ summer and winter “ you. But, follow him up, and by-and-by there will be a chance when there can be no mistake as to your motives. I had a man in my parish in Indiana, who was a very ugly fellow. He had a wife and daughter who were awakened during the revival which was then working; and, while visiting others who needed instruction, I went to see and talk with them. He heard that I had been in his house, and shortly afterwards I passed down the street in which he lived. He was sitting on the fence; and of all the filth that was ever emptied on a young minister’s head, I received my share. He threw it out, right and left, up and down, and said everything that wan calculated to harrow my pride. I was very wholesomely indignant for a young man. I said to my self, “ Look here, I will be revenged on you yet.” He told me I should never darken his door again, to which I responded that I never would until I had his invitation to do so. Things went on for some time. I met him on the street, bowed to him, spoke well of him, and never repeated his treatment of me to any one. We constantly crossed each other’s paths, and often visited the same people. I always spoke kindly of him. Very soon he ran for the office of sheriff, and then I went out into the field and worked for him. I canvassed for votes; I used my personal influence. It was a pretty close election, but he was elected. When he knew I was Working for him, I never saw a man so utterly perplexed as he was. He did not know what to make of it. Ho came to me one (Lay, awkward and stumbling, and undertook to “make up,” as the saying is. He said he would be very glad to have me call and see him. I congratulated him on his election, and of course accepted his overtures; and from that time forth I never had a faster friend in the world than he was. Now I might have thrown stones at him from the topmost cliffs of Mount Sinai, and hit him every time; but that would not have done him any good. Kindness killed him. I Avon his confidence. Now, your congregation will be full of sluggish people. Somebody must bear with those dull and stupid ones. You will find, what is a great deal worse, people who know everything, and yet know nothing. You cannot teach them anything. They are conceited snips of men, who are rushing up to you, and taking on airs in your presence, and you feel like smacking them, as you would a black fly or a mosquito. But somebody has to bear with them. If Christ died for the world, he died for a great many ordinary folks; and if we are Christ’s we must do the same thing. I defy you to do this on a plan, or a purpose, or “ on speculation,” if I might say so. You have to do it because there is that in your heart which makes you brother to such men. You have to say, “ He is worth bearing with. I would better surfer in his place than let him suffer. He must be enlarged. He must be augmented, and made more a man in Christ Jesus.” Then, again, you have obstinate men whom you cannot start, men who are unreasonable. There is nothing in the long nm that can withstand a wise tenderness, a gentle benevolence, and a sympathy that melts the heart by a genial fervour, and which is continued in season and out of season, in sickness and in health, year in and year out. Nothing can withstand that. How is the soil disintegrated? First, the ground is broken down by the grinding of the frost, then come the warmth of spring, the mellow rains, and then the after-sunshine. In such ways must a minister work first by attrition, and then by the geniality of his own soul. You can make soil out of almost anything, if you will only give your time to it.* LOVE, THE KEY-XOTE OF PULPIT-WORK. There are also some specialties in this true Christian love and sympathy that bear upon the pulpit. In the first place, the whole cast of your thought and the subjects with which you deal are to bear tho impress of this good news: that God is love, and that God so loved the world that he gave his Son to die for it; and that Christ so loves the world that, having died for it, he now sits at the right hand of God, a risen Saviour, to live for it. * “ But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children: so\ being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you. I not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto V us. For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night \ and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblamably we behaved ourselves among you that believe. As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children.” 1Th 2:7-11. If you preach justice alone, you will murder the gospel. If you preach conscientiously, as it is called I if you sympathize with law and with righteousness as interpreted by the narrow rule of a straight line j if you preach, especially, with a sense of vindictive retribution I do not care who the criminals arc you will fail of your whole duty. There must be justice, and punitive justice, of course; but, after all, “ Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord. It is a quality so dangerous to handle that only infinite love is safe in administering it. No mortal man should dare to touch it, for it is a terrible instrument. You are to administer all the great truths, the most rugged truths, in the spirit of the truest sympathy, benevolence, and love. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 128: 1.J 07. LOVE MAKES A FREE PREACHER ======================================================================== Love Makes a Free Preacher. When you kindle to a full sympathy with God and man you can preach anything you please. You can say anything you please; if it goes with a reason able degree of wisdom and a great degree of sympathetic love, it will be warmly received. Recollect the apostle’s manner. When he wanted to rebuke the Ephesian Church he bethought him of all the good things he could, for encouragement. “ Never theless, I have somewhat against thee,” adds he, and then he brought in his rebuke, having prepared the way for it. Some ministers seem to feel that men are totally depraved, and that it is the duty of every preacher to secure the evidence of it by stirring men up to, bitterness and resistance. Your business is to tone), that down, and to prepare men’s hearts by skilful address that shall put to sleep these repellent forces in them, so that they will hear your message and accept your influence upon the nobler side of their minds. When you are like a wise teacher or an affectionate parent, and prepare your congregation for what you wish, you can say almost anything to them. Young gentlemen, the great art of managing a congregation lies in this, I am supposing, now, that a man has a good substance of thought and common sense, and I am speaking of the qualifications that reside in the heart alone, be good-natured yourself, and keep them good-natured, and then they will not need any managing. It is the most difficult thing in the world to control a great audience when they are irritable and fault-finding and peevish; and they will be apt to be so if the minister’s own gifts lie in that direction, and his service is irritating and arrogant. On the other hand, if the ministration of the pulpit is a balm to them, not by keeping down their moral sensibilities, but by keeping the sweeter and nobler part of their nature uppermost, you can reprove and rebuke, with all long-suffering, and they will accept it at your hands. It is out of this spirit, too, that you can deal with topics that otherwise would not be allowed. Minis ters often think they cannot preach what they feel they ought to preach. There is a reformation going on, and it will affect vested interests, and there are men in the congregation, involved in these matters, 011 whom one’s influence very largely depends, and it would be dangerous to irritate them. _ One man is a factory-owner, and the whole church turns on that pivot; and yet it becomes necessary to preach on the duties of employers to labouring men, and their sympathies with working men. Capital is largely represented, and it is suspicious and watchful. Now, you cannot afford to let this topic alone; and you have sold yourself to any man fear of whom makes you silent. Yet you can discuss any topic if you only love men enough; your heart will tell you how to approach it. In a neighbourhood you can preach stringent temperance, though there are many in your church who are interested in the prevalence of drinking-usages. Slavery can be preached against, and so it could in the olden times. Of course there are some who will take offence, but, in the main, you will hold your own and save others. It is to be done by being perfectly sweet-tempered and perfectly fearless. A congregation knows when a minister is afraid of them, just as well as a horse knows that his driver is afraid of him. If you want to stay in a place, be willing to leave it. He that would save his life must be willing to lose it, and he that will lose his life shall save it. If you are willing to go out of any parish just as soon as they want you to go, and are perfectly willing to lay down your work to-morrow if they say so, they will know it. If you want to stay very much, they will know that too, and will take advantage of it. Stand fearless, speaking the truth in love and in a good deal of love in love multiplied just in proportion as the theme is critical and dangerous. Be willing to take the responsibility of saying it, when they attack you out of the pulpit, bearing in mind that your business is to take care not only of your self, but of all men. If one of your parishioners behaves badly, you must tax yourself with his bad behaviour, and say it is partly your fault, and not altogether his. If you take the stand indicated by such instances as I have alluded to, there is no reason why your pastorate should not be long, and there is no reason why you may not preach upon any subject you choose. I recollect one thing, which I may have told you before, but if I have, you will have a chance, as I have heard Gough say, to see whether I am capable of telling the same thing twice alike. It is inreference to what Calvin Fletcher, a wise old lawyer in Indianapolis, said to me 011 one occasion, and which has been a help to me all my life since. He said, “ If I do business with any man and he gets angry at me, or does not act right, it is my fault. My business is to see that everybody with whom I do business shall do right; I charge myself with that responsibility.” Now you must charge your selves, in the same way, with the responsibility of your parish. If, after the lapse of some consider able time, people get angry and act wrongly, it is in part your fault, and not theirs alone. If people want to hear the truth with freshness and new life, do not go clucking around the country, and say, “ I was ousted from my nest, where I was brooding, because the people have itching ears and want novelties.” If people are discontented with you, they have a right to be so. In closing, then, I urge you to see that you are competent for all things, by study, by the weight of your thought, and by the skill of your administration of the truth to men; but, above all, and beyond all, have in you the propelling power of that genial, yearning love which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.” For “whether there be prophecies “doctrines, teachings “they shall fail; whether there be knowledge “-such partial and incomplete systems of thought as men work out “it shall vanish away.” There is but one thing that stands. “LOVE NEVER FAILETH.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 129: 1.J 08. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ======================================================================== Questions and Answers. Q. Would you have us preach on the subject of the heart belli” “ desperately wicked “ V MR. BEECHER. Oh yes. There are some texts in the Bible that I think it would be difficult to preach from, but that is not one of them. On the contrary, only last Sunday morning I preached on a branch of that theme namely, the “ deceitfulness of riches.” I showed what deceit men practised on themselves in proposing to themselves to get rich, in trying to get rich, and then in taking care of the riches when acquired. I did not notice that any of my rich men took it to themselves, either. Q. Would you preach “ He that believeth not shall be damned “? MR. BEECHER. Would I? STUDENT. Yes. sir. M.R. BEECHER. Yes, sir, assuredly. I always preach with a shadow. There is always an alternative. But I do not need, you know, to have a whip right up over the kitchen fireplace, where the boy can see it all the time. If you have given him one good whipping, he will remember it, and then, when you say “John!” that is enough. There are a dozen whippings in that. These questions that you are propounding all come on the supposition that to preach in a spirit of love means that there is to be no punishment. It does not mean any such thing. The spirit of love carries everything with it. It carries punishment with it, but in a qualified form, even as love carries it; though not as fear does, nor as conscience does, nor as pure intellect does. Q. Where is the spring from which a man is to obtain the love and sympathy you speak of? MR, BEECHER. If a man knows what he wants and what he is aiming at in his every-day life, he must get it just as he would seek any other educational development. If you desire a musical education, what do you do? You practise for that. If you wish to attain knowledge by art, what do you do? You put yourself under a master, and work for form and colour. If you want devotion in the sense of rapt meditation, then you seek that. If you want it in the sense of exhilaration and of bounding joyousness, you will seek that. But if you want religion in a sense of genial sympathy with men, you will seek it by being with men. And when you can bring yourself to lay aside things that you very much wish to do, things that are naturally strong in you, for the sake of doing something that you do not want to do, or being something that you do not want to be, on account of other persons, who are neither very agreeable nor very rewarding and who, perhaps, will never know of your sacrifice, then you will have shown yourself n’t for your work, and can say, “ I lay down a part of my life for that man.” That is the way we must minister to our congregations. Christ says, “ I am the way.” Make a road for men’s feet upon yourself. Pave it with your most precious things. Do it a few times, and do not think you will have to ask me any other questions as to the way to cultivate that spirit. Practise loving men, if you want to have the power of love. Q. Do you think that a man who is hy nature very cold and unsympathetic should preach, or #0 into the ministry V MR. BEECHEH. No; you might as well take an icicle to warm an invalid’s bed with. Q. Was not Jonathan Edwards, when preaching the justice of God, moved by love? Great as Edwards truly was, and far in advance of his age in many respects, he yet was unconsciously under the grossly materializing theological habits of the mediaeval schools. The monarchial figures of government in the Bible, and the figures of material punishment, are full terrible enough. But to employ the imagination, as Edwards did, in inventing new horrors for hell, above all, in attempting to picture the divine Heart as so in love with justice that it rejoices in the merited sufferings of the wicked, was a sad perversion of the functions of imagination. In some respects Edwards’s terrific sermon, “ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” may be ranked with Dante’s Inferno or Michael Angelo’s painting of the “ General Judgment.” But who can look upon the detestable representations of the painter, or the hideous scenes of the Florentine poet, without a shudder of wonder that they should have ever come from such tender and noble hearts? They were dreams of dark days. The doom of wickedness is dreadful enough, with out the hideous materialism and the horrible buffoonery of justice which prevailed in a former day. Q. Is there not something analogous to divine judgment in the punishment of criminals by capital and other punishment? Punishments follow the violations of natural law. But Nature is blind. It makes no discriminations. It takes no account of motives. It has no palliations and no pity. When a father punishes, he takes account of the age, inexperience, temptations, and motives of the child, and grades his penalties, or wholly pardons, as will best effect his end, the child’s good. Governments undertake to do the same. But magistrates are hampered. Their knowledge is imperfect. The law fixes arbitrary processes of procedure. Punishments are often too lenient or too severe. They are determined full as much by the weakness of government as by the desert of the victim. Governments are but clumsy machines, and public justice is but a poor imitation of divine justice. We should be cautious in employing the analogies derived from material laws, or from human civil governments, in interpreting the method of One who knows perfectly all things, w^ho is unlimited in power, and who is not impelled by sheer weakness to such expedients as are resorted to by human tribunals. I think that the analogies of parental government, in a human household, in which penalties are administered in the spirit of love, and for the child’s good, are far nearer the truth than those derived from the example of civil governments or artificial tribunals. LECTURES ON PREACHING. HENRY WARD BEECHER. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. Earlier Scenes. By HENRY WARD BEECHHK, Author of “ Life Thoughts,” c. Demy S\o. Price 75. 6d. “ He gives us a continuous narrative of the earlier ministry of our Lord, in a style remarkable for its philosophical insight, its strong common sense, and its graphic descriptiveness. His thoughts are always fresh and vigorous; his style always forcible and pointed. There has been to our literature on this great subject no more valuable addition than this.” Freeman. FOURTH THOUSAND. FAMILIAR TALKS ON THEMES OF GENERAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. By HI-XKY WARD BEECHHR. One Volume. Post Svo. Price 35. 6d. P. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 130: 2.00. LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN ON VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects By Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 In this 7 chapter work, Beecher presents us special presentations to young Christian men, and these presentations are sins and problems to avoid, like immoral women, the portrait gallery, popular amusements, six warnings, industry versus idleness, and gamblers and gambling. CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. The Immoral Woman 3. The Portrait Gallery 4. Popular Amusements 5. Six Warnings 6. Industry and Idleness 7. Gamblers and Gambling ======================================================================== CHAPTER 131: 2.01. INTRODUCTION ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 DEDICATION To Lyman Beecher, To you I owe more than to any other living being. In childhood, you were my Father; in later life, my Teacher; in manhood, my Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles, my knowledge, and that I am a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. For whatever profit they derive from this little Book — the young will be indebted to you. PREFACE Having watched the courses of those who seduce the young — their arts, their blandishments, their pretenses; having witnessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost in the same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, whose downfall began with the appearances of innocence; I felt an earnest desire, if I could, to warn the young, and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, with such facility, destroyed! I ask every young man who may read this book, not to submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, nor blindly to follow me; but to weigh my reasons, that he may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a friend; and that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present truth in those forms which best please the young. And though I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise — my whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sympathy of young men. REVIEWS [From D. H. Allen, Professor at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio.] "We have a variety of books designed for young men, but I know of none worth half as much as this. It will be sure to be read, and if read, will not be easily forgotten; and the young man who reads and remembers it, will always have before him a vivid picture of the snares and pitfalls to which he is exposed. Every youth should possess it. Every father should place it in the hands of his sons. It should be in every Sabbath School Library, on board every Steamboat, in every Hotel, and wherever young men spend a leisure hour." [From Wm. H. McGuffoy, Professor at Woodward College, Cincinnati, Ohio.] "Mr. Beecher sketches character with a masterly hand; and the old, as well as the young, must bear witness to the truth and fidelity of his portraits. I would recommend the book to the especial attention of those for whom it was designed, and hope that the patronage extended to this may encourage the author to make other efforts through the press, for the promotion of sound morals." [From Dr. A. Wylie, President of the Indiana University, at Bloomington.] "The indignant rebukes which the author deals out against that spirit of licentiousness which shows itself in those frivolous works which he mentions, and which are corrupting the taste as well as the morals of our youth, have my warmest approbation. The warnings which Mr. Beecher has given on the subject of amusements are greatly needed. In short, the book deserves a place on the shelf of every household in the land, to be read by the old as well as the young!" (From Dr. C. White, President of Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana.] "Beecher’s Lectures follow a long series of elaborate and able works addressed to young men by some of our best writers. It is no small merit of this production, that it is not less instructive and impressive than the best of those which have preceded it, at the same time, that it is totally unlike them all. Mr. Beecher has given to young men most important warnings, and most valuable advice with unusual fidelity, and powerful effect. Avoiding the abstract and formal, he has pointed out to the young, the evils and advantages which surround them, with so much reality and vividness — that we almost forget we are reading a book, instead of looking personally into the interior scenes of a living and breathing community. These lectures will bear to be read often." [From Hon. John McLean, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.] "I know of no work so admirably calculated, if read with attention, to lead young men to correctness of thought and action, and I earnestly recommend it to the study of every young man who desires to become eminently respectable and useful." [From E. W. Sehon, General Agent American Bible Society for the West] "The intention of the author is well preserved throughout this volume. We commend the book for its boldness and originality of thought and independence of expression. The young men of our country cannot too highly appreciate the efforts of one who has thus nobly and affectionately labored for their good." [From Pastor James H. Perkins, Cincinnati, Ohio] "I have read Mr. Henry W. Beecher’s lectures to young men with a great deal of pleasure. They appear to me to contain advice better adapted to our country, than can be found in any similar work with which I am acquainted; and this advice is presented in a style far better calculated than that common to the pulpit, to attract and please the young. I would certainly recommend the volume to any young man, as worthy of frequent perusal, and trust our American pulpit may produce many others as pleasing and practical." [From T. E. Cressy, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] "There is so much ignorance among good men in general, in all our cities and large towns, of the astonishing prevalence of vice, especially of licentiousness and of its procuring causes; and there is such a false delicacy on the part of those who know these things, to hold them up to the gaze of the unsuspecting, that this book will not pass for its real worth. But it is a very valuable work. It speaks the truth in all plainness. It should be in every family library; every young man should first read and then study it!" (From J. Blanchard, Pastor of the Fifth Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] "The book is both pleasing and profitable. It is filled with vivid sketches and delineations of vice; weighty instructions, pithy sentiments, delicate turns of thought, and playful sallies of humor! And in style and matter, is admirably adapted to the tastes and needs of the class for whom it is written." [From T. A. Mills, Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.] "The matter of this work is excellent — and the style striking and attractive. The dangers of young men are vividly portrayed, and much moral instruction given. Many of the popular vices of the present day are handled as they deserve. No young man can read the book attentively without profit, and its perusal would prove advantageous even to those who are immersed in the cares and business of life. It will need no recommendation after it becomes known." [From the Indiana State Journal.] "We have no doubt that these Lectures, as read, will produce a powerful impression! The pictures which glow from the hand of the artist arrest the eye — so admirable is the style and arrangement; nor will the interest once aroused slacken, until the whole sketch shall be contemplated. And the effect of the sketch — like that of a visit to the dens of iniquity shorn of their blandishments — cannot fail to be of the most wholesome warning character." [From the Daily Cincinnati Gazette.] "To find anything new or peculiar in a work of this kind, now-a-days, would indeed be strange. In this respect we were agreeably surprised in looking over the book before us. The subjects, though many of them are common-place, are important and handled in a masterly manner. The author shows himself acquainted with the world, and with human nature, in all its varying phases. He writes as one who has learned the dangers and temptations that beset the young — from personal observation, and not from hearsay." [From the Ohio State Journal, Columbus, Ohio.] "The garb in which the author presents his subjects, makes them exceedingly attractive, and must make his Lectures very popular, when the public shall become acquainted with them. When delivered, it was not the design of the accomplished author to publish them — but at the earnest solicitation of a number of prominent citizens of Indiana, who were convinced that they would have a highly beneficial influence in arresting the progress of vice and immorality — he prepared them for the press, and they are now published in a cheap and neat form." [From the Baptist Cross and Journal, Columbus, Ohio.] "It is an excellent book, and should be in the hands of every young man, and of many parents. But few of those who are anxious to place their sons in large towns and cities — are aware of the temptations which beset them there; or of the many sons thus placed, who are unable to withstand these temptations. This work will open their eyes, and place them on their guard. It is written in a popular, captivating style, and is neatly printed. It goes right at the besetting sins of our age, and handles them without gloves. It ought to be extensively circulated." [From the Cincinnati Daily Herald.] "Mr. Beecher looks at things in his own way, and utters his thoughts in his own style. His conceptions are strong, his speech direct and to the point. The work is worthy of anybody’s perusal. This book is entirely practical, and specially appropriate to the times — and its views, so far as we can speak from our own perusal, are just, and very forcible." [From the Louisville Journal.] "It is the most valuable addition to our youth literature that has been made for many years. Let all get it and read it carefully." [From the ’Olive Branch’] "Beecher’s Lectures To Young Men is one of the most able, interesting and really useful works for young men. Every young man should have a copy of it!" [From the New York Commercial Advertiser.] "The subjects are practical — such as concern all young men especially at the present day. The sentiments of the writer are put forth with much conciseness and vigor of style, for Mr. Beecher writes like one in earnest. We would wish that every young man had the book put into his hands — especially every youth "whose avocation or choice may lead him to reside in any of the larger cities." [From the Christian Observer, Philadelphia.] "This is a new edition of an approved and excellent book, which it affords us pleasure to recommend to young men in every part of the country. The author’s thoughts, style, and manner, are his own; and his vivid sketches of the evils which surround the young, are replete with important counsels and valuable instruction." [From the Christian Mirror, Portland, Maine.] "Characters and qualities, whether for warning or imitation, are drawn with uncommon graphic power and justness of delineation, as anyone may satisfy himself who will turn to ’the picture gallery,’ and survey the full length portraits of the Wit, the Humorist, the Cynic, the Libertine, the Demagogue, and the Party-man. Would that every family might procure and peruse it!" [From the Christian Citizen.] "This is a volume of good strong Saxon thoughts, which no young man can read without thinking the like. The author talks right into the avocations of every-day life, as if he had been there himself, and were not dealing in kid glove theories of life and duty. Young men, you had better buy this book; it costs but little, and it will be worth a hundred dollars a year to you — if you read it in the right way!" [From the Christian Reflector, Boston.] "This is especially the ’young man’s manual’. It treats of the most important subjects, with simple directness, and yet with the hand of a master. There are thousands of young men in Boston who should read it with profit and interest, and not a few whom its perusal might save from the yawning gulf of corruption and ruin! Let every young man secure this book, and read it!" [From the Portland Transcript.] "In handling his subjects, the author has a peculiar style. There is a freshness and originality about it, which at once arrests attention. He writes with an ungloved hand — presents truth, as truth should be presented — naked! Whatever there is beautiful, or whatever there is hideous about her — there she stands, a mark for all to gaze at! We have vices enough in New England which need rebuking and reforming. There are none so virtuous who may not be profited by these lectures. They are addressed to the young men particularly — yet the aged may glean from them many a useful lesson. We commend the work heartily to all. It is not a dry, abstract treatise on morals; but highly practical throughout. The pictures presented are life-like — flesh and blood portraits. The illustrations are apt and insightful, while an occasional vein of humor comes in as a very agreeable seasoning. The author writes like one in earnest, like one who feels the importance of the duty he has assumed. A better work for the young, we have rarely read." [From the Daily Evening Transcript, Boston.] "These Lectures abound in important and impressive truths, expressed in clear and pungent language. Mr. Beecher’s style is remarkable for compactness and forcibleness. He occasionally thunders and lightenings, but it is to arouse young men to the dangers to which they are exposed. There is a freshness and vivacity about his thoughts and language, which must interest as well as instruct and warn the young. We desire that every young man in our city — yes, in our country — had a copy of these lectures in his hands! They can scarcely fail to interest every intelligent reader, nor to benefit every young man not lost to a sense of duty, not blind to danger, not in love with vice." [From the Advocate of Moral Reform, New York.] "Wherever this book is known, it is regarded of superlative worth. In our judgment no young man should enter upon city-life without it. Employers, both in city and country, should place it in the hands of their clerks and apprentices. Fathers should give it to their sons, and sons should keep it next their Bibles, and engrave its precepts upon their hearts. We are glad to learn, that, although so recently published, it has passed to a third edition, and the demand for it is increasing." [From the Congregational Journal, Concord, N. H.] "The writer draws his sketches with the hand of a master, and entering upon his work with a hearty interest in the young, for whom he writes it — he makes them feel that he is honest and in earnest. While the book is not lacking in seriousness — it has the charm of variety; and though it encourages solemn Christian and moral principles, the pictures drawn in it are so vivid, that it will be read with the interest of an ingenious work of fiction. Every father should read it in his family!" Highly recommendatory notices appeared in the New York Evangelist, New York Observer, Christian World, Christian Register, Christian Watchman, etc, etc. Valuable notices have appeared in most of the papers in New England and New York state, too numerous to copy. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 132: 2.02. THE IMMORAL WOMAN ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 The Immoral Woman! "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2Ti 3:16-17 Surely one cannot declare the whole counsel of God, and leave out a subject which is interwoven with almost every chapter of the Bible. So inveterate is the prejudice against introducing into the pulpit the subject of immorality, that Ministers of the Gospel, knowing the vice to be singularly dangerous and frequent — have yet by silence almost complete, or broken only by circuitous allusions, manifested their submission to the popular taste. That Vice upon which it has pleased God to be more explicit and full, than upon any other; against which he uttered his voice upon Sinai, "You shall not commit adultery;" upon which the lawgiver, Moses, legislated with boldness; which Judges condemned; upon which the venerable Prophets spoke often and again; against which Christ with singular directness and plainness uttered the purity of religion; and upon which He inspired Paul to discourse to the Corinthians, and to almost every primitive church; this subject, upon which the Bible does not so much speak, as thunder — not by a single bolt — but peal after peal — we are solemnly warned not to introduce into the pulpit! I am entirely aware of the delicacy of introducing this subject into the pulpit. The proverbs of Solomon are designed to furnish us a series of maxims for every relation of life. There will naturally be the most said where there is the most needed. If the frequency of warning against any sin measures the liability of man to that sin, then none is worse than Impurity. In many separate passages is the solemn warning against the immoral woman given with a force which must terrify all but the innocent or incorrigible; and with a delicacy which all will feel but those whose modesty is the fluttering of an impure imagination. I shall take such parts of all these passages as will make up a connected narrative. When wisdom enters into your heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto your soul, discretion shall preserve you . . . to deliver you from the immoral woman, who chatters with her tongue; her lips drop as a honey-comb, her mouth is smoother than oil. She sits at the door of her house on a seat in the high places of the city, to call to passengers who go right on their ways: "Whoever is simple let him turn in here." To him that lacks understanding, she says, "Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant;" but he knows not that the dead are there. Lust not after her beauty, neither let her capture you with her eyelids. She forsakes the guide of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God. Remove your way far from her, and come not near the door of her house, for her house inclines unto death! She has cast down many wounded; yes, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to Hell, going down to the chamber of death; none that go unto her, return again; neither take they hold of the paths of life. Let not your heart incline to her ways, lest you mourn at last, when your flesh and your body are consumed, and say: "How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised correction!" I. Can language be found which can draw a corrupt beauty so vividly as this? Look out upon that fallen creature whose mirthful sally through the street calls out the significant laugh of bad men, the pity of good men, and the horror of the pure. Was not her cradle as pure as ever a beloved infant? Love soothed its cries. Sisters watched its peaceful sleep, and a mother pressed it fondly to her bosom! Had you afterwards, when spring-flowers covered the earth, and every gale was fragrance, and every sound was music, seen her, fairer than the lily or the violet, searching them, would you not have said, "Sooner shall the rose grow poisonous than she; both may wither — but neither corrupt." And how often, at evening, did she clasp her tiny hands in prayer? How often did she put the wonder-raising questions to her mother, of God, and Heaven, and the dead — as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision! As young womanhood advanced, and these foreshadowed graces ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, health glowed in her cheek, love looked from her eye, and purity was an atmosphere around her. Alas! she forsook the guide of her youth. Faint thoughts of evil, like a far-off cloud which the sunset gilds, came first; nor does the rosy sunset blush deeper along the Heaven, than her cheek, at the first thought of evil. Now, ah! mother, and you guiding elder sister, could you have seen the lurking spirit embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer might have broken the spell, a tear have washed its stain! Alas! they saw it not; she spoke it not; she was forsaking the guide of her youth. She thinks no more of Heaven. She breathes no more prayers. She has no more penitential tears to shed; until, after a long life, she drops the bitter tear upon the cheek of despair — then her only suitor. You have forsaken the covenant of your God. Go down! fall never to rise! Hell opens to be your home! Oh Prince of torment! if you have transforming power, give some relief to this once innocent child, whom another has corrupted! Let your deepest damnation seize him who brought her here! let his coronation be upon the very mount of torment! and the rain of fiery hail be his salutation! He shall be crowned with thorns poisoned and anguish-bearing; and every woe beat upon him, and every wave of Hell roll over the first risings of baffled hope. Your guilty thoughts, and guilty deeds, shall flit after you with bows which never break, and quivers forever emptying but never exhausted! If Satan has one dart more poisoned than another; if God has one bolt more transfixing and blasting than another; if there is one hideous spirit more unrelenting than others — they shall be yours, most execrable wretch! who led her to forsake the guide of her youth, and to abandon the covenant of her God. II. The next injunction of God to the young, is upon the ensnaring danger of Beauty. "Desire not her beauty in your heart, neither let her capture you with her eyelids." God did not make so much of nature with exquisite beauty, or put within us a taste for it, without an object. He meant that it should delight us. He made every flower to charm us. He never made a color, nor graceful-flying bird, nor silvery insect, without meaning to please our taste. When He clothes a man or woman with beauty — He confers a favor, did we know how to receive it. Beauty, with amiable dispositions and ripe intelligence — is more to any woman than a queen’s crown. The peasant’s daughter, the rustic belle, if they have woman’s sound discretion, may be rightfully prouder than kings’ daughters; for God adorns those who are both good and beautiful; man can only conceal the lack of beauty, by blazing jewels. As moths and tiny insects flutter around the bright blaze which was kindled for no harm — so the foolish young, fall down burned and destroyed by the blaze of beauty. As the flame which burns to destroy the insect, is consuming itself and soon sinks into ashes — so beauty, too often, draws on itself that ruin which it inflicts upon others. If God has given you beauty, tremble; for it is as gold in your house — thieves and robbers will prowl around and seek to possess it. If God has put beauty before your eyes, remember how many strong men have been cast down wounded by it. Are you stronger than David? Are you stronger than mighty patriarchs? — than kings and princes, who, by its fascinations, have lost peace and purity, and honor, and riches, and armies, and even kingdoms? Let other men’s destruction be your wisdom and warning; for it is hard to reap prudence upon the field of experience. III. In the minute description of this dangerous creature, mark next how seriously we are cautioned of her WILES. Her wiles of dress. Coverings of tapestry and the fine linen of Egypt are hers; the perfumes of myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. Silks and ribbons, laces and rings, gold and equipage; ah! how low a price for damnation! The wretch who would be hung simply for the sake of riding to the gallows in a golden chariot, clothed in king’s raiment — what a fool is he! Yet how many consent to enter the chariot of Death — drawn by the fiery steeds of lust which fiercely fly, and stop not for food or breath until they have accomplished their fatal journey — if they may spread their seat with flowery silks, or flaunt their forms with glowing apparel and precious jewels! Her wiles of speech. Beasts may not speak; this honor is too high for them. To God’s imaged-sons, this prerogative belongs, to utter thought and feeling in articulate sounds. We may breathe our thoughts to a thousand ears, and inspire a multitude with the best portions of our soul. How, then, has this soul’s breath, this echo of our thoughts, this only image of our feelings — been perverted, that from the lips of sin it has more persuasion, than from the lips of wisdom! What horrid wizard has put the world under a spell and charm, that words from the lips of an immoral woman shall ring upon the ear like tones of music; while words from the divine lips of religion fall upon the startled ear like the funeral tones of the burial-bell! Wisdom seems crabbed; sin seems fair. Purity sounds morose; but from the lips of the harlot, words drop as honey, and flow smoother than oil; her speech is fair, her laugh is as merry as music. The eternal glory of purity has no luster — but the deep damnation of lust is made as bright as the gate of Heaven! Her wiles of Love. Love is the mind’s light and heat; it is that tenuous air in which all the other faculties exist, as we exist in the atmosphere. A mind of the greatest stature without love, is like the huge pyramid of Egypt — chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passages. A mind with love, is as a king’s palace lighted for a royal festival. Shame! that the sweetest of all the mind’s attributes should be suborned to sin! that this daughter of God should become a slave to arrogant lusts! — the cup-bearer to tyrants! — yet so it is. Devil-tempter! will your poison never cease? — shall beauty be poisoned? — shall language be charmed? — shall love be made to defile like pitch, and burn as the living coals? Her tongue is like a bended bow, which sends the silvery shaft of flattering words. Her eyes shall cheat you, her dress shall beguile you, her beauty is a trap, her sighs are baits, her words are lures, her love is poisonous, her flattery is the spider’s web spread for you. Oh! trust not your heart nor ear with Delilah! The locks of the mightiest Samson are soon shorn off, if he will but lay his slumbering head upon her lap. He who could slay heaps upon heaps of Philistines, and bear upon his huge shoulders the ponderous iron-gate, and pull down the vast temple — was yet too weak to contend with one wicked artful woman! Trust the sea with your tiny boat, trust the fickle wind, trust the changing skies of April, trust the miser’s generosity, the tyrant’s mercy; but ah! simple man, trust not yourself near the artful woman, armed in her beauty, her cunning clothing, her dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow, her look of love, her voice of flattery — for if you had the strength of ten Ulysses, unless God helps you — "Her house is a highway to Hell, leading down to the chambers of death!" Next beware the wile of her reasonings. "To him who lacks understanding she says, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. I came forth to meet you, and I have found you." What says she in the credulous ear of inexperience? Why, she tells him that sin is safe; she swears to him that sin is pure; she protests to him that sin is innocent. Out of history she will entice him, and say: What king have I not sought? What conqueror have I not conquered? Philosophers have not, in all their wisdom, learned to hate me. I have been the guest of the world’s greatest men. The Egyptian priest, the Athenian sage, the Roman censor, the crude Gaul — have all worshiped in my temple. Are you afraid to tread where Plato trod, and the pious Socrates? Are you wiser than all that ever lived? Nay, she reads the Bible to him; she goes back along the line of history, and reads of Abraham, and of his glorious compeers; she skips past Joseph with averted looks, and reads of David and of Solomon; and whatever chapter tells how good men stumbled, there she has turned down a leaf, and will persuade you, with honeyed speech, that the best deeds of good men were their sins; and that you should only imitate them in their stumbling and falls! Or, if the Bible will not cheat you, how will she plead your own nature; how will she whisper, "God has made you so!" How, like her father Adam, will she lure you to pluck the apple, saying, "You shall not surely die!" And she will hiss at virtuous men, and spit on modest women, and shake her serpent-tongue at any purity which shall keep you from her ways. Oh! then, listen to what God says: "With much fair speech she causes him to yield; with the flattery of her lips she forced him. He goes after her as an ox goes to slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, until a dart strike through his liver — as a bird hastens to a snare, and knows not that it is for his life!" I will point only to another wile. When inexperience has been beguiled by her infernal machinations, how, like a flock of startled birds, will spring up late regrets, and shame, and fear. And worst of all, how will conscience ply her scorpion-whip and lash you, uttering with stern visage, "you are dishonored, you are a wretch, you are lost!" When the soul is full of such outcry, memory cannot sleep; she wakes, and while conscience still plies the scourge, will bring back to your thoughts, youthful purity, home, a mother’s face, a sister’s love, a father’s counsel. Perhaps it is out of the high Heaven that your mother looks down to see your baseness. Oh! if she has a mother’s heart — nay — but she cannot weep for you there! These wholesome pains, not to be felt if there were not yet health in the mind, would save the victim, could they have time to work. But how often have I seen the spider watch, from his dark round hole, the struggling fly, until he began to break his web; and then dart out to cast his long lithe arms about him, and fasten new cords stronger than ever! So, God says, the immoral woman shall secure her ensnared victims, if they struggle. Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are changeable that you can not know them. She is afraid to see you soberly thinking of leaving her, and entering the path of life; therefore her ways are changeable. She multiplies devices, she studies a thousand new wiles, she has some sweet word for every sense — lust for your pride, praise for your vanity, generosity for your selfishness, religion for your conscience, racy quips for your wearisomeness, spicy scandal for your curiosity. She is never still, nor the same; but evolving as many shapes as the rolling cloud, and as many colors as dress the wide prairie. IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me show you what God says of the chances of ESCAPE to those who once follow her: "None who go to her return, or attain the paths of life!" The strength of this language was not meant absolutely to exclude hope from those who, having wasted their substance in riotous living, would yet return; but to warn the unfallen, into what an almost hopeless gulf they plunge, if they venture. Some may escape — as here and there a mangled sailor crawls out of the water upon the beach — the only one or two of the whole crew; the rest are gurgling in the waves with impotent struggles, or already sunk to the bottom! There are many evils which hold their victims by the force of habit; there are others which fasten them, by breaking their return to society. Many a person never reforms, because reform would bring no relief. There are other evils which hold men to them, because they are like the beginning of a fire; they tend to burn with fiercer and wider flames, until all fuel is consumed, and go out only when there is nothing to burn! Of this last kind is the sin of immorality: and when the conflagration once breaks out, experience has shown, what the Bible long ago declared — that the chances of reformation are few indeed. The certainty of continuance is so great, that the chances of escape are dropped from the calculation; and it is said roundly, "None who go unto her, return again!" V. We are repeatedly warned against the immoral woman’s house. There is no vice like immorality, to delude with the most fascinating offers of delight — and fulfill the promise with the most loathsome experience. All vices at the beginning, are silver-tongued — but none so impassioned as this. All vices in the end, cheat their dupes — but none with such overwhelming disaster as immorality. I shall describe by an allegory . . . its specious seductions; its plausible promises; its apparent innocence; its delusive safety; its deceptive joys — their change, their sting, their flight, their misery; and the victim’s ruin! HER HOUSE has been cunningly planned by an Evil Architect to attract and please the attention. It stands in a vast garden full of enchanting objects. It shines in glowing colors, and seems full of happiness and full of pleasure. All the signs are of unbounded enjoyment — safe, if not innocent. Though every beam is rotten, and the house is the house of death, and in it are all the vicissitudes of infernal misery; yet to the young, it appears like a palace of delight. They will not believe that death and damnation can lurk behind so brilliant a fabric. Those who are within, look out and pine to return; and those who are without, look in and pine to enter. Such is the mastery of deluding sin. That part of the garden which borders on the highway of innocence, is carefully planted. There is not a poison-weed, nor thorn, nor thistle there. Ten thousand flowers bloom, and waft a thousand fragrances. A victim cautiously inspects it; but it has been too carefully patterned upon innocency, to be easily detected. This outer garden is innocent — innocence is the lure to wile you from the right path, into her grounds — innocence is the bait of that trap by which she has secured all her victims. At the gate stands a lovely porter, welcoming kindly: "Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!" Will the youth enter? Will he seek her house? To himself he says, "I will enter only to see the garden — its fruits, its flowers, its birds, its arbors, its warbling fountains!" He is resolved in virtue. He seeks wisdom, not sinful pleasure! — Dupe! you are deceived already! And this is your first lesson of wisdom. He passes, and the porter leers behind him! He is within an Enchanter’s garden! Can he not now return, if he wishes? — he will not wish to return, until it is too late. He ranges the outer garden near to the highway, thinking as he walks: "How foolishly have I been alarmed at pious lies about this beautiful place! I heard it was Hell — I find it is Paradise!" Emboldened by the innocency of his first steps, he explores the garden further from the road. The flowers grow richer; their fragrances exhilarate; the very fruit breathes perfume like flowers; and birds seem intoxicated with delight among the fragrant shrubs and loaded trees. Soft and silvery music steals along the air. "Are angels singing? — Oh! fool that I was, to fear this place — it is all the Heaven I need! Ridiculous minister, to tell me that death was here — where all is beauty, fragrance, and melody! Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous apparel as this! Death is grim and hideous!" He has now come near to the immoral woman’s house. If it was beautiful from afar — it is celestial now; for his eyes are bewitched with magic. When our passions enchant us — how beautiful is the way to death! In every window are sights of pleasure; from every opening, issue sounds of joy — the lute, the harp, bounding feet, and echoing laughter. Nymphs have spotted this pilgrim of temptation — they smile and beckon him. Where are his resolutions now? This is the virtuous youth who came only to observe! He has already seen too much! But he will see more; he will taste, feel, regret, weep, wail, and die! The most beautiful nymph that eye ever rested on, approaches with decent guise and modest gestures, to give him hospitable welcome. For a moment he recalls his home, his mother, his sister-circle; but they seem far-away, dim, powerless! Into his ear, the beautiful herald pours the sweetest sounds of love: "You are welcome here, and worthy! You have great wisdom, to break the bounds of superstition, and to seek these grounds where summer never ceases, and sorrow never comes! Hail! and welcome to the House of Pleasure!" There seemed to be a response to these words — the house, the trees, and the very air, seemed to echo, "Hail! and welcome!" In the stillness which followed, had the victim been less intoxicated, he might have heard a clear and solemn voice which seemed to fall straight down from Heaven: "Do not come near the door of her house. Her house is the way to Hell, going down to the chambers of death!" It is too late! He has gone in — and shall never return. He goes after her immediately, as an ox goes to the slaughter; or as a fool to the correction of the stocks — and knows not that it is for his life! Enter with me, in imagination, the immoral woman’s house — where, God grant you may never enter in any other way. There are five rooms — Pleasure, Satiety, Reality, Disease, and Damnation. 1. The Room of PLEASURE. The eye is dazzled with the magnificence of its apparel — soft velvet, glossy silks, burnished satins, crimson draperies, plushy carpets. Exquisite pictures glow upon the walls, carved marble adorns every niche. The inhabitants deceive by these lying shows; they dance, they sing; with beaming eyes they utter softest strains of flattery and graceful compliment. They partake the amorous wine, and the feast which loads the table. They eat, they drink, they are blithe and merry. Surely, they should be happy; for after this brief hour, they shall never know purity nor joy again! For this moment’s revelry — they are selling their soul and Heaven! The immoral woman walks among her guests in all her charms; fans the flame of joy, scatters grateful fragrances, and urges on the fatal revelry. As her poisoned wine is quaffed, and the mirthful creatures begin to reel, the torches wane and cast but a twilight. One by one, the guests grow somnolent; and, at length, they all repose. Their cup is exhausted, their pleasure is forever over — life has exhaled to a vapor, and that is consumed! While they sleep, servants, practiced to the work — and remove them all to another room. 2. The Room of SATIETY. An excess of sensual gratification — excites wearisomeness or loathing! Here reigns a bewildering twilight through which can hardly be discerned the wearied inhabitants — yet sluggish upon their couches. Over-flushed with dance, sated with wine and sweets — a fitful drowsiness vexes them. They wake — to crave; they taste — to loathe; they sleep — to dream; they wake again from unquiet visions. They long for the sharp taste of pleasure — so grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repining to sleep; by starts, they rouse at an ominous dream; by starts, they hear strange cries! The sweets burn and torment; the wine shoots sharp pains through their body. Strange wonder fills them. They remember the recent joy — as a reveler in the morning thinks of his midnight madness. The glowing garden and the sumptuous banquet now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate return; pensively they long for their native spot! At sleepless moments, mighty resolutions form — as substantial as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope will not shine. The past is not pleasant! The present is wearisome! And the future is gloomy! 3. The Room of REALITY. In the third room, no deception remains. The floors are bare; the naked walls drip filth; the air is poisonous with sickly fumes, and echoes with mirth concealing hideous misery! None supposes that he has been happy. The past seems like the dream of the miser, who gathers gold spilled like rain upon the road, and awakes, clutching his bed, and crying "Where is it?" On your right hand, as you enter, close by the door, is a group of fierce felons in deep drink with drugged liquor. With red and swollen faces; or white and thin; or scarred with ghastly corruption; with scowling brows, malevolent eyes, bloated lips and demoniac grins — in person all filthy, in morals all debauched, in peace, bankrupt. The desperate wretches wrangle one with the other, swearing bitter oaths, and heaping reproaches each upon each! Around the room you see miserable creatures unclothed, or dressed in rags — sobbing and moaning. That one who gazes out at the window, calling for her mother and weeping — was rightly, tenderly, and purely bred. She has been baptized twice — once to God, and once to the Devil! She sought this place in the very vestments of God’s house. "Do not call upon your mother! She is a saint in Heaven, and cannot hear you!" Yet, all night long she dreams of home, and childhood, and wakes to sigh and weep; and between her sobs, she cries "Mother! mother!" Yonder is another youth, once a servant at God’s house. His hair hangs tangled and torn; his eyes are bloodshot; his face is ashen; his fist is clenched. All the day, he wanders up and down, cursing sometimes himself, and sometimes the wretch that brought him here! And when he sleeps — he dreams of Hell; and then he awakes to feel all he dreamed! This is the Room of Reality. All know why the first rooms looked so gay — they were enchanted! It was enchanted wine they drank; and enchanted fruit they ate! Now they know the pain of fatal poison in every limb! 4. The Room of DISEASE. You who look wistfully at the pleasant front of this lovely house — come with me now, and look long into the terror of this room; for here are the seeds of sin in their full harvest form! We are in a leper-room! Its air disgusts every sense; its sights confound our thoughts; its sounds appall our ear; its stench repels us; it is full of diseases! Here a shuddering wretch is clawing at his breast — to tear away that worm which gnaws his heart! By him, is another wretch, whose limbs are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next, swelters another wretch in reeking filth — his eyes rolling in bony sockets, every breath a pang, and every pang a groan! But yonder, on a pile of rags, lies one whose yells of frantic agony appall every ear! Clutching his rags with spasmodic grasp, his swollen tongue lolling from a blackened mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and rolling — he shrieks curses; now blaspheming God — and now imploring him. He hoots and shouts, and shakes his grisly head from side to side, cursing or praying; now calling death, and then, as if driving away fiends, abhorrently yelling, "Get away! Be gone!" Another has been ridden by pain, until he can no longer shriek; but lies foaming and grinding his teeth, and clenches his bony hands, until the finger-nails pierce the palm — though there is no blood there to flow out — trembling all the time with the shudders and chills of utter agony. The happiest wretch in all this room, is an Idiot — confused, distorted, and moping! All day, he wags his head, and chatters, and laughs, and bites his nails! Then he will sit for hours motionless, with open jaw, and glassy eye fixed on nothing at all. In this room are huddled all the Diseases of Immoral Pleasure. This is the torture-room of the immoral woman’s house, and it exceeds the Catholic Inquisition. The wheel, the rack; the bed of knives, the roasting-fire, the brazen-room slowly heated, the slivers driven under the finger-nails, the hot pincers — what are these tortures of the Inquisition — compared to the agonies of the last days of immoral vice? Hundreds of rotting wretches would change their couch of torment in the immoral woman’s house — for the gloomiest terror of the Inquisition — and profit by the change! Nature herself becomes the tormentor. Nature, long trespassed on and abused, at length casts down the wretch; searches every vein, makes a road of every nerve for the scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls at every muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the brain, eats out the skin, and casts living coals of torment on the heart! What are hot pincers — compared to the envenomed claws of disease? What is it to be put into a pit of snakes and slimy toads, and feel their cold coil or piercing fang — compared to the creeping of a whole body of vipers? — where every nerve is a viper, and every vein a viper, and every muscle a serpent; and the whole body, in all its parts, coils and twists upon itself in unimaginable anguish? I tell you, there is no Inquisition so bad, as that which the Doctor looks upon! Young man! I can show you in this room, worse pangs than ever a savage produced at the stake! — than ever a tyrant wrung out by engines of torment! — than ever an Inquisitor devised! Every year, in every town — immoral wretches die scalded and scorched with agony. Were the sum of all the pain that comes with the last stages of immorality collected — it would rend the very heavens with its outcry; it would shake the earth; it would even blanch the cheek of Infatuation! You who are listening in the garden of this immoral woman, among her cheating flowers; you who are dancing in her halls in the first room — come here! Look upon her fourth room — its vomited blood, its sores and fiery blotches, its purulence, and rotten bones! Stop, young man! You turn your head from this ghastly room; and yet, stop! — and stop soon — or you shall soon lie here yourself! Mark the solemn signals of your passage! You have had already enough of warnings in your cheek, in your bosom, in your pangs of forewarning! But ah! Every one of you who are dancing in the immoral woman’s first hall — let me break your spell; for now I shall open the doors of the last room. Look! Listen! Witness your own end, unless you take quickly a warning! 5. The Room of DAMNATION! No longer does the incarnate wretch pretend to conceal her cruelty. She thrusts — yes! as if they were dirt — she shovels out the wretches. Some fall headlong through the rotten floor — a long fall to a fiery bottom! The floor trembles to deep thunders which roll below. Here and there, jets of flame sprout up, and give a ghastly light to the murky hall. Some would gladly escape; and flying across the treacherous floor, which man never safely passed, they go through pitfalls and treacherous traps — with hideous outcries and astounding yells — to eternal perdition! Fiends laugh! The infernal laugh! The cry of agony, the thunder of damnation — shake the very roof and echo from wall to wall. Oh! that the young might see the end of immorality — before they see the beginning! I know that you shrink from this picture; but your safety requires that you should look long into the Room of Damnation — that fear may supply strength to your virtue. See the blood oozing from the wall, the fiery hands which pluck the wretches down, the light of Hell gleaming through, and hear its roar as of a distant ocean chafed with storms! Will you sprinkle the wall with your blood? Will you feed those flames with your flesh? Will you add your voice to those thundering wails? Will you go down a prey through the fiery floor of the chamber of damnation? Believe then the word of God: "Her house is the way to Hell, going down to the chambers of death! Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and go on your way!" I have described the immoral woman’s house in strong language — and it needed it. If your taste shrinks from the description — so does mine. Hell, and all the ways of Hell — when we pierce through the cheating disguises and see the truth — are terrible to behold! And if men would not walk there — neither would we pursue their steps. We wish to sound the alarm, and gather back whom we can! Allow me to close, by directing your attention to a few points of especial danger. I. I solemnly warn you against indulging a sensual imagination. In that busy and mischievous faculty, begins the evil. Were it not for his evil imaginations, man might stand his own master — not overmatched by the worst part of himself. But ah! these summer-reveries, these venturesome dreams, these fairy-castles — built for no good purposes — they are haunted by impure spirits, who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you! Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are you, most favored of God, whose thoughts are pure; whose imagination will not breathe or fly in tainted air; and whose path has been measured by the Golden Rod of Purity. May I not paint PURITY, as a saintly virgin, in spotless white, walking with open face, in an air so clear that no vapor can stain it? Her steps are a queen’s steps; God is her father, and you her brother — if you will make her yours! Let your heart be her dwelling. Wear her ring upon your hand — and her charm on your heart. II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the young of evil companions. Decaying fruit corrupts the neighboring fruit. You cannot make your head a metropolis of base stories, the ear and tongue a highway of immodest words — and yet be pure. Another, as well as yourself — may throw a spark on the gun-powder of your passions — beware how your companions do it! No man is your friend who will corrupt you. An impure man is every godly man’s enemy — your deadly foe; and all the worse, if he hides his poisoned dagger under the cloak of friendship. Therefore, select your associates, assort them, winnow them. Keep the grain — and let the wind sweep away the chaff. III. But I warn you, with yet more solemn emphasis — against Evil Books and Evil Pictures! There is in every town an under-current which glides beneath our feet, unsuspected by the pure; out of which, notwithstanding, our sons scoop many a poisoned goblet. Books are hidden in trunks, concealed in dark holes; pictures are stored in sly portfolios, or trafficked from hand to hand; and the handiwork of depraved art is seen in forms which ought to make a harlot blush! I would think a man would loathe himself, and wake up from owning such things, as from a horrible nightmare! Those who circulate them — are incendiaries of all morality! And those who make them — are the worst public criminals! A pure heart would shrink from these abominable things — as from death itself! France, where true religion long ago was extinguished, smothered in immorality — has flooded the world with a species of literature redolent of the vilest depravity. Upon the plea of exhibiting human nature — novels are now scooped out of the very lava of corrupt passions. They are true to nature — but to nature as it exists in grossly vile and immoral hearts. Under a plea of reality — we have shown to us, troops of harlots — to prove that they are not so bad as purists think; and gangs of desperadoes — to show that there is nothing in crime inconsistent with the noblest feelings. We have in French and English, novels of the infernal school — humane murderers, lascivious saints, upright infidels, honest robbers. The devotion of these artists, is such as might be expected from vile thieves, in the vortex of thrice-deformed vice. Obscene libertines are now our professors of morality. They scrape the very sediment and muck of society — to mold their creations; and their books are monster-galleries, in which the inhabitants of old Sodom would have felt at home as connoisseurs. Over loathsome women, and unutterably vile men, huddled together in motley groups, and over all their monstrous deeds — their lies, their plots, their crimes, their horrendous pleasures, their appalling conversation — is thrown the impure light of a sensual imagination — until they glow with an infernal luster! Such novels are the common-sewers of society, into which drain the concentrated filth of the worst passions, of the worst creatures, of the worst cities! Such novels come to us impudently pretending to be reformers of morals, and liberalizers of religion; they propose to instruct our laws, and teach justice to a discreet humanity! The Ten Plagues have visited our literature: water is turned to blood; frogs and lice creep and hop over our most familiar things — the couch, the cradle, and the bread-box; locusts, plague, and fire — are smiting every green thing. I am ashamed and outraged, when I think that wretches could be found to open these foreign seals — and let out their plagues upon us — that any Satanic pilgrim should voyage to France to dip from the dead sea of her abomination — such immoral filth for our children. It were a mercy compared to this, to import . . . venomous serpents from Africa — and pour them out in our homes; ferocious lions — and free them in our towns; poisonous lizards and scorpions and black tarantulas — and put them in our gardens! Men could slay these — but those offspring-reptiles of the French mind — who can kill these? You might as well draw sword on a plague — or charge malaria with the bayonet! This black smut-lettered literature circulates in our towns, floats in our stores, nestles in the shops, is fingered and read nightly, and hatches broods of obscene thoughts in the young mind! While the parent strives to infuse Christian purity into his child’s heart — he is checked by most accursed messengers of evil; and the child’s heart hisses already like a nest of young and nimble vipers! IV. Once more, let me persuade you that no examples in high places — can justify imitation in low places. Your purity is too precious to be bartered, because an official rogue tempts by his example! I wish that every eminent place of state were a sphere of purity and light, from which should be flung down on your path a cheering glow to guide you on to virtue. But if these wandering stars, reserved I do believe for final blackness of darkness, wheel their malignant spheres in the orbits of corruption — do not follow after them! God is greater than wicked great men; Heaven is higher than the highest places of nations; and if God and Heaven are not brighter to your eyes than great men in high places — then you must take part in their doom, when, before long, God shall dash them to pieces! V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard your heart-purity. Never lose it! If it is gone — you have lost from the casket the most precious gift of God. The first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if soiled — can be cleansed by no fuller’s soap. If lost — it cannot be found, though sought carefully with tears! If a harp is broken — it may be repaired; if a light is quenched — the flame may enkindle it; but if a flower is crushed — what art can repair it? If an fragrance is wafted away — who can collect or bring it back? The heart of youth is a wide prairie. Over it hang the clouds of Heaven, to water it; and the sun throws its broad sheets of light upon it, to awake its life. Out of its bosom spring, the long season through, flowers of a hundred names and hues, entwining together their lovely forms, wafting to each other a grateful fragrance, and nodding each to each in the summer-breeze. Oh! such would man be — did he sustain that purity of heart which God gave him! But you now have a Depraved Heart. It is a vast continent; on it are mountain-ranges of evil powers, and dark deep streams, and pools, and morasses. If once the full and terrible clouds of temptation settle thick and fixedly upon you, and begin to cast down their dreadful stores — may God save whom man can never! Then the heart shall feel tides and streams of irresistible power, mocking its control, and hurrying fiercely down from steep to steep, with growing desolation. Your only resource is to avoid the uprising of your giant-passions. We are drawing near to Christmas day, by the usage of ages, consecrated to celebrate the birth of Christ. At his advent, God hung out a prophet-star in the Heaven; guided by it, the wise men journeyed from the east and worshiped at his feet. Oh! let the star of Purity hang out to your eye, brighter than the orient orb to the Magi; let it lead you, not to the Babe — but to His feet who now stands in Heaven, a Prince and Savior! If you have sinned — one look, one touch, shall cleanse you while you are worshiping, and you shall rise up healed. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 133: 2.03. THE POTRAIT GALARY ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 The Portrait Gallery "My son, if sinners entice you — do not consent!" Pro 1:10 He who is allured to embrace evil under some engaging form of beauty, or seductive appearance of good — is enticed. A man is tempted to what he knows to be sinful; he is enticed where the evil appears to be innocent. The Enticer wins his way by . . . bewildering the moral sense, setting false lights in the imagination, painting disease with the hues of health, making impurity to glow like innocency, strewing the broad-road with flowers, lulling its travelers with soothing music, hiding all its chasms, covering its pitfalls, and closing its long perspective with the mimic glow of Paradise. The young are seldom tempted to outright wickedness; evil comes to them as an enticement. The honest generosity and fresh heart of youth, would revolt from open baseness and undisguised vice. The Adversary conforms his wiles to their nature. He tempts them to the basest deeds — by beginning with innocent ones, gliding to more objectionable ones, and finally, to positively wicked ones. All our warnings then must be against the spring beauty of vice. Its autumn and winter — none wish. It is my purpose to describe the enticement of particular men upon the young. Every youth knows that there are dangerous men abroad who would injure him by lying, by slander, by over-reaching and plundering him. From such, they have little to fear, because they are upon their guard. Few imagine that they have anything to dread from those who have no designs against them; yet such is the instinct of imitation, so insensibly does the example of men steal upon us and warp our conduct to their likeness — that the young often receive a deadly injury from men with whom they never spoke! Our thoughts, our tastes, our emotions, our partialities, our prejudices, and finally, our conduct and habits — are insensibly changed by the silent influence of men who never once directly tempted us, or even knew the effect which they produced. I shall draw for your inspection, some of those dangerous men, whose open or silent enticement has availed against thousands, and will be exerted upon thousands more. I. The WIT. It is sometimes said by morose theologians, that Christ never laughed — but often wept. I shall not quarrel with the assumption. I only say that men have within them a faculty of mirthfulness which God created. I suppose it was meant for use. Those who do not feel the impulsion of this faculty, are not the ones to sit in judgment upon those who do. It would be very absurd for an owl in an ivy bush, to read lectures on optics to an eagle; or for a mole to counsel a lynx on the sin of sharp-sightedness. He is divinely favored, who may trace a silver vein in all the affairs of life; see sparkles of light in the gloomiest scenes; and absolute radiance in those which are bright. There are in the clouds ten thousand inimitable forms and hues, to be found nowhere else; there are in plants and trees beautiful shapes and endless varieties of color; there are in flowers minute pencilings of exquisite shades; in fruits a delicate bloom — like a veil, making the face of beauty more beautiful. Sporting among the trees, and upon the flowers, are tiny insects — gems which glow like living diamonds. Ten thousand eyes stare fully upon these things — and see nothing at all; and yet thus the Divine Artist has finished his matchless work! Thus, too, upon all the labors of life, the events of each hour, the course of good or evil; upon each action, or word, or attitude; upon all the endless changes transpiring among myriad men — there is a delicate grace, or bloom, or sparkle, or radiance — which catches the eye of Wit, and delights it with appearances which are to the weightier matters of life — what fragrance, colors, and symmetry are, to the marketable and commercial properties of matter. A mind imbued with this feeling is full of dancing motes, such as we see moving in sunbeams when they pour through some shutter into a dark room; and when the sights and conceptions of wit are uttered in words, they diffuse upon others that pleasure whose brightness shines upon its own cheerful imagination. It is not strange that the Wit is a universal favorite. All companies rejoice in his presence, watch for his words, repeat his language. He moves like a comet whose incomings and outgoings are uncontrollable. He astonishes the regular stars with the eccentricity of his orbit, and flirts his long tail athwart the heavens without the slightest misgivings that it will be troublesome, and romances the very sun with audacious familiarity. When wit is unperverted, it . . . lightens labor, makes the very face of care to shine, diffuses cheerfulness among men, multiplies the sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the dark things of life, and heightens the luster of the brightest. When wit is perverted, it . . . becomes an instrument of malevolence, gives a deceitful coloring to vice, reflects a semblance of truth upon error, and distorts the features of real truth, by false lights. The Wit is liable . . . to indolence — by relying upon his genius; to vanity — by the praise which is offered as incense; to malignant sarcasm — to revenge his affronts; to dissipation — from the habit of exhilaration, and from the company which courts him. The mere Wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses, not expected to draw the load — but only to jingle while the horses draw. The young often repine at their own native dullness; and since God did not choose to endow them with this shining quality — they will make it for themselves. Forthwith, they are smitten with the itch of imitation. Their ears purvey to their mouth the borrowed jest; their eyes note the Wit’s manner — and the awkward youth clumsily apes, in a side circle . . . the Wit’s deft and graceful gesture, the smooth smile, the roguish twinkle, the sly look. Every community is supplied with self-made Wits. One retails other men’s sharp witticisms. Another roars over his own brutal quotations. Another invents a witticism by a logical deduction of circumstances, and sniffs and giggles over the result as delightfully as if other men laughed too. Other self-made Wits lie in wait around your conversation, to trip up some word, or strike a light out of some sentence. Others fish in dictionaries for pitiful puns — and all fulfill the prediction of Isaiah: "You shall conceive chaff — and bring forth stubble!" It becomes a mania. Each school has its allusions, each circle has its apish motion, each companionhood its stock of wit-artillery. We find street-wit, shop-wit, school-wit, fool’s-wit, whisky-wit, business-wit, and almost every kind of wit — but mother-wit. We find puns, quibbles, catches, would-be jests, thread-bare stories, and gew-gaw tinsel — everything but the real diamond — which sparkles simply because God made it so that it could not help sparkling. Real, native wit, is like a pleasant rill which quietly wells up in some verdant nook, and steals out from among reeds and willows noiselessly, and is seen far down the meadow, as much by the fruitfulness of its edges in flowers, as by its own glimmering light. Let everyone beware of the insensible effect of witty men upon him! The perverted wit gild lies — so that base coin may pass for true. That which is grossly wrong — wit may make fascinating. When no argument could persuade you — the coruscations of wit may dazzle and blind you. When duty presses you — the threatenings of this human lightning may make you afraid to do right. Remember that the very best office of wit, is only to lighten the serious labors of life; that it is only a torch, by which men may cheer the gloom of a dark way. When it sets up to be your Counselor or your guide — it is the fool’s fire, flitting irregularly and leading you into the quagmire or morass. The great Dramatist represents a witty fairy to have put an donkey’s head upon a man’s shoulders; beware that you do not let this mischievous fairy put an ape’s head upon yours! If God has not given you this quicksilver — no art can make it; nor need you regret it. The stone, the wood, and the iron are a thousand times more valuable to society — than pearls and diamonds and rare gems. And sterling common-sense, and industry, and integrity — are better a thousand times, in the hard work of living, than the brilliance of Wit. II. The HUMORIST. I do not employ the term to designate one who indulges in that pleasantest of all wit — inherent wit; but to describe a creature who conceals a coarse animalism under a brilliant, jovial exterior. The dangerous humorist answers very well to the Psalmist’s description: "Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. They scoff, and speak with malice." Whatever is pleasant in ease, whatever is indulgent in morals, whatever is solacing in luxury — the jovial few, the convivial many, the glass, the cards, the revel, and midnight uproar — these are his delights. His manners are easy and agreeable; his face redolent of fun and good nature; his whole air that of a man fond of the utmost possible bodily refreshment. Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect and secretive of his course, to maintain a place in genteel society; for that is a luxury. He is not a glutton — but a choice eater. He is not a gross drinker, only a gentlemanly consumer of every curious compound of liquor. He has traveled; he can tell you which, in every city, is the best bar, the best restaurant, the best motel. He knows every theater, each actor; particularly is he versed in the select morsels of the scandalous indulgence peculiar to each. He knows every race-course, the history of all the famous matches, and the pedigree of every distinguished horse. The whole vocabulary of pleasure is vernacular — its wit, its slang, its watchwords, and blackletter literature. He is a profound annalist of scandal; every stream of news, clear or muddy, disembogues into the gulf of his prodigious memory. He can tell you, after living but a week in a city, who gambles, when, for what sums, and with what fate; who is impure, who was, who is suspected, who is not suspected — but ought to be. He is a morbid anatomist of morals; a brilliant flesh-fly — unerring to detect taint. Like other men, he loves admiration and desires to extend his influence. All these manifold accomplishments are exhibited before the naive young. That he may secure a train of useful followers, he is profuse of money; and moves among them with an easy, insinuating frankness, a never-ceasing gaiety, so spicy with fun, so diverting with stories, so full of little hits, sly innuendoes, or solemn wit, with now and then a rare touch of dexterous mimicry, and the whole so pervaded by the indescribable flavor, the changing hues of humor — that the young are bewildered with idolatrous admiration. What mirthful young man, who is old enough to admire himself and be ashamed of his parents, can resist a man so bedewed with humor, narrating exquisite stories with such mock gravity, with such slyness of mouth, and twinkling of the eye, with such grotesque attitudes, and significant gestures? He is declared to be the most remarkable man in the world. Now take off this man’s dress, put out the one faculty of mirthfulness, and he will stand disclosed without a single positive virtue! With strong appetites deeply indulged, hovering perpetually upon the twilight edge of every vice; and whose wickedness is only not apparent, because it is garnished with flowers and garlands; who is not despised, only because his various news, artfully told, keep us in good humor with ourselves! At one period of youthful life, this creature’s influence supplants that of every other man. There is an absolute fascination in him which awakens a craving in the mind to be of his circle; plain duties become drudgery, home has no light; life at its ordinary key is monotonous, and must be screwed up to the concert pitch of this wonderful genius! As he tells his stories, so with a wretched grimace of imitation, apprentices will try to tell them; as he gracefully swings through the street, they will roll; they will leer because he stares genteelly; he sips, they guzzle — and talk impudently, because he talks with easy confidence. He walks erect, they strut; he lounges, they loll; he is less than a man, and they become even less than he. Copper-rings, huge blotches of breastpins, wild streaming handkerchiefs, jaunty hats, odd clothes, superfluous walking-sticks, ill-uttered oaths, stupid jokes, and blundering pleasantries — these are the first fruits of imitation! There are various grades of it, from the office, store, shop, street, clear down to the stable. Our cities are filled with these juvenile nondescript monsters, these compounds of vice, low wit, and vulgarity. The original is morally detestable, and the counterfeit is a very base imitation of a very base thing; the dark shadow of a very ugly substance. III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man — and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness — and blind to light; mousing for vermin — and never seeing noble game. The Cynic puts all human actions into only two classes — openly bad, and secretly bad. All virtue and generosity and unselfishness are merely the appearance of good — but selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man does a good thing, except for profit. The effect of his conversation upon your feelings, is to chill and sear them; to send you away sour and morose. His criticisms and innuendos fall indiscriminately upon every lovely thing, like frost upon flowers. If a man is said to be pure and chaste, he will answer: "Yes, in the day-time." If a man is pronounced virtuous, he will reply: "Yes, as yet Mr. A. is a religious man — yes, on Sundays. Mr. B. has just joined the church, certainly — the elections are coming on." The minister of the gospel is called an example of diligence: "it is because it is his trade." Such a man is generous: "it is of other men’s money." This man is obliging: "it is to lull suspicion and cheat you." That man is upright: "it is because he is naive." Thus his eye strains out every good quality — and takes in only the bad. To him . . . religion is hypocrisy, honesty is a preparation for fraud, virtue is only lack of opportunity, and undeniable purity is asceticism. The live-long day, he will coolly sit with sneering lip, uttering sharp speeches in the quietest manner, and in polished phrase — crucifying every character which is presented. His words are softer than oil — yet are they drawn swords. All this, to the young, seems a wonderful knowledge of human nature; they honor a man who appears to have found out mankind. They begin to indulge themselves in flippant sneers; and with supercilious brow, and impudent tongue, wagging to an empty brain — deprecate the wise, the long tried, and the venerable. I do believe that man is corrupt enough; but something of good has survived his wreck; something of evil, religion has restrained, and something partially restored; yet, I look upon the human heart as a mountain of fire. I dread its crater. I tremble when I see its lava roll the fiery stream. Therefore, I am the more glad, if upon the old crust of past eruptions, I can find a single flower springing up. So far from rejecting appearances of virtue in the corrupt heart of a depraved race, I am eager to see their light as ever mariner was to see a star in a stormy night. Moss will grow upon gravestones; the ivy will cling to the moldering pile; the mistletoe springs from the dying branch; and, God be praised, something green, something fair to the sight and grateful to the heart — will yet entwine around and grow out of the seams and cracks of the desolate temple of the human heart! Who could walk through Thebes, Palmyra, or Petra, and survey the wide waste of broken arches, crumbled altars, fallen pillars, effaced cornices, toppling walls, and crushed statues, with no feelings but those of contempt? Who, unsorrowing, could see the owl’s nest upon the carved pillar, satyrs dancing on marble pavements, and scorpions nestling where beauty once dwelt, and vermin the sole tenants of royal palaces? Amid such melancholy magnificence, even the misanthrope might weep! If here and there an altar stood unbruised, or a graven column unblemished, or a statue nearly perfect — he might well feel love for a man-wrought stone — so beautiful, when all else is so dreary and desolate. Thus, though man is as a desolate city, and his passions are as the wild beasts of the wilderness howling in kings’ palaces — yet he is God’s workmanship, and a thousand touches of exquisite beauty remain. Since Christ has put his sovereign hand to restore man’s ruin, many points are remolded, and the fair form of a new fabric already appears growing from the ruins, and the first faint flame is glimmering upon the restored altar. It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of opinion upon our fellow-men — without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings. A man will be what his most cherished feelings are. If he encourages a noble generosity — every feeling will be enriched by it. If he nurses bitter and envenomed thoughts — his own spirit will absorb the poison; and he will crawl among men as a burnished adder, whose life is mischief, and whose errand is death! Although experience should correct the indiscriminate confidence of the young, no experience should render them callous to goodness wherever seen. He who hunts for flowers — will find flowers; and he who loves weeds — may find weeds. Let it be remembered, that no man, who is not himself mortally diseased, will have a relish for disease in others. A swollen wretch, blotched all over with leprosy, may grin hideously at every wart or excrescence upon beauty. A wholesome man will be pained at it, and seek not to notice it. Reject, then, the morbid ambition of the Cynic — or cease to call yourself a man! IV. The Libertine. I fear that few villages exist without a specimen of the Libertine. His errand into this world is to explore every depth of sensuality — and collect upon himself the foulness of every one. He is proud to be vile; his ambition is to be viler than other men. Were we not confronted almost daily by such wretches, it would be hard to believe that any could exist, to whom purity and decency were a burden — and only corruption a delight. This creature has changed his nature, until only that which disgusts a pure mind, pleases his. He is lured by the scent of carrion. His coarse feelings, stimulated by gross excitants, are insensible to delicacy. The exquisite bloom, the dew and freshness of the flowers of the heart, which delight both good men and God himself, he gazes upon, as a Behemoth would gaze enraptured upon a prairie of flowers. It is just so much pasture. The forms, the fragrances, the hues are only a mouthful for his terrible appetite. Therefore, his breath blights every innocent thing. He sneers at the mention of purity, and leers in the very face of Virtue, as though she were herself corrupt, if the truth were known. He assures the credulous disciple that there is no purity; that its appearances are only the veils which cover indulgence. Nay, he solicits praise for the very openness of his evil; and tells the listener that all act as he acts — but only few are courageous enough to own it. But the uttermost parts of depravity are laid open, only when several such monsters meet together, and vie with each other, as we might suppose shapeless mud-monsters amuse themselves in the slimiest ooze. They dive in fierce rivalry which shall reach the most infernal depth, and bring up the blackest sediment. It makes the blood of an honest man run cold, to hear but the echo of the shameless rehearsals of their lewd enterprises. Each strives to tell a blacker tale than the other. When the abomination of their actual life is not damnable enough to satisfy the ambition of their unutterable corruption — they devise, in their imagination, scenes yet more flagrant; swear that they have performed them, and when they separate, each strives to make his lying boastings true. It would seem as if miscreants so loathsome, would have no power of temptation upon the young. Experience shows that the worst men are, often — the most skillful in touching the springs of human action. A young man knows little of life; less of himself. He feels in his bosom the various impulses, wild desires, restless cravings he can hardly tell for what, a somber melancholy when all is mirthful, a violent exhilaration when others are sober. These wild gushes of feeling, peculiar to youth, the sagacious tempter has felt, has studied, has practiced upon, until he can sit before that most capacious organ, the human mind, knowing every stop, and all the combinations, and competent to touch any note through the organ. As a serpent deceived the purest of mortals — so now a beast may mislead their posterity. He begins afar off. He decries the virtue of all men; studies to produce a doubt that any are under self-restraint. He unpacks his filthy stories, plays off the fire-works of his corrupt imagination — its blue-lights, its red-lights, and green-lights, and sparkle-spitting lights; and edging in upon the yielding youth, who begins to wonder at his experience, he boasts his first exploits, he hisses at the purity of women! He grows yet bolder, tells more wicked deeds, and invents worse even than he ever performed, though he has performed worse than good men ever thought of. All thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are merged in one — and that the lowest, vilest, most detestable ambition. Had I a son, I could, with thanksgiving, see him go down to the grave — rather than fall into the maw of this most besotted devil. The plague is mercy, the cholera is love, the deadliest fever is refreshment to man’s body — in comparison with this epitome and essence of moral disease! He lives among men as Hell’s ambassador with full credentials; nor can we conceive that there should be need of any other fiend to perfect the works of darkness, while he lives among us, stuffed with every pestilent drug of corruption. The heart of every virtuous young man should loathe him; if he speaks, you should as soon hear a wolf bark. Gather around you the venomous snake, the poisonous toad, the foul vulture, the prowling hyena — and their company would be an honor to you above his; for they at least remain within their own nature; but he goes out of his nature that he may become more vile than it is possible for a mere animal to be. He is hateful to religion, hateful to virtue, hateful to decency, hateful to the coldest morality. The stenchful purulence of his dissolute heart, has flowed over every feeling of his nature, and left them as the burning lava leaves the garden, the orchard, and the vineyard. And it is a wonder that the bolt of God which crushed Sodom does not slay him. It is a wonder that the earth does not refuse the burden and open and swallow him up. I do not fear that the young will be undermined by his direct assaults. But some will imitate him — and their example will be again freely imitated — and finally, a remote circle of disciples will spread the diluted contagion among the virtuous. This man will be the fountain-head, and though none will come to drink at a hot spring — yet further down along the stream it sends out, will be found many scooping from its waters. V. The polished Libertine. I have just described the devil in his native form — but he sometimes appears as an angel of light. There is a polished Libertine, in manners studiously refined, in taste faultless; his face is mild and engaging; his words drop as pure as newly-made honey. In general society, he would rather attract regard as a model of purity, and suspicion herself could hardly look askance upon him. But under this brilliant exterior — his heart is like a sepulcher, full of all uncleanness! Contrasted with the gross libertine, it would not be supposed that he had a thought in common with him. But if his heart could be opened to our eyes, as it is to God’s — we would perceive scarcely dissimilar feeling in respect to appetite. Professing unbounded admiration of virtue in general — he leaves not in private, a point untransgressed. His reading has culled every glowing picture of amorous poets, every tempting scene of loose dramatists, and looser novelists. Enriched by these, his imagination, like a rank soil, is overgrown with a prodigal luxuriance of poison-herbs and deadly flowers. Men such as this man is, frequently aspire to be the censors of morality. They are hurt at the injudicious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit! They make great outcry when plain words are employed to denounce base things. They are astonishingly sensitive and fearful lest good men should soil their hands with too much meddling with evil. Their cries are not the evidence of sensibility to virtue — but of too lively a sensibility to vice. Sensibility is, often, only the fluttering of an impure heart. At the very time that their voice is ringing an alarm against immoral reformations, they are secretly skeptical of every tenet of virtue, and practically unfaithful to every one. Of these two libertines, the most refined is the more dangerous. The one is a rattlesnake which carries its warning with it; the other, hiding his burnished scales in the grass, skulks to perform unsuspected deeds in darkness. The one is the visible fog and miasma of the quagmire; the other is the serene air of a tropical city, which, though brilliant — is loaded with invisible pestilence. The Politician. If there be a man on earth whose character should be framed of the most sterling honesty, and whose conduct should conform to the most scrupulous morality, it is the man who administers public affairs. The most romantic notions of integrity are here not extravagant. As, under our institutions, public men will be, upon the whole, fair exponents of the character of their constituents, the plainest way to secure honest public men, is to inspire those who make them, with a right understanding of what political character ought to be. Young men should be prompted to discriminate between the specious — and the real; the artful — and the honest; the wise — and the cunning; the patriotic — and the pretender. I will sketch — VI. The Demagogue is a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices. The lowest of politicians, is that man who seeks to gratify an invariable selfishness — by pretending to seek the public good. For a profitable popularity, he accommodates himself to all opinions, to all dispositions, to every side, and to each prejudice. He is a mirror, with no face of its own — but a smooth surface from which each man of ten thousand may see himself reflected. He glides from man to man coinciding with their views, pretending their feelings, simulating their tastes. With this person, he hates a man; with that person, he loves the same man. He favors a law — and he dislikes it. He approves — and opposes. He is on both sides at once. He attends meetings to suppress intemperance — but at elections makes every tavern free to all drinkers. He can with equal relish plead most eloquently for temperance — or drink up a dozen glasses in a dirty tavern. He thinks that there is a time for everything, and therefore, at one time he swears and jeers and leers with a carousing crew; and at another time, having happily been converted, he displays the various features of devotion. Indeed, he is a capacious Christian — an epitome of faith. He was always a Methodist and always shall be — until he meets a Presbyterian; then he is a Presbyterian, old-school or new, as the case requires. However, as he is not a bigot — he can afford to be a Baptist, in a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink he tells the zealous elder, that he never had one of his children baptized, not he! He whispers to the Reformer that he abhors all creeds but the Bible. After all this, room will be found in his heart for the fugitive sects also, which come and go like clouds in a summer sky. His flattering attention at church edifies the simple-hearted preacher, who admires that a plain sermon should make a man whisper amen! and weep. Upon the platform, his tact is no less rare. He roars and bawls with courageous plainness, on points about which all agree: but on subjects where men differ, his meaning is nicely balanced on a pivot that it may dip either way. He depends for success chiefly upon humorous stories. A glowing patriot telling stories is a dangerous antagonist; for it is hard to expose the fallacy of a hearty laugh, and men convulsed with merriment are slow to perceive in what way an argument is a reply to a story. Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, and versatile cunning — have advanced many a bad man higher than a good man could attain. Men will admit that he has not a single moral virtue — but he is smart. We object to no man for amusing himself at the fertile resources of the politician here painted; for sober men are sometimes pleased with the grimaces and mischievous tricks of a versatile monkey; but would it not be strange indeed if they should select him for a ruler, or make him an exemplar to their sons? 7. The Party Man. I describe next a more respectable and more dangerous politician — the Party Man. He has associated his ambition, his interests, and his affections with a political party. He prefers, doubtless, that his side should be victorious by the best means, and under the championship of good men; but rather than lose the victory, he will consent to any means, and follow any man. Thus, with a general desire to be upright — the exigency of his party constantly pushes him to dishonorable deeds. He opposes fraud by craft; lie, by lie; slander, by counter-aspersion. To be sure, it is wrong to mis-state, to distort, to suppress or color facts; it is wrong to employ the evil passions; to set class against class; the poor against the rich, the country against the city, the farmer against the mechanic, one section against another section. But his opponents do it, and if they will take advantage of men’s corruption — so he must, or lose by his virtue. He gradually adopts two characters, a personal and a political character. All the requisitions of his conscience, he obeys in his private character; all the requisitions of his party, he obeys in his political conduct. In one character he is a man of principle; in the other, a man of mere expedients. As a man, he means to be genuine, honest, moral; as a politician, he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous — anything for party. As a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue; as a politician, he employs him as a scavenger. As a man, he shrinks from the flagitiousness of slander; as a politician, he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices in the success gained by it. As a man, he respects no one who is rotten in heart; as a politician, no man through whom victory may be gained can be too bad. As a citizen, he is an apostle of temperance; as a politician, he puts his shoulder under the men who deluge their track with whisky, marching a crew of brawling patriots, pugnaciously drunk, to exercise the freeman’s noblest franchise — the Vote. As a citizen, he is considerate of the young, and counsels them with admirable wisdom; then, as a politician, he votes for aspirants scraped from the ditch, the tavern, and the brothel; thus saying by deeds which the young are quick to understand: "I jested, when I warned you of bad company; for you perceive none worse than those whom I delight to honor." For his religion, he will give up all his secular interests; but for his politics, he gives up even his religion. He adores virtue — and rewards vice. While bolstering up unrighteous measures, and more unrighteous men — he prays for the advancement of religion, and justice, and honor! I would to God that his prayer might be answered upon his own political head; for never was there a place where such blessings were more needed! I am puzzled to know what will happen at death to this political Christian — but most unchristian politician. Will both of his characters go heavenward together? If the strongest prevails — he will certainly go to Hell. If his weakest, (which is his Christian character,) is saved — then what will become of his political character? Shall he be sawn in two, as Solomon proposed to divide the contested infant? If this style of character were not flagitiously wicked, it would still be supremely ridiculous — but it is both! Let young men mark these amphibious exemplars, to avoid their influence. The young have nothing to gain from those who are saints in religion and morals, and devils in politics; who have partitioned off their heart, invited Christ into one half, and Belial into the other. It is wisely said, that a strictly honest man who desires purely the public good, who will not criminally flatter the people, nor take part in lies, or party-slander, nor descend to the arts of the rat, the weasel, and the fox — cannot succeed in politics. It is calmly said by thousands that one cannot be a politician — and a Christian. Indeed, a man is liable to downright ridicule, if he speaks in good earnest of a scrupulously honest and religiously moral politician. I regard all such representations as false. We are not without men whose career is a refutation of the slander. It poisons the community to teach this fatal necessity of corruption, in a course which so many must pursue. It is not strange, if such be the popular opinion, that young men include the sacrifice of strict integrity, as a necessary element of a political life, and calmly agree to it, as to an inevitable misfortune, rather than to a dark and voluntary crime! Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can he escape blame for such a decision! A young man, at this day, in this land, who can coolly purpose a life of most unmanly deceit, who means to earn his bread and fame by a sacrifice of integrity — is one who requires only temptation and opportunity to become a felon! What a heart has that man, who can stand in the very middle of the Bible, with its transcendent truths raising their glowing fronts on every side of him, and feel no inspiration, but that of immorality and baseness! He knows that for him have been founded the perpetual institutions of religion; for him prophets have spoken, miracles been wrought, Heaven robbed of its Magistrate, and the earth made sacred above all planets as the Redeemer’s birth and death place — he knows it all, and plunges from this height to the very bottom of corruption! He hears that he is immortal, and despises the immortality; that he is a creation of God, and scorns the dignity; a potential heir of Heaven, and infamously sells his heirship, and himself, for a contemptible mess of loathsome pottage! Do not tell me of any excuses. It is a shame to attempt an excuse! If there were no religion, if that vast sphere, out of which glow all the supereminent truths of the Bible, was a mere emptiness and void — yet, methinks, the very idea of Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws and Liberties of a great people — would enkindle such a high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be consumed! But if . . . the love of country, a sense of character, a manly regard for integrity, the example of our most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all its solicitations, and the prospect of the future — as dark as Perdition to the evil, and as bright as Paradise to the holy — cannot inspire a young man to anything higher than a sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent fame and dishonest bread — it is because such a creature has never felt one sensation of manly virtue — it is because his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to innocence! Thus have I sketched a few of the characters which abound in every community; dangerous, not more by their direct temptations, than by their insensible influence. The sight of their deeds, of their temporary success, their apparent happiness . . . relaxes the tense rigidity of a scrupulous honesty, inspires a ruinous liberality of sentiment toward vice, and breeds the thoughts of evil. And Evil Thoughts are the cockatrice’s eggs, hatching into all Evil Deeds. Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to ruin, you will have to bear it alone! They are strong to seduce — but heartless to sustain their victims. They will . . . exhaust your means, teach you to despise the God of your fathers, lead you into every sin, go with you while you afford them any pleasure or profit — and then, when the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins to overwhelm you — they will abandon whom they have debauched! When, at length, DEATH gnaws at your bones and knocks at your heart; when staggering, and worn out, your courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity gone, and long, long ago your peace gone — will he who first enticed your steps, now serve your extremity with one office of kindness? Will he encourage you? — cheer your dying agony with one word of hope? — or light the way for your coward steps to the grave? — or weep when you are gone? — or send one pitiful scrap to your desolate family? What reveler wears death-crape for a dead drunkard? — what gang of gamblers ever intermitted a game for the death of a companion? — or went on kind missions of relief to broken-down fellow-gamblers? What harlot weeps for a harlot? — what debauchee mourns for a debauchee? They would carouse at your funeral — and gamble on your coffin! If one flush more of pleasure were to be had by it, they would drink shame and ridicule to your memory out of your own skull — and roar in bacchanalian-revelry over your damnation! All the shameless atrocities of wicked men, are nothing to their heartlessness toward each other when broken-down. As I have seen worms writhing on a carcass, crawling over each other, and elevating their fiery heads in petty ferocity against each other, while all were enshrined in the corruption of a common carrion — I have thought, ah! shameful picture of wicked men tempting each other, abetting each other, until calamity overtook them — and then fighting and devouring or abandoning each other, without pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or remorse! Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate you — you are without a friend in the universe! "My son, if sinners entice you — do not give in to them. If they say: ’Come along with us; let’s lie in wait for someone’s blood, let’s waylay some harmless soul; let’s swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit! We will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse.’ My son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths; for their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood. These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves!" Pro 1:10-18 ======================================================================== CHAPTER 134: 2.04. POPULAR AMUSEMENTS ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 Popular Amusements "Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see — but know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment!" Ecc 11:9 I am to venture the delicate task of reprehension, always unwelcome — but peculiarly offensive upon topics of public popular amusement. I am anxious, in the beginning, to put myself right with the young. If I satisfy myself, Christian men, and the sober community — and do not satisfy the young — then my success will be like a physician’s, whose prescriptions please himself, and the relations, and do good to everybody except the patient — he dies. Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that I am not meddling with matters which do not concern me. This is the impression which the patrons and partners of criminal amusements, study to make upon your minds. They represent our duty to be in the church — taking care of doctrines, and of our own members. When more than this is attempted; when we speak a word for you who are not church-members — we are met with the surly answer, "Why do you meddle with things which do not concern you? If you do not enjoy these pleasures — why do you molest those who do? May not men do as they please in a free country, without being hung up in a gibbet of public remark?" It is conveniently forgotten, I suppose, that in a free country we have the same right to criticize popular amusements — which others have to enjoy them. Indeed, you and I both know, that in coffee-house circles, and in convivial nocturnal feasts — that the Church is regarded as little better than a spectacled old beldam, whose impertinent eyes are spying everybody’s business but her own; and who, too old or too homely to be tempted herself, with compulsory virtue — pouts at the joyous dalliances of the young and mirthful. Religion is called a nun, sable with gloomy vestments; and the Church a cloister, where ignorance is deemed innocence, and which sends out querulous reprehensions of a world, which it knows nothing about, and has professedly abandoned! This all sounds very pretty; and is only defective, in not being at all true! The Church is not a cloister, nor her members recluses, nor are our censures of vice intermeddling. I hope it is not bigotry to have eyes and ears! I hope it is not fanaticism, in the use of these excellent senses, for us to judge that throwing one’s heels higher than their head a-dancing, is not exactly the way to teach virtue to our daughters! Oh! no; we are told, that Christians ought to think that men who are kings and dukes and philosophers on the stage — are virtuous men, even if they gamble all night, and are drunk all day; and if men are so used to comedy, that their life becomes a perpetual farce on morality — we have no right to censure this acting! Are we meddlers, who only seek the good of our own families, and of our own community where we live and expect to die? Or are they, who wander up and down without ties of social connection, and without aim, except of money to be gathered off from men’s vices? I am anxious to put all religious men in their right position before you; and in this controversy between them and the mirthful world, to show you the facts upon both sides. A floating population of theater actors, without permission, blow the trumpet for all our youth to flock to their banners! Are they related to them? — are they concerned in the welfare of our town? — do they live among us? — do they bear any part of our burdens? — do they care for our substantial citizens? We grade our streets, build our schools, support all our municipal laws, and the young men are ours; our sons, our brothers, our clerks, or apprentices. They are living in our houses, our stores, our shops — and we are their guardians, and take care of them in health, and watch them in sickness. Yet every vagabond who floats in here, swears and swaggers, as if they were all his! And when they offer to corrupt all these youth, we paying them round sums of money for it. And when we finally get courage to say that we had rather not; that industry and honesty are better than expert knavery — they turn upon us in great indignation with, "Why don’t you mind your own business — what are you meddling with our affairs for?" I will suppose a case: With much pains-taking, I have saved enough money to buy a little garden-spot. I put all around it a good fence — I put the spade into it and mellow the soil deeply; I go to the nursery and pick out choice fruit trees — I send abroad and select the best seeds of the rarest vegetables; and so, my garden thrives. I know every inch of it, for I have watered every inch with sweat. One morning I am awakened by a mixed sound of sawing, digging, and delving; and looking out, I see a dozen men at work in my garden. I run down and find one man sawing out a huge hole in the fence. "My dear sir, what are you doing?" "Oh, this high fence is very troublesome to climb over; I am fixing an easier way for folks to get in." Another man cutting down several choice trees, and is putting in new trees. "Sir, what are you doing that for?" "Oh, this kind don’t suit me; I like a new kind." One man is digging up my beans — to plant cockles; another is rooting up my strawberries — to put in pursley; and another is destroying my currants, and gooseberries, and raspberries — to plant mustard and dill. At last, I lose all patience, and cry out, "Well, gentlemen, this will never do! I will never tolerate this abominable imposition; you are ruining my garden!" One of them says, "You old hypocritical bigot! do mind your business, and let us enjoy ourselves. Take care of your house, and do not pry into our pleasures." Fellow-citizens! I own that no man could so invade your garden; but men are allowed thus to invade our town, and destroy our children! You will let them evade your laws, to fleece and demoralize you; and you sit down under their railing, as though you were the intruders! This is just as if the man, who drives a thief out of his house, ought to ask the rascal’s pardon for interfering with his little plans of pleasure and profit! Every parent has a right — every citizen and every minister has the same right to expose traps — which men have to set to harm them! We have the same right to prevent mischiefs — which men have to plot them! We have the same right to attack vice — which vice has to attack virtue! We have a better right to save our sons and brothers, and companions — than artful men have to destroy them. The necessity of amusement, is admitted on all hands. There is an appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every sense — for which God has provided the material. Gaiety of every degree, this side of juvenile levity, is wholesome to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. NATURE is a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magnitude of God’s works, is not less admirable than its exhilarating beauty. The crudest forms — have something of beauty. The ruggedest mountains — are graced with charm. The very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature — are attractive by qualities of beauty more than is necessary for mere utility. The sun could go down without gorgeous clouds; evening could advance without its evanescent brilliance; trees might have flourished without symmetry; flowers might have existed without fragrance, and fruit without flavor. When I have journeyed through forests — where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist without apparent use; through meadows — whose undulations exhibit innumerable sheets of flowers, and absolutely dazzling the eye with their prodigality of beauty — beauty, not a tenth of which is ever seen by man — I have said, "It is plain that God is himself passionately fond of beauty, and the earth is his garden, as an acre is man’s." God has made us like Himself, to be pleased by the universal beauty of the world. He has made provision in nature, in society, and in the family — for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart with the perpetual sunshine of delight! Upon this broad earth, gemmed with flowers, scented with fragrances, brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and re-echoing melody — I take my stand against all demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our Father’s house is so full of dear delights — that we must wander prodigal to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough for drink? When the trees of God’s heritage bend over our head, and solicit our hand to pluck the golden fruitage — must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom — with outside fair, and inside ashes? Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of horsemanship. But a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from the high Heaven; then flit with graceful ease here and there, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial fountain of sound — no man cares for that! Upon the stage of life, the most interesting plays are performing every day. Others are raising their youthful forms, to begin the drama of their existence. The world of society is as full of exciting interest — as nature is full of beauty. The great dramatic throng of life is hustling and bustling along — the wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles before us, smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom — as the spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast Theater which God has built — where more unusual plays are seen than ever an author wrote — man seldom cares to come. When God dramatizes, when nations act, or all the human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrophe — men sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on — unobserved and unthought upon. They turn from all its varied magnificence — to hunt out some candle-lighted hole and gaze at drunken ranters, or cry at the piteous virtue of harlots in distress. It is my object then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure — but from unworthy pleasures; not to lessen their enjoyments — but to increase them, by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile! Of gambling, I have already sufficiently spoken. Of cock-fighting, dog-baiting, and prize-fights, I need to speak but little. These are the desperate excitements of debauched men; but no man becomes desperately criminal, until he has been genteelly criminal. No one spreads his sail upon such waters, at first. These brutal amusements are but the gulf into which flow all the streams of criminal pleasures; and they who embark upon the river — are sailing toward the gulf! Wretches who have waded all the depths of iniquity, and burned every passion to the socket — find in rage and blows and blood — the only stimulus of which they are susceptible. You are training yourselves to be just such wretches, if you are exhausting your passions in illicit indulgences! As it is impossible to analyze, separately, each wicked amusement offered to the young, I am compelled to select two, each the representative of a clan. Thus, the reasonings applied to the amusement of horse-racing — apply equally well to all violent amusements which congregate indolent and dissipated men, by ministering intense excitement. The reasonings applied to the Theater, with some modifications — apply to the Circus, to promiscuous balls, to night-reveling, bacchanalian feasts, and to other similar indulgences. Many, who are not in danger, may be inclined to turn from these pages; they live in rural districts, in villages, or towns, and are out of the reach of jockeys, and actors, and gamblers. This is the very reason why you should read. We are such a migratory, restless people, that our home is usually everywhere but at home; and almost every young man makes annual, or biennial visits to famous cities; conveying produce to market, or purchasing wares and goods. It is at such times, that the young are in extreme danger; for they are particularly anxious, at such times, to appear at their full age. A young man is ashamed, in a great hotel, to seem naive and not to know the mysteries of the bar and of the town. They put on a very remarkable air, which is meant for ease; they affect profusion of expense; they think it fit for a gentleman, to know all that certain other city-gentlemen seem proud of knowing. As sober citizens are not found lounging at Hotels; and the gentlemanly part of the traveling community are usually retiring, modest, and unnoticeable — the young are left to come in contact chiefly with a very flashy class of men who swarm about city-Restaurants and Hotels — swollen clerks, gay sportsmen, epicures, and rich, green youth, seasoning. These are the most numerous class which engage the attention of the young. They bustle in the sitting room, or crowd the bar, assume the chief seats at the table, and play the petty lord in a manner so brilliant, as altogether to dazzle our poor country boy, who mourns at his deficient education, at the poverty of his rural cursings, and the meagerness of those illicit pleasures, which he formerly nibbled at with mouse-like stealth; and he sighs for these riper accomplishments. Besides, it is well known, that large commercial establishments have, residing at such hotels, well appointed clerks to draw customers to their counter. It is their business to make your acquaintance, to fish out the probable condition of your funds, to sweeten your temper with delicate tit-bits of pleasure; to take you to the Theater, and a little further on, if need be; to draw you in to a generous supper, and initiate you to the high life of men whose whole life is only the varied phases of lust — gastronomical or amorous. Besides these, there lurk in such places, lynx-eyed procurers; men who have an interest in your appetites; who look upon a young man, with some money, just as a butcher looks upon a bullock — a thing of so many pounds of beef, and a hide! If you have nothing — they will have nothing to do with you; if you have means — they undertake to supply you with the disposition to use them. They know the city, they know its haunts, they know its secret doors, they know its blind passages, they know its spicy pleasures, they know its racy vices — clear down to the mud-slime of the very bottom! Meanwhile, the usual restraint of home cast off, the youth feels that he is unknown, and may do what he chooses — unexposed. There is, moreover, an intense curiosity to see many things of which he has long ago heard and wondered; and it is the very art and education of vice — to make itself attractive. It comes. . . with garlands of roses about its brow, with nectar in its goblet, and with love upon its tongue. If you have, beforehand, no settled opinions as to what is right and what is wrong; if your judgment is now, for the first time, to be formed upon the propriety of your actions; if you are not controlled by settled moral principles — there is scarcely a chance for your purity! For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss these things, that you may settle your opinions and principles before temptation assails you! As a ship is built upon the dry shore, which afterwards is to dare the storm and brave the sea — so would I build you staunch and strong, before you be launched abroad upon life. I. Horse-racing. This amusement justifies its existence by the plea of Utility. We will examine it upon its own ground. Who are the patrons of the race? — farmers? — laborers? — men who are practically the most interested in the improvement of their families? The unerring instinct of self-interest would lead these men to patronize the race-course, if its utility were real. It is notorious that these are not the patrons of racing. It is sustained by two classes of men — gamblers, and jaded rich men. In England, and in our own country, where the races are liveliest, they owe their existence entirely to the extraordinary excitement which they afford to dissipation, or to cloyed appetites. For those industrial purposes for which the horse is chiefly valuable, for roadsters, and cart-horses, what do the patrons of the race care? Their whole anxiety is centered upon winning cups and stakes; and that is incomparably the best blood, which will run the longest space in the shortest time. The points required for this are not, and never will be, the points for substantial service. New England, where racing is unknown, is to this day the place where the horse exists in the finest qualities. Except for the sole purpose of racing, a New England horse brings a higher price than any other. The other class of patrons who sustain a race course, are mere gamblers. As crows to a cornfield, or vultures to their prey; as flies to summer-sweet — so to the annual races, flow the whole tribe of gamesters and pleasure-lovers! It is the Jerusalem of wicked men; and there the tribes go up, like Israel of old — but for a far different sacrifice. No form of social abomination is unknown or unpracticed. To ruin men for the sake of watching horses run; to sacrifice conscience and purity for the sake of good bones and muscles in a beast; this is paying a little too much for good brutes. Indeed, the shameless immorality, the perpetual and growing dishonesty, the almost immeasurable secret villainy — has alarmed and disgusted many stalwart racers, who, having no objection to some evil, are appalled at the very ocean of depravity which rolls before them. I extract the words of one of the leading sportsmen of England. "How many fine domains have been shared among these hosts of rapacious sharks, during the last two hundred years; and, unless the system is altered, how many more are doomed to fall into the same gulf! For, we lament to say, the evil has increased: all heretofore has been ’Tarts and Cheese-cakes’ compared to the villainous proceedings of the last twenty years on the English race course." I will drop this barbarous amusement, with a few questions. What have you, young men, to do with the race course, admitting it to be what it claims — a school for horses? Are you particularly interested in that branch of learning? Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such tremendous excitement as that of racing? Is the invariable company of such places of a kind which you ought to be found in? — will races make you more moral? — more industrious? — more careful? — more economical? — more trustworthy? You who have attended them, what advice would you give a young man, a younger brother for instance, who should seriously ask if he had better attend? I digress to say one word to women. When a race course was opened at Cincinnati, ladies would not attend it; when one was opened here, ladies would not attend it. For very good reasons — they were Ladies. If it is said that they attend the Races at the South and in England, I reply, that they do a great many other things which you would not choose to do. Roman ladies could see hundreds of gladiators stab and hack each other — could you? Spanish ladies can see savage bull-fights — would you? It is possible for a modest woman to countenance very questionable practices — where the customs of society and the universal public opinion approve them. But no woman can set herself against public opinion, in favor of an immoral sport, without being herself immoral; for, if worse is lacking, it is immorality enough for a woman to put herself where her reputation will lose its pure luster. II. The Theater. Desperate efforts are made, year by year, to resuscitate this expiring evil. Its claims are put forth with vehemence. Let us examine them. The theater cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be to facts. Let the roll of English literature be explored — our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics, and Divines — and for what part of their memorable writings are we indebted to the Drama? If we except one period of our literature, the claim is wholly groundless; and at this day, the truth is so opposite to the claim, that extravagance, affectation, and rant — are proverbially denominated theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to supersede the admirable implements of farming now in use, by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks — it would not be more absurd than to advocate that clumsy machine of literature, the Theater — by the side of the popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is not congenial to our age, or necessities. Its day is gone by — it is in its senility, as might be suspected, from the weakness of the garrulous apologies which it puts forth. The theater is a school of morals. Yes, doubtless! So the guillotine is defended on the plea of humanity. Inquisitors declare their racks and torture-beds to be the instruments of love, affectionately admonishing the fallen of the error of their ways. The slave-trade has been defended on the plea of humanity — and slavery is now defended for its mercies. But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to Theater-virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain questions. Will any of you who have been to Theaters, please to tell me whether virtue ever received important education from the gallery of Theaters? Will you tell me whether ’the Pit’ is a place where an ordinarily modest man would love to seat his children? Was ever a Theater known where a prayer at the opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be tormentingly discordant? How does it happen, that in a school for morals, the teachers never learn their own lessons? Would you allow a son or daughter to associate alone with actors or actresses? Do these men who promote virtue so zealously when acting, take any part in public moral enterprises, when their stage dresses are off? Which would surprise you most, to see actors steadily at Church — or to see holy Christians steadily at a Theater? Would not both strike you as singular incongruities? What is the reason that loose and abandoned men abhor religion in a Church — and love it so much in a Theater? Since the Theater is the handmaid of virtue, why are drinking houses so necessary to its neighborhood — yet so offensive to Churches? The trustees of the Tremont Theater in Boston, publicly protested against an order of council forbidding liquor to be sold on the premises, on the ground that it was impossible to support the Theater without it. I am told that Christians do attend the Theaters. Then I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A holy man reproached the devil for stealing a young man who was found at the Theater. He promptly replied, "I found him on my premises, and took him." But, it is said, if Christians would take Theaters in hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men — they might become the handmaids of religion. The Church has had an intimate acquaintance with the Theater for eighteen hundred years. During that period, every available agent for the diffusion of morality has been earnestly tried. The result is, that familiarity has bred contempt and abhorrence. If, after so long and thorough an acquaintance, the Church stands the mortal enemy of Theaters, the testimony is conclusive. It is the evidence of generations speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any longer the precincts of the Church, with impudent proposals of alliance. When the Church needs an alliance — it will not look for it in the kennel. Ah! what a blissful scene would that be — the Church and Theater imparadised in each other’s arms! What a sweet conjunction would be made, could we build our Churches so as to preach in the morning, and play in theaters by night! And how melting it would be, beyond the love of David and Jonathan, to see minister and actor in loving embrace; one slaying Satan by direct thrusts of plain preaching — and the other sucking his very life out, by the enchantment of the Drama! To this millennial scene of Church and Theater, I only suggest a single improvement: that the vestry be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, when not wanted for prayer-meetings; that the Sunday-school room should be furnished with poker-tables, and useful texts of Scripture might be printed on the cards, for the pious meditations of gamblers during the intervals of play and worship. "But if these places are put down, men will go to worse ones." Where will they find worse ones? Are those who go to the Theater, the Circus, the Race-course, the men who abstain from worse places? It is notorious that the crowd of theater-goers are vomited up from these worse places! It is notorious that the Theater is the door to all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this infamous place — that the young learn to love those wicked associates and practices to which, else, they would have been strangers. Half the victims of the gallows and of the Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools for morals were to them the gate of debauchery, the porch of pollution, the vestibule of the very house of Death! It is too true — the Drama makes one acquainted with human life, and with nature. There is scarcely an evil incident to human life, which may not be fully learned at the Theater. Here nourishes every variety of wit — ridicule of sacred things, burlesques of religion, and immoral double-entendres. Nowhere can so much of this vile lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the Theater. There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice: immorality is glamorized; license is prospered; and the young come away alive to the glorious liberty of violence and lust. "But the stage is not the only place where human nature is learned." In the Boxes the young may make the acquaintance of those who abhor home and domestic quiet; of those who glory in profusion and obtrusive display; of those who expend all, and more than their earnings, upon mirthful clothes and jewelry; of those who think it no harm to borrow their money without permission, from their employer’s till; of those who despise vulgar appetite — but affect polished and genteel immorality. Or, he may go to ’the Pit’ and learn the whole round of villain-life, from masters in the art. He may sit down among thieves, blood-loving scoundrels, swindlers, broken-down immoral men — the coarse, the vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman, the infernal. Or, if still more of human nature is wished, he can learn yet more; for the Theater epitomizes every degree of corruption. Let the virtuous young scholar go to the Gallery, and learn there, decency, modesty, and refinement — among the quarreling, drunken, ogling, mincing, brutal women of the brothel! Ah! there is no place like the Theater for learning human nature! A young man can gather up more experimental knowledge here in a week, than elsewhere in a year. But I wonder that the Drama should ever confess the fact; and yet more, that it should lustily plead in self-defense, that Theaters teach men so much of human nature! Here are brilliant taverns — to teach the young to drink; here are mirthful companions — to undo in half an hour the scruples formed by an education of years; here are pimps of pleasure — to delude the brain with bewildering sophisms of immorality; here is pleasure, all flushed in its gayest, boldest, most fascinating forms; and few there be who can resist its wiles, and fewer yet who can yield to them and escape ruin. If you would pervert the taste — go to the Theater. If you would imbibe false views — go to the Theater. If you would efface as speedily as possible all qualms of conscience — go to the Theater. If you would put yourself irreconcilably against the spirit of virtue and religion — go to the Theater. If you would be infected with each particular vice in the catalogue of Depravity — go to the Theater. Let parents, who wish to make their children weary of home and quiet domestic enjoyments — take them to the Theater. If it be desirable for the young to loathe industry and didactic reading, and burn for fierce excitements, and seek them by stealth or through pilferings, if need be — then send them to the Theater. It is notorious that the bill of fare at these temples of pleasure is made up to the taste of the baser appetites; that base comedy, and baser farce, running into absolute obscenity — are the only means of filling a house. Theaters which should exhibit nothing but the classic Drama, would exhibit it to empty seats. They must be corrupt, to live; and those who attend them will be corrupted! Let me turn your attention to several reasons which should incline every young man to forswear such criminal amusements. I. You ought not to countenance these things, because they will waste your TIME. I do not mean that they waste only the time consumed while you are within them; but they make you waste your time afterwards. You will go once, and wish to go again; you will go twice, and seek it a third time; you will go a third time — a fourth; and whenever the bill flames, you will be seized with a restlessness and craving to go, until the appetite will become a passion. You will then waste your nights: your mornings being heavy, melancholy, and stupid, you will waste them. Your next day will be confused and crowded: your duties poorly executed or deferred; habits of arrant shiftlessness will ensue; and day by day, industry will grow tiresome — and leisure sweeter, until you are a waster of time — an idle man; and if not a rogue, you will be a fortunate exception. II. You ought not to countenance these things, because they will waste your MONEY. Young gentlemen! Squandering is as shameful as hoarding. Any fool can throw away money, and any fool can lock up money; but it is a wise man, who, neither parsimonious nor profuse, steers the middle course of generous economy and frugal liberality. A young man, at first, thinks that all he spends at such places, is the ticket-price of the Theater, or the small bet on the races; and this he knows is not much. But this is certainly not the whole bill — nor half. First, you pay your entrance. But there are a thousand petty luxuries which one must not neglect, or custom will call him stingy. You must buy your cigars, and your friend’s. You must buy your juleps, and treat in your turn. You must occasionally wait on your lady, and she must be comforted with divers confections. You cannot go to such places in homely working dress — new and costlier clothes must be bought. All your companions have jewelry — you will want a ring, or a seal, or a golden watch, or an ebony cane, a silver toothpick, or quizzing glass. Thus, item presses upon item, and in the year a long bill runs up of money spent for little trifles. But if all this money could buy you off from the yet worse effects, the bargain would not be so dear. But compare, if you please, this mode of expenditure — with the principle of your ordinary expense. In all ordinary and business transactions, you get an equivalent for your money — either food for support, or clothes for comfort, or permanent property. But when a young man has spent one or two hundred dollars for the Theater, Circus, Races, Balls, and reveling — what has he to show for it at the end of the year? Nothing at all good, and much that is bad! You sink your money as really as if you threw it into the sea! And you do it in such a way that you form habits of careless expense. You lose all sense of the value of property; and when a man sees no value in property, he will see no necessity for labor; and when he is lazy, and careless of property — he will be dishonest. Thus, a habit which seems innocent — the habit of trifling with property — often degenerates to worthlessness, indolence, and roguery. III. You ought not to countenance these things, because such pleasures are incompatible with your ordinary pursuits. The very way to ruin an honest business, is to be ashamed of it, or to put alongside of it something which a man loves better. There can be no industrial calling so exciting as the Theater, the Circus, and the Races. If you wish to make your real business very dull and detestable — visit such places. After the glare of the Theater has dazzled your eyes — your blacksmith-shop will look smuttier than ever it did before. After you have seen stalwart heroes pounding their antagonists, you will find it a dull business to pound iron; and a valiant apprentice who has seen such smooth glances of love, and such rapturous kissing of hands — will hate to dirty his heroic fingers with mortar. If a man had a homely — but most useful wife — patient, kind, intelligent, hopeful in sorrow, and cheerful in prosperity — but yet very plain, very homely — would he be wise to bring under his roof a fascinating and artful beauty? Would the contrast, and her deceitful wiles — make him love his own wife better? Young gentlemen, your wives are your industrial callings? These theater beauties, are artful adulteresses, dressed up on purpose to purloin your affections. Let no man be led to commit adultery with a Theater harlot. IV. Another reason why you should let alone these deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage you in BAD COMPANY. To the Theater, the Ball, the Circus, the Race-course, the gaming-table — resort all the idle, the dissipated, the rogues, the immoral, the epicures, the gluttons, the artful harlots, the immodest, the worthless, the refuse. When you go, you will not, at first, take introduction to them all — but to those nearest like yourself; by them, the way will be opened to others. And a very great evil has befallen a young man, when wicked men feel that they have a right to his acquaintance. When I see a gambler slapping a young mechanic on the back; or a lecherous scoundrel suffusing a young man’s ear by a story at which, despite his blushes, he yet laughs; I know the youth has been guilty of criminal indiscretion, or these men could not approach him thus. That is a brave and strong heart, which can stand up pure in a company of artful wretches. When wicked men mean to seduce a young man, so tremendous are the odds in favor of practiced experience against innocence, that there is not one chance in a thousand, if the young man lets them approach him. Let every young man remember that he carries, by nature, a heart of passions just such as bad men have. With youth, they slumber; but temptation can wake them, bad men can influence them; they know the road, they know how to serenade the heart; how to raise the sash, and elope with each passion. There is but one resource for innocence among men or women; and that is, an embargo upon all commerce of bad men. Bar the window! — bolt the door! — nor answer their calls, if they charm ever so wisely! In no other way can you be safe. So well am I assured of the power of bad men to seduce the erring purity of man, that I pronounce it next to impossible for man or woman to escape — if they permit bad men to approach and dally with them. Oh! there is more than magic in temptation, when it beams down upon the heart of man, like the sun upon a morass! At the noontide-hour of purity, the mists shall rise and wreath a thousand fantastic forms of delusion; and a sudden freak of passion, a single gleam of the imagination, one sudden rush of the capricious heart — and the resistance of years may be prostrated in a moment — the heart entered by the besieging enemy, its rooms sought out, and every lovely affection rudely seized by the invader’s lust, and given to ravishment and to ruin! V. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, circus-men, actors and racing jockeys — I pronounce them to be men who live off of society without returning any useful equivalent for their support. At the most lenient sentence, they are a band of mirthful idlers. They do not throw one cent into the stock of public good. They do not make shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or anything else that is useful. A stableman is useful; he performs a necessary office. A cobbler is useful; somebody must act his part. A street-sweeper, a chimney-sweep, the seller of old clothes, a tinker, a boot-black — all these men are respectable; for though their callings are very humble, they are founded on the real needs of society. The bread which such men eat, is the representation of what they have done for society; not the bread of idleness — but of usefulness. But what do pleasure-mongers do for a living? — what do they invent? — what do they make? — what do they repair? — what do they for the mind, for the body, for man, or child, or beast? The dog that gnaws a discarded bone, pays for it in barking at a thief. The cat that purrs its gratitude for a morsel of meat, will clear our house of mice. But what do we get in return for supporting whole loads of play-mongers, and circus-clowns? They eat, they drink, they giggle, they grimace, they strut in gaudy clothes — and what else? They have not afforded even useful amusement; they are professional laugh-makers; their trade is comical or tragical buffoonery — the trade of tickling men. We do not feel any need of them, before they come; and when they leave, the only effects resulting from their visits are — unruly boys, aping apprentices, and unsteady workmen. Now, upon principles of mere political economy, is it wise to support a growing class of imprudent idlers? If at the top of society, the government should erect a class of favored citizens, and pamper their idleness with fat pensions — the indignation of the whole community would break out against such privileged aristocrats. But we have, at the bottom of society, a set of wandering, jesting, dancing, fiddling aristocrats, whom we support for the sake of their capers, grins, and caricatures upon life — and no one seems to think this an evil! VI. But even this is cheap and wise, compared with the evil which I shall mention. If these morality-teachers could guarantee us against all evil from their doings, we might pay their support and think it a cheap bargain. The direct and necessary effect of their pursuit, however, is to demoralize men! Those who defend Theaters would scorn to admit actors into their friendship. It is within the knowledge of all, that men, who thus cater for public pleasure, are excluded from respectable society. The general fact is not altered by the exceptions — and honorable exceptions there are. But where there is one exception — how many thousand immoral wretches are there, whose acting is but a means of sensual indulgence? In the support of gamblers, circus-men, actors, and racing-jockeys — an industrious people are guilty of supporting mere mischief-makers — men whose very heart is diseased, and whose sores exhale contagion to all around them. We pay moral assassins to stab the purity of our children. We warn our sons of temptation — and yet plant the seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes and thorns of the worst temptation. If to this strong language, you answer, that these men are generous and jovial, that their very business is to please, that they do not mean to do harm — I reply, that I do not charge them with trying to produce immorality — but with pursuing a course which produces it, whether they try or not. An evil example does harm by its own liberty, without asking permission. Moral disease, like the plague, is contagious, whether the patient wishes it or not. A vile man infects his children — in spite of himself. Criminals make criminals, just as taint makes taint, disease makes disease, plagues make plagues. Those who run the mirthful round of pleasure — cannot help dazzling the young, confounding their habits, and perverting their morals — it is the very nature of their employment. These demoralizing professions could not be sustained, but by the patronage of moral men. Where do the clerks, the apprentices, the dissipated, get their money which buys an entrance? From whom is that money drained, always, in every land, which supports vice? Unquestionably from the good, the laborious, the careful. The skill, the enterprise, the labor, the good morals of every nation — are always taxed for the expenses of vice. Jails are built out of honest men’s earnings. Courts are supported from peaceful men’s property. Penitentiaries are built by the toil of virtue. Crime never pays its own way! Vice has no hands to work. Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to waste; and good men, directly or indirectly, foot the bill! At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the return of that bread which we wastefully cast upon the waters — some question might be asked about the economy of vice — the economy of paying for our sons’ idleness; the economy of maintaining a whole lazy profession of gamblers, racers, actresses, and actors — whose errand is mischief, and luxury, and license, and giggling folly! It ought to be asked of men who groan to pay their taxes, whether they want to be taxed to pay the bills of charlatans? It is astonishing how little the influence of those professions has been considered, which exert themselves mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. That whole race of men, whose camp is the Theater, the Circus, or the Gaming-table, is a race whose instinct is destruction, who live to corrupt, and live off of the corruption which they make. For their support, we annually sacrifice youthful victims. Even sober Christian men, look smilingly upon the gaudy outside of these vessels of destruction; and while we see the results to be, uniformly, dissipation, idleness, dishonesty, vice and crime! Disguise it as you will, these men of pleasure are, the world over, corrupters of youth. Upon no principle of kindness can we tolerate them; no excuse is bold enough; we can take bail from none of their weaknesses — it is not safe to have them abroad even upon excessive bail. You might as well take bail for lions, and allow scorpions to breed in our streets for a suitable license; or for a tax, indulge assassins. Men whose life is given to evil pleasures are, to ordinary criminals, what a universal pestilence is to a local disease. They fill the air, pervade the community, and bring around every youth an atmosphere of death! Corrupters of youth have no mitigation of their baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, their knowledge nothing, their varied accomplishments nothing. These are only so many facilities for greater evil. Is a serpent less deadly, because his burnished scales shine? Shall a dove praise and court the vulture, because he has such glossy plumage? The more accomplishments an evil man has, the more dangerous is he — they are the garlands which cover up the knife with which he will stab! There is no such thing as good corrupters. You might as well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a very lenient assassination, a fragrant stench, or a pious devil. We denounce them; for it is our nature to loathe treacherous corruption. We have no compunction to withhold us. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb; but who mourns the wolf which tore it? We weep for despoiled innocence; but who sheds a tear for the savage fiend who plucks away the flower of virtue? We shudder and pray for the shrieking victim of the Inquisition; but who would spare the cruel Inquisitor, before whose shriveled form, the piteous maid implores relief in vain? Even thus, we palliate the sins of our youth; and their downfall is our sorrow: but for their destroyers, for the Corrupters of Youth, who practice the infernal chemistry of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice — we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience! We lift our heart to Him who bears the iron rod of vengeance, and pray for the appointed time of judgment. You miscreants! Do you think that you are growing tall, and walking safely, because God has forgotten? The bolt shall yet smite you! You shall be heard as the falling of an oak in the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the more terrible its resounding downfall! Oh! you Corrupter of Youth! I would not take your death, for all the pleasure of your guilty life, a thousand fold! You shall draw near to the shadow of death. These shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. Images of terror shall dimly rise and beckon — the ghastly deeds of the past shall stretch out their skinny hands to push you forward! You shall not die unattended. Despair shall mock you. Agony shall tender to your parched lips, her fiery cup. Remorse shall feel for your heart, and rend it open. Good men shall breathe freer at your death, and utter thanksgiving when you are gone. Men shall place your grave-stone as a monument and testimony that a plague is stayed; no tear shall wet it, no mourner linger there! And, as borne on the blast, your guilty spirit whistles toward the gate of Hell — the hideous shrieks of those whom your hand has destroyed, shall pierce you — Hell’s first welcome! In the bosom of that everlasting storm which rains perpetual misery in Hell — shall you, Corrupter of Youth, be forever hidden from our view! And may God wipe out the very thoughts of you from our memory! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 135: 2.05. SIX WARNINGS ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 Six Warnings "The generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever." Psa 112:2-3 "He who gets riches, by unjust means, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at the end shall be a fool." Jer 17:11 When justly obtained, and rationally used — riches are called a gift of God, an evidence of his favor, and a great reward. When gathered unjustly, and corruptly used — wealth is pronounced a canker, a rust, a fire, a curse. There is no contradiction, then, when the Bible persuades to industry, and integrity, by a promise of riches; and then dissuades from wealth, as a terrible thing, destroying soul and body. Blessings are vindictive to abusers, and kind to rightful users; they serve us — or rule us. Fire warms our dwelling — or consumes it. Steam serves man — and also destroys him. Iron, in the plough, the sickle, the house, the ship, is indispensable. The assassin’s knife, the cruel sword and the spear, are iron also. The constitution of man, and of society, alike evinces the design of God. Both are made to be happier by the possession of riches — their full development and perfection are dependent, to a large extent, upon wealth. Without it, there can be neither books nor implements; neither commerce nor arts, neither towns nor cities. It is a folly to denounce that, a love of which God has placed in man by a constitutional faculty; that, with which he has associated high grades of happiness; that, which has motives touching every faculty of the mind. Wealth is an Artist — by its patronage men are encouraged to paint, to carve, to design, to build and adorn. Wealth is a master-mechanic — and inspires man to invent, to discover, to apply, to forge, and to fashion. Wealth is a Gardener — and under its influence men rear the flock, till the earth, plant the vineyard, the field, the orchard, and the garden. Wealth is a manufacturer — and teaches men to card, to spin, to weave, to color and dress all useful fabrics. Wealth is a Merchant — and sends forth ships, and fills ware-houses with their returning cargoes gathered from every zone. Wealth is the scholar’s patron — it sustains his leisure, rewards his labor, builds the college, and gathers the library. Is a man weak? — he can buy the strong. Is he ignorant? — the learned will serve his wealth. Is he crude of speech? — he may procure the advocacy of the eloquent. The rich cannot buy honor — but honorable places, they can; they cannot purchase nobility — but they may its titles. Money cannot buy freshness of heart — but it can every luxury which tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its body-guard, and no earthly power may safely defy it; either while running in the swift channels of commerce, or reposing in the reservoirs of ancient families. Here is an astonishing thing — that gold, an inert metal, which neither thinks, nor feels, nor stirs — can set the whole world to thinking, planning, running, digging, fashioning, and drives on the sweaty mass with never-ending labors! Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy therewith; not to clothe or feed itself; not to make it an instrument of wisdom, of skill, of friendship, or religion. Avarice seeks it — to heap it up; to walk around the pile, and gloat upon it; to fondle, and court, to kiss and hug the darling stuff to the end of life, with the homage of idolatry. Pride seeks it — for it gives power, and place, and titles, and exalts its possessor above his fellows. To be a thread in the fabric of life, just like any other thread, hoisted up and down by the treddle, played across by the shuttle, and woven tightly into the piece, this may suit humility — but not pride. Vanity seeks it — what else can give it costly clothing, and rare ornaments, and stately dwellings, and showy equipage, and attract admiring eyes to its gaudy colors and costly jewels? Taste seeks it — because by it, may be had whatever is beautiful, or refining, or instructive. What leisure has poverty for study, and how can it collect books, manuscripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curiosities? Love seeks it — to build a home full of delights for father, wife or child; and, wisest of all, Religion seeks it — to make it the messenger and servant of benevolence, to need, to suffering, and to ignorance. What a sight does the busy world present, as of a great workshop, where hope and fear, love and pride, and lust, and pleasure, and avarice, separate or in partnership — drive on the universal race for wealth! Delving in the mine, digging in the earth, sweltering at the forge, plying the shuttle, ploughing the waters; in houses, in shops, in stores, on the mountain-side, or in the valley; by skill, by labor, by thought, by craft, by force, by traffic; all men, in all places, by all labors, fair and unfair, the world around, busy, busy; ever searching for wealth — that wealth may supply their pleasures. As every taste and inclination may receive its gratification through riches, the universal and often fierce pursuit of it arises, not from the single impulse of avarice — but from the impulse of the whole mind; and on this very account, its pursuits should be more exactly regulated. Let me set up a warning over against the special dangers which lie along the Road To RICHES. I. I warn you against thinking that riches necessarily confer happiness; and that poverty always brings unhappiness. Do not begin life supposing that you shall be heart-rich, when you are purse-rich. A man’s happiness depends primarily upon his disposition; if that is good — riches will bring pleasure; but only vexation — if his disposition is evil. To lavish money upon shining trifles, to make an idol of one’s self for fools to gaze at, to rear mansions beyond our needs, to garnish them for display and not for use, to chatter through the heartless rounds of pleasure, to lounge, to gape, to simper and giggle — can wealth make Vanity happy by such folly? If wealth descends upon AVARICE — does it confer happiness? It blights the heart, as autumnal fires ravage the prairies! The eye glows with greedy cunning, conscience shrivels, the light of love goes out, and the wretch moves amidst his coin no better, no happier — than a loathsome reptile in a mine of gold. A dreary fire of self-love burns in the bosom of the avaricious rich, as a hermit’s flame in a ruined temple of the desert. The fire is kindled for no deity, and is odorous with no incense — but only warms the shivering hermit. Wealth will do little for LUST — but to hasten its corruption. There is no more happiness in a foul heart — than there is health in a pestilent morass. Satisfaction is not made out of such stuff as fighting carousals, obscene revelry, and midnight orgies. An alligator, gorging or swollen with surfeit and basking in the sun — has the same happiness which riches bring to the man who eats to gluttony, drinks to drunkenness, and sleeps to stupidity. But riches indeed bless that heart whose almoner is Benevolence. If the taste is refined, if the affections are pure, if conscience is honest, if charity listens to the needy, and generosity relieves them; if the public-spirited hand fosters all that embellishes and all that ennobles society — then is the rich man happy. On the other hand, do not suppose that all poverty is a waste and howling wilderness. There is a poverty of vice — base, loathsome, covered with all the sores of depravity. There is a poverty of indolence — where virtues sleep, and passions fret and bicker. There is a poverty which despondency makes — a deep dungeon, in which the victim wears hopeless chains. May God save you from that! There is a spiteful and venomous poverty — in which base and cankered hearts, repairing none of their own losses, spit at others’ prosperity, and curse the rich — themselves doubly cursed by their own hearts. But there is a contented poverty — in which industry and peace rule; and a joyful hope, which looks out into another world where riches shall neither fly nor fade. This poverty may possess an independent mind, a heart ambitious of usefulness, a hand quick to sow the seed of other men’s happiness, and find its own joy in their enjoyment. If a serene age finds you in such poverty, it is such a wilderness, if it be a wilderness, as that in which God led his chosen people, and on which he rained every day a heavenly manna. If God opens to your feet the way to wealth, enter it cheerfully; but remember that riches will either bless or curse you — as your own heart determines. But if circumscribed by necessity, you are still indigent, after all your industry, do not scorn poverty. There is often in the hut, more dignity — than in the palace. There is often more satisfaction in the poor man’s scanty fare — than in the rich man’s satiety. II. Men are warned in the Bible against making haste to be rich. "He who hastens to be rich has an evil eye, and considers not that poverty shall come upon him!" This is spoken, not of the alacrity of enterprise — but of the precipitancy of avarice. That is an evil eye which leads a man into trouble by incorrect vision. When a man seeks to prosper by crafty tricks instead of careful industry; when a man’s inordinate covetousness pushes him across all lines of honesty that he may sooner clutch the prize; when gambling speculation would reap where it had not strewn; when men gain riches by crimes — there is an Evil Eye, which guides them through a specious prosperity, to inevitable ruin! So dependent is success upon patient industry, that he who seeks it otherwise, tempts his own ruin. A young lawyer, unwilling to wait for that practice which rewards a good reputation, or unwilling to earn that reputation by severe application, rushes through all the dirty paths of chicanery to a hasty prosperity; and he rushes out of it, by the dirtier paths of discovered villainy. A young politician, scarcely waiting until the law allows him, sturdily begs for that popularity which he should have patiently earned. In the ferocious conflicts of political life, cunning, intrigue, falsehood, slander, vituperative violence, at first sustain his pretensions — and at last demolish them. It is thus in all the ways of traffic, in all the arts, and trades. That prosperity which grows like the mushroom — is as poisonous as the mushroom! Few men are destroyed — but many destroy themselves. When God sends wealth to bless men — he sends it gradually like a gentle rain. When God sends riches to punish men — they come tumultuously, like a roaring torrent, tearing up landmarks and sweeping all before them in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil which environs the path to wealth, springs from that criminal haste which substitutes adroitness for industry, and trick for toil. III. Let me warn you against Covetousness. "You shall not covet," is the law by which God sought to bless a favorite people. Covetousness is greediness of money. The Bible meets it with significant woes, by God’s hatred, by solemn warnings, by denunciations, by exclusion from Heaven! This financial gluttony comes upon the competitors for wealth insidiously. At first, business is only a means of paying for our pleasures. Vanity soon whets the appetite for money, to sustain her parade and competition, to gratify her jealousies. Pride throws in fuel for a brighter flame. Vindictive hatreds often augment the passion, until the whole soul glows as a fervent furnace, and the body is driven as a boat whose ponderous engine trembles with the utmost energy of steam. Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats its own purposes. It breeds restless daring, where it is dangerous to venture. It works the mind to fever, so that its judgments are not cool, nor its calculations calm. Greed of money is like fire; the more fuel it has — the hotter it burns. Everything conspires to intensify the heat. Loss excites by desperation, and gain by exhilaration. When there is fever in the blood, there is fire on the brain; and courage turns to rashness, and rashness runs to ruin. Covetousness breeds misery. The sight of houses better than our own, of dress beyond our means, of jewels costlier than we may wear, of stately equipage, and rare curiosities beyond our reach — these hatch the viper brood of covetous thoughts; vexing the poor — who would be rich; tormenting the rich — who would be richer. The covetous man pines to see pleasure; is sad in the presence of cheerfulness; and the joy of the world is his sorrow — because all the happiness of others is not his. I do not wonder that God abhors him! He inspects his heart, as he would a cave full of foul birds, or a nest of rattling reptiles, and loathes the sight of its crawling tenants! To the covetous man, life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may. Mammon might build its palace on such a heart, and Pleasure bring all its revelry there, and Honor all its garlands — it would be like pleasures in a sepulcher, and garlands on a tomb. The creed of the greedy man is brief and consistent; and unlike other creeds, is both subscribed and believed. The chief end of man is to glorify Gold and enjoy him forever. Life is a time afforded man to grow rich in; death, the winding up of speculations; Heaven, a mart with golden streets; Hell, a place where shiftless men are punished with everlasting poverty. God searched among the beasts for a fit emblem of contempt, to describe the end of a covetous prince: He shall be buried with the burial of an Donkey, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. He whose heart is turned to greediness, who sweats through life under the load of labor only to heap up money, and dies without private usefulness, or a record of public service — is no better, in God’s estimation, than a pack-horse — a mule — an donkey; a creature for burdens, to be beaten, and worked and killed, and dragged off by another like him, abandoned to the birds and forgotten. He is buried with the burial of an donkey! This is the Miser’s Epitaph — and yours, Young Man! if you earn it by covetousness! IV. I warn you against Selfishness. Of riches it is written: "There is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice and to do good in his life." If men selfishly absorb their property, it parches the heart so that it will not give forth blossoms and fruits — but only thorns and thistles. If men radiate and reflect upon others some rays of the prosperity which shines upon themselves — then wealth is not only harmless — but full of advantage. The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded by a throng who jostle, and thrust, and conflict — like men in the tumult of a battle. The rules which crafty old men breathe into the ears of the young, are full of selfish wisdom — teaching them that the chief end of man is to harvest and to hoard. Their life is made obedient to a scale of preferences graded from a sordid experience; a scale which has poverty for one extreme, and stinginess for the other; and the virtues are ranked between them as they are relatively fruitful in physical thrift. Every crevice of the heart is caulked with stingy maxims — so that no precious drop of wealth may leak out through inadvertent generosities. Indeed, generosity and all its company, are thought to be little better than pilfering pick-locks, against whose wiles the heart is prepared, like a coin-vault, with iron-clenched walls of stone, and impenetrable doors. Mercy, pity, and sympathy — are vagrant fowls; and that they may not scale the fence between a man and his neighbors, their wings are clipped by the miser’s master-maxim — Charity Begins At Home. It certainly stays there. The habit of regarding men as dishonest rivals, dries up, also, the kindlier feelings. A shrewd trafficker must watch his fellows, be suspicious of their offers, vigilant of their movements, and jealous of their pledges. The world’s way is a very crooked way, and a very deceitful one. Its travelers creep by stealth, or walk craftily, or glide, in concealments, or appear in specious guises. He who stands watching among men, to pluck his advantage from their hands, or to lose it by their wiles — comes at length to regard all men as either enemies or instruments. Of course he thinks it fair to strip an enemy; and just as fair to use an instrument. Men are no more to him than bales, boxes, or goods — mere matters of business. If he ever relaxes his commercial rigidity to indulge in the fictions of poetry, it is when, perhaps on Sundays or at a funeral, he talks quite prettily about friendship, and generosity, and philanthropy. The tightest ship may leak in a storm, and an unbartered penny may escape from this man, when the surprise of the solicitation gives no time for thought. The heart cannot wholly petrify without some honest revulsions. Opiates are administered to it. This business-man tells his heart that it is beset by unscrupulous enemies; that beneficent virtues are doors to let them in; that liberality is bread given to one’s foes; and selfishness only self-defense. At the same time, he enriches the future with generous promises. While he is getting rich, he cannot afford to be liberal; but when once he is rich, ah! how liberal he means to be! As though habits could be unbuckled like a belt, and were not rather steel-bands riveted, defying the edge of any man’s resolution, and clasping the heart with invincible servitude! Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth, is like a citadel stormed in war. The banner of victory waves over dilapidated walls, desolate chambers, and magazines riddled with artillery. Men, covered with sweat, and begrimed with toil — expect to find joy in a heart reduced by selfishness to a smouldering heap of ruins. I warn every aspirant for wealth, against the infernal canker of selfishness. It will eat out of the heart with the fire of Hell, or bake it harder than a stone! The heart of avaricious old age stands like a bare rock in a bleak wilderness, and there is no rod of authority, nor incantation of pleasure, which can draw from it one crystal drop to quench the raging thirst for satisfaction. But listen not to my words alone; hear the solemn voice of God, pronouncing doom upon the selfish: "Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire!" 5. I warn you against seeking wealth by Covert Dishonesty. The everlasting plea of petty fraud or open dishonesty, is, its necessity or profitableness. But it is neither necessary — nor profitable. The hope is a deception, and the excuse a lie. The severity of competition affords no reason for dishonesty in word or deed. Competition is fair — but not all methods of competition. A mechanic may compete with a mechanic, by rising earlier, by greater industry, by greater skill, more punctuality, greater thoroughness, by employing better materials; by a more scrupulous fidelity to promises, and by facility in accommodation. A merchant may study to excel competitors, by a better selection of goods, by more obliging manners, by more rigid honesty, by a better knowledge of the market, by better taste in the arrangement of his goods. Industry, honesty, kindness, taste, genius and skill — are the only materials of all rightful competition! But whenever you have exerted all your knowledge, all your skill, all your industry, with long continued patience and without success, then, it is clear, not that you may proceed to employ trick and cunning — but that you must stop. God has put before you a bound which no man may overleap. There may be the appearance of gain on the knavish side of the wall of honor. Traps are always baited with food sweet to the taste of the intended victim; and Satan is too crafty a trapper not to scatter the pitfall of dishonesty with some shining particles of gold. But what if fraud were necessary to permanent success? Will you take success upon such terms? I perceive, too often, that young men regard the argument as ended, when they prove to themselves that they cannot be rich without deceit. Very well — then be poor! But if you prefer money to honor — you may well swear fidelity to the villain’s law! If it is not base and detestable to gain by equivocation — then neither is it by lying; and if not by lying — then neither is it by stealing; and if not by stealing — then neither by robbery or murder. Will you tolerate the loss of honor and honesty, for the sake of profit? For exactly this, Judas betrayed Christ, and Benedict Arnold his country. Because deceit is the only way to gain some pleasure — then . . . may a wife yield her honor? may a politician sell himself? may a statesman barter his counsel? may a judge take bribes? may a juryman forswear himself? or a witness commit perjury? Then virtues are marketable commodities, and may be hung up, like meat in the shambles, or sold at auction to the highest bidder. Who can afford a victory — if gained by a defeat of his virtue? What prosperity can compensate the plundering of a man’s heart? "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches" — sooner or later every man will find it so. With what dismay would Esau have sorrowed for a lost birthright, had he lost also the pitiful porridge for which he sold it? With what double despair would Judas have clutched at death, if he had not obtained even the thirty pieces of silver which were to pay his infamy? And with what utter confusion will all dishonest men, who were learning from the Devil to defraud other men, find at length, that he was giving his most finished lesson of deception — by cheating them! and making poverty and disgrace the only fruit of the lies and frauds which were framed for profit! Getting treasure by a lying tongue, is a vanity tossed to and fro by those who seek damnation! Men have only looked upon the beginning of a career, when they pronounce upon the profitableness of dishonesty. Many a ship goes gaily out of harbor — which never returns again. That only is a good voyage — which brings home the richly-freighted ship. God explicitly declares that an inevitable curse of dishonesty, shall fall upon the criminal himself, or upon his children. He who by usury, and unjust gain, increases his substance — he shall gather it for him who will pity the poor. His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate. Neither is there any to deliver them — the robber swallows up their substance. Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, are permitted to open bright as the morning; the most poisonous bud unfolds with brilliant colors. So the threshold of perdition is burnished until it glows like the gate of paradise. "There is a way which seems right unto a man — but the ends thereof are the ways of death!" This end is dishonesty described to the full. At first you look down upon a smooth and verdant path covered with flowers, perfumed with fragrances, and overhung with fruits and grateful shade. Its long perspective is illusive; for it ends quickly in a precipice, over which you pitch into irretrievable ruin! For the sources of this inevitable disaster, we need look no further than the effect of dishonesty upon a man’s own mind. The difference between cunning and wisdom — is the difference between acting by the certain and immutable laws of nature, and acting by the shifts of temporary expedients. An honest man puts his prosperity upon the broad current of those laws which govern the world. A crafty man means to pry between them, to steer across them, to take advantage of them. An honest man steers by God’s chart; and a dishonest man by his own. Which is the most liable to perplexities and fatal mistakes of judgment? Wisdom steadily ripens to the end; cunning is worm-bitten, and soon drops from the tree. I could repeat the names of many men, (every village has such, and they swarm in cities,) who are skillful, indefatigable — but audaciously dishonest; and for a time, they seemed going straight forward to the realm of wealth. But I never knew a single one to avoid ultimate ruin. Men who act under dishonest passions — are like men riding fierce horses. It is not always with the rider — when or where he shall stop. If for his sake, the steed dashes wildly on while the road is smooth; so, turning suddenly into a rough and dangerous way, the rider must go madly forward for the steed’s sake — now chafed, his mettle up, his eye afire, and beast and burden like a bolt speeding through the air, until some bound or sudden fall tumble both to the ground — a crushed and mangled mass! A man pursuing plain ends by honest means, may be troubled on every side — yet not distressed; perplexed — but not in despair; persecuted — but not forsaken; cast down — but not destroyed. But those who pursue their advantage by a round of dishonesties, "when fear comes as a desolation, and destruction as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon them — shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices; for the turning away of the simple shall slay them; and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them." 6. The Bible overflows with warnings to those who gain wealth by violent extortion, or by any flagrant villainy. Some men stealthily slip the possessions of the poor from under them. Some beguile the simple and heedless, of their inheritance. Some tyrannize over ignorance, and extort from it, its fair domains. Some steal away the senses, and intoxicate the mind — the more readily and largely to cheat; some set their traps in all the dark places of men’s adversity, and prowl for wrecks all along the shores, on which men’s fortunes go to pieces. Men will take advantage of extreme misery, to wring it with more griping tortures, and compel it to the extreme sacrifices; and stop only when no more can be borne by the sufferer, or nothing more extracted by the usurer. The earth is as full of these avaricious monsters — as the tropical forests are of beasts of prey. But amid all the lions, and tigers, and hyenas — is seen the stately bulk of three huge Behemoths. The first Behemoth is that incarnate fiend who navigates the ocean to traffic in human slavery, and freight with the groans and tears of agony. Distant shores are sought with cords and manacles; villages surprised with torch and sword; and the loathsome ship swallows what the sword and the fire have spared. By night and day the voyage speeds, and the storm spares wretches more relentless than itself. The wind wafts and the sun lights the path for a ship whose log is written in blood. Hideous profits, dripping red, even at this hour, lure these infernal miscreants to their remorseless errands. The thirst of gold inspires such courage, skill, and cunning vigilance — that the thunders of four allied navies cannot sink the infamous fleet. What wonder! Just such a Behemoth of rapacity stalks among us, and fattens on the blood of our sons. Men there are, who, without a pang or gleam of remorse, will coolly wait for character to rot, and health to sink, and means to melt — that they may suck up the last drop of the victim’s blood. Our streets are full of reeling wretches whose bodies and manhood and souls have been crushed and put to the press, that monsters might wring out of them a wine for their infernal thirst. The agony of midnight massacre, the frenzy of the ship’s dungeon, the living death of the passage, the wails of separation, and the dismal torpor of hopeless servitude — are these found only in the piracy of the slave trade? They all are among us! worse assassinations! worse dragging to a prison-ship! worse groans ringing from the stinking ship! worse separations of families! worse bondage of intemperate men, enslaved by that most inexorable of all taskmasters — sexual habit! The third Behemoth is seen lurking among the Indian savages, and bringing the arts of learning, and the skill of civilization, to aid in plundering the debauched barbarian. The cunning, murdering, scalping Indian — is no match for the Christian whiteman. Compared with the midnight knavery of men reared in schools, rocked by religion, tempered and taught by the humane institutions of liberty and civilization — all the craft of the savage is as twilight. Vast estates have been accumulated, without having an honest farthing in them. Our Penitentiaries might be sent to school to the Treaty-grounds and Council-grounds. Smugglers and swindlers might humble themselves in the presence of Indian traders. All the crimes against property known to our laws, nourish with unnatural vigor; and some, unknown to civilized villainy! To swindle ignorance, to overreach simplicity, to lie without scruple to any extent; to tempt the savages to rob each other, and to receive their plunder; to sell goods at incredible prices to the sober Indian, then to intoxicate him, and steal them all back by a sham bargain, to be sold again, and stolen again; to employ falsehood, lust, threats, whisky, and even the knife and the pistol; in short to consume the Indian’s substance by every vice and crime possible to an unprincipled heart inflamed with an insatiable rapacity, unwatched by Justice, and unrestrained by Law — this it is to be an Indian Trader! I would rather inherit the center of Vesuvius, or make my bed in Mount Etna, than own those estates which have been scalped off from human beings as the hunter strips a beaver of its fur. Of all these, of all who gain possessions by extortion and robbery — never let yourself be envious! "For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness. They seem to live such painless lives; their bodies are so healthy and strong. They don’t have troubles like other people; they’re not plagued with problems like everyone else. They wear pride like a jeweled necklace and clothe themselves with cruelty. When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me until I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!" I would not bear their heart, who have so made money — were the world a solid globe of gold, and mine! I would not stand for them in the judgment — were every star of Heaven a realm of riches, and mine. I would not walk with them to the burning fires of Hell, to bear their torment, and utter their groans — for the throne of God itself. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the getter! Riches bought with guile — God will pay for with vengeance! Riches got by fraud — are dug out of one’s own heart, and destroy the mine! Unjust riches — curse the owner in getting, in keeping, in transmitting! They curse his children in their father’s memory, in their own wasteful habits, in drawing around them all bad men to be their companions. While I do not discourage your search for wealth, I warn you that it is not a cruise upon level seas, and under kind skies. You advance where ten thousand are broken in pieces, before they reach the mart; where those who reach it are worn out by their labors, and past enjoying their riches. You seek a land pleasant to the sight — but dangerous to the feet; a land of fragrant winds — which lull to security; of golden fruits — which are poisonous; of glorious hues — which dazzle and mislead. You may be rich and be pure — but it will cost you a great struggle. You may be rich and go to Heaven — but ten, doubtless, will sink beneath their riches, where one breaks through them to Heaven. If you have entered this shining way — begin to look for snares and traps. Go not careless of your danger, and provoking it. See, on every side of you, how many there are who seal God’s word with their blood! "But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows!" 1Ti 6:9-10 ======================================================================== CHAPTER 136: 2.06. INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 Industry and Idleness "Give us this day our daily bread." Mat 6:11 "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ’If a man will not work, he shall not eat!’ We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat!" 2Th 3:10-12. The bread which we ask from God — he gives us through our own industry. Prayer sows it — and Industry reaps it. INDUSTRY is the habitual activity in some useful pursuit. So, not only inactivity — but also all activities without the design of usefulness, are of the nature of IDLENESS. The supine sluggard is no more indolent than the bustling do-nothing. Men may walk much, and read much, and talk much, and pass the day without an unoccupied moment, and yet be substantially idle; because Industry requires, at least, the intention of usefulness. But gadding, gazing, lounging, mere pleasure-mongering, reading for the relief of boredom — these are as useless as sleeping, or dozing, or the stupidity of a glutton. There are many grades of idleness; and veins of it run through the most industrious life. We shall indulge in some descriptions of the various classes of idlers, and leave the reader to judge, if he is an indolent man — to which class he belongs. 1. The lazy man. He is of a very ancient pedigree; for his family is minutely described by Solomon: "How long will you sleep, O sluggard? when will you awake out of sleep?" This is the language of impatience; the speaker has been trying to awaken him — pulling, pushing, rolling him over, and shouting in his ear; but all to no purpose. He soliloquizes, whether it is possible for the man ever to wake up! At length, the sleeper drawls out a dozing petition to be let alone: "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep;" and the last words confusedly break into a snore — that somnolent lullaby of repose! Long ago the birds have finished their morning prayers, the sun has advanced full high, the dew has gone from the grass, and the labors of Industry are far in progress — when our sluggard, awakened by his very efforts to maintain sleep, slowly emerges to perform life’s great duty of eating — with him, second only in importance to sleep. And now, well rested, and suitably nourished — surely he will abound in labor. Nay, the sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold weather. It is yet early spring; there is ice in the north; and the winds are hearty — his tender skin shrinks from exposure, and he waits for milder days — envying the residents of tropical climates, where cold never comes, and harvests wave spontaneously. He is valiant at sleeping all the morning; but for other courage, the slothful man says, "There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the street!" He has not been out to see; but he heard a noise, and resolutely betakes himself to prudence. Under so thriving a manager, so alert in the morning, so busy through the day, and so enterprising — we might anticipate the thrift of his farm, "I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins!" To complete the picture, only one thing more is needed — a description of his house — and then we should have, at one view — the lazy man, his farm, and house. Solomon has given us that also: "If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks!" Let all this be put together, and possibly some reader may find an unpleasant resemblance to his own affairs! He sleeps long and late, he wakes to slothfulness, with indolent eyes sleepily rolling over neglected work; neglected because it is too cold in spring, and too hot in summer, and too laborious at all times — a great coward in danger, and therefore very boasting in safety. His lands run to waste, his fences are dilapidated, his crops are chiefly of weeds and brambles; his house is sagging, the side leaning over as if wishing, like its owner, to lie down to sleep; the chimney tumbling down; the roof breaking in, with moss and grass sprouting in its crevices; the well without pump or cover, a trap for their children. This is the very castle of Indolence! 2. Another idler as useless — but vastly more active than the last, attends closely to everyone’s business — except his own! His wife earns the children’s bread — and his; she procures her own clothing — and his; she procures the wood; she procures the water. While he, with hands in his pocket, is busy watching the building of a neighbor’s barn; or advising another how to trim and train his vines. Or he has heard of sickness in a friend’s family, and is there, to suggest a hundred cures, and to do everything but to help. He is a spectator of all the sports matches in town. He knows all the stories of all the families who live in the village. If he can catch a stranger at the tavern in a rainy day, he pours out a strain of information, a pattering of words, as thick as the rain-drops out side. He has good advice to everybody, how to save, how to make money, how to do everything. He can tell the saddle-maker about his trade; he gives advice to the blacksmith about his work, suggests improvements, advises this paint or that varnish, criticizes the finish, or praises the trimmings. He is a ravenous reader of newspapers, almanacs, and magazines. And with scraps of history and mutilated anecdotes — he faces the very school-master, and gives up only to the articulateness of the oily-tongued village lawyer — few have the hardihood to match him. And thus every day he bustles through his multifaceted idleness, and completes his circle of visits, as regularly as the hands of a clock visit each figure on the dial-plate. But alas! the clock forever tells man the useful lesson of time passing steadily away — and returning never. But what useful thing do these busy-buzzing-idlers perform? 3. We introduce another idler. He follows no job; he only follows those who do. Sometimes he sweeps along the streets, with all-important gait; sometimes perfumes it with the unpleasant odors of tobacco. He also frequents sunny benches, or breezy piazzas. His business is to see. His desire to be seen, and no one fails to see him — so gaudily dressed, his hat sitting aslant upon a wilderness of hair, like a bird half startled from its nest, and every thread arranged to provoke attention. He is a man of honor — not that he keeps his word or shrinks from baseness. He defrauds his laundress, his tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at other men’s expense. He gambles and swears, and fights — when he is too drunk to be afraid; but still he is a man of honor, for he has whiskers and looks fierce, wears a large bushy moustache with hair growing down the sides of the mouth, and says, "Upon my honor, sir!" "Do you doubt my honor, sir?" Thus he appears by day. By night he does not appear; he may be dimly seen flitting around; his voice may be heard loud in the carousal of some tavern — or above the songs and uproar of a midnight return, staggering home. 4. The next of this brotherhood of idlers excites our pity. He began life most thriftily; for his rising family he was gathering an ample subsistence; but, involved in other men’s affairs, he went down in their ruin. Late in life he begins once more, and at length, just secure of an easy competence — his ruin is compassed again. He sits down quietly under it, complains of no one, envies no one, refuses the cup, and is even more pure in morals, than in better days. He moves on from day to day, as one who walks under a spell — it is the spell of despondency, which nothing can disenchant or arouse. He neither seeks work nor refuses it. He wanders among men a dreaming gazer, poorly clad, always kind, always irresolute, able to plan nothing for himself, nor to execute what others have planned for him. He lives and he dies a discouraged man, and the most harmless and excusable of all idlers. 5. I have not mentioned the fashionable idler — whose riches defeat every object for which God gave him birth. He has a fine form, and manly beauty, and the chief end of life is to display them. With notable diligence, he ransacks the market for rare and curious clothes, for costly jewelry, and chains, and rings. A poorly-fitted coat is the unpardonable sin of his creed. He meditates upon fine clothes, employs a profound discrimination in selecting a hat, or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon the tastefulness of a button or a neck-tie, with the deliberation of a statesman. Thus dressed up, he saunters in fashionable galleries, or flaunts his stylish equipage, or parades the streets with silly belles, or delights their itching ears with compliments of flattery, or with choicely culled scandals. He is a reader of fictions, a player of cards, and is especially conspicuous in games. Mirthful and frivolous, rich and useless, polished until the enamel is worn off — his whole life serves only to make him an animated puppet of pleasure. He is as corrupt in imagination — as he is refined in manners. He is as selfish in private — as he is generous in public; and even what he gives to another, is given for his own sake. He worships where fashion worships — today at the theater, tomorrow at the church, as either exhibits the whitest hand, or the most polished actor. A gaudy, busy and indolent butterfly — he flutters without industry from flower to flower, until summer closes, and frosts sting him, and he sinks down and dies, unthought of and unremembered. 6. One other portrait should be drawn of a business man, who wishes to exist by his occupation, while he attends to everything else. If a sporting club meets — he must go. He has set his fishing-line in every hole in the river, and dozed in a summer day under every tree along its bank. He rejoices in a riding party — a sleigh-ride — a summer frolic — a winter’s glee. He is everybody’s friend — universally good-natured — forever busy where it will do him no good, and remiss where his interests require activity. He takes amusement for his main business — which other men employ as a relaxation. And the serious labor of life, which other men are mainly employed in — he knows only as a relaxation. After a few years he fails, his good nature is somewhat clouded, and as age sobers his buoyancy, without repairing his profitless habits — he soon sinks to a lower grade of laziness, and to ruin. It would be endless to describe the wiles of idleness — how it insidiously creeps in upon men, how secretly it mingles with their pursuits, how much time it purloins from the scholar, from the professional man, and from the artisan. It steals minutes, it clips off the edges of hours, and at length takes possession of days. Where it has its will — it sinks and drowns employment. But where necessity, or ambition, or duty resists such extremes — then indolence makes labor heavy; scatters the attention; puts us to our tasks with wandering thoughts, with irresolute purpose, and with dreamy visions. Thus when it may — it plucks out hours and rules over them; and where this may not be — it lurks around them to impede the sway of industry, and turn her seeming toils to subtle idleness. Against so mischievous an enchantress — we should be duly armed. I shall, therefore, describe the advantages of Industry — and the evils of Indolence. 1. A hearty industry promotes happiness. Some men of the greatest industry, are unhappy from sourness of disposition; they are morose, or suspicious, or envious. Such qualities make happiness impossible under any circumstances. Health is the platform on which all happiness must be built. Good appetite, good digestion, and good sleep — are the elements of health — and Industry confers them. As use polishes metals, so labor polishes the faculties, until the body performs its unimpeded functions with elastic cheerfulness and hearty enjoyment. Buoyant spirits are an element of happiness — and activity produces them; but they fly away from sluggishness. Men’s spirits are like water, which sparkles when it runs — but stagnates in still pools, and is mantled with green, and breeds corruption and filth. The applause of conscience, the self-respect of wholesome pride, the consciousness of independence, a manly joy of usefulness, the consent of every faculty of the mind to one’s occupation, and their gratification in it — these constitute a happiness superior to the fever-flashes of vice in its brightest moments. After an experience of ages, men should have learned that satisfaction is not the product of excess, or of indolence, or of luxury — but of industry, temperance, and usefulness! Every village has instances which ought to teach young men, that he who goes aside from the simplicity of nature, and the purity of virtue — to wallow in excesses of food or drink, or carousals — at length misses the goal of his life; and sinking with shattered body prematurely to a dishonored grave, mourns that he mistook exhilaration for satisfaction — and abandoned the very home of happiness, when he forsook the labors of useful Industry. The poor man with Industry — is happier than the rich man in Idleness; for labor makes the one more manly — and riches unmans the other. The slave is often happier than the master, who is nearer undone by luxury — than his vassal by toil. Luxurious couches, plushy carpets from oriental looms, pillows of down, carriages contrived with cushions and springs to make motion imperceptible — is the indolent master of the rich. And often, happy is the slave who wove the carpet, the Indian who hunted the northern flock, and the servant who drives the pampered steeds! Let those who envy the mirthful revels of rich idlers, and pine for their masquerades, their escapades, and their operas — experience for a week the lassitude of their gluttony, the unarousable torpor of their life when not under a fiery stimulus, their desperate boredom, and restless somnolence — and they would gladly flee from their indolent haunts, as from a land of cursed enchantment! 2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In the overburdened states of Europe, the severest toil often only suffices to make life a wretched vacillation between food and famine; but in America, Industry is prosperity. Although God has stored the world with an endless variety of riches for man’s needs, he has made them all accessible only to Industry. The food we eat, the clothing which covers us, the house which protects — must be secured by diligence. To tempt man yet more to Industry — every product of the earth has a susceptibility of improvement; so that man not only obtains the gifts of nature at the price of labor — but these gifts become more precious as we bestow upon them greater skill and cultivation. The wheat and corn which crown our ample fields, were foods fit only for birds, before man perfected them by labor. The fruits of the forest and the hedge, scarcely tempting to extreme hunger — after human skill has dealt with them and transplanted them to the orchard and the garden, allure every sense with the richest colors, fragrances, and flavors. The world is full of sources which man is set to develop; and there is scarcely an assignable limit, to which the hand of skill and labor may not improve the powers of nature. The scheming speculations of the last ten years have produced an aversion among the young, to the slow accumulations of ordinary Industry — and fired them with a conviction that shrewdness, cunning, and bold ventures, are a more manly way to wealth. There is a swarm of men, bred in the heats of adventurous times, whose thoughts scorn pennies and nickels, and who humble themselves to speak of dollars — hundreds and thousands are their words. They are men of great operations. Forty thousand dollars is a moderate profit of a single speculation. They mean to own the Bank; and to look down, before they die, upon moderately wealthy. The young farmer becomes almost ashamed to meet his schoolmate, whose stores line whole streets, whose stocks are in every bank and company, and whose increasing money is already well near inestimable. But if the butterfly derides the bee in summer — he was never known to do it in the stormy days of autumn. Every few years, Commerce has its earthquakes, and the tall and toppling warehouses which haste ran up — are the first to be shaken down. The hearts of men fail them for fear; and the suddenly rich, made more suddenly poor — fill the land with their loud laments. But nothing strange has happened. When the whole story of commercial disasters is told, it is only found out that they, who slowly amassed the gains of useful Industry, built upon a rock; and they, who flung together the imaginary millions of commercial speculations, built upon the sand. When times grew dark, and the winds came, and the floods descended and beat upon them both — the rock sustained the one, and the shifting sand let down the other. If a young man has no higher ambition in life than riches — then Industry — plain, rugged, brown-faced, homely clad, old-fashioned Industry — must be courted. Young men are pressed with a most unprofitable haste. They wish to reap — before they have ploughed or sown. Everything is driving at such a rapid rate, that they have become giddy. Laborious occupations are avoided. Money is to be earned in genteel leisure, with the help of fine clothes, and by the soft seductions of smooth hair and luxuriant whiskers. Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. Shall the promising lad be apprenticed to his uncle, the blacksmith? The sisters think the blacksmith so very smutty; the mother shrinks from the ungentility of his swarthy labor; the father, weighing the matter prudentially deeper, finds that a whole life had been spent in earning the uncle’s property. These sagacious parents, wishing the tree to bear its fruit before it has ever blossomed — regard the long delay of industrious trades as a fatal objection to them. The son, then, must be a rich merchant, or a popular lawyer, or a broker; and these, only as the openings to business speculation. Young business men are often educated in two very unthrifty species of contempt — a contempt for small gains, and a contempt for hard labor. To do one’s own errands, to wheel one’s own barrow, to be seen with a bundle, bag, or burden — is considered disreputable. Men are so sharp now-a-days, that they can compass by their shrewd heads — what their fathers used to do with their heads and hands. 3. Industry gives character and good reputation to the young. The reputable portions of society have maxims of prudence, by which the young are judged and admitted to their good opinion. Does he regard his word? Is he industrious? Is he economical? Is he free from immoral habits? The answer which a young man’s conduct gives to these questions, settles his reception among good men. Experience has shown that the other good qualities of veracity, frugality, and modesty — are usually associated with industry. A prudent man would scarcely be persuaded that a listless, lounging fellow — would be economical or trust-worthy. An employer would judge wisely, that where there was little regard for time, or for occupation — there would be as little, upon temptation, for honesty or veracity. Pilferings of the till, and robberies, are fit deeds for idle clerks, and lazy apprentices. Industry and dishonesty are sometimes found associated; but men wonder at it, as at a strange thing. The epithets of society, which betoken its experience, are all in favor of Industry. Thus, the terms "a hard-working man;" "an industrious man;" "a laborious artisan;" are employed to mean, an honest man; a trustworthy man. I may here, as well as anywhere, impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck. There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan the misfortunes of their lives, in the poverty of a wretched old age. Luck forever ran against them — and for others. One with a good profession, lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a fishing, when he should have been in the office. Another, with a good trade, perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his employers to fire him. Another, with a lucrative business, lost his luck by amazing diligence at everything but his business. Another, who steadily followed his trade — as steadily followed his bottle. Another, who was honest and constant to his work, erred by perpetual misjudgments — he lacked discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by expectant speculations; by trusting fraudulent men; and by dishonest gains. A man never has good luck — who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest — who complained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry — are impregnable to the assaults of all the bad luck which fools ever dreamed of. But when I see a ragamuffin, creeping out into the street late in the forenoon, with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat turned up, and the crown knocked in — I know he has had bad luck — for the worst of all luck, is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a drunkard. 4. Industry is a substitute for Genius. Where one or more faculties exist in the highest state of development and activity — as the faculty of music in Mozart — invention in Fulton — idealism in Milton — we call their possessor a genius. But a genius is usually misunderstood to be a creature of such rare facility of mind — that he can do anything without labor. According to the popular notion — he learns without study, and knows without learning. He is eloquent without preparation; exact without calculation; and profound without reflection. While ordinary men toil for knowledge by reading, by comparison, and by minute research — a genius is supposed to receive it as the mind receives dreams. His mind is like a vast cathedral, through whose colored windows the sunlight streams, painting the aisles with the varied colors of brilliant pictures. Such geniuses may exist. But so far as my observations have ascertained the species — they abound in academies, colleges, and actor societies; in village debating clubs; in coteries of young artists, and among young professional aspirants. They are to be known by a reserved air, excessive sensitiveness, and utter indolence; by very long hair, and very open shirt collars; by the reading of much wretched poetry, and the writing of much — yet more wretched; by being very conceited, very ostentatious, very disagreeable, and very useless — beings whom no man wants for friend, pupil, or companion! The occupations of the truly great man, and of the common man, are necessarily, for the most part, the same; for the business of life is made up of minute affairs, requiring only judgment and diligence. A high order of intellect is required for the discovery and defense of truth — but this is an infrequent task. Those who enlarge the bounds of knowledge, must push out with bold adventure beyond the common walks of men. But only a few pioneers are needed for the largest armies, and a few profound men in each occupation may herald the advance of all the business of society. The vast bulk of men are required to discharge the common duties of life; and they have less need of genius than of intellectual Industry and patient Enterprise. Young men should observe, that those who take the honors and emoluments of mechanical crafts, of commerce and of professional life — are rather distinguished for a sound judgment and a close application — than for a brilliant genius. In the ordinary business of life — Industry can do anything which Genius can do; and very many things which it cannot. Genius is usually impatient of application, irritable, scornful of men’s dullness, squeamish at petty disgusts — it loves a conspicuous place, a short work, and a large reward. It loathes . . . the sweat of toil, the vexations of life, and the dull burden of care. Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by delays and repulses; and, like water, bends itself to the shape of the soil over which it flows; and if checked, will not rest — but accumulates, and mines a passage beneath, or seeks a side-track, or rises above and overflows the obstruction. What Genius performs at one impulse — Industry gains by a succession of blows. In ordinary matters, they differ only in rapidity of execution, and are upon one level before men — who see the result, but not the process. It is admirable to know that those things which in skill, in art, and in learning, the world has been unwilling to let die, have not only been the conceptions of genius — but the products of toil. The masterpieces of antiquity, as well in literature, as in art — are known to have received their exquisite finish, from an almost incredible continuance of labor upon them. I do not remember a book in all the departments of learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated. Genius needs Industry — as much as Industry needs Genius. If only Milton’s imagination could have conceived his visions, his consummate industry only could have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them. If only Newton’s mind could reach out to the secrets of Nature, even his could only do it by the severest toil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night dreams — but, like coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor. The conceptions of Michelangelo would have perished like a night’s phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence. From enjoying the pleasant walks of Industry — we turn reluctantly to explore the paths of Indolence. All degrees of Indolence incline a man to rely upon others — and not upon himself; to eat their bread — and not his own. His carelessness — is somebody’s loss; his neglect — is somebody’s downfall; his promises — are a perpetual stumbling block to all who trust them. If he borrows — the article remains borrowed; if he begs and gets — it is as the letting out of waters — no one knows when it will stop. He . . . spoils your work; disappoints your expectations; exhausts your patience; eats up your substance; abuses your confidence; and hangs a dead weight upon all your plans! The very best thing an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to get rid of him! Solomon says: "Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle — you will not remove his folly from him!" He does not mention what kind of a fool he meant; but as he speaks of a fool by preeminence, I take it for granted he meant a lazy man; and I am the more inclined to the opinion, from another expression of his experience: "As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes — so is a sluggard to those who send him!" Indolence is a great spendthrift. An indolently inclined young man, can neither make nor keep property. I have Scriptural authority for this: "One who is slack in his work — is brother to one who is a great waster!" When Satan would put ordinary men to a crop of mischief, like a wise gardener, he clears the ground and prepares it for seed; but he finds the idle man already prepared, and he has scarcely the trouble of sowing; for vices, like weeds, need little fertilizing, except what the wind gives their ripe and winged seeds, shaking and scattering them all abroad. Indeed, lazy men may fitly be likened to a tropical prairie, over which the wind of temptation perpetually blows, drifting every vagrant seed from hedge and hill, and which — without a moment’s rest through all the year — waves its rank harvest of luxuriant weeds. First, the imagination will be haunted with unlawful visitants. Upon the outskirts of towns are shattered houses, abandoned by reputable people. They are not empty, because thieves, vagabonds and villains haunt them, in joint possession with rats, bats, and vermin. Such are idle men’s imaginations — full of unlawful company. The imagination is closely related to the passions, and fires them with its heat. The day-dreams of indolent youth, glow each hour with warmer colors, and bolder adventures. The imagination fashions scenes of enchantment, in which the passions revel; and it leads them out, in shadow at first, to deeds which soon they will seek in earnest. The brilliant colors of far-away clouds, are but the colors of the storm; the evil day-dreams of indolent men, rosy at first and distant, deepen every day, darker and darker, to the color of actual evil. Then follows the blight of every habit. Indolence promises, without redeeming the pledge; a mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory of vows and oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds more falsehoods than the cunning of the swindler. As poverty waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon such poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every plan. Negligence of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton mendacity — these three traverse the whole road of lies. Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to lying. Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road, and not far apart. In directing the conduct of the Ephesian converts, Paul says, "He who has been stealing must steal no longer — but must work, doing something useful with his own hands." The men who were thieves — were those who had ceased to work. Industry was the road back to honesty. When stores are robbed — the idle are first suspected. The desperate forgeries and swindlings of past years have taught men, upon their occurrence, to ferret their authors among the unemployed, or among those vainly occupied in wicked pleasures. The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows upon the young, except through the necessities of their idle pleasures. Business is first neglected for amusement — and amusement soon becomes the only business. The appetite for wicked pleasure — outruns the means of procuring it. The theater, the circus, the card-table, the midnight carouse — all demand money. When scanty earnings are gone, the young man pilfers from the til. First, because he hopes to repay, and next, because he despairs of paying. For the disgrace of stealing, ten dollars or a thousand will be the same — but not their respective pleasures. Next, he will gamble, since it is only another form of stealing. Gradually excluded from reputable society, the vagrant takes all the badges of vice, and is familiar with her paths; and, through them, enters the broad road of crime. Society precipitates its lazy members, as water does its filth; and they form at the bottom, a pestilent sediment, stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riots, robberies and murders. Into it, drains all the filth — and out of it, as from a morass, flow all the streams of pollution. Brutal wretches, desperately hunted by the law, crawling in human filth, brood their villain schemes here, and plot mischief to man. Here resorts the violent demagogue, to stir up the putrid filth against his adversaries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, which cannot rest — but casts up mire and dirt. The results of Indolence upon communities, are as marked as upon individuals. In a town of industrious people — the streets would be clean; houses neat and comfortable; fences in repair; school-houses swarming with rosy-faced children, decently clad, and well-behaved. The laws would be respected, because justly administered. The church would be thronged with devout worshipers. The tavern would be silent, and for the most part empty, or a welcome retreat for weary travelers. Liquor-sellers would fail — and mechanics grow rich. Labor would be honorable — and loafing a disgrace. For music, the people would have the blacksmith’s anvil, and the carpenter’s hammer; and at home, the spinning wheel, and girls cheerfully singing at their work. Debts would be seldom paid — because seldom made; but if contracted, no grim officer would be invited to the settlement. Town-officers would be respectable men, taking office reluctantly, and only for the public good. Public days would be full of sports, without fighting; and elections would be as orderly as weddings or funerals. In a town of lazy men — I would expect to find crazy-houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off; doors hingeless, and all a-creak: windows stuffed with rags, hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and warmth in winter — every house would swarm with vermin in hot weather — and with starveling pigs in cold; fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance, and gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud. Lanky cattle would follow every loaded wagon, supplicating a morsel, with famine in their looks. Children would be ragged, dirty, brash. The school-house would be empty — and the jail full. The the church would be silent — and the taverns noisy. Lawyers would reign; constables flourish, and hunt sneaking criminals. The peace-officers would wink at tumults, arrest rioters in fun, and drink with them in good earnest. Good men would be obliged to keep hidden — and bad men would swear, fight, and rule the town. Public days would be scenes of confusion, and end in fights; elections would be drunken, illegal, boisterous and brutal. The young abhor the last results of Idleness; but they do not perceive that the first steps lead to the last. They are in the opening of this career; but with them . . . it is genteel leisure — not laziness; it is relaxation — not sloth; it is amusement — not indolence. But leisure, relaxation, and amusement, when men ought to be usefully engaged — are Indolence. A spurious Industry — is the worst Idleness. A young man perceives that the first steps lead to the last — with everybody but himself! He sees others become drunkards by social tippling — he sips socially, as if he could not be a drunkard. He sees others become dishonest, by petty habits of fraud; but will indulge slight aberrations, as if he could not become thievish. Though others, by lying, lose all character — he does not imagine that his little dalliances with falsehood will make him a liar. He knows that indecent imaginations, immoral pictures, and illicit familiarities — have led thousands to the harlot’s door, whose house is the way to Hell; yet he never sighs or trembles lest these things should take him to this inevitable way of damnation! In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you will abhor it in others — without suspecting it in yourself! While you read, I fear you are excusing yourself! You are supposing that your leisure has not been laziness; or that, with your disposition, and in your circumstances — Indolence is harmless. Be not deceived! If you are idle — you are on the fast road to ruin — and there are few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice, than a road. While I point out the temptation to Indolence, scrutinize your course, and pronounce honestly upon your risk. 1. Some are tempted to Indolence by their wretched training — or rather, wretched lack of it. How many families are the most remiss — whose base condition and sufferings are the strongest inducement to Industry. The children have no inheritance — yet never work; they have no education — yet are never sent to school. It is hard to keep their rags around them — yet none of them will earn better clothing. If ever there was a case when a Government should interfere between parent and child — that seems to be the one, where children are started in life with an education of vice! If, in every community, three things should be put together, which always work together — the front would be a tavern — the middle a jail — the rear a gallows — an infernal trinity! And the recruits for this three-headed monster, are largely drafted from the lazy children of worthless parents! 2. The children of rich parents are apt to be reared in Indolence. The ordinary motives to industry are lacking — and the temptations to sloth are multiplied. Other men labor to provide support; to secure homage; to obtain power; to multiply the elegant products of wealth. But the child of affluence inherits these things. Why should he labor — who may command universal service, whose money exhausts the luxuries of society, and makes rarities common by their abundance? Only the blind would not see, that riches and ruin run in one channel to prodigal children! The most rigorous regimen, the most confirmed industry, and steadfast morality — can alone disarm inherited wealth, and reduce it to a blessing. The profligate wretch, who fondly watches his father’s advancing decrepitude, and secretly curses the lingering steps of death, (seldom too slow except to hungry heirs,) at last is over-blessed in the tidings that the loitering death has come — and the estate is finally his. When the golden shower has fallen — he rules as a prince in a court of expectant parasites. All the sluices by which pleasurable vice drains an estate — are opened wide. A few years complete the ruin. The hopeful heir, avoided by all whom he has helped, ignorant of useful labor, and scorning a knowledge of it, fired with an incurable appetite for wicked excitement, sinks steadily down — a profligate, a wretch, a villain-scoundrel, a convicted felon! Let parents who hate their offspring — rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches — and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty! 3. Another cause of Idleness, is found in the secret effects of youthful indulgence. The purest pleasures lie within the circle of useful occupation. Mere pleasure — sought outside of usefulness — existing by itself — is fraught with poison! When its exhilaration has thoroughly kindled the mind, the passions thenceforth refuse a simple food; they crave and require an excitement, higher than any ordinary occupation can give. After reveling all night in wine-dreams, or amid the fascinations of the dance, or the deceptions of the drama — what does the dull store, or the dirty shop have — which can continue the pulse at this fever-heat of delight? The face of Pleasure to the youthful imagination — is the face of an angel, a paradise of smiles, a home of love; while the rugged face of Industry, embrowned by toil, is dull and repulsive: but at the end it is not so. These are harlot charms which Pleasure wears. At last, when Industry shall put on her beautiful garments, and rest in the palace which her own hands have built — Pleasure, blotched and diseased with indulgence, shall lie down and die upon the dunghill. 4. Bad example leads to Idleness. The children of industrious parents at the sight of vagrant rovers seeking their sports wherever they will — disrelish labor, and envy this unrestrained leisure. At the first relaxation of parental vigilance, they shrink from their odious tasks. Idleness is begun — when labor is a burden, and industry a bondage, and only idle relaxation a pleasure. The example of famous people is not usually conducive to Industry. The idea insensibly fastens upon the mind, that greatness and hard labor are not companions. The inexperience of youth imagines that great men — are men of great leisure. They see them much in public, often applauded, and greatly followed. How disgusting in contrast is the mechanic’s life; a tinkering shop — dark and smutty — is the only theater of his exploits; and labor, which covers him with sweat and fills him with weariness, brings neither notice nor praise. The ambitious apprentice, sighing over his soiled hands, hates his ignoble work — neglecting it, he aspires to better things — resorts to a bar-room; fights in a tavern; and dies in a ditch. 5. Men become Indolent through the reverses of fortune. Surely, despondency is a grievous thing, and a heavy load to bear. To see disaster and wreck in the present, and no light in the future; but only storms, ghastly by the contrast of past prosperity, and growing darker as they advance — to wear a constant expectation of woe like a belt; to see poverty at the door, imperiously knocking, while there is no strength to repel, or courage to bear its tyranny — indeed, this is dreadful enough! But there is a thing more dreadful. It is more dreadful if the man is wrecked with his fortune. Can anything be more poignant in anticipation, than one’s own self, unnerved, and helplessly drifting and driven down the troubled sea of life? Of all things on earth, next to his God, a broken man should cling to a courageous Industry. If it brings nothing back, and saves nothing — it will save him. To be pressed down by adversity has nothing in it of disgrace; but it is disgraceful to lie down under it like a scared dog. Indeed, to stand composedly in the storm, amidst its rage and wildest devastations; to let it beat over you, and roar around you, and pass by you, and leave you undismayed — this is to be a man. Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon us his image and superscription. In this matter, men may learn from insects. The ant will repair his dwelling as often as the mischievous foot crushes it; the spider will exhaust life itself, before he will live without a web; the bee can be decoyed from his labor neither by plenty nor scarcity. If summer is abundant, it toils none the less; if it be parsimonious of flowers, the tiny laborer sweeps a wider circle, and by Industry, repairs the frugality of the season. Man should be ashamed to be rebuked in vain by the spider, the ant, and the bee. "Do you see a man diligent in his business? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men!" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 137: 2.07. GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING ======================================================================== Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 Gamblers and Gambling "When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided his clothes among the four of them. They also took his robe, but it was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said, ’Rather than tearing it apart, let’s cast dice for it!’ So that is what they did." John 19:23-24 How marked in every age is a Gambler’s character! The ferocious priesthood taunted Christ’s dying agonies; the bewildered multitude, accustomed to cruelty, could shout; but no earthly creature — but a Gambler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly under a dying man to wrangle for his garments, and arbitrate their avaricious differences by casting dice for his robe, with hands spotted with his spattered blood, warm and yet undried upon them! The descendants of these patriarchs of gambling, however, have taught us that there is nothing possible to Hell, uncongenial to these, its elect saints. In this lecture, it is my disagreeable task to lead your steps down the dark path to their cruel haunts — there to exhibit their infernal passions, their awful ruin, and their ghastly memorials! In this house of darkness, amid fierce faces gleaming with the fire of fiercer hearts, amid oaths and groans and fiendish orgies, ending in murders and strewn with sweltering corpses — do not mistake, and suppose yourself in Hell — you are only in its precincts and vestibule! Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon mere chance. The gardener renders produce, for his gains; the mechanic renders the product of labor and skill, for his gains; the gambler renders for his gain, the sleights of useless skill, or more often, downright cheating! Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. Dealings in speculative stocks are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned, are no better than the profits of dice, cards, or chance! When skill returns for its earnings a useful service, beneficial products, or profitable labor — it is honest commerce. The skill of a pilot in threading a narrow channel, the skill of a lawyer in threading a still more intricate one, are as substantial equivalents for a price received, as if they were merchant goods or agricultural products. But all gains of mere chance which result in no real benefit, are gambling gains. Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our nature, has, in some form, probably existed in every age. We trace it in remote periods and among the most barbarous people. It loses none of its fascinations among a civilized people. On the contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants, the jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of wealth, seem to invite the master-excitant. Our land, not apt to be behind in good or evil, is full of gambling in all its forms — the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets and wagers, and the gambling of games of chance. There is gambling in refined circles, and in the lowest; among the members of our national government, and of our state governments. Thief gambles with thief, in jail; the judge who sent them there, the lawyer who prosecuted, and the lawyer who defended them — often gamble too. This vice, once almost universally prevalent among the Western legal system, and still too frequently disgracing its members, is, however, we are happy to believe, decreasing. In many circuits, not long ago, and in some now, the judge, the jury, and the bar, shuffled cards by night, and law by day — dealing out money and justice alike. The clatter of dice and cards disturbs your slumber on the boat, and rings drowsily from the upper rooms of the hotel. This vice pervades the city, extends over every line of travel, and infests the most moral districts. The secreted lamp, dimly lights the apprentices to their game; with unsuspected disobedience, boys creep out of their beds to it; it haunts the shop. The scoundrel in his lair, the scholar in his room; the pirate on his ship, mirthful women at parties; loafers in the street-corner, public leaders in their offices; the beggar under the hedge, the rascal in prison, and some professors of religion in the somnolent hours of the Sabbath — waste their energies by the ruinous excitement of the game! Besides these players, there are troops of professional gamblers, troops of hangers-on, troops of youth to be drawn in. An inexperienced eye would detect in our peaceful towns, no signs of this vulture-flock — so in a sunny day, when all cheerful birds are singing merrily, not a buzzard can be seen; but let a carcass drop, and they will push forth their gaunt heads from their gloomy roosts, and come flapping from the dark woods to speckle the air, and dot the ground with their numbers! The universal prevalence of this vice is a reason for parental vigilance; and a reason of remonstrance from the citizen, the parent, the minister of the gospel, the patriot, and the press. I propose to trace its beginning, describe its subjects, and detail its effects. A young man, proud of freedom, anxious to exert his manhood, has tumbled his Bible, and sober books, and letters of counsel — into a dark closet. He has learned various accomplishments — to flirt, to boast, to swear, to fight, to drink. He has let every one of these chains be put around him, upon the solemn promise of Satan — that he would take them off whenever he wished. Hearing of the heroic feats of eminent gamblers — he emulates them. So, he ponders the game. He teaches what he has learned to his shopmates, and feels himself their master. As yet he has never played for stakes. It begins thus: Peeping into a book-store, he watches until the sober customers go out; then slips in, and with assumed boldness, not concealing his shame — he asks for cards, buys them, and hastens out. The first game is to pay for the cards. After the relish of playing for a stake — no game can satisfy them without a stake. A few nuts are staked; then a bottle of wine; an oyster-supper. At last they can venture a sixpence in actual money — just for the amusement of it, of course. I need go no further — whoever wishes to do anything with the lad, can do it now. If properly plied, and gradually led — he will go to any length, and stop only at the gallows. Do you doubt it? Let us trace him a year or two further on. With his father’s blessing, and his mother’s tears — the young man departs from home. He has received his patrimony, and embarks for life and independence. Upon his journey he rests at a city; visits the "school of morals;" lingers in more suspicious places; is seen by a sharper; and makes his acquaintance. The knave sits by him at dinner; gives him the news of the place, and a world of advice; cautions him against sharpers; inquires if he has money, and charges him to keep it secret; offers himself to make with him the rounds of the town, and secure him from imposition. At length, that he may see all, he is taken to a gaming-house — but, with apparent kindness, warned not to play. He stands by to see the various fortunes of the game; some, forever losing; some, touch what number they will, gaining piles of gold. Looking in thirst, where wine is free. A glass is taken; another of a better kind; next the best the landlord has, and two glasses of that. A change comes over the youth; his exhilaration raises his courage — and lulls his caution. Gambling seen — seems a different thing from gambling painted by a pious father! Just then, his friend remarks that one might easily double his money by a few ventures — but that it was, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only this was needed to fire his mind. What! only prudence between me and gain! Then that shall not be long! He stakes — he wins. Stakes again — he wins again. Glorious! I am the lucky man that is to break the bank! He stakes — and wins again. His pulse races; his face burns; his blood is up, and fear gone. He loses — loses again — loses all his winnings — loses more. But fortune turns again — he wins anew. He has now lost all self-command. Gains excite him, and losses excite him more. He doubles his stakes; then trebles them — and all is swept away. He rushes on, puts up his whole purse — and loses the whole! Then he would borrow — but no man will lend. He is desperate, he will fight at a word. He is led to the street, and thrust out. The cool breeze which blows upon his fevered cheek, wafts the slow and solemn stroke of the clock — one — two — three — four; four of the morning! Quick work of ruin! — an innocent man destroyed in a night! He staggers to his hotel, remembers as he enters it, that he has not even enough to pay his bill. It now flashes upon him that his friend, who never had left him for an hour before, had stayed behind where his money is, and, doubtless, is laughing over his spoils! His blood boils with rage. But at length comes up the remembrance of home — a parent’s training and counsels for more than twenty years, destroyed in a night! "Good God! what a wretch I have been! I am not fit to live. I cannot go home. I am a stranger here. Oh! that I were dead! Oh! that I had died before I knew this guilt, and were lying where my sister lies! Oh God! Oh God! my head will burst with agony!" He stalks his lonely room with an agony which only the young heart knows in its first horrible awakening to remorse — when it looks despair full in the face, and feels its hideous incantations tempting him to suicide. Subdued at length by agony, cowed and weakened by distress — he is sought again by those who plucked him. Cunning to subvert inexperience, to raise the evil passions, and to allay the good — they make him their pliant tool. Farewell, young man! I see your steps turned to that haunt again! I see hope lighting your face; but it is a lurid light, and never came from Heaven. Stop before that threshold! — turn, and bid farewell to home! — farewell to innocence! — farewell to venerable father and aged mother! — the next step shall part you from them all forever! And now henceforth be a mate to thieves — a brother to corruption. You have made a league with death — and unto death shall you go! Let us here pause, to draw the likeness of a few who stand conspicuous in that vulgar crowd of gamblers, with which hereafter he will consort. The first is a taciturn — a quiet man. No one knows when he comes into town, or when he leaves. No man hears of his gaining; for he never boasts, nor reports his luck. He spends little for parade; his money seems to go and come only through the game. He reads none, converses none, is neither a glutton nor a hard drinker; he sports few ornaments, and wears plain clothing. Upon the whole, he seems to be a gentlemanly man; and sober citizens say, "his only fault is gambling." What then is this "only fault?" In his heart, he has the most intense and consuming lust for gambling. He is quiet because every passion is absorbed in one; and that one burning at the highest flame. He thinks of nothing else — and cares only for this. All other things, even the hottest lusts of other men, are too cool to be temptations to him; so much deeper is the style of his passions. He will sit upon his chair, and no man shall see him move for hours, except to play his cards. He sees none come in — and none go out. Death might groan on one side of the room, and marriage might sport on the other — he would be aware of neither. Every other influence is shut out; one thing alone moves him — the game; and that leaves not one pulse of excitability unaroused — but stirs his soul to the very dregs! Very different is the roistering gamester. He bears a jolly face, a glistening eye something watery through watching and drink. His fingers are manacled in rings; his bosom glows with pearls and diamonds. He learns the time which he wastes, from a watch gorgeously carved, and slung around his neck by a ponderous golden chain. There is not as splendid a fellow to be seen sweeping through the streets. The landlord makes him welcome — he will pay his full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he will buy half his shop. Other places bid him welcome — he will bear large stealings. Like the Judge, he makes his circuit — but not for justice; like the Preacher, he has his appointments — but not for instruction. His circuits are the race-courses, the crowded capital, days of general convocation, conventions, and mass-gatherings. He will flame on the race-track, bet his thousands, and beat the ring at swearing and oaths — vernacular, imported, simple, or compound. The drinking-booth smokes when he draws in his welcome suit. Did you see him only by day, flaming in apparel, jovial and free-hearted at the Restaurant or Hotel, you would think him a Prince let loose! But night is his day. These are mere exercises, and brief prefaces to his real accomplishments. He is keen indeed — who is sharper than he is. No one is quicker, slyer, and more alert at a game. He can shuffle the pack until an honest man would as soon think of looking for a particular drop of water in the ocean — as for a particular card in any particular place. Perhaps he is ignorant which is at the top and which at the bottom! At any rate, watch him closely, or you will get a lean hand — and he a fat one. A plain man would think him a wizard — or the devil. When he touches a pack they seem alive, and acting to his will, rather than his touch. He deals them like lightning, they rain like snow-flakes, sometimes one, sometimes two, if need be four or five together, and his hand hardly moved. If he loses, very well, he laughs; if he gains, he only laughs a little more. Full of stories, full of songs, full of wit, full of roistering spirit — yet do not trespass too much upon his good nature with insult! All this outside is only the spotted hide which covers the tiger! He who provokes this man, shall see what lightning can break out of a summer-seeming cloud! These do not fairly represent the race of gamblers — conveying too favorable an impression. There is one, often met on Steam-boats, traveling solely to gamble. He has the servants, or steward, or some partner, in league with him, to fleece every unwary player whom he inveigles to a game. He deals falsely; heats his dupe to madness by drink, drinking none himself; watches the signal of his accomplice telegraphing his opponent’s hand; at a stray look, he will slip your money off and steal it. To cover false playing, or to get rid of paying losses — he will lie fiercely, and swear uproariously, and break up the play to fight with knife or pistol — first scraping the table of every penny. When the passengers are asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see what may be worth stealing; he pulls a watch from under the pillow of one sleeper; fumbles in the pockets of another; and gathers booty throughout the cabin. Leaving the boat before morning, he appears at some village hotel — a magnificent gentleman, a polished traveler, or even a distinguished nobleman! There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, stealthy, humble, mousing, and mean — a simple blood-sucker. For money, he will be a tool to other gamblers. He will steal for them — and from them. He plays the jackal, and searches victims for them, humbly satisfied to pick the bones afterward. Thus, (to employ his own language,) he ropes in the inexperienced young, flatters them, teaches them, inflames their passions, purveys to their appetites, cheats them, debauches them, draws them down to his own level — and then lords it over them in malignant baseness. Himself impure, he plunges others into lasciviousness; and with a train of reeking accomplices, he revolves a few years in the orbit of the game, the brothel, and the doctor’s shop — and then sinks and dies. The world is then purer, and good men thank God that he is gone. Besides these, time would fail me to describe the ineffable dignity of a gambling judge; the cautious, phlegmatic lawyer, gambling from sheer avarice; the broken-down and cast-away politician, seeking in the game the needed excitement, and a fair field for all the base tricks he once played off as a patriot; the pert, sharp, keen, jockey-gambler; the soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, bacchanal; and a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all the badges and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage. A detail of the evils of gambling should be preceded by an illustration of that constitution of mind out of which they mainly spring — I mean its Excitability. The body is not stored with a fixed amount of strength, nor the mind with a uniform measure of excitement; but both are capable, by stimulation, of expansion of strength or feeling, almost without limit. Experience shows, that within certain bounds, excitement is healthful and necessary — but beyond this limit, exhausting and destructive. Men are allowed to choose between moderate but long-continued excitement — and intense but short-lived excitement. Too generally they prefer the latter. To gain this intense thrill, a thousand methods are tried. The inebriate obtains it by drink and drugs; the politician, by the keen interest of the civil campaign; the young by amusements which violently inflame and gratify their appetites. When once this higher flavor of stimulus has been tasted, all that is less — becomes vapid and disgustful. A sailor tries to live on shore — a few weeks suffice. To be sure, there is no hardship, or cold, or suffering; but neither is there the strong excitement of the ocean, the gale, the storm, and the world of strange sights. The politician perceives that his private affairs are deranged, his family neglected, his character aspersed, his feelings exacerbated. When men hear him confess that his career is a hideous waking dream, the race vexatious, and the end vanity — they wonder that he clings to it; but he knows that nothing but the fiery wine which he has tasted, will rouse up that intense excitement, now become necessary to his happiness. For this reason, great men often cling to public office with all its envy, jealousy, care, toil, hates, competitions, and unrequited fidelity; for these very disgusts, and the perpetual struggle — strike a deeper chord of excitement than is possible to the gentler touches of home, friendship and love. Here too is the key to the real evil of promiscuous novel-reading, to the habit of reverie and mental romancing. None of life’s common duties can excite to such wild pleasure as these; and they must be continued, or the mind reacts into the lethargy of fatigue and boredom. It is upon this principle, that men love pain; suffering is painful to a spectator; but in tragedies, at public executions, at boxing matches, at cock-fightings, horse-races, dog-baitings, bull-fights, gladiatorial shows — pain excites a jaded mind as nothing else can. A tyrant torments for the same reason that a girl reads her tear-bedewed romance, or an inebriate drinks his beer. No longer susceptible even to inordinate stimuli — actual moans, and shrieks, and the writhing of utter agony — just suffice to excite his worn-out sense, and inspire, probably, less emotion than ordinary men have in listening to a tragedy or reading a bloody novel. Gambling is founded upon the very worst perversion of this powerful element of our nature. It heats every part of the mind like an oven. The faculties which produce calculation, pride of skill, of superiority, love of gain, hope, fear, jealousy, hatred — are absorbed in the game, and exhilarated, or exacerbated by victory or defeat. These passions are, doubtless, excited in men by the daily occurrences of life; but then they are transient, and counteracted by a thousand grades of emotion, which rise and fall like the undulations of the sea. But in gambling there is no intermission, no counteraction. The whole mind is excited to the utmost, and concentrated at its extreme point of excitation for hours and days, with the additional waste of sleepless nights, profuse drinking, and other congenial immoralities. Every other pursuit becomes tasteless; for no ordinary duty has in it, a stimulus which can scorch a mind which now refuses to burn without blazing, or to feel an interest which is not intoxication. The victim of excitement is like a mariner who ventures into the edge of a whirlpool for a motion more exhilarating than plain sailing. He is unalarmed during the first few gyrations, for escape is easy. But each turn sweeps him further in; the power augments, the speed becomes terrific as he rushes toward the vortex; all escape now hopeless. A noble ship went in; it is spit out in broken fragments, splintered spars, crushed masts, and cast up for many a rood along the shore. The specific evils of gambling may now be almost imagined. 1. Gambling diseases the mind, unfitting it for the duties of life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful vocation. A gambling mechanic finds his labor less relishing — as his passion for play increases. He grows unsteady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to promises; and what he does perform, he slights. Little jobs seem little enough; he desires immense contracts, whose uncertainty has much the excitement of gambling — and for the best of reasons; and in the pursuit of great and sudden profits, by wild schemes — he stumbles over into ruin, leaving all who employed or trusted him, in the rubbish of his speculations. A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his profession, will court its exciting duties. To explore authorities, compare reasons, digest, and write — this is tiresome. But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests with keen opponents, this is nearly as good as gambling. Many a ruined client has cursed the law, and cursed a stupid jury, and cursed everybody for his irretrievable loss — except his lawyer, who gambled all night when he should have prepared the case, and came half asleep and debauched into court in the morning to lose a good case mismanaged, and snatched from his gambling hands, by the art of sober opponents. A gambling student, if such a thing can be, withdraws from thoughtful authors — to the brilliant and spicy; from the pure among these — to the sharp and ribald; from all reading about depraved life — to seeing; from sight — to experience. Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys the industry — for no man will drudge for cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred; or practice a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indifference, he makes or loses five hundred in a night. 2. For a like reason, gambling destroys all domestic habits and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gambler; there is no air there that he can breathe. For a moment he may sport with his children, and smile upon his wife; but his heart, its strong passions, are not there. A little rill of his affections may flow through the family — but the deep river flows away from home. On the outcome of a game, Tacitus narrates that the ancient Germans would stake their property, their wives, their children, and themselves! What less than this is it, when a man will stake that property which is to give his family bread, and that honor which gives them place and rank in society? When playing becomes desperate gambling, the heart is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have smouldered to ashes; and a thorough-paced gamester could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his stakes amid murder, and pocket gold dripping with the blood of his own kindred! 3. Gambling is the parent and companion of every vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society. It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious and thriving men — that those who practice it are shut up to themselves. Unlike lawful pursuits, it is not modified or restrained by collision with others. Gamblers herd with gamblers. They tempt and provoke each other to all evil, without affording one restraint, and without providing the counterbalance of a single virtuous impulse. They are like snakes coiling among snakes — poison and poisoning! They are like plague-patients — infected and diffusing infection; each sick, and all contagious! It is impossible to put bad men together — and not have them grow worse. The herding of convicts promiscuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity, that, long ago, legislators forbade it. When criminals, out of jail, herd together by choice — the same corrupt nature will doom them to growing loathsomeness, because to increasing wickedness. 4. Gambling is a provocative of alcohol. The bottle is almost as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some are seduced to drink; some drink for imitation, at first, and fashion. When super-excitements, at intervals, subside, their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the reaction; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system to the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the invariable concomitant of the theater, circus, race-course, gaming-table, and of all amusements which powerfully excite all but the moral feelings. When the double fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man — he will soon be consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are the more noticeable, because they are exceptions. 5. Gambling is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevitable cause of dishonesty. Robbers have robbers’ honor; thieves have thieves’ law; and pirates conform to pirates’ regulations. But where is there a gambler’s code? One law there is, and this not universal — pay your gambling debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to cheat — what law is there? What will shut a man out from a gambler’s club? May he not discover his opponent’s hand by fraud? May not a concealed thread, pulling the significant one — or the sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inform him, and yet his standing be fair? May he not cheat in shuffling, and yet be in full orders and accepted? May he not cheat in dealing, and yet be a welcome gambler? May he not steal the money from your pile by laying his hands upon it, just as any other thief would — and yet be an approved gambler? May not the whole code be stated thus — get what you can, and in any way you can! I am told, perhaps, that there are honest gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly; there are always ripe apples — before there are rotten! Men always begin — before they end; there is always an approximation, before there is contact. Players will play truly — until they get used to playing untruly. They will be honest — until they cheat. They will be honorable — until they become base. And when you have said all this, what does it amount to but this — that men who really gamble, really cheat; and that they only do not cheat, who are not yet real gamblers? If this mends the matter — let it be so amended. I have spoken of gamesters only among themselves; this is the least part of the evil; for who is concerned when lions destroy bears, or wolves devour wolf-cubs, or snakes sting vipers? In respect to that department of gambling which includes the roping-in of strangers, young men, collecting-clerks, and unsuspecting green-hands — and robbing them, I have no language strong enough to mark down its turpitude, its infernal rapacity! After hearing many of the scenes familiar to every gambler, I think Satan might be proud of their dealings, and look up to them with that deferential respect, with which one monster gazes upon a superior. There is not even the expectation of honesty. Some scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the unwary wretch into the secret room; he is tempted to drink; made confident by the specious simplicity of the game; allowed to win; and every bait and lure and blind is employed — then he is plucked to the skin by tricks which appear as fair as honesty itself. The robber avows his deed, does it openly; the gambler sneaks to the same result under skulking pretenses. There is a frank way, and a mean way of doing a wicked thing. The gambler takes the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The victim’s own partner is sucking his blood; it is a league of sharpers, to get his money at any rate; and the wickedness is so unblushing and unmitigated, that it gives, at last, an instance of what the deceitful human heart, knavish as it is — is ashamed to try to cover or conceal; but confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud, cheating, stealing, robbery — and nothing else. If I walk the dark street, and a perishing, hungry wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a single dollar, the whole town awakes; the officers are alert, the myrmidons of the law scout, and hunt, and bring in the trembling culprit to stow him in the jail. But a worse thief may meet me, decoy my steps, and by a greater dishonesty, filch ten thousand dollars — and what then? The story spreads, the sharpers move abroad unharmed, no one stirs! It is the day’s conversation; and like a sound, it rolls to the distance, and dies in an echo. Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out amidst us — and no man care? Do we love our children — and yet let them walk in a den of vipers? Shall we pretend to virtue, and purity, and religion — and yet make partners of our social life, men whose heart has conceived such damnable deeds, and whose hands have performed them? Shall there be even in the eye of religion, no difference between the corrupter of youth and their guardian? Are all the lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the nerve and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency and boldness of flagitious crimes — that men, covered over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no obstacle to their advancement among a Christian people! In almost every form of iniquity, there is some shade or trace of good. But we have in gambling, a crime standing alone — dark, malignant, uncompounded wickedness! It seems in its full growth, to be a monster without a tender mercy, devouring its own offspring without one feeling but appetite! A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect is a living thing, quickened with double life for villainy; his heart is steel of fourfold temper. When a man begins to gamble, he is as a noble tree full of sap, green with leaves — a shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. When one becomes a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless; seasoned hard and tough; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture perches for a moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming away for its prey. To every young man who indulges in the least form of gambling, I raise a warning voice! Under the specious name of Amusement — you are laying the foundation of gambling! Playing is the seed which comes up gambling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm. It is the white frost which preludes the winter. You are mistaken, however, in supposing that it is harmless in its earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs, doubtless, to a later stage; but its consumption of time, its destruction of industry, its distaste for the calmer pleasures of life — belong to the very beginning. You will begin to play with every generous feeling. Amusement will be the plea. At the beginning the game will excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and the love of money. The love of money, at first almost imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest — like Aaron’s rod — a serpent, swallowing every other serpent! Generosity, enthusiasm, pride and skill, love of mastery — will be absorbed in one mighty feeling — the savage lust of filthy lucre! There is a downward climax in this sin. The opening and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward each other with almost irresistible attraction. If gambling is a vortex — then playing is the outer ring of the maelstrom. The thousand pound stake, the whole estate put up on a game — what are these but the instruments of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased heart craves? What is the amusement for which you play — but the excitement of the game? And for what but excitement — does the jaded gambler play? You differ from him only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace yourself that you shall escape because others have; for they stopped, and you go on. Are you as safe as they, when you are in the gulf-stream of perdition — and they on the shore? But have you ever asked, how many have escaped? Not one in a thousand is left unblighted! You have nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against you — and one for you; and will you go on? If a disease should stalk through the town, devouring whole families, and sparing only one in five hundred — would you lie down under it quietly because you had one chance in five hundred? Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate your pangs to reflect that you had only one chance in one hundred in surviving? Had you swallowed corrosive poison, would it ease your convulsions to think there was only one chance in fifty for you? I do not call every man who plays a gambler — but a gambler in embryo. Let me trace your course from the amusement of innocent playing — to its almost inevitable end. First Scene. A genteel coffee-house — whose humane screen conceals a line of alcohol bottles, and hides respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a quiet little room opening out of the bar; and here sit four jovial youths. The cards are out — the wines are in. The fourth is a reluctant hand; he does not love the drink, nor approve the game. He anticipates and fears the result of both. Why is he here? He is a whole-souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fashionable gaiety. He will sip his wine upon the importunity of a friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil that friend’s pleasure by refusing a part in the game. They sit, shuffle, deal; the night wears on, the clock telling no tale of passing hours — the prudent liquor-fiend has made it safely dumb. The night is getting old; its dank air grows fresher; the east is grey; the gaming and drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the youths wending homeward. What says conscience? No matter what it says; they did not hear — and we will not. Whatever was said, it was very shortly answered thus: "This has not been gambling; all were gentlemen; there was no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes except the bills incident to the entertainment. If anybody blames a young man for a little innocent exhilaration on a special occasion, he is a superstitious bigot; let him croak!" Such a garnished game is made the text to justify the whole round of gambling. Let us, then, look at the Second Scene. In a room so silent that there is no sound except the shrill rooster crowing the morning, where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long and lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved marble could not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watchful, though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively read each other’s faces. Hours have passed over them thus. At length they rise without words; some, with a satisfaction which only makes their faces brightly haggard, scrape off the piles of money; others, dark, sullen, silent, fierce — move away from their lost money. The darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who only sat down to make up enough players for a game! He will never sit so innocently again. What says he to his conscience now! I have a right to gamble; I have a right to be damned too, if I choose; whose business is it? Third Scene. Years have passed on. He has seen youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then with only silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils; and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs — see a filthy crew dealing cards smudged with tobacco, grease and liquor. One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy; a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain eyes, which glare out like a wild beast’s from a thicket. Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch, vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, and a burly negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the group. They have spectators — drunken sailors, and ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, sometimes with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows; and the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, scratching, and rolling over and over in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four — is our friend who began by sitting down to make up enough players for a game! Fourth Scene. Upon this bright day, stand with me, if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that multitude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hung! At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows’ ladder, his courage fails. His coward-feet refuse to ascend. Dragged up, he is supported by bustling officials; his brain reels, his eye swims, while the meek minister utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed, the signal is given; a shudder runs through the crowd as he swings through the air. After a moment, his convulsed limbs stretch down, and hang heavily and still; and he who began to gamble to make up enough players for a game, and ended with stabbing an enraged victim whom he had fleeced — has here played his last game — himself the stake! I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of all sober citizens to some potent influences which are exerted in favor of gambling. In our civil economy we have Legislators to devise and enact wholesome laws; Lawyers to counsel and aid those who need the laws’ relief; and Judges to determine and administer the laws. If Legislators, Lawyers, and Judges are gamblers — with what hope do we warn off the young from this deadly fascination, against such authoritative examples of high public functionaries? With what eminent fitness does that Judge press the bench, who in private commits the vices which officially he is set to condemn! With what singular terrors does he frown on a convicted gambler, with whom he played last night, and will play again tonight! How wisely should the fine be light, which the sprightly criminal will win and pay out of the Judge’s own pocket! With the name of Judge — is associated ideas of immaculate purity, sober piety, and fearless, strict justice. Let it then be counted a dark crime for a recreant official so far to forget his revered place, and noble office, as to run the gauntlet of filthy vices, and make the word Judge, to suggest an incontinent trifler, who smites with his mouth, and smirks with his eye; who holds the rod to strike the criminal, and smites only the law — to make a gap for criminals to pass through! If God loves this land — may he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing, gambling, wicked Judges! With such Judges I must associate corrupt Legislators, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all the sinks of infamy at the Capital. These living exemplars of vice, pass still-born laws against vice. Are such men sent to the Capital only to practice debauchery? Laborious seedsmen — they gather every germ of evil; and laborious sowers — at home they strew them far and wide! It is a burning shame, a high outrage, that public men, by corrupting the young with the example of manifold vices — should pay back their constituents for their honors! Our land has little to fear from abroad — and much from within. We can bear foreign aggression, scarcity, the losses of commerce, plagues, and pestilences; but we cannot bear wicked Judges, corrupt Courts, gambling Legislators, and a wicked, corrupt, and gambling constituency! Let us not be deceived! The decay of civil institutions, begins at the core. The outside wears all the lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside is rotting. Decline does not begin in bold and startling acts; but, as in autumnal leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush, a brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public sentiment declare that Personal Morality is the first element of patriotism; that corrupt Legislators are the most pernicious of criminals; that the Judge who lets the villain off, is the villain’s patron; that tolerance of crime is intolerance of virtue — our nation might defy all enemies and live forever! And now, my young friends, I beseech you to let alone this evil, before it is meddled with. You are safe from vice — when you avoid even its appearance; and only then. The first steps to wickedness are imperceptible! We do not wonder at the inexperience of Adam; but it is wonderful that six thousand years’ repetition of the same arts, and the same uniform disaster — should have taught men nothing! that generation after generation should perish, and the wreck be no warning! The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks, stands off from perilous shoals, and steers wide of reefs on which hang shattered morsels of wrecked ships. But the mariner upon life’s sea, carries no chart of other men’s voyages, drives before every wind that will speed him, draws upon horrid shores with slumbering crew, or heads in upon roaring reefs — as though he would not perish where thousands have perished before him! Hell is populated with the victims of harmless amusements! Will men never learn, that the way to Hell is through the Valley of Deceit! The power of Satan to hold his victims, is nothing to that mastery of art by which he first gains them. When he approaches to charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a ghastly cloud — but as an angel of light radiant with innocence. His words fall like dew upon the flower; as musical as the crystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by his deceits, he leads you to the enchanted ground. Oh! how it glows with every refulgent hue of Heaven! Afar off, he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime; its smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever! and he himself cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for the very purpose of blinding and drawing you there! He leads you to captivity through all the bowers of lulling magic. He plants your foot near fragrant flowers; he fans your cheek with balmy breath; he overhangs your head with rosy clouds; he fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, charming every sense to rest. Oh you, who have thought the way to Hell was as bleak and frozen as the Arctic, as parched and barren as the Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones and skulls, reeking with stench like the valley of Gehenna — witness your mistake! The way to Hell looks pleasant! It is a broad highway; no lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe! Paradise is imitated — to build you a way to death; the flowers of Heaven are stolen and poisoned; the sweet plant of knowledge is here; the pure white flower of religion; seeming virtue and the charming tints of innocence are scattered all along like native herbage. The enchanted victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a silver trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the wind a solemn warning: "There is a way which seems right to man — but the end thereof is death!" And again, with louder blast: "The wise man foresees the danger and takes refuge; but fools goes blindly on and suffer the consequences!" Startled for a moment, the victim pauses; gazes around upon the flowery scene, and whispers, Is it not harmless? — "Harmless," responds a serpent from the grass! — "Harmless," echo the sighing winds! — Harmless," re-echo a hundred airy tongues! If now a gale from Heaven might only sweep the clouds away through which the victim gazes; oh! if God would break that potent spell which chains the blasts of Hell, and let the sulphur-stench roll up the valley, how would the vision change! — the road would become a track of dead men’s bones! — the heavens a lowering storm! — the balmy breezes, distant wailings — and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops of blood upon their poison-boughs! You who are meddling with the edges of vice, you are on this road — and utterly duped by its enchantments! Your eye has already lost its honest glance, your taste has lost its purity, your heart throbs with poison! The leprosy is all over you, its blotches and eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slippery places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you refuse the warning which I raise. They shall slide from Heaven, never to be visited by a gambler; slide down to that fiery abyss below you, out of which none ever come! Then, when the last card is cast, and the game over, and you lost; then, when the echo of your fall shall ring through hell — in malignant triumph, shall the Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played for your soul, have his prey! Too late you shall look back upon life as a Mighty Game, in which you were the stake, and Satan the winner! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 138: S. CONFLICT OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN THEORIES OF MAN AND SOCIETY, ======================================================================== GREAT SPEECH, DELIVERED IN NEW YORK CITY, BY HENRY WARD BEECHER, ON THE Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories OF MAN AND SOCIETY, January 14, 1855. ROCHESTER: STEAM PRESS OF A. STRONG & CO., COR. OF STATE AND BUFFALO STREETS. 1855. Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories OF MAN AND SOCIETY. The Eighth Lecture of the Course before the Anti-Slavery Society, was delivered, January 14, 1855, at the Tabernacle, New York, by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. The subject, at the present time, is one of peculiar interest, as touching the questions of Slavery and Know-Nothingism, and, together with the popularity of the lecturer, drew together a house-full of auditors. There were a number of gentlemen of distinction, occupying seats on the rostrum—among whom were the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, James Mott, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Dudley, of Buffalo. Mr. Beecher was introduced to the audience by Mr. Oliver Johnson, who said: Ladies and Gentlemen: The speaker who occupied this platform on Tuesday evening last, in the course of his remarks upon the wide degeneracy of the American Clergy on the Slavery Question, reminded us that there was in a Brooklyn pulpit, a man. We thought you would be glad to see and hear such a rara avis, and therefore have besought him to come hither to-night to instruct us by his wisdom and move us by his eloquence. I trust that, whatever you may think of some other parts of the lecture of Wendell Phillips, you will, when this evening’s performance is over, be ready at least to confess that in what he said of the Brooklyn preacher he was not more eulogistic than truthful. Mr. Beecher, on presenting himself, was received with loud and hearty applause. He spoke as follows: The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the application of principles already ascertained. Our debates have been between one way of doing a thing and another way of doing it—between living well and living better; and so through, it has been a question between good and better. We have discussed policies, not principles. In Europe, on the other hand, life-questions have agitated men. The questions of human rights, of the nature and true foundations of Government, are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our fathers in 1630. In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and even grandeur, in the struggles, secretly or openly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and France, which never can belong to the mere questions of mode and manner which occupy us—boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal improvements, currency; all very necessary but secondary topics. They touch nothing deeper than the pocket. In this respect, there would be a marked contrast between the subjects which occupy us, and the grander life-themes that dignify European thought, were it not for one subject—Slavery. That is the only question, in our day and in our community, full of vital struggles turning upon fundamental principles. If Slavery were a plantation-question, concerning only the master and the slave, disconnected from us, and isolated—then, though we should regret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate remedy, yet, it would be, (as are questions of the same kind in India or South America,) remote, constituting a single element in that globe of darkness of which this world is the core, and which Christianity is yet to shine through and change to light. But it is not a plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only morally touch us.—But the disputes between the masters and the Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will yet scourge us with thorns! Indeed, I cannot say that I believe that New England and the near North will be affected locally, and immediately by an adverse issue of the great national struggle now going on. But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American nation. She will be rolled up in a corner, like a cocoon waiting for its transmigration. The whole North will become provincial; it will be but a fringe to a nation whose heart will beat in the South. But New-England was not raised up by Divine Providence to play a mean part in the world’s affairs. Remember, that New-England brought to America those principles which every State in the Union has more or less thoroughly adopted. New-England first formed those institutions which liberty requires for beneficient activity; and from her, both before and since the Revolution, they have been copied throughout the Land. Having given to America its ideas and its institutions, I think the North is bound to stand by them. Until 1800, the North had distinctive national influence, and gave shape, in due measure, to national policy, as she had before to national institutions. Then she began to recede before the rising of another power. For the last fifty years, upon the national platform have stood arrayed two champions in mortal antagonism—New-England and the near North—representing personal freedom, civil liberty, universal education, and a religious spirit which always sympathises with men more than with Governments. The New-England theory of Government has always been in its element—first, independent men; then democratic townships; next republican States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of Republican States. All her economies, her schools, her policy, her industry, her wealth, her intelligence, have been at agreement with her theory and policy of Government. Yet, New-England, strong at home, compact, educated, right-minded; has gradually lost influence, and the whole North with her. The Southern League of States, have been held together by the cohesive power of Common Wrong. Their industry, their policy, their whole interior, vital economy, have been at variance with the apparent principles of their own State Governments, and with the National Institutions under which they exist. They have stood upon a narrow basis, always shaking under them, without general education, without general wealth, without diversified industry. And yet since the year 1800, they have steadily prevailed against Representative New-England and the North. The South, the truest representation of Absolutism under republican forms, is mightier in our National Councils and Policy to-day than New-England, the mother and representative of true republicanism and the whole free North. And now it has come to pass that, in the good providence of God, another opportunity has been presented to the whole North to reassert her place and her influence, and to fill the institutions of our country with their original and proper blood. I do not desire that she should arise and put on her beautiful garments, because she is my mother, and your mother; not because her hills were the first which my childhood saw, that has never since beheld any half so dear; nor from any sordid ambition, that she should be great in this world’s greatness; nor from any profane wish to abstract from the rightful place and influence of any State, or any section of our whole country. But I think that God sent New-England to these shores as his own messenger of mercy to days and ages, that have yet far to come ere they are born! She has not yet told this Continent all that is in her heart. She has sat down like Bunyan’s Pilgrim, and slept in the bower by the way, and where she slept she has left her roll—God grant that she hath not lost it there while she slumbered! By all the love that I bear to the cause of God, and the glory of his Church, by the yearnings which I have for the welfare of the human kind, by all the prophetic expectations which I have of the destiny of this land, God’s Almoner of Liberty to the World, I desire to see Old Representative New-England, and the affiliated North, rouse up and do their first works. Is it my excited ear that hears an airy phantasm whispering? or do I hear a solemn voice crying out, "Arise? Shine? thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is arisen upon thee!" I am quite aware that the subject of Slavery has been regarded, by many, as sectional; and the agitation of it in the North needless, and injurious to our peace and the country’s welfare. Whatever may have been the evils, the agitation has only come through men, not from them. It is of God. It is the underheaving of Providence. Mariners might as well blame you for the swing and toss of their craft when tides troop in or march out of your harbor, as us, for heaving to that tide which God swells under us. Tides in the ocean and in human affairs are from celestial bodies and celestial beings. The conflict which is going on springs from causes as deep as the foundations of our institutions. It will go on to a crisis; its settlement will be an era in the world’s history, either of advance or of decline. I wish to call your patient attention to the real nature of this contest. It is, The conflict between Northern theories and Southern theories of man and of Society. There have been, from the earliest period of the world, two different, and oppugnant, doctrines of man—his place, rights, duties and relations. And the theory of man is always the starting point of all other theories, systems, and Governments which divide the world. Outside of a Divine and Authoritative Revelation, men have had but one way of estimating the value of man. He was to them simply a creature of time, and to be judged in the scientific method, by his phenomena. The Greeks and the Romans had no better way. They did not know enough of his origin, his nature, or his destiny, to bring these into account, in estimating man. Accordingly they could do no better than to study him in his developments and rank him by the power which he manifested. Now if a botanist should describe a biennial plant, whose root and stem belong to one season, whose blossom and fruit belong to another, as if that were the whole of it which the first year produced, he would commit the same mistake which the heathen idea of man commits in measuring and estimating a being whose true life comes hereafter, by the developments which he makes in only this world. From this earthly side of man springs the most important practical results. For the doctrine of man, simply as he is in this life, logically deduces Absolutism and Aristocracy. If the power of producing effects is the criterion of value, the few will always be the most valuable, and the mass relatively, subordinate, and the weak and lowest will be left helplessly worthless. And the mass of all the myriads that do live, are of no more account than working animals; and there is, no such a theory, no reason, a priori; why they should not be controlled by superior men, and made to do that for which they seem the best fitted—Work and Drudgery! Only long experiment could teach a doctrine contrary to the logical presumption arising from weakness. There could be no doctrine of human rights. It would be simply a doctrine of human forces. Right would be a word as much out of place as among birds and beasts. Authority would go with productive greatness, as gravity goes with mass in matter. The whole chance of Right, and the whole theory of Liberty, springs from that part of man that lies beyond this life. As a material creature, man ranks among physical forces. Rights come from his spiritual nature. The body is of the earth, and returns to earth, and is judged by earthly measures. The soul is of God, and returns to God, and is judged by Divine estimates. And this is the reason why a free, unobstructed Bible always works toward human rights. It is the only basis on which the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring masses can entrench against oppression. What, then, is that theory of man which Christianity gives forth? It regards man not as a perfect thing, put into life to blossom and die, as a perfect flower doth. Man is a seed, and birth is planting. He is in life for cultivation, not exhibition; he is here chiefly to be acted on, not to be characteristically an agent. For, though man is also an actor, he is yet more a recipient. Though he produces effects, he receives a thousand fold more than he produces. And he is to be estimated by his capacity of receiving, not of doing. He has his least value in what he can do; it all lies in what he is capable of having done to him. The eye, the ear, the tongue, the nerve of touch, are all simple receivers. The understanding, the affections, the moral sentiments, all, are primarily and characteristically, recipients of influence; and only secondarily agents. Now, how different is the value of ore, dead in its silent waiting-places, from the wrought blade, the all but living engine, and the carved and curious utensil! Of how little value is a ship standing helpless on the stocks—but half-built, and yet building—to one who has no knowledge of the ocean, or of what that helpless hulk will become the moment she slides into her element, and rises and falls upon the flood with joyous greeting! The value of an acorn is not what it is, but what it shall be when nature has brooded it, and brought it up, and a hundred years have sung through its branches and left their strength there! He, then, that judges man by what he can do, judges him in the seed. We must see him through some lenses—we must prefigure his immortality. While, then, his industrial value in life must depend on what he can do, we have here the beginning of a moral value which bears no relation to his power, but to his future destiny. This view assumes distinctness and intensity, when we add to it the relationship which subsists between man and his Maker. This relationship begins in the fact that we are created in the divine image; that we are connected with God, therefore, not by Government alone, but by nature. This initial truth is made radiant with meaning, by the teaching of Christianity that every human being is dear to God: a teaching which stands upon that platform, built high above all human deeds and histories, the advent, incarnation, passion, and death of Christ, as a Savior of men. The race is a brotherhood; God is the Father, Love is the law of this great human commonwealth, and Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds with liberty whatever it touches. One more element to human liberty is contributed by Christianity, in the solemn development of man’s accountability to God, by which condition hereafter springs from pure character here. However heavy that saying is, every one of us shall give an account of himself before God—in it is the life of the race. You cannot present man as a subject of Divine government, held responsible for results, compared with which the most momentous earthly deeds are insignificant, plied with influences accumulating from eternity, and by powers which though they begin on earth in the cradle, gentle as a mother’s voice singing lullaby, go on upward, taking every thing as they go, till they reach the whole power of God; and working out results that outlast time and the sun, and revolve forever in flaming circuits of disaster, or in sacred circles of celestial bliss; you cannot present man as the center and subject of such an august and eternal drama, without giving him something of the grandeur which resides in God himself, and in the spheres of immortality! Who shall trifle with such a creature, full bound upon such an errand through life, and swelling forth to such a destiny? Clear the place where he stands?—give him room and help, but no hinderance, as he equips for eternity!—loosen the bonds of man, for God girds him!—take off all impediments, for it is his life and death and struggle for immortality! That this effect of accountability to God was felt by the inspired writers, cannot be doubtful to any who weigh such language as this: "So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not, therefore judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way." By making man important in the sight of God, he becomes sacred to his fellow. The more grand and far-reaching are the divine claims, the greater is our conception of the scope and worth of being. Human rights become respected in the ratio in which human responsibility is felt. Whatever objections men may hold to Puritanism—their theory since the days of St. Augustine has constantly produced tendencies to liberty and a prevalent belief in the natural rights of man—and on account of that very feature which to many, has been so offensive—its rigorous doctrine of human accountability. Here, then, is the idea of man which Christianity gives in contrast with the inferior and degrading heathen notions of man. He is a being but begun on earth—a seed only planted here for its first growth. He is connected with God, not as all matter is by proceeding from creative power, but by partaking the divine nature, by the declared personal affection of God, witnessed and sealed by the presence and sufferings of the world’s Redeemer. He is a being upon whom is rolled the responsibility of character and eternal destiny! Of such a creature it were as foolish to take an estimate, by what he is and what he can do in this life, as it would be to estimate by an eagle’s egg, what the old eagle is worth, with wings outspread far above the very thunder, or coming down upon its quarry as the thunder comes! It is the Future that gives value to the Present. It is Immortality only that reaches down a measure wherewith to gauge a man. If a heathen measures, the strong are strong, and the weak are weak: the rich, the favored, must rule, and their shadow must dwarf all others. If a Christian measures, he hears a voice saying: "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and brother." These are the things that give value to man. It is not to be said that there is no difference between men; that one is not more powerful than another; that one is not richer in genius than another; that one is not more valuable to society than another; that education, refinement, skill, experience, give no precedence over their negatives. But God takes up the least of all human creatures, and, declares, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me." In a household, a babe is vastly less than the grown-up children. But who dare touch it, as if it were as worthless as it is weak? So God pleads his own relationship to the meanest human creation, as his protection from wrong; as the evidence of his rights, as the reason of his dignity! There is something of God in the meanest creature. He is sacred from injury! In these truths we find the reason why Christianity always takes hold so low down in human life. Things that have got their root need little from the gardener; but the seeds, and tender sprouts, and difficult plants, require and get nurture. A Christianity that takes care of the rich, the strong, the governing class, and neglects the poor, and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the antitype of Christ. It is in this direction only, that the declaration of man’s equality is true. No heathen nation could say that "all men are born free and equal"—for in more earthly respects it is false. But it is a truth that stands only and firmly in those grand relations which man sustains to God, to Eternity, and to future dignity—all are equally subjects of these. Man is ungrown. All his fruit is green. If he must stand by what he is, how surely must he be given over to weakness, to abuse, to oppressions. The weak are the natural prey to the strong, and superiority is a charter for tyranny. But if he be an heir, waiting for an inheritance of God, eternal in the heavens, woe be to him that dare lay a finger on him because he is a minor! I dwell the longer upon this view because it carries the world’s heart in it. We must deepen our thinkings of man, and bore for the springs of liberty far below the drainings of surface strata, down deep, Artesian, till we strike something that shall be beyond winter or summer, frost or drouth. I do not believe that there is a doctrine of individual rights nor of civil liberty that can stand outside of Christianity. They are to be seen revealed in nature, but there is none to interrupt them with authority. Christ is the World’s Emancipator, for he hath declared that men belong to Him; and an oppressor thus becomes a felon, a robber, and a wronger of God, in the person of every poor and wretched victim! A Christianity that tells man what his origin is—of God; his destiny, to God again; his errand on earth, to grow toward goodness, and make the most of himself—this Christianity is rank rebellion in despotisms, and insurrection on plantations. It cannot be preached there. These two radical theories of man—man, a physical creature to be judged by effects produced in Time; or man, a spiritual creature, to be judged by the development to which he is destined, are at the root of all the antagonisms between the spirit of northern and southern institutions: northern policy and southern policy. In the North, it is the public sentiment of the people, that all men are born free and equal; that every man has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, forfeited only by crime. The North believe that personal and political liberty are not only rights of man, but their necessity, that man cannot thrive nor develop, with the true proportions of manhood, without liberty. It is the northern sentiment that a man must be prepared for liberty, and that the act of birth is that preparation; that no creature lives which is the better for oppression, and who will not be the better for freedom, which is the natural air appointed for the soul’s breathing. The North disdains every pretense that men are injured by sudden liberty. A famished man may injure himself by over-feeding; but that is an argument not against food, but against famine. It is the northern sentiment, and justly deduced from the Christian theory of man, that society should redeem all its own children from ignorance, should secure their growth, equip them for citizenship, make all the influences of society enure to the benefit of the mass of men. The southern sentiment is the reverse of this. It holds that all men are not born free and equal; that men have not an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and that men are not in their very constitution fitted for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that liberty is an attribute of power; that it is a blossom which belongs to races, and not to mankind; that a part were born to rule, and a part were ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a blessing; that it accords with the creative intent of God, and with his revealed institutions; that a nation cannot be homogeneous, and should not aim at it; that there is a law and scale of gradation, on which the top is privilege and authority, the bottom labor and obedience. These are the radical theories of the respective sections of the land. Men often are profoundly ignorant of the principles which control their policy, as a ship is unconscious of the rudder that steers her. Many are found, both North and South, whose conduct over-rules their theory, and who are better or worse than their belief. There are southern men who are more generous than their theory, and there are northern men who are grossly untrue to the northern theory, which, with their lips, they profess. There are southern men with northern consciences, and there are northern men with southern consciences. But, in the main, these respective theories reign and regulate public procedure. There is not a man so poor in the North, or so ignorant, or souseless, as not to be regarded as a Man, by religion, by civil law, and by public opinion. Selfishness and pride, avarice and cunning, anger or lust, may prey upon the heedlessness or helplessness of many. Society may be full of evils. But all these things are not sequences of northern doctrines, but violations of them. If sharks in great cities consume the too credulous emigrant; if usurers, like moths, cut the fabric of life with invisible teeth; if landlords sack their tenements and pinch the tenant—all these results are against the spirit of our law, against public feeling, and they that do such things must slink and burrow. They are vermin that run in the walls, and peep from hiding-holes, and we set traps for them as we do for rats or weazels. But, in the South, the subordination of man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time and labor—in his person, his affections, his very children—is a part of the theory of society, drawn out into explicit statutory law, coincident with public opinion, and executed without secrecy. A net spread for those guilty of such wrongs against man, would catch States, and Legislatures, Citizens, Courts, and Constitutions. In the North the most useless pauper that burdens the Alms-House—the most uncombed foreigner that delves in a ditch—the most abject creature that begs a morsel from door to door, is yet a man; and there is, not in theory only, but in the public sentiment, a sacredness of rights, which no man, except by stealth, can violate with impunity. There is no other law for the Governor of New-York or of Massachusetts, than for the beggar in your streets. That which protects the dwelling and the property of the rich man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the beggar. God sends but one sun, and it is the same light that kindles against the roof of a mansion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut. The same air comes to each, the same showers, the same seasons, summer and winter. And as is Nature, so in the North, is law, and the distributive benefits of society. They bathe society from top to bottom! The rich, the learned, the refined, the strong, may know how to make a better use of the air, but they have no more air of privilege to breathe, than the poorest wretch. In the South, exactly the reverse is true, not by stealth, not by neglect of a recognized principle, but as the result of men’s ideas, and by organized arrangements. Touch a hireling’s wages, in the North, and the Law stands to defend him and beat you down! Take the laborer’s wages in the South, and the law stands to defend you, and beat him down. Beat a man, in the North, for a private wrong done, and the law will strike you. But in the South, it is the right of the white, unquestioned and unquestionable to beat every third person in the community. Let the proudest mill-owner break but the skin of the poorest operative in Lowell or Lawrence, and both law and public sentiment, alike, would grasp and punish him! But in the South the law refuses to look at any degree of cruelty in chastisements upon the universal laborer, short of maiming or death, and public sentiment is but little better than the law. The laborer in the North answers to a tribunal; in the South, to a master, incensed, passionate, vindictive in justice executed upon all symptoms of resisting manhood! In the North, nothing is more sacred than a man’s family and his children. It would not be possible for a man to do public violence to a family circle without vindictive penalty. Let him separate a mother from her daughters, let him employ a hireling ruffian to carry off the boys into the country and parcel them out there—let him scatter the flock, and leave the children motherless, and the parents childless, and what do you think would become of him? In the South it is a part of the civil rights of men to do these things whenever they please. And though public sentiment is better than law, yet as no public sentiment on earth is a match for legalized lust, or avarice, or the grip of misfortune, these things are continually done, and remorselessly. Cruelty, chastity, virtue, do not mean the same things in the South as in the North. A man is not blemished by deeds and indulgencies, upon a plantation, among slaves, which in the North, would strike him through with infamy and house him in the penitentiary. In the South, there are many roads leading from the top of society to the bottom, but not one, not one from the bottom to the top. In the North, if the citizen chooses to walk in it, there is a road from every man’s door up to the Governor’s chair or the Presidential seat! It needs no words, now, to convince you, that out of such different theories of men, there will exist in the North and in the South, extremely different ideas of Society, Government, and Public Policy. In the North, first in order of consideration is man, the individual man; next the family, made of those of common blood, and by far the strongest, as it is the most sacred of all institutions. Then comes the township, which presents the only spectacle of an absolute political democracy. For, here only, do citizens assemble in mass and vote, directly and not by representation. Next comes Society at large, or the mass of citizens grouped into States. And in Society, in the North, there are no classes except such as rise out of spontaneous forces. Wealth, experience, ability set men above their fellows. There they stand as long as there is a real superiority. But they stand there, not by legal force, nor to exercise any legal power, or to have one single privilege or prerogative, which does not belong just as much to every citizen clear down to the bottom. All that a class means in the North is, that when men have shown themselves strong and wise men give them honor for it. Death levels it all down again. Their children inherit nothing. They must earn for themselves. There is no division of society into orders, by which some have privilege and some have not, some have opportunity and advantages which others have not. In the South, society is divided into two great and prominent classes—the ruling and the obeying—the thinking and the working. The labor of the South is performed by three million creatures who represent the heathen idea of man. All the benefits that have accrued to man from Christianity, are appropriated and monopolized by the white population. Here is a seam that no sophistry can sew up. Here is a society organized, not on an idea of equal rights, and of inequalities only as they spring from difference of worth, but on an idea of permanent, political, organized inequality among men. They carry it so far that the theory of Slave law regards the slave not as an inferior man, governed, for his own good as well as for the benefit of the society at large, but it pronounces him, in reiterated forms, not a man at all, but a chattel. When a community of States, by the most potential voice of Law, says to the whole body of its laboring population, Ye are not men and shall not be; ye are chattels—it is absurd to speak about kind treatment—about happiness. It is about cattle that they are talking! Our vast body of laboring men do not yet feel the force of such a theory of human society. But, if that political system, which has openly been making such prodigious strides for the last fifty years, and effecting, secretly, a yet greater change in men’s ideas of society and government, shall gain complete ascendancy, they, in their turn, and in due time will know and see the difference between a Republican Democracy and a Republican Aristocracy? Out of such original and radical differences, there must flow a perpetual contrast and opposition of policies and procedures, in the operation of society and of business. We will select but a few, of many, subjects of contrast, Work, Education, Freedom of Speech and of the Press, and Religion. I. Work. Among us, and from the beginning, Work has been honorable. It has been honorable to dig, to hew, to build, to reap, to wield the hammer at the forge, and the saw at the bench. It has been honorable because our people have been taught that each man is set to make the most of himself. The crown for every victory gained in a struggle of skill or industry over matter is placed upon the soul; and thus among a free people industry becomes education. It is the peculiarity of Northern labor, that it thinks. It is intelligence working out through the hands. There is more real thought in a Yankee’s hand than in a Southerner’s head. This is not true of a class, or of single individuals, or of single States. It pervades the air. It is Northern public sentiment. It springs from our ideas of manhood. These influences, acting through generations, have been wrought into the very blood. It is in the stock. Go where you will a Yankee is a working creature. He is the honeybee of mankind. Only Work is royal among us. It carries the sceptre, and changes all nations by its touch, opening its treasures and disclosing its secrets. But with all this industry, you shall find nowhere on earth so little drudging work as in the North. It is not the servitude of the hands to material nature. It is the glorious exercise of mind upon nature. They vex nature with incessant importunities. They are always prying, and thinking, and trying. In California, gold is found in quartz formations. But in New England, and the free inventive North, in the geology of industry, gold is found everywhere—in rye straw and bonnets, in leather and stone, in wool, felts and cloths; in wood, in stone, and in very ice. It is wrapped up in the beggar’s raiment, which unroll in our mills into paper—yesterday, a beggar’s feculent rags; to-day, a newspaper, conveying the world’s daily life into twenty thousand families. And so great are the achievements of labor that everybody honors it. It stands among us as an invisible dignity. Four spirits there are that rule in New England—religion, social virtue, intelligence, and work; and this last takes something from them all, and is their physical exponent. So that not only is work honored and honorable, but the want of it is an implied discredit. The presumption is always against a man who does not labor. In the South, the very reverse is true, as a general proposition. It is true, because labor is the peculiar badge of Slavery. It does not stand, as with us, a symbol of intelligence, but a symbol of stupid servitude. It is the business of those whom the law puts out of the pale of society and accounts chattels, and who, by the opinion of society, are at the bottom, and under the feet of respectable men. To work is, therefore, prima facie evidence of degradation. It is ranking oneself with a slave by doing a slave’s tasks; as eating a beggar’s crust with him would be a beggar’s fellowship. But this is not the whole reason, nor the chiefest and more potent reason of the difference between public feeling about Work, North and South. The ideas of men in the South do not inspire any such tendency. Men are judged there not by what they are and are to be, but by what they can now do. Only such things as have an echo in them, that reverberate in the ear of public opinion, that produce an effect of notice, honor, advancement in the opinions of men, are relished. In the North, men are educated to be something—in the South to seem something. The North tends to doing—the South to appearing. And both tendencies spring from the root of opposite theories of men and notions of society. And it is this innate, hereditary indisposition to work that, after all, is the greatest obstacle to emancipation. Laziness in the South and money in the North, are the bulwarks of Slavery! To take away a planter’s slaves is to cut off his hands. There is where he keeps his work. There is none of it in himself. And it is this, too, which leads to the contempt which southern people feel for northern men. They are working men, and work is flavored to the Southerner with ideas of ignominy, of meanness, of vulgar lowness. Neither can they understand how a man who works all his life long can be high-minded and generous, intelligent and refined. Not only is there this contrast in dignity of work, but even more—in rights of industry. Work, in the North, has responsibilities that are prodigious educators. We ordain that a man shall have the fullest chance, and then he shall have the results of his activity. He shall take all he can make, or he shall take the whole result of indolence. It is a double education. It inspires labor by hope of fruition, and intensifies it by the fear of non-fruition. The South have their whole body of laborers at work without either responsibility. They cut it off at both ends. They virtually say to the slave, in reality, "Be lazy, for all that you earn shall do you no good; be lazy, for when you are old and helpless we are bound to take care of you." It is this apparent care for the helplessness of slaves, that has won the favor of many northern men, and of some who ought to have known better the effect of taking off from men the responsibility of labor, in both ways, its fruition and its penalty. Once declare in New York that Government would take care of poverty and old age, so as to make it honorable, and it would be a premium upon improvidence. With us, it is expected that every man will work, will earn, will lay up, will deliver his family from public charity. There is, to be sure, an Alms House to catch all who, by misfortune or improvidence, fall through. But such is the public opinion in favor of personal independence springing from industry, that a native-born American citizen had rather die than go to an Alms-House. Foreigners are our staple paupers. Our charity feeds the poor wretches whom foreign slavery has crippled and cast upon us. But the whole South is a vast work-house for the slave while young, and a vast alms-house for him when old, and neither young or old, is he permitted to feel the responsibility for labor. And this, too, explains the apparent advantage which the South has over the North in the matter of pauperism and distress. The northern system intends to punish those who will not work. It it not a system calculated for slaves nor for lazy men. If indolence comes under it, it will take the penalty of not working. And nowhere else in the world is the penalty of indolence, and even of shiftlessness, so terrible as in the North, as nowhere else is the remuneration of a virtuous industry so ample and so widely diffused. II. There is just as marked a contrast upon the subject of education, and especially of Common Schools. In the North we have Common Schools. This is more than a School. It is more than a public school. It is a Common School, in distinction from a select, or class school. It is a public provision for bringing together, upon a perfect equality, the children of the rich and the poor, the noble and ignoble, the high and the low. It is a provision of our institutions, by which every generation is led to a line and made to start equal and together. There will be inequality enough as soon as men get into life. Some shoot ahead; some, like dull sailors in a fleet, are dropped behind, and men are scattered all along the ocean. But the Common School gathers up their children and brings them all back again to take a new start together. Thus our schools are not mere whetstones to the intellect; they are institutions for evening up society; they resist the tendency to separation into classes, which grows with the prosperity of a community; they bind together, in cordial sympathy, all classes of citizens. For nothing is more tenacious than schoolday remembrances, and the last things that we forget are playmates and schoolmates. The South may have schools. But never Common Schools. The South has no common people. There can be States, there, but never Commonwealths. There is no common ground, where the theory of society grades men upon a perpendicular scale. It is a society of classes, and a society of classes can never be a community. When the whole labor of a State is performed by a degraded class, that are not included in the State as citizens or social beings, it is impossible but that the class next above them should feel the force of those theories and ideas which have produced such a state of things. It is so. The poor white population of the South is degraded. They are ignorant—they are not fertile in thought or labor. They are not so low as the slaves, nor so high as those who own slaves. There are three classes—the top, the middle, and the bottom; and two of these, the top and bottom, being fixed and legal, the middle is modified by them both. In such a Society, there cannot be a Common School, in any such sense as we mean it. Indeed, there cannot be general education in any State where ignorance is the legal condition of one-half the population, as is the case in many Southern States. Ignorance is an institution in the South. It is a political necessity. It is as much provided for by legislation and by public sentiment, and guarded by enactments, as intelligence is in the North. It must be. The restrictions which keep it from the slave will keep it from the whites, excepting, always, the few who live at the top. There cannot be an atmosphere of intelligence. Slaves would be in danger of breathing that. There cannot be a common public sentiment, a common school, nor common education. Knowledge is power, not only, but powder, putting the South in the risk of being blown up, by careless handling and too great abundance. III. Closely connected with this, and springing from the same causes, is a contrast between the North and the South, in respect to free speech and open discussion by lip and by type. The theory of the North is, that every man has the right, on every subject, to the freest expression of his opinions, and the fullest right to urge them upon the convictions of others. It is not a permission of law; it is the inherent right of the individual. Law is only to protect the citizen in the use of that right. It is the theory of the North that society is as much a gainer by this freedom of discussion as is the individual. It is a perpetual education of the people, and a safeguard to the State. There is the utmost latitude of speech and discussion among our citizens. The attempt to abridge it would be so infatuated that the most dignified Court that ever sat in Boston would become an object of universal merriment and ridicule, that should presume to arrest and cause to be indicted any man for free speaking in old Faneuil Hall. Merriment, I say, for who would not laugh at a philosopher who would set snares for the stars, and fix his net to catch the sun, and regulate their indiscreet shining. Darkness and silence are excellent for knaves and tyrants; but the attempt to command the one or the other in the North, changes the knave to an imbecile and the tyrant to a fool. But should any power, against the precedents of the past, the spirit of our people, the theory of our civil polity and the rights of individual man succeed, and make headway against free speech, and put it in jeopardy, it would convulse the very frame-work of society. There would be no time for a revolution—there would be an eruption, and fragmentary Judges, Courts and their minions would fly upward athwart the sky, like stones and balls of flame driven from the vomiting crater of a furious volcano! No. This is a right like the right of breathing. This is a liberty that broods upon us like the atmosphere. The grand American doctrine that men may speak what they think, and may print what they speak—that all public measures shall have free public discussion—cannot be shaken; and any party must be intensely American that can afford to destroy the very foundation of American principle that public questions shall be publicly discussed, and public procedure be publicly agreed upon. Right always gains in the light, and Wrong in the dark. An owl can whip an eagle in the night! The South, holding a heathen theory of man—an aristocratic theory of society,—is bound to hold, and does hold, a radically opposite practice in respect to rights of speech and freedom of the press. There is not freedom of opinion in the South and there cannot be. Men may there talk of a thousand things—of all religious doctrines, of literature, of art, of public political measures—but no man has liberty to talk as he pleases about the structure of southern society, and apply to the real facts of southern life and southern internal questions that searching investigation and public exposure which, in the North, brings every possible question to the bar of public opinion, and makes society boil like a pot! Yes, you may speak of Slavery, if you will defend it; you may preach about it, if you shingle its roof with Scripture texts; but you may not talk, nor preach, nor print abolition doctrines, though you believe them with the intensity of inspiration! The reason given is, that it will stir up insurrection. And so it will. It is said that free speech is inflammatory. So it is. That it would bring every man’s life in the South into jeopardy; that, in self-defence, they most limit and regulate the expression of opinion. But what is that theory of Government, and what is the state of society under it, in which free speech and free discussion are dangerous? It is the boast of the North, not alone that speech and discussion are free, but that we have a society constructed in every part so rarely, wisely, and justly, that they can endure free speech; no file can part, but only polish. We turn out any law, and say, Discuss it! that it may be the stronger! We challenge scrutiny for our industry, for our commerce, for our social customs, for our municipal affairs, for our State questions, for all that we believe, and all that we do, and everything that we build. We are not in haste to be born in respect to any feature of life. We say—probe it, question it, put fire to it. We ask the experience of the past to sit and try it. We ask the ripest wisdom of the present to test and analyze it. We ask enemies to plead all they know against it. We challenge the whole world of ideas, and the great deep of human interests to come up upon anything that belongs, or is to belong, to public affairs. And then, when a truth, a policy, or a procedure comes to birth, from out of the womb of such discussion, we know that it will stand. And when our whole public interests are rounded out and built up, we are glad to see men going around and about, marking well our towers, and counting our bulwarks. May it do them good to see such architecture and engineering! And it is just this difference that distinguishes the North and the South. We have institutions that will stand public and private discussion—they have not. We will not have a law, or custom, or economy, which cannot be defended against the freest inquiry. Such a rule would cut them level as a mowed meadow! They live in a crater, forever dreading the signs of activity. They live in a powder magazine. No wonder they fear light and fire. It is the plea of Wrong since the world began. Discussion would unseat the Czar; a free press would dethrone the ignoble Napoleon; free speech would revolutionize Rome. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression! they are mighty champions, that go with unsheathed swords the world over, to redress the weak, to right the wronged, to pull down evil and build up good. And a State that will be damaged by free speech ought to be damaged. A King that cannot keep his seat before free speech ought to be unseated. An order or an institution that dreads freedom of the press has reason to dread it. If the South would be revolutionized by free discussion, how intensely does that fact show her dying need of revolution! She is a dungeon, full of damps and death-air. She needs light and ventilation. And the only objection is, that if there were light and air let in, it would no longer be a dungeon. IV. There is a noticeable contrast between Northern and Southern ideas of Religion. We believe God’s revealed word to contain the influence appointed for the regeneration and full development of every human being, and that it is to be employed as God’s universal stimulant to the human soul, as air and light are the universal stimulants of vegetation. We preach it to arouse the whole soul; we preach it to fire the intellect, and give it wings by which to compass knowledge; we preach it to touch every feeling with refinement, to soften rudeness and enrich affections; we build the family with it; we sanctify love, and purge out lust; we polish every relation of life; we inspire a cheerful industry and whet the edge of enterprise, and then limit them by the bonds of justice and by the moderation of a faith which looks into the future and the eternal. We teach each man that he is a child of God; that he is personally one for whom the Savior died; we teach him that he is known and spoken of in heaven, his name called; that angels are sent out upon his path to guard and to educate him; we swell within him to the uttermost every aspiration, catching the first flame of youth and feeding it, until the whole heart glows like an altar, and the soul is a temple bright within, and sweet, by the incense-smoke and aspiring flame of perpetual offerings and divine sacrifices. We have never done with him. We lead him from the cradle to boyhood; we take him then into manhood, and guide him through all its passes; we console him in age, and then stand, as he dies, to prophesy the coming heaven, until the fading eye flashes again, and the unhearing ear is full again; for from the other side ministers of grace are coming, and he beholds them, and sounds on earth and sights are not so much lost as swallowed up in the glory and the melody of the heavenly joy! Now tell me whether there is any preaching of the Gospel to the slave, or whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to convert them into men, they to make them content to be beasts of burden! Is this all that the Gospel has? When credulous ministers assure us that slaves have the means of grace, do they mean that they have such teaching as we have? Or that there is any such ideal in preaching? The power of religion with us is employed to set men on their feet; to make them fertile, self-sustaining, noble, virtuous, strong, and to build up society of men, each one of whom is large, strong, capacious of room, and filled with versatile powers. Religion with them does no such thing. It doth the reverse. With them it is Herod casting men into prison. With us it is the angel, appearing to lead them out of prison and set them free! In short religion with us is emancipation and liberty; with them it is bondage and contentment. It is very plain that while nominally republican institutions exist in both the North and South, they are animated by a very different spirit, and used for a different purpose. In the North, they aim at the welfare of the whole people; in the South they are the instruments by which a few control the many. In the North, they tend toward Democracy; in the South, toward Oligarchy. It is equally plain that while there may be a union between Northern and Southern States, it is external, or commercial, and not internal and vital, springing from common ideas, common ends, and common sympathies. It is a union of merchants and politicians and not of the people. Had these opposite and discordant systems been left separate to work out each its own results, there would have been but little danger of collision or contest. But they are politically united. They come together into one Congress. There these antagonistic principles, which creep with subtle influence through the very veins of their respective States, break out into open collision upon every question of national policy. And, since the world began, a republican spirit is unfit to secure power. It degenerates it in the many. But an aristocratic spirit always has aptitude and impulse toward power. It seeks and grasps it as naturally as a hungry lion prowls and grasps its prey. For fifty years the imperious spirit of the South has sought and gained power. It would have been of but little consequence were that power still republican. The seat of empire may be indifferently on the Massachusetts Bay or the Ohio, on the Lakes or on the Gulf; if it be the same empire, acting in good faith for the same democratic ends. But in the South the growth of power has been accompanied by a marked revolution in political faith, until now the theory of Mr. Calhoun, once scouted, is becoming the popular belief. And that theory differs in nothing from outright European Aristocracy, save in the forms and instruments by which it works. The struggle, then, between the North and the South is not one of sections, and of parties, but of Principles—of principles lying at the foundations of governments—of principles that cannot coalesce, nor compromise; that must hate each other, and contend, until the one shall drive out the other. Oh! how little do men dream of the things that are transpiring about them! In Luther’s days, how little they knew the magnitude of the results pending that controversy of fractious monk and haughty pope! How little did the frivolous courtier know the vastness of that struggle in which Hampden, Milton and Cromwell acted! We are in just such another era. Dates will begin from the period in which we live! Do not think that all the danger lies in that bolted cloud which flashes in the Southern horizon. There is decay, and change, here in the North. Old New-England, that suckled American liberty, is now suckling wolves to devour it. What shall we think when a President of old Dartmouth College goes over to Slavery, and publishes to the world his religious conviction of the rightfulness of it, as a part of God’s disciplinary government of the world—wholesome to man, as a punishment of sins which he never committed, and to liquidate the long arrearages of Ham’s everlasting debt! and avowing that, under favorable circumstances, he would buy and own slaves! A Southern volcano in New-Hampshire, pouring forth the lava of despotism in that incorrupt, and noble old fortress of liberty! What a College to educate our future legislators! What are we to think, when old Massachusetts, the mother of the Revolution, every league of whose soil swells with the tomb of some heroic patriot, shall make pilgrimages through the South, and, after surveying the lot of slaves under a system that turns them out of manhood, pronounces them chattles, denies them marriage, makes their education a penal and penitentiary offence, makes no provision for their religious culture, leaving it to the stealth of good men, or the interest of those who regard religion as a currycomb, useful in making sleek and nimble beasts—a system which strikes through the fundamental instincts of humanity, and wounds nature in the core of the human heart, by taking from parents all right in their children, and leaving the family, like a bale of goods, to be unpacked, and parceled out and sold in pieces, without any other protection than the general good nature of easy citizens; what shall be thought of the condition of the public mind in Boston, when one of her most revered, and personally, deservedly beloved pastors, has come up so profoundly ignorant of what we thought every child knew, that he comes home from this pilgrimage, to teach old New-England to check her repugnance to Slavery, to dry up her tears of sympathy, and to take comfort in the assurance that Slavery, on the whole, is as good or better for three millions of laboring men as liberty. He has instituted a formal comparison between the state of society and the condition of a laboring population in a slave system and those in a free State, and left the impression on every page that Liberty works no better results than servitude, and that it has mischiefs and inconveniences which Slavery altogether avoids. Read that book in Faneuil Hall, and a thousand aroused and indignant ghosts would come flocking there, as if they heard the old roll-call of Bunker Hill. Yea, read those doctrines on Bunker Hill—and would it flame or quake? No. It would stand in silent majesty, pointing its granite finger up to Heaven and to God—an everlasting witness against all Slavery, and all its abettors or defenders. At this moment, the former parties that have stood in counterpoise have fallen to pieces. And we are on the eve, and in the very act, of reconstructing our parties. One movement there is that calls itself American. Oh, that it were or or would be! Never was an opening so auspicious for a true American party that, embracing the principles of American institutions, should enter our Temple of Liberty and drive out thence not merely the interloping Gentiles, but the money-changers, and those, also, who sell oxen, and cattle and slaves therein. It is not the question whether a Northern party should be a party of philanthropy, or of propagandism, or of abolition. It is simply a question whether, for fear of these things, they will ignore and rub out of their creed every principle of human rights! I am not afraid of foreigners among us. Nevertheless, our politicians have so abused us through them, that I am glad that a movement is on foot to regulate the conduct of new-comers among us, and oblige them to pass through a longer probation before they become citizens. In so far as I understand the practical measures proposed and set forth in the Message of the Governor of Massachusetts, I approve them. But I ask you, fellow-citizens, whether the simple accident of birth is a basis broad enough for a permanent National party? Is it a principle, even? It is a mere fact. Ought we not to look a little at what a man is after he is born, as well as at the place where? Especially, when we remember that Arnold was born in Connecticut and La Fayette in France. If then, a party is American, ought it not to be because it represents those principles which are fundamental to American Institutions and to American policy? principles which stand in contrast with European Institutions and policy! Which of these two theories is the American? The North has one theory, the South another; which of them is to be called the American idea? Which is American—Northern ideas or Southern ideas? That which declares all men free &c., or that which declares the superior races free, and the inferior, Slaves? That which declares the right of every man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—or that which declares the right of strength and intelligence to subordinate weakness and ignorance? That which ordains popular education, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, public discussion—or that which makes these a prerogative, yielded to a class but denied to masses? That which organizes Society as a Democracy and Government, and Republic—or that which organizes Society as an Aristocracy, and Government as an Oligarchy? Which shall it be—that of organized New England townships, schools, and churches—that resisted taxation without representation—that covered Boston harbor with tea, as if all China had shook down her leaves there—which spake from Faneuil Hall, and echoed from Bunker Hill; or that policy which landed slaves on the Chesapeake—that has changed Old Virginia from a land of heroes into a breeding-ground of slaves—that has broken down boundaries, and carried war over our lines, not for liberty, but for more territory for slaves to work, that the owners might multiply, and the Aristocracy of America stand on the shores of two oceans, an unbroken bound all between? If a National American party is ever formed, by leaving out the whole question of Human Rights, it will be what a man would be—his soul left out! An American National party—Liberty left out! An American party—Human Rights left out! Gentlemen, such a party will stink with dissolution before you can get it finished. No Masonry can make it solid—no art can secure it. No anchor that was ever forged in infernal stythy can go deep enough into political mud to hold it! If you rear up an empty name; if you take that revered name American, all the world over radiant and revered, as the symbol of human rights and human happiness—if you sequester and stuff that name with the effete doctrines of despotism, do you believe you can supplicate from any gods the boon of immortality for such an unbaptized monster? No. It may live to ravage our heritage for a few days, but there is a spirit of liberty that lives among us, and that shall live. And aroused by that spirit, there shall spring up the yet unaroused hosts of men that have not bowed the knee to Baal—and we will war it to the knife, and knife to the hilt. For, it shall be; America shall be free! We will take that for our life’s enterprise. Dying, we will leave it a legacy to our children, and they shall will it to theirs, until the work is done, our fathers’ prayers are answered, and this whole land stands clothed and in its right mind—a symbol of what the earthly fruits of the Gospel are! If a National party is now to be formed, what shall it be, and what shall its office be? It shall be a peacemaker, say sly politicians. Yes, peace by war. But an American party, seeking peace with the imperious Aristocracy by yielding everything down to the root—one would think no party need be formed to do that. Judas did as much without company. Arnold did that without companions. An American National party must either be a piebald and patched-up party, carrying in its entrails the mortal poison of two belligerent schemes, former legendary disputes, and agitation, and furious conflict; or, to be a real national party, it must first be a Northern party and become national. We must walk again over the course of history. Here in the North Liberty began. Its roots are with us yet. All its associations and all its potent institutions are with us. Having once given forth this spirit of liberty, now fading out of our Southern States, the North should again come forth and refill the poisoned veins that have been drinking the hemlock of Despotism with the new blood of Liberty! Let us give sap to the tree of Liberty, that it may not wither and die! When Hercules was born, but yet a child, the jealous Juno sent two serpents to his cradle to destroy him. Hercules or the serpents must die. Both could not lie in the same bed. He seized them and suffocated them by his grip, while his poor brother, Iphiclus, filled the house with his shrieks. An infernal Juno, envious of the destined greatness of this country, hath sent this serpent upon it! What shall we do? Shall we imitate Hercules or Iphiclus? Shall we choke it; or shall we form a timid National party and shriek? Gentlemen, you will never have rest from this subject until there is a victory of principles. Northern ideas must become American, or Southern ideas must become American, before there will be peace. If the North gives to the Nation her radical principles of human rights and democratic Governments, there will be the peace of an immeasurable prosperity. If the South shall give to the country a policy derived from her heathen notions of men, there will be such a peace as men have overdrugged with opium, that deep lethargy just before the mortal convulsions and death! All attempts at evasion, at adjourning, at concealing and compromising are in vain. The reason of our long agitation is, not that restless Abolitionists are abroad, that ministers will meddle with improper themes, that parties are disregardful of the country’s interest. These are symptoms only, not the disease; the effects, not the causes. Two great powers that will not live together are in our midst, and tugging at each other’s throats. They will search each other out, though you separate them a hundred times. And if by an insane blindness you shall contrive to put off the issue, and send this unsettled dispute down to your children, it will go down, gathering volume and strength at every step, to waste and desolate their heritage. Let it be settled now. Clear the place. Bring in the champions. Let them put their lances in rest for the charge. Sound the trumpet, and God save the right! The latter portion of the lecture was frequently interrupted by boisterous applause. After Mr. Beecher had taken his seat, there were loud calls for Mr. Giddings, whereupon that gentleman came forward and said that he had not come to make a speech, but, like a good Methodist brother, he would add his exhortation to the excellent sermon of his clerical friend. In conclusion, Mr. Giddings besought all to enter heartily into the contest for Freedom—to trust in God and keep their powder dry! [Loud applause.] Transcriber’s Notes Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. The transcriber noted the following issues and made changes as indicated to the text to correct obvious errors: 1. p. 4, "lees" changed to "less" 2. p. 4, "themother" changed to "the mother" 3. p. 5, "Revleation" changed to "Revelation" 4. p. 5, "oppugnent" changed to "oppugnant" 5. p. 5, "prodncing" changed to "producing" 6. p. 5, "weekness" changed to "weakness" 7. p. 6, "Cristianity" changed to "Christianity" 8. p. 6, "Chris’," changed to "Christ," 9. p. 6, "unto the "least" changed to "unto the least" 10. p. 7, "sprours" changed to "sprouts" 11. p. 7, "Cristianity" changed to "Christianity" 12. p. 7, "southren" changed to "southern" 13. p. 7, "aud" changed to "and" 14. p. 7, "fouud" changed to "found" 15. p. 8, "breath" changed to "breathe" 16. p. 8, "choses" changed to "chooses" 17. p. 8, "Govenor’s" changed to "Governor’s" 18. p. 9, "agaih" changed to "again" 19. p. 10, "achievments" changed to "achievements" 20. p. 10, "feculant" changed to "feculent" 21. p. 10, "inate" changed to "innate" 22. p. 13, "grapsits" changed to "graps its" 23. p. 14, "llke" changed to "like" 24. p. 15, "Junot" changed to "Juno" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 139: S. IMMORTALITY ======================================================================== Immortality If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.—1Co 15:19. This is not the declaration of a universal principle: it is biographical and personal. And yet, there is in it a principle of prime importance. It is true that Paul and his compeers had sacrificed everything that was dear to man for the sake of Christ. Paul had given up the place that he held among his countrymen, and the things which surely awaited him. He had consented to be an exile. Loving Palestine and the memory of his fathers, as only a Jew could love, he found himself an outcast, and despised everywhere by his own people. And the catalog that he gives of the sufferings which he felt keenly; which perhaps would not have been felt by a man less susceptible than he, but which were no less keen in his case—that catalog shows how much he had given up for Christ. And if it should turn out that after all he had followed a mere fable, a myth; that Christ was but a man; that, dying, He had come to an end; that He stayed dead, and that there was no resurrection, no future, but only that past through which he waded, and that present in which he was suffering, then, surely, it would be true that of all men he was most miserable. This is the biographical view; but it may be said of all men, in this respect, that no persons can so ill afford to lose faith of immortality as those who have had all their affections burnished, deepened and rendered sensitive by the power of Christianity. When Christianity has had the education of generation after generation, and has shaped the style of its manhood, and ordained the institutions by which its affections have been enlarged and purified; when, in short, generations of men have been legitimately the children of Christianity, to take away from them the faith of immortality would be a cruelty which could have no parallel in the amount of suffering which it would entail. It is not necessarily true that men without a hope of Christianity would have no incitement to virtue—certainly not in the ordinary way in which it is put to us. Abstractly, it is said that virtue is its own reward—and it is. If there was enough of it to amount to anything, it would be a great, an exceeding great, reward; but where it is a spark; a germ; where it is struggling for its own existence; where it bears but a few ripe fruits, the reward is hardly worth the culture. If all that we get is what we have in this life, it is but little. Many men are favorably organized and favorably situated; they have an unyearning content; things seem good enough for them; and they do not understand why it is that persons should desire immortality and glory—that is, at first. In general, I think there are few persons that live long in life who do not, sooner or later, come to a point in which they wake up to the consciousness of a need of this kind. It is not always true in the case of persons of refined moral and intellectual culture that they are conscious of needing a belief in immortality; but a belief in immortality is the unavoidable result and the indispensable requirement of all true manhood. When you look at growth, not in each particular case, but largely, as it develops itself in communities; when you consider it, not only in a single individual, but in whole communities, as they develop from childhood to manhood, or from barbarism through semi-civilization to civilization and refinement, the law of development is always away from animal life and its sustaining appetites and passions toward the moral and the intellectual. That is the direction in which unfolding takes place. The naturalist watches the insect, and studies all the stages through which it goes, till it becomes a perfect insect. We look at a seed, and see how it develops stem and leaf and blossom all the way through, till we find out what the plant is in its final and perfect condition. And in studying men to know what is the perfect condition of manhood, looking at them from the beginning to the end, which way does manhood lie, in the direction of the bodily appetites and senses, or in the other direction? Men come into life perfect animals. There is very little that culture does in that direction, giving them a little more or a little less use of themselves, as the case may be. That which we mean when we speak of developing manhood in a child, is something more than the development of symmetry of form and power of physical organization. When we speak of the civilization and refinement of the race at large, development does not mean bodily power or bodily skill: it means reason; moral sense; imagination; profounder affection; subtler, purer, sweeter domestic relations. Manhood grows away from bodily conditions, without ever leaving them. The body becomes a socket, and the soul is a lamp in it. And if you look narrowly at what we mean by growth in mankind, whether it be applied to the individual or to the race, you will find that we mean an unfolding which takes a man away from the material toward that which is subtler, more spiritual, existing outside of the ordinary senses, though acting from them, as something better than bone and muscle, nerve and tissue. All development, then, is from the animal toward the spiritual and the invisible. This is the public sentiment of mankind even in the lower forms of society. What are considered heroic traits, the things which bring admiration to men, if narrowly examined will be found to be not the things which belong to men as brutes—tho these things may be employed by them as instruments. Even in the cases of such men as Samson and Hercules, who were rude, brute men, it was not their strength that drew admiration to them: it was their heroism; it was their patriotism; it was that which they did by their strength for their kind, and not for themselves. And in lower societies it is courage, it is self-devotion, it is the want of fear, it is the higher form of animal life, that attracts admiration. But as we develop out of barbarous into civilized conditions, we admire men, not because they can lift so much, or throw such heavy weights, or endure such hardships of body. Admiration on these accounts has its place; but higher than these is the power of thought, the power of planning, the power of executing, the power of living at one point so as to comprehend in the effects produced all circuits of time in the future. Thought-power; emotion; moral sense; justice; equity in all its forms; higher manhood, and its branches, which stretch up into the atmosphere and reach nearest to the sun—these are something other than those qualities which develop earliest, and are lowest—nearest to the ground. True manhood, then, has its ripeness in the higher faculties. Without disdaining the companionship of the body the manhood of man grows away from it—in another direction. There is not simply the ripening of the physical that is in man; but there is, by means of the physical, the ripening of the intellectual, the emotional, the moral, the esthetic life, as well as the whole spiritual nature. When reason and moral sense are developed, there will inevitably spring up within a man an element the value of which consists in perpetuating things—in their continuance. It is spontaneous and universal for one to seek to perpetuate, to extend life. I do not mean by this that one wants to live a great while; but men are perpetually under the unconscious influence of this in their nature: the attempt to give form and permanence to that which is best in their manhood. We build, to be sure, primarily, to cover ourselves from the elements; but we very soon cease to build for that only: we not merely build for protection from cold and from wet, but we build for gratification. We build to gratify the sense of beauty, the sense of convenience, and the sense of love. And we go on beyond that: we build in order that we may send down to those who are to come after us a memorial of our embodied, incarnated thoughts. In other words, when men build, they seek, by incarnation, to render things permanent which have existed only as thoughts or transient emotions. There is a tendency to incarnate the fugitive elements in men, and give them permanence. And the element of continuing is one of the elements which belong to the higher manhood. This throws light upon the material growths of society. Men strive to perpetuate thoughts and feelings which are evanescent unless they are born into matter. Men build things for duration. There is this unconscious following out of things to make them last; to give them long periods. And it opens up to men the sense of their augmented being. Largeness of being is indissolubly connected with extended time of being. We admire the pyramids, not because they have been associated with so many histories, but because they have stood so many ages. We admire old trees, not because so many tribes have sat under them, nor because so many events have taken place beneath them, but simply because they have age with them. For there are mute, inexplicable feelings connected with the mere extension of time which belong to the higher development of manhood in us. Frangible things are of less value than things that are infrangible. Things that last are of more value, on the same plane, than their congeners are that do not last. Who can equal the pictures which are painted on the panes of glass in our winter rooms? Where can you find a Lambineau, or any painter who can give a mountain scenery such as we have for nothing, every morning, when we wake up, and such as the sun outside, or the stove inside, destroys before ten o’clock? These pictures are not valued as are those which are painted on canvas, and which are not half so good; but the element of enduring is with the latter, while the element of evanescence is with the former. though the pictures on the pane are finer than those on the canvas, they lack the element of time, on which value so largely depends. The soul craves, hungers for, this quality of continuance as an element for measuring the value of things. This element of time is somewhat felt in the earlier conditions of humanity; but it grows with the development of men, and attaches itself to every part of human life. I never saw a diamond that was so beautiful as are the dew-drops which I see on my lawn in summer. What is the difference between a dew-drop and a diamond? One goes in a moment; it flashes and dies; but the other endures; and its value consists in its endurance. There are hundreds of things which are as beautiful as a diamond in their moment; but the endurance of the diamond is measured by ages, and not by moments, and so carries on the value. I do not draw these reasonings very close as yet—I do not desire to put too much emphasis upon them; but I think you will see that there is a drift in them, and that they will bear, at last, an important relation to this question of immortality. The element of manhood carries with it a very powerful sense of the value of existence. The desire to live is a blind instinct. A happy experience brings to this instinct many auxiliaries—the expectation of pleasure; the wish to complete unfinished things; the clinging affection to those that have excited love; and habits of enterprise. Besides all these, is a development of the sense of value in simply being. We have said that in external matters the continuity of being is an element of value in the judgment which mankind at large have put upon things. We say that the same is true in respect to the inward existence—to manhood itself. The savage cares very little for life. He lives for to-day; and in every to-day he lives for the hour. Time is of the least importance to him. The barbarian differs from the savage in this: that he lives to-day for tomorrow, perhaps, but not for next year. The semi-civilized man lives for next year; but only for the year, or for years. The civilized man begins to live in the present for the future. And the Christian civilized man begins to live with a sense of the forever. The extension of the sense of time goes on with the development of manhood in men. The sweet, the tender, the loving, the thoughtful, the intellectual, live not simply with a sense of life as a pleasure-bringer: there grows up in them, with their development toward manhood, an intrinsic sense of the value of being itself. The soul knows the cargo that it carries. It knows that that cargo is destined to immortality. As men are conscious of seeing more, of thinking more, and of feeling more; as thought becomes more precious; as emotion becomes deeper and more valuable; so men more and more feel that they cannot afford to have such things go to waste. A man who takes in his hands a lump of mud and molds it to some pleasing form, cares but little when, dropping it, he sees it flatten on the ground. The man that grinds a crystal, and sees it broken, thinks of it for a moment, perhaps, with regret, but soon forgets it. No one, however, can see an organized thing, having its uses, and indicating exquisite skill and long experience, dashed to pieces without pain. But what is anything that is organized in life worth in comparison with the soul of a man? And if that soul be pure, and sweet, and deep, and noble, and active, and fruitful, who can, without a pang, look at it, and think that it must in an instant go to nothing, dissolving again as an icicle from a roof in the spring? The feeling is not the fruit of mere reflection. It is instinctive. It is universal. Men do not cultivate it on purpose. They cannot help having it. No man of moral culture can regard human life as without immortality except with profound melancholy. No man that is susceptible to reflectiveness can bear to think of man’s existence here without the bright background of another life. The sense of the continuity of existence is grounded in men, and grows with their refinement and development and strength, and gives color to their life, and change to their opinions, it may be. To men who have developed moral sense and intellectual culture, every element of value in life is made precious by some conscious or some unconscious element of time and continuance. It is the nature of our better faculties, in their better states, to place a man in such relations to everything that is most precious to him, that it gives him pleasure in the proportion in which it seems to be continuous and permanent, and gives him pain in the proportion in which it seems to be evanescent and perishing. We are building a crystal character with much pain and self-denial; and it is to be built as bubbles are blown? What is finer in line than the bubble? What is more airy? Where are pictures more exquisite, where are colors more tender and rich and beautiful—and where is there anything that is born so near to its end as a bubble? Is the character which we are building with so much pain and suffering and patience, with so much burden of conscience, and with so much aspiration; is the character which we are forming in the invisible realm of the soul—is that but a bubble? Is that only a thin film which reflects the transient experiences of a life of joy or sadness, and goes out? Then, what is life worth? If I had no function but that of a pismire; if I were a beetle that rolled in the dirt, and yet were clothed with a power of reflection, and knew what the depths of feeling were, what intense emotions were, and what struggling and yearning were; if, being a mere insect, I had all the works in the intellect of man, and all the aspiration that goes with spiritual elements; if I were but a leaf-cutter, a bug in the soil, or about the same thing on a little larger pattern, and were to be blotted out at death, what would be the use of my trying to grow? If by refining and whetting our faculties they become more susceptible to pleasure, they become equally susceptible to pain. And in this great, grinding, groaning world, pain is altogether out of proportion to pleasure, in an exquisite temperament. The finer men are the better they are, if they are forever; but the finer men are the worse they are if they are only for a day; for they have a disproportion of sensibility to suffering over and above present remuneration and conscious enjoyment. Men feel an intrinsic sense of personality and personal worth. They have self-esteem, which is the only central, spinal, manly faculty which gives them a sense of personal identity and personal value, and which is an auxiliary counselor of conscience itself. This sense of “I” demands something more than a short round of physical life, to be followed by extinction. I am too valuble to perish so; and every step in life has been training me in the direction of greater value. As men grow broader, and stronger, and finer, and deeper, and sweeter, they become more and more conscious of the intrinsic value of their being, and demand for themselves a harbor in order that they may not be wrecked or foundered. Nor do I think that there can be found, to any considerable extent, or developed, friendships which shall not, with all their strength and with all their depth, resist the conception of dissolution or of fading. For friendships are not casual likings. Friendships are not merely the interchange of good nature, and the ordinary friendly offices of good neighborhood. These things are friendly, but they do not comprise friendship. Two trees may grow contiguous, and throw their shade one over upon the other; but they never touch nor help each other; and their roots quarrel for the food that is in the ground. But two vines, growing over a porch, meet each other, and twine together, and twist fiber into fiber and stem into stem, and take shape from each other, and are substantially one. And such are friendships. Now, one cannot have his life divided as two trees are. He cannot enter into partnership with others, and be conscious that that partnership shall be but for an hour or for a moment. The sanctity, the honor, the exaltation, the exhilaration of a true and manly friendship lies in the thought of its continuance. There can be no deep friendship which does not sign for endlessness. Still more is this true of love: not that rudimentary form which seeks lower fruitions, and which is often but little more than passion done up in friendship; but that higher love which manifests itself chiefly in the spiritual realm; that love which is not forever asking, but forever giving; that love which is not centripetal, but centrifugal; that love which, like a mother’s, gives for the pleasure of giving; that love which reveres; that love which looks up; that love which seeks to exalt its object by doing what is pleasant and noble; that love which demands continuance, elevation, yea, grandeur, it may be, in the thing beloved. How little will such a love tolerate the idea of evanescence, the dread of discontinuing! Can such a love do other than yearn for immortality? So then, if you take the thought, it is this: that if men develop, they come under the dominion of higher faculties; and that it is then their nature to stamp on all their occupations, on their self-consciousness, on the whole development of their affections, the need of continuance, of immortality. There are, therefore, in the growth of the mind itself, as a department of nature, these elements of conviction. The mind cannot do other than develop in itself a faith in immortality. It may be said, and it sometimes is said, that the origin of the belief of existence out of the body, of spiritual existence, may be traced directly back to the dreams of the barbarous ages, to a period when men were so low that they did not recognize the difference between a dream and a waking reality—to a time when persons dreamed that their friends came back to them, and waked up and believed that they had been back. Thus, it is said, began the thought of continuity of life after death. For my part, I do not care how it began. The question is not how it started; the question is, What becomes of it now that it has begun? No matter how it was born, what purpose is it to serve? What is it adapted to do? How is it calculated to influence our manhood? In what way shall it be employed to lead man Godward? How shall it be used to work most effectually in the direction of civilization and refinement? It so fits every human soul, that men will not let it go. They cling to it with their inward and best nature. All experiences of human life fall in with this tendency of the mind. When men look out upon the incoherent and unmannerly course of things in time, I can understand how, believing in the future, they may live with patience; but in every age of the world where the clear light of immortality has not shone, men have mostly been discouraged, have been generally indifferent to public superiority, and have taken no interest in things done for the sake of humanity. Such is the worthlessness of time, to the thought of those that have no faith in the future, that they have cared for little except present physical enjoyment. And on the whole, when such men crowd together, and tribes take the place of individuals, or kingdoms take the place of tribes, with all their complications in the working out of their clashing results, they look upon human life, and feel that the world is not worth living for. Things are so uncertain, products are in such disproportion to their causes, or to the expectations of men, that if there is to be nothing but this life, then, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” is not only the philosophy of the epicurean, but the temptation of the most wise and frugal and self-restraining. The nature of life to a man who is highly educated requires that he should believe in the continuity and existence of the myriads that he sees in such a state of quarreling infelicity and wretchedness in this mortal condition. The utter futility of the best part of man’s life here, the total bankruptcy of his best endeavors, the worthlessness of his career from the material standpoint, makes it imperative on him to believe that he shall have another chance in another sphere of being. Is it enough to have been born, to have lived till one is of age, and then to be launched out to founder in mid-ocean? Is it enough that one should devote the best part of his life to the building of a character, only to see the fabric which he has constructed tumbling about his ears? Is this enough in the day of distress and bankruptcy? Is it enough, in the time when a man’s ambitions are crossed, and the sky is dark, and he can do nothing but stand amid the ruins of his hopes and expectations? Is not the thought revolting to every instinct of manhood? But if there is another life; if all our labor has this value in it, that while a man is building up his outward estate, if it is certain that the man himself will live, no matter what becomes of his property and his reputation, then all his endeavors have endless scope, and his life becomes redeemable and radiant. Nowhere else so much as in the realm of grief, I think, is the question of immortality interpreted. It is true that the first shock of overwhelming grief sometimes drives faith out of the mind; that it sometimes staggers the reason; that it sometimes dispossesses the moral sense of its accustomed health, and leaves the mind in weakness. As in a fever, the natural eye can see nothing aright, and things then seem to dance in the air, and take on grotesque forms, so persons who are bewildered with first sorrow oftentimes see things amiss. And there is no skepticism which is so deep and pulseless as that which often takes possession of people in the first great overmastering surprize and shock of grief. But after one had recovered a little, and the nerve has come to its wonted sensibility, the faith of immortality returns. There is that in every soul which knows what is the strength of life and noble deeds and aspirations; and therefore there is that in every soul which calls out for immortality. I cannot believe, I will not believe, when I walk upon the clod, that it is my mother that I tread under foot. She that bore me, she that every year more than gave birth to me out of her own soul’s aspiration—I will not believe that she is dust. Everything within me revolts at the idea. Do two persons walk together in an inseparable union, mingling their brightest and noblest thoughts, striving for the highest ideal, like flowers that grow by the side of each other, breathing fragrance each on the other, and shining in beauty each for the other; are two persons thus twined together and bound together for life, until in some dark hour one is called and the other is left; and does the bleeding heart go down to the grave and say, “I return dust to dust?” Was that dust, then? That trustworthiness; that fidelity; that frankness of truth; that transparent honesty; that heroism of love; that disinterestedness; that fitness and exquisiteness of taste; that fervor of love; that aspiration; that power of conviction; that piety; that great hope in God—were all these elements in the soul of the companion that had disappeared but just so many phenomena of matter? And have they already collapsed and gone, like last year’s flowers struck with frost, back again to the mold? In the grief of such an hour one will not let go the hope of resurrection. Can a parent go back from the grave where he has laid his children and say, “I shall never see them more?” Even as far back as the dim twilight in which David lived, he said, “Thou shalt not come to me, but I shall go to thee”; and is it possible for the parental heart to stand in our day by the side of the grave, where the children have been put out of sight, and say, “They neither shall come to me, nor shall I go to them; they are blossoms that have fallen; they never shall bring forth fruit”? It is unnatural. It is hideous. Everything that is in man, every instinct that is best in human nature repels it. Is not the human soul, then, itself a witness of the truth of immortality? Men say, “You cannot prove it. There is no argument that can establish it. No man has seen it, and it cannot be substantiated. It is not a ponderable thing.” Men demand that we should prove things by straight lines; by the alembic; by scales; by analysis; but I say that there is much in nature which is so high that scales and rules and alembics cannot touch it. And is not man’s soul a part of nature—the highest part? I hold that even the materialist may believe in immortality. For, although there is a gross kind of materialism, there may be a materialism which is consistent with a belief in immortality. Because, on the supposition that the mind is matter, it must be admitted that it is incomparably superior to any other matter that we are familiar with. Is there any matter outside of mind that produces thought and feeling such as we see evolved among men? If it be the theory that mind is matter, and if the matter of which the mind is composed be so far above all other kinds of matter in its fruit and product, is it not on so high a plane as presumably not to be subject to the lower and coarser forms of examination and test? I know no reason why cerebral matter may not be eternal. I do not belong to those who take that material view of the mind; but I do not know that immortality is inconsistent even with materialism; and how much more easily may it be reconciled to the view of those who believe in the ineffable character, the imponderable, spiritual condition, of the soul! In addition to these arguments, when we come to the Word of God, we hear the voices of those who sang and chanted in the past. We hear the disciple crying out, “Christ is risen!” and we hear the apostle preaching this new truth to mankind. So that now the heavens have been broken open. The secrets of the other life have been revealed. And is there not a presumption, following the line of a man’s best manhood, that immortality is true? Does one need to go into a rigorous logical examination of this subject? Should one stand jealously at the side of the sepulcher of Christ, and examine this matter as a policeman examines the certificate of a suspected man, or as one takes money from the hand of a cheating usurer and goes out to see if it is gold? Shall one stand at the door from which issue all the hopes that belong to the best part of man; shall one look upon that which is demanded by the very nature of his better manhood, and question it coldly, and tread it under foot? What do we gain by obliterating this fair vision? Why should not heaven continue to shine on? Why should we not look into it, and believe that it is, and that it waits for us? Have we not the foretokens of it? Is not the analogy of the faculties one that leads us to believe that there is some such thing? Does not the nature of every man that is high and noble revolt at flesh and matter? Are they not rising toward the ineffable? Are not all the intuitions and affections of men such that, the better they are, the more they have of things that are manly, the more indispensable it is that they should have endurance, etherealization, perpetuation? The heart and flesh cry out for God. They cry out for immortality. Not only does the Spirit from the heavenly land say to every toiling, yearning, anxious soul, “Come up hither,” but every soul that is striving upward has in it, if not a vocalized aspiration, yet a mute yearning—a voice of the soul—that cries out for heaven, “As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!” On such a day as this, then, in a community of moral feeling, how blest is the truth which comes to us, that we are not as the beasts that die; that we are as the gods that live! That for which we were made is immortality; and our journey is rough, straight, sharp, burdensome, with many tears. Our journey is not to the grave. I am not growing into old age to be blind, and to be deaf, and to be rheumatic, and to shrink a miserable cripple into the corner, shaking and tottering and forgetting all that I ever knew. The best part of me is untouched. The soul; the reason; the moral sense; the power to think; the power to will; the power to love; the power to admire purity, and to reach out after it—that is not touched by time, though its instrument and means of outer demonstration be corroded and failing. No physical weakness touches the soul. Only the body is touched by sickness. And shake that down! Shake it down! Let it go! For, as the chrysalis bursts open, and the covering which confines the perfected insect is dropt, that he may come out into brightness of form and largeness of life, so this body is but a chrysalis; and when we break through it, we rise on wings by the attraction of God, and by the propulsion of our own inevitable desire and need, and are forever with the Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 140: S. QUOTES ======================================================================== Short pithy quotes from Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) ~ ~ ~ ~ The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things. ~ ~ ~ ~ No man can tell if he is rich or poor — by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is — not according to what he has. ~ ~ ~ ~ If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is — then he cannot be a Christian anywhere. "Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him." 1Co 7:20 ~ ~ ~ ~ "I can forgive, but I cannot forget" — is only another way of saying, "I will not forgive." Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note — torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown again. ~ ~ ~ ~ The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it — to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right. ~ ~ ~ ~ I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest — who complained of bad luck. There is always work, and tools to work with — for those who will. ~ ~ ~ ~ The Bible is God’s chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on the rocks! ~ ~ ~ ~ The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way — or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things. ~ ~ ~ ~ The thankful heart will find, in every hour — some heavenly blessings. ~ ~ ~ ~ Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next! ~ ~ ~ ~ No man is more cheated, than the selfish man. ~ ~ ~ ~ Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit — since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere. ~ ~ ~ ~ It is not what we read, but what we remember — which makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do — which makes us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a life long struggle — which makes us valiant. ~ ~ ~ ~ Beauty is God’s trademark in creation. ~ ~ ~ ~ God washes the eyes by tears — until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. ~ ~ ~ ~ Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. ~ ~ ~ ~ Affliction comes to us all: not to make us sad — but sober; not to make us sorry — but to make us wise; not to impoverish us — but to enrich us! ~ ~ ~ ~ Be a hard master to yourself — and be lenient to everybody else. ~ ~ ~ ~ The moment an affliction can be patiently handled — it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain. ~ ~ ~ ~ Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety — or the handle of faith. ~ ~ ~ ~ The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope — then he sees worlds beyond! But, if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. ~ ~ ~ ~ Christianity works — while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost — while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. ~ ~ ~ ~ A library of holy books is not a luxury — but one of the necessities of the Christian life. ~ ~ ~ ~ What a mother sings to the cradle — goes all the way down to the coffin! ~ ~ ~ ~ The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians — but a school for the education of imperfect ones. ~ ~ ~ ~ Genius unexerted, is no more genius — than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks! ~ ~ ~ ~ A man’s true estate of power and riches is in himself. It is not in his dwelling or position or bank account — but in his own essential character. ~ ~ ~ ~ Conceited men, by an overweening pride — relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all. ~ ~ ~ ~ For fidelity, devotion, and love — many a two-legged animal is below the dog. Happy would it be for thousands of people, if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say: I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog. ~ ~ ~ ~ There is no man that lives — who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. ~ ~ ~ ~ In the family, happiness is in the proportion in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens. ~ ~ ~ ~ There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut — than by all the wisdom in the world. ~ ~ ~ ~ It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words — that is friendship. ~ ~ ~ ~ It’s easier to go down a hill than up it — but the view is much better at the top. ~ ~ ~ ~ Hold yourself responsible to a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never make excuses. ~ ~ ~ ~ Blessed are the happiness makers. Blessed are they who know how to shine on one’s gloom, with their cheer. ~ ~ ~ ~ Greatness lies not in being strong — but in the right use of strength. He is the greatest, whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own. ~ ~ ~ ~ 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. ~ ~ ~ ~ Whatever is almost true — is quite false. The most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth — are more likely to lead astray. ~ ~ ~ ~ It is not work that kills men — it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade. ~ ~ ~ ~ A person without a sense of humor, is like a wagon without springs. It is jolted by every pebble on the road. ~ ~ ~ ~ There is a power in the human mind to see things as they might be. ~ ~ ~ ~ Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. ~ ~ ~ ~ All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can’t be broken down — provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. ~ ~ ~ ~ A dull axe never loves grindstones, but a keen workman does; and he puts his tool on them in order that it may be sharp. In the same way, men do not like grinding; but they are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out with them, and therefore He is grinding them. ~ ~ ~ ~ We never know how much one loves us — until we know how much he is willing to endure and suffer for us. It is the suffering element which measures love. The characters that are great must, of necessity, be characters that shall be willing, patient and strong to endure for others. ~ ~ ~ ~ You are only sure of today — do not let yourself be cheated out of it. ~ ~ ~ ~ When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve — he makes a compact with the devil, and sells him soul for the value of an ounce. ~ ~ ~ ~ It is not what we gather up, but what we give up — which makes us rich. ~ ~ ~ ~ What a pity flowers can utter no sound! A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle — oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! ~ ~ ~ ~ We are but a point, a single comma — and God is the literature of eternity! ~ ~ ~ ~ Nobody ever sees truth — except in fragments. ~ ~ ~ ~ If a man can have only one kind of sense — let him have common sense! ~ ~ ~ ~ It is not the going out of port, but the coming into port — which determines the success of a voyage. ~ ~ ~ ~ The things that hurt us, teach us. ~ ~ ~ ~ Repentance begins instantly — but reformation often requires a sphere of years. ~ ~ ~ ~ No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today — enjoy it and bless God for it. ~ ~ ~ ~ God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how. ~ ~ ~ ~ There is no friendship, no love — like that of the parent for the child. ~ ~ ~ ~ The mother’s heart, is the child’s schoolroom. ~ ~ ~ ~ The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man — and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light — mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. ~ ~ ~ ~ Your greatest pleasure, is that which rebounds from hearts which you have made glad. ~ ~ ~ ~ Life would be a perpetual flea hunt — if a man were obliged to hunt down all the innuendoes, untruths, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him. ~ ~ ~ ~ He is the happiest man, who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind. ~ ~ ~ ~ Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures — it weaves imaginations — it fills the future with delight. ~ ~ ~ ~ The head learns new things — but the heart forever practices old experiences. ~ ~ ~ ~ Sorrow makes men sincere. ~ ~ ~ ~ A man without ambition — is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it. ~ ~ ~ ~ Clothes and manners do not make the man — but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. ~ ~ ~ ~ Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory, as when defeated in a good cause. ~ ~ ~ ~ Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest — I would say, his capacity to hate. ~ ~ ~ ~ The commerce of the world is conducted by the strong — and usually it operates against the weak. ~ ~ ~ ~ Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system — is yet exemplifying infinite diversities. ~ ~ ~ ~ Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth! "Owe nothing to anyone — except for your obligation to love one another." Rom 13:8 ~ ~ ~ ~ A baby is nothing but a bundle of possibilities. ~ ~ ~ ~ A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude — is itself a fortune. ~ ~ ~ ~ Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. ~ ~ ~ ~ Our best successes — often comes after our greatest disappointments. ~ ~ ~ ~ It is not fitting for a man to pray cream — and live skim milk. ~ ~ ~ ~ Of all man’s works of art — a cathedral is greatest. Yet a vast and majestic tree — is greater than that! ~ ~ ~ ~ The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man — but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance. ~ ~ ~ ~ To array a man’s will against his sickness, is the supreme art of medicine. ~ ~ ~ ~ The first hour of the morning, is the rudder of the day. ~ ~ ~ ~ Every artist dips his brush in his own soul — and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~ ~ ~ ~ Too much looking backward — is bad for progress. "One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus!" Php 3:13-14 ~ ~ ~ ~ The basest, most contemptible kind of praise — is that which first speaks well of a man — and then qualifies it with a BUT. ~ ~ ~ ~ Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men — and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations. ~ ~ ~ ~ Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others are plain, honest and upright — like the broad faced sunflower and the hollyhock. ~ ~ ~ ~ There is no slave out of Heaven, like a loving woman. And of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother. ~ ~ ~ ~ There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read the Bible for ammunition. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. Such men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive! ~ ~ ~ ~ A person can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it — than one could suddenly grow from a child’s stature to an adult’s, without harm. ~ ~ ~ ~ When the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep. ~ ~ ~ ~ God puts the excess of hope in one man — in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent. ~ ~ ~ ~ Diligence is the price of success of any sort. ~ ~ ~ ~ A crafty man robs no one half as much as himself. ~ ~ ~ ~ The beginning, is the promise of the end. ~ ~ ~ ~ No cradle for an emperor’s child, was ever prepared with so much magnificence — as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle. ~ ~ ~ ~ Spreading Christianity abroad — is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home. ~ ~ ~ ~ Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning. ~ ~ ~ ~ Let parents who hate their offspring — rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches. And before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty! ~ ~ ~ ~ Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth, classified and arranged. ~ ~ ~ ~ Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated — who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes. ~ ~ ~ ~ Flattery is praise insincerely given — for a selfish purpose. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 141: S. THE THEATER ======================================================================== The Theater! Henry Ward Beecher, 1849 Desperate efforts are made, year by year, to increase this corrupting evil. Its claims are put forth with vehemence. Let us examine them. 1. They claim that the theater cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be to facts. Let the roll of English literature be explored — our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics, and Divines — and for what part of their memorable writings are we indebted to the theater? If we except one period of our literature, the claim is wholly groundless; and at this day, the truth is so opposite to the claim, that extravagance, affectation, and rant, are proverbially denominated theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to supersede the admirable implements of husbandry, now in use, by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks — it would not be more absurd than to advocate that clumsy machine of literature, the Theater — by the side of the popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is not congenial to our age or necessities. Its day is gone by — it is in its senility, as might be suspected, from the weakness of the garrulous apologies which it puts forth. 2. They claim that the theater is a school of morals. Yes, doubtless! So the guillotine is defended on the plea of humanity. Inquisitors declare their racks and torture-beds to be the instruments of love, affectionately admonishing the fallen of the error of their ways. The slave-trade has been defended on the plea of humanity, and slavery is now defended for its mercies. Were it necessary for any school or party, doubtless we should hear arguments to prove the Devil’s grace, and the utility of his agency among men. But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to Theater-virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain questions. Will any of you who have been to Theaters, please to tell me whether virtue ever received important accessions from the gallery of Theaters? Will you tell me whether the Theater is a place where an ordinarily virtuous man would love to seat his children? Was ever a Theater known where a prayer at the opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be tormentingly discordant? How does it happen, that in a school for morals — the teachers never learn their own lessons? Would you allow a son or daughter to associate alone with actors or actresses? Do these men who promote virtue so zealously when acting, take any part in public moral enterprises, when their stage dresses are off? Which would surprise you most, to see actors steadily at Church, or to see Christians steadily at a Theater? Would not both strike you as singular incongruities? What is the reason that loose and abandoned men abhor religion in a Church — and love it so much in a Theater? Since the Theater is the handmaid of virtue, why are drinking houses so necessary to its neighborhood, yet so offensive to Churches? The trustees of the Tremont Theater in Boston, publicly protested against an order of council forbidding liquor to be sold on the premises, on the ground that it was impossible to support the Theater without it. 3. I am told that Christians attend the Theaters. Then I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A holy monk reproached the devil for stealing a young man who was found at the Theater. He promptly replied, "I found him on my premises, and took him." But, it is said, if Christians would take Theaters in hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men — they might become the handmaids of religion. The Church has had an intimate acquaintance with the Theater for eighteen hundred years. During that period, every available agent for the diffusion of morality into it has been earnestly tried. The result is, that familiarity has bred contempt and abhorrence. If, after so long and thorough an acquaintance, the Church stands the mortal enemy of Theaters, the testimony is conclusive. It is the evidence of generations speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any longer the precincts of the Church, with impudent proposals of alliance. When the Church needs an alliance, it will not look for it in the kennel. Ah! what a blissful scene would that be — the Church and Theater imparadised in each other’s arms! What a sweet conjunction would be made, could we build our Churches so as to preach in the morning, and play in the theaters by night! And how melting it would be, beyond the love of David and Jonathan, to see minister and actor in loving embrace; one slaying Satan by direct thrusts of plain preaching — and the other sucking his very life out by the enchantment of the Drama! To this millennial scene of Church and Theater, I only suggest a single improvement: that the church building be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, when not needed for prayer-meetings; that the Sabbath-school room should be furnished with dice and card-tables, and useful texts of scripture might be printed on the cards, for the pious meditations of gamblers during the intervals of play and worship. 4. But if theaters are put down, men will go to worse vices. Where will they find worse ones? Are those who go to the Theater, the Circus, the Race-course, the men who abstain from worse places? It is notorious that the crowd of theater-goers are vomited up from these worse places. It is notorious that the Theater is the door to all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this infamous place that the young learn to love those wicked associates and practices to which, else, they would have been strangers. Half the victims of the gallows and of the Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools for morals were to them the gate of debauchery, the porch of pollution, the vestibule of the very house of Death! 5. The theater makes one acquainted with human life, and with human nature. It is too true. There is scarcely an evil incident to human life, which may not be fully learned at the Theater. Here flourishes every variety of wit — ridicule of sacred things, burlesques of religion, and licentious double-entendres. Nowhere can so much of this lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the Theater! There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice; immorality prospers; and the young come away alive to the glorious liberty of conquest and lust. But the stage is not the only place about the Drama where human nature is learned. In the Boxes the young may make the acquaintance of those who abhor home and domestic quiet; of those who glory in profusion and obtrusive display; of those who expend all, and more than their earnings, upon mirthful clothes and jewelry; of those who think it no harm to borrow their money without permission from their employer’s til; of those who despise vulgar appetite, but affect polished and genteel licentiousness. Or, he may go to the Theater, and learn the whole round of villain-life from masters in the art. He may sit down among thieves, blood-loving scoundrels, swindlers, broken-down men of pleasure — the coarse, the vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman, the infernal. Or, if still more of human nature is wished, he can learn yet more; for the Theater epitomizes every degree of corruption. Let the virtuous young scholar go to the Theater, and learn there, decency, modesty, and refinement, among the quarreling, drunken, ogling, mincing, brutal women of the brothel! Ah! there is no place like the Theater for learning human nature! A young man can gather up more experimental knowledge here in a week, than elsewhere in a year. But I wonder that the Theater should ever confess the fact; and yet more, that it should lustily plead in self-defense, that Theaters teach men so much of human nature! Here are brilliant bars, to teach the young to drink; here are mirthful companions, to undo in half an hour, the scruples formed by an education of years; here are pimps of pleasure, to delude the brain with bewildering sophisms of immorality; here is pleasure, all flushed in its gayest, boldest, most fascinating forms! Few there be who can resist its wiles, and fewer yet who can yield to them and escape ruin. If you would pervert the taste — then go to the Theater. If you would imbibe false views of life — then go to the Theater. If you would efface as speedily as possible all qualms of conscience — then go to the Theater. If you would put yourself irreconcilably against the spirit of virtue and religion — then go to the Theater. If you would be infected with each particular vice in the catalogue of Depravity — then go to the Theater. Let parents, who wish to make their children weary of home and quiet domestic enjoyments — take them to the Theater. If it be desirable for the young to loathe industry and education, and burn for fierce excitements, and seek them by stealth or through pilferings, if need be — then send them to the Theater! It is notorious that the bill of fare at these temples of pleasure is made up to the taste of the baser appetites; that base comedy, and baser farce, running into absolute obscenity — are the only means of filling a house. Theaters must be corrupt, to live; and those who attend them will be corrupted! Let me turn your attention to several reasons which should incline every young man to forswear such immoral amusements. 1. The first reason is, their waste of TIME. I do not mean that they waste only the time consumed while you are within them; but they make you waste your time afterwards. You will go once — and wish to go again; you will go twice, and seek it a third time; you will go a third time — a fourth; and whenever the Theater opens, you will be seized with a restlessness and craving to go, until the appetite will become a passion. You will then waste your nights: your mornings being heavy, melancholy, and dull — you will waste them. Your day will next be confused and crowded; your duties poorly executed or deferred; habits of arrant slothfulness will ensue; and day by day, industry will grow tiresome, and leisure sweeter, until you are a waster of time — an idle man; and if not a rogue, you will be a fortunate exception. 2. You ought not to countenance these things because they will waste your MONEY. Young gentlemen! Wasting and squandering is as shameful as hoarding. A fool can throw away — and a fool can lock up; but it is a wise man, who, neither stingy nor profuse, steers the middle course of generous economy and frugal liberality. A young man, at first, thinks that all he spends at such places, is the ticket-price of the Theater, or the small bet on the races; and this he knows is not much. But this is certainly not the whole bill — nor half. First, you pay your entrance fee. But there are a thousand petty luxuries which one must not neglect, or custom will call him niggard. You must buy your cigars, and your friend’s. You must buy your juleps, and treat in your turn. You must occasionally wait on your lady, and she must be comforted with divers confections. You cannot go to such places in homely working dress — new and costlier clothes must be bought. All your companions have jewelry — you will need a ring, or a gold watch, or an ebony cane, or some other luxury. Thus, item presses upon item, and in the year a long bill runs up of money spent for little trifles. But if all this money could buy you off from the yet worse effects, the bargain would not be so dear. But compare, if you please, this mode of expenditure with the principle of your ordinary expense. In all ordinary and business-transactions you get an equivalent for your money — either food for nourishment, or clothes for comfort, or permanent property. But when a young man has spent one or two hundred dollars for the Theater, Circus, Races, Balls, and reveling — what has he to show for it at the end of the year? Nothing at all good — and much that is bad! You sink your money as really as if you threw it into the sea; and you do it in such a way that you form habits of careless expense. You lose all sense of the value of property; and when a man sees no value in property, he will see no necessity for labor; and when he is both lazy and careless of property, he will become dishonest. Thus, a habit which seems innocent — the habit of trifling with money — often degenerates to slothfulness, indolence, and roguery. 3. Such pleasures are incompatible with your ordinary pursuits. The very way to ruin an honest business is to be ashamed of it, or to put alongside of it, something which a man loves better. There can be no industrial calling so exciting as the Theater, the Circus, and the Races. If you wish to make your real employment very dull and hateful, visit such places. After the glare of the Theater has dazzled your eyes — your blacksmith-shop will look smuttier than ever it did before. After you have seen stalwart heroes pounding their antagonists — you will find it a dull business to pound iron. And a faithful apprentice who has seen such gracious glances of love and such rapturous kissing of hands — will hate to dirty his heroic fingers with mortar, or by rolling felt on the hatter’s board. If a man had a plain, but most useful wife — patient, kind, intelligent, hopeful in sorrow, and cheerful in prosperity, but yet very plain — would he be wise to bring under his roof a fascinating and seductive beauty? Would the contrast, and her fascinations, make him love his own wife better? Young gentlemen, your wives are your industrial calling! These theater beauties are artful jades, dressed up on purpose to purloin your affections. Let no man be led to commit adultery with a Theater, against the rights of his own trade. 4. Another reason why you should let alone these deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage you in BAD COMPANY. To the Theater, the Ball, the Circus, the Race-course, the gambling-table — resort all the idle, the dissipated, the rogues, the licentious, the epicures, the gluttons, the artful jades, the immoral, the worthless, the refuse. When you go, you will not, at first, take introduction to them all, but to those nearest like yourself; by them the way will be open to others. A very great evil has befallen a young virtuous man, when wicked men feel that they have a right to his acquaintance. When I see a gambler slapping a young mechanic on the back; or a lecherous scoundrel suffusing a young man’s cheek by a story at which, despite his blushes, he yet laughs — I know the youth has been guilty of criminal indiscretion, or these men could not approach him thus. That is a brave and strong heart that can stand up pure in a company of seductive wretches. When wicked men mean to seduce a young man, so tremendous are the odds in favor of practiced experience against innocence, that there is not one chance in a thousand — if the young man lets them approach him. Let every young man remember that he carries, by nature, a heart full of passions, just such as bad men have. With youth these passions slumber; but temptation can wake them, bad men can influence them — they know the road, they know how to serenade the heart; how to raise the sash, and elope with each passion. There is but one resource for innocence among men or women; and that is, an embargo upon all commerce of bad men. Bar the window! — bolt the door! — nor answer their seductions, even if they charm ever so wisely! In no other way can you be safe. So well am I assured of the power of bad men to seduce the erring purity of man, that I pronounce it next to impossible for man or woman to escape, if they permit bad men to approach and dally with them. Oh! there is more than magic in temptation, when it beams down upon the heart of man, like the sun upon a morass! At the noontide-hour of purity, the mists shall rise and wreathe a thousand fantastic forms of delusion; and a sudden outbreak of passion, a single gleam of the imagination, one sudden rush of the capricious heart — and the resistance of years may be prostrated in a moment, the heart entered by the besieging enemy, its rooms sought out, and every lovely affection rudely seized by the invader’s lust, and given to ravishment and to ruin! 5. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, circus-people, actors and racing-jockeys — I pronounce them to be men who live off of society without returning any useful equivalent. At the most lenient sentence, they are a band of mirthful idlers. They do not throw one cent into the stock of public good. They do not make shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or anything else that is useful. A stableboy is useful; he performs a necessary office. A street-sweeper, a chimney-sweep, the seller of old clothes, a tinker — all these men are respectable; for though their callings are very humble, they are founded on the real needs of society. The bread which such men eat, is the representation of what they have done for society; not the bread of idleness, but of usefulness. But what do pleasure-mongers do for a living? — what useful service do they do? — what do they make? — what do they repair? — what do they for the mind, for the body, for man, or child, or beast? The dog that gnaws a refuse bone, pays for it in barking at a thief. The cat that purrs its gratitude for a morsel of meat, will clear our house of rats. But what do we get in return for supporting whole loads of play-actors, and circus-clowns? They eat, they drink, they giggle, they grimace, they strut in garish clothes — and what else? They have not afforded even useful amusement; they are professional laugh-makers; their trade is comic or tragic buffoonery — the trade of tickling men. We do not feel any need of them, before they come; and when they leave, the only effects resulting from their visits are, unruly boys, aping apprentices, and unsteady workmen. Now, upon principles of mere political economy, is it wise to support a growing class of wasteful idlers? If at the top of society, the government should erect a class of favored citizens, and pamper their idleness with fat pensions — the indignation of the whole community would break out against such privileged aristocrats. But we have, at the bottom of society, a set of wandering, jesting, dancing, fiddling aristocrats, whom we support for the sake of their capers, grins, and caricatures upon life — and no one seems to think this an evil! 6. But even this is cheap, compared with the evil which I shall mention. If these morality-teachers could guarantee us against all evil from their doings, we might pay their support and think it a cheap bargain. But the direct and necessary effect of their pursuit, however, is to debauch and corrupt others! Those who defend Theaters would scorn to admit actors into their home society. It is within the knowledge of all, that men, who thus cater for public pleasure, are excluded from respectable society. The general fact is not altered by the exceptions — and honorable exceptions there are. In the support of gamblers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jockeys, a Christian and industrious people are guilty of supporting mere mischief-makers — men whose very heart is diseased, and whose sores exhale contagion to all around them! We pay moral assassins to stab the purity of our children. We warn our sons of temptation, and yet plant the seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes and thorns of the worst temptation. If to this strong language, you answer, that these men are generous and jovial, that their very business is to please, that they do not mean to do harm — I reply, that I do not charge them with knowingly trying to produce immorality — but with pursuing a course which produces it, whether they want to or not. Moral disease, like the plague, is contagious, whether the patient wishes it or not. A vile man infects his children in spite of himself. Criminals make criminals, just as taint makes taint, disease makes disease, and plagues make plagues. Those who run the mirthful round of pleasure cannot help dazzling the young, confounding their industrious habits, and perverting their morals — it is the very nature of their employment. These debauching and corrupting professions could not be sustained but by the patronage of moral men. Where do the clerks, the apprentices, the dissipated, get their money which buys an entrance? From whom is that money drained, always, in every land, which supports vice? Unquestionably from the good, the laborious, the careful. The skill, the enterprise, the labor, the good morals of every nation — are always taxed for the expenses of vice. Jails are built out of honest men’s earnings. Courts are supported from peaceful men’s property. Penitentiaries are built by the toil of virtuous people. Crime never pays its own way. Vice has no hands to work, no head to calculate. Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to waste; and good men, directly or indirectly, foot the bill. At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the return of that bread which we wastefully cast upon the waters; when, all over the sea, men are fishing up the wrecks of those sunken ships, and full freighted fortunes, which foundered in the sad storm of recent times — some question might be asked about the economy of vice; the economy of paying for our sons’ idleness; the economy of maintaining a whole lazy profession of gamblers, racers, actresses, and actors — human, equine and beastly — whose errand is mischief, and luxury, and license, and giggling folly. It ought to be asked of men who groan at a tax, to pay their honest foreign debts — whether they can be taxed to pay the bills of charlatans? It is astonishing how little the wicked influence of those professions has been considered, which exert themselves mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. That whole race of men, whose camp is the Theater, the Circus, the Gambling-table, is a race whose instinct is destruction, who live to corrupt, and live off of the corruption which they make. For their support, we sacrifice annual hoards of youthful victims. Even sober Christian men, look smilingly upon the garish outside of these bands of destruction; and while we see the results to be, slothfulness, dissipation, idleness, dishonesty, vice and crime — still they lull us with the lying lyric of "classic drama" and "human life" "morality" "poetry" and "comedy"? Disguise it as you will, these men of sinful pleasure are, the world over, Corrupters of Youth. Upon no principle of kindness can we tolerate them; no excuse is bold enough; we can take bail from none of their weaknesses — it is not safe to have them abroad even upon excessive bail. You might as well take bail for lions, or allow scorpions to breed in our streets for a suitable license; or raise a tax to fund assassins. Men whose life is given to evil pleasures are, to ordinary criminals — what a universal pestilence is to a local disease. They fill the air, pervade the community, and bring around every youth an atmosphere of death. Corrupters of youth have no mitigation of their baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, their knowledge nothing, their varied accomplishments nothing. These are only so many facilities for greater evil. Is a serpent less deadly, because his burnished scales shine? Shall a dove praise and court the vulture, because he has such glossy plumage? The more talents a bad man has, the more dangerous is he — they are the garlands which cover up the knife with which he will stab. There is no such a thing as good corrupters. You might as well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a very lenient assassination, or a pious devil. We denounce them; for it is our nature to loathe treacherous corruption. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb — but who mourns the wolf which rent it? We weep for despoiled innocence — but who sheds a tear for the savage fiend who plucks away the flower of virtue? Even thus, we palliate the sins of generous youth; and their downfall is our sorrow. But for their destroyers, for the corrupters of youth, who practice the infernal chemistry of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice — we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience. We lift our heart to Him who bears the iron rod of vengeance, and pray for the appointed time of judgment. You miscreants! You think that you are growing tall, and walking safely, because God has forgotten? The bolt of judgment shall yet smite you! You shall be heard as the falling of an oak in the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the more terrible its resounding downfall! Oh! you corrupter of youth! I would not have your death, for all the pleasure of your guilty life, a thousand fold. You shall draw near to the shadow of death. To the Christian, these shades are the golden haze which Heaven’s light makes, when it meets the earth and mingles with its shadows. But to you, these shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. Images of terror in the Future shall dimly rise and beckon — the ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out their skinny hands to push you forward! You shall not die unattended. Despair shall mock you. Agony shall offer her fiery cup, to your parched lips. Remorse shall feel for your heart, and rend it open. Godly men shall breathe freer at your death, and utter thanksgiving when you are gone! Men shall place your grave-stone as a monument and testimony that a plague is stayed; no tear shall wet it, no mourner linger there! And, as borne on the blast, your guilty spirit whistles toward the gate of Hell, the hideous shrieks of those whom your hand has destroyed, shall pierce you — Hell’s first welcome! In the bosom of that everlasting storm which rains perpetual misery in Hell, shall you, corrupter of youth — be forever hidden from our view! And may God wipe out the very thoughts of you from our memory! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 142: S. TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY ======================================================================== Twelve Causes of Dishonesty By Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Philadelphia Henry Altemus COPYRIGHTED 1896 by HENRY ALTEMUS Henry Altemus, Manufacturer PHILADELPHIA TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY Only extraordinary circumstances can give the appearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usually, not to seem honest, is not to be so. The quality must not be doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and day and taking hues from both; it must be day-light, clear, and effulgent. This is the doctrine of the Bible: Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. In general it may be said that no one has honesty without dross, until he has honesty without suspicion. We are passing through times upon which the seeds of dishonesty have been sown broadcast, and they have brought forth a hundred-fold. These times will pass away; but like ones will come again. As physicians study the causes and record the phenomena of plagues and pestilences, to draw from them an antidote against their recurrence, so should we leave to another generation a history of moral plagues, as the best antidote to their recurring malignity. Upon a land,—capacious beyond measure, whose prodigal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abundance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signalized by enterprise and industry—there came a summer of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come. Each day grew brighter. No reins were put upon the imagination. Its dreams passed for realities. Even sober men, touched with wildness, seemed to expect a realization of oriental tales. Upon this bright day came sudden frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke from gorgeous dreams in the midst of desolation. The harvests of years were swept away in a day. The strongest firms were rent as easily as the oak by lightning. Speculating companies were dispersed as seared leaves from a tree in autumn. Merchants were ruined by thousands; clerks turned adrift by ten thousands. Mechanics were left in idleness. Farmers sighed over flocks and wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. The wide sea of commerce was stagnant; upon the realm of Industry settled down a sullen lethargy. Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass. Banks were exploded,—or robbed,—or fleeced by astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces, and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of villains. The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like mines on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to have forsaken men. Many that had earned a reputation for sterling honesty were cast so suddenly headlong into wickedness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion overgrew confidence, and the heart bristled with the nettles and thorns of fear and jealousy. Then had almost come to pass the divine delineation of ancient wickedness: The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince and the judge ask for a reward: and the great man uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The world looked upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose harvest had glutted the markets, and rotted in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins of an earthquake, mourning for children, for houses crushed, and property buried forever. That no measure might be put to the calamity, the Church of God, which rises a stately tower of refuge to desponding men, seemed now to have lost its power of protection. When the solemn voice of Religion should have gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek in him their strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise of warring sects; some contending against others with bitter warfare; and some, possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and rending themselves. In a time of panic, and disaster, and distress, and crime, the fountain which should have been for the healing of men, cast up its sediments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollution. In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the clamor of contention, and cooled the heats of parties; but the greatness of our national calamity seemed only to enkindle the fury of political parties. Contentions never ran with such deep streams and impetuous currents, as amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity. States were greater debtors to foreign nations, than their citizens were to each other. Both states and citizens shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dishonestly from the taxes necessary to discharge them. The General Government did not escape, but lay becalmed, or pursued its course, like a ship, at every furlong touching the rocks, or beating against the sands. The Capitol trembled with the first waves of a question which is yet to shake the whole land. New questions of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legislation, and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest decline of family government; an increase of the ratio of popular ignorance; a decrease of reverence for law, and an effeminate administration of it. Popular tumults have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers; and like them, have swept over the land with desolation, and left their filthy slime in the highest places:—upon the press;—upon the legislature;—in the halls of our courts;—and even upon the sacred bench of Justice. If unsettled times foster dishonesty, it should have flourished among us. And it has. Our nation must expect a periodical return of such convulsions; but experience should steadily curtail their ravages, and remedy their immoral tendencies. Young men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught by the severest of masters—experience. They should be studied; and that they may be, I shall, from this general survey, turn to a specific enumeration of the causes of dishonesty. 1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a vehement inclination to dishonest ways. Knavish propensities are inherent: born with the child and transmissible from parent to son. The children of a sturdy thief, if taken from him at birth and reared by honest men, would, doubtless, have to contend against a strongly dishonest inclination. Foundlings and orphans under public charitable charge, are more apt to become vicious than other children. They are usually born of low and vicious parents, and inherit their parents’ propensities. Only the most thorough moral training can overrule this innate depravity. 2. A child naturally fair-minded, may become dishonest by parental example. He is early taught to be sharp in bargains, and vigilant for every advantage. Little is said about honesty, and much upon shrewd traffic. A dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote; visitors are regaled with the boy’s precocious keenness. Hearing the praise of his exploits, he studies craft, and seeks parental admiration by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for his safety, that he must not range beyond the law: that would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality thus: Legal honesty is the best policy,—dishonesty, then, is a bad bargain—and therefore wrong—everything is wrong which is unthrifty. Whatever profit breaks no legal statute—though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness, by gloss; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupulous conscience—he considers fair, and says: The law allows it. Men may spend a long life without an indictable action, and without an honest one. No law can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others’ misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over-reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds, swooping down upon the weak, the straggling, and the weary. The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the law itself to piracy, and works outrageousg fraud in the hall of Courts, by the decision of judges, and under the seal of Justice. 3. Dishonesty is learned from one’s employers. The boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, where the employer practises legal frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter among the better taught clerks. The master tells them that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he could not help. At first, it verily pains the youth’s scruples, and tinges his face to frame a deliberate dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His tongue stammers at a lie; but the example of a rich master, the jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual practice, cure all this. He becomes adroit in fleecing customers for his master’s sake, and equally dexterous in fleecing his master for his own sake. 4. Extravagance is a prolific source of dishonesty. Extravagance,—which is foolish expense, or expense disproportionate to one’s means,—may be found in all grades of society; but it is chiefly apparent among the rich, those aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be thought affluent. Many a young man cheats his business, by transferring his means to theatres, race-courses, expensive parties, and to the nameless and numberless projects of pleasure. The enterprise of others is baffled by the extravagance of their family; for few men can make as much in a year as an extravagant woman can carry on her back in one winter. Some are ambitious of fashionable society, and will gratify their vanity at any expense. This disproportion between means and expense soon brings on a crisis. The victim is straitened for money; without it he must abandon his rank; for fashionable society remorselessly rejects all butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. Which shall he choose, honesty and mortifying exclusion, or gaiety purchased by dishonesty? The severity of this choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life with or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion. The struggle with others is on the very ground of honor. A wife led from affluence to frigid penury and neglect; from leisure and luxury to toil and want; daughters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when poor,—this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic haze of despondency. Honor, love and generosity, strangely bewitched, plead for dishonesty as the only alternative to such suffering. But go, young man, to your wife; tell her the alternative; if she is worthy of you, she will face your poverty with a courage which shall shame your fears, and lead you into its wilderness and through it, all unshrinking. Many there be who went weeping into this desert, and ere long, having found in it the fountains of the purest peace, have thanked God for the pleasures of poverty. But if your wife unmans your resolution, imploring dishonor rather than penury, may God pity and help you! You dwell with a sorceress, and few can resist her wiles. 5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty. The Royal Preacher tells us: The borrower is servant to the lender. Debt is a rigorous servitude. The debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, and frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master. He is tempted to make ambiguous statements; pledges, with secret passages of escape; contracts, with fraudulent constructions; lying excuses, and more mendacious promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settlements; to prevaricate upon the terms; to resist equity, and devise specious fraud. When the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the debtor then thinks himself released from moral obligation, and brought to a legal game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. He disputes true accounts; he studies subterfuges; extorts provocatious delays; and harbors in every nook, and corner, and passage, of the law’s labyrinth. At length the measure is filled up, and the malignant power of debt is known. It has opened in the heart every fountain of iniquity; it has besoiled the conscience; it has tarnished the honor; it has made the man a deliberate student of knavery; a systematic practitioner of fraud; it has dragged him through all the sewers of petty passions,—anger, hate, revenge, malicious folly, or malignant shame. When a debtor is beaten at every point, and the law will put her screws upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of dishonesty into which he will not boldly plunge. Some men put their property to the flames, assassinate the detested creditor, and end the frantic tragedy by suicide, or the gallows. Others, in view of the catastrophe, have converted all property to cash, and concealed it. The law’s utmost skill, and the creditor’s fury, are alike powerless now,—the tree is green and thrifty; its roots drawing a copious supply from some hidden fountain. Craft has another harbor of resort for the piratical crew of dishonesty; viz.: putting the property out of the law’s reach by a fraudulent conveyance. Whoever runs in debt, and consumes the equivalent of his indebtedness; whoever is fairly liable to damage for broken contracts; whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost the benefit of his outlay; whoever is legally obliged to pay for his malice or carelessness; whoever by infidelity to public trusts has made his property a just remuneration for his defaults;—whoever of all these, or whoever, under any circumstances, puts out of his hands property, morally or legally due to creditors, is a dishonest man. The crazy excuses which men render to their consciences, are only such as every villain makes, who is unwilling to look upon the black face of his crimes. He who will receive a conveyance of property, knowing it to be illusive and fraudulent, is as wicked as the principal; and as much meaner, as the tool and subordinate of villany is meaner than the master who uses him. If a church, knowing all these facts, or wilfully ignorant of them, allows a member to nestle in the security of the sanctuary; then the act of this robber, and the connivance of the church, are but the two parts of one crime. 6. Bankruptcy, although a branch of debt, deserves a separate mention. It sometimes crushes a man’s spirit, and sometimes exasperates it. The poignancy of the evil depends much upon the disposition of the creditors; and as much upon the disposition of the victim. Should they act with the lenity of Christian men, and he with manly honesty, promptly rendering up whatever satisfaction of debt he has,—he may visit the lowest places of human adversity, and find there the light of good men’s esteem, the support of conscience, and the sustenance of religion. A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose tender-mercies are cruel; or his dishonest equivocations may exasperate their temper and provoke every thorn and brier of the law. When men’s passions are let loose, especially their avarice whetted by real or imaginary wrong; when there is a rivalry among creditors, lest any one should feast upon the victim more than his share; and they all rush upon him like wolves upon a wounded deer, dragging him down, ripping him open, breast and flank, plunging deep their bloody muzzles to reach the heart and taste blood at the very fountain;—is it strange that resistance is desperate and unscrupulous? At length the sufferer drags his mutilated carcass aside, every nerve and muscle wrung with pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. He curses the whole inhuman crew with envenomed imprecations; and thenceforth, a brooding misanthrope, he pays back to society, by studied villanies, the legal wrongs which the relentless justice of a few, or his own knavery, have brought upon him. 7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties practised because the law allows them. The very anxiety of law to reach the devices of cunning, so perplexes its statutes with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that like a castle gradually enlarged for centuries, it has its crevices, dark corners, secret holes and winding passages—an endless harbor for rats and vermin, where no trap can catch them. We are villanously infested with legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most flagrant dishonesties with impunity. They can do all of wrong which is profitable, without that part which is actionable. The very ingenuity of these miscreants excites such admiration of their skill, that their life is gilded with a specious respectability. Men profess little esteem for blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and run away; but for a gentleman who can break the whole of God’s law so adroitly, as to leave man’s law unbroken; who can indulge in such conservative stealing that his fellow-men award him a rank among honest men for the excessive skill of his dishonesty—for such a one, I fear, there is almost universal sympathy. 8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of every kind. It is possible for good men to permit single sins to co-exist with general integrity, where the evil is indulged through ignorance. Once, undoubted Christians were slave-traders. They might be, while unenlightened; but not in our times. A state of mind which will intend one fraud, will, upon occasions, intend a thousand. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us that He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. Circumstances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any but political dishonesty; but under temptation, a dishonest politician would be a dishonest cashier,—would be dishonest anywhere,—in anything. The fury which destroys an opponent’s character, would stop at nothing, if barriers were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders in politics, is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty in voters runs into general dishonesty, as the rotten speck taints the whole apple. A community whose politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty on both sides, will be tainted by immorality throughout. Men will play the same game in their private affairs, which they have learned to play in public matters. The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, the cunning sharpness;—the tricks and traps and sly evasions; the equivocal promises, and unequivocal neglect of them, which characterize political action, will equally characterize private action. The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere; if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. His creed is a perpetual index of his hypocrisy. The genius of our government directs the attention of every citizen to politics. Its spirit reaches the uttermost bound of society, and pervades the whole mass. If its channels are slimy with corruption, what limit can be set to its malign influence? The turbulence of elections, the virulence of the press, the desperation of bad men, the hopelessness of efforts which are not cunning, but only honest, have driven many conscientious men from any concern with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth will be caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed to pieces, and its hail will break down every green thing. At God’s house the cure should begin. Let the hand of discipline smite the leprous lips which shall utter the profane heresy: All is fair in politics. If any hoary professor, drunk with the mingled wine of excitement, shall tell our youth, that a Christian man may act in politics by any other rule of morality than that of the Bible; and that wickedness performed for a party, is not as abominable, as if done for a man; or that any necessity justifies or palliates dishonesty in word or deed,—let such a one go out of the camp, and his pestilent breath no longer spread contagion among our youth. No man who loves his country, should shrink from her side when she groans with raging distempers. Let every Christian man stand in his place; rebuke every dishonest practice; scorn a political as well as a personal lie; and refuse with indignation to be insulted by the solicitation of an immoral man. Let good men of all parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality in politics, and there, as powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of public sentiment will ultimately be felt. 9. A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted—is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness;—in evil he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young;—to domestic fidelity, a recreant; to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite;—base in all that is worthy of man, and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful; and yet this wretch could go where he would; enter good men’s dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him and assist him; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious knaves, cannot breed honest men. Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks the administration of justice between man and man, is ruinous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of business cover the ground with rubbish over which men stumble; and fill the air with dust, in which all the shapes of honesty appear distorted. Men are thrown upon unusual expedients; dishonesties are unobserved; those who have been reckless and profuse, stave off the legitimate fruits of their folly by desperate shifts. We have not yet emerged from a period, in which debts were insecure; the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect; and lowered to a dishonest insufficiency; and when thus diminished, not collected; the citizens resisting their own officers; officers resigning at the bidding of the electors; the laws of property paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up; and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to despoil its dignity, and prostrate its power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty; and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall of our morals. If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties is not aroused; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, and conscience intoned to a severer morality, our night is at hand,—our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a generation fed upon the bread of fraud, whose children’s inheritance shall be a perpetual memento of their fathers’ unrighteousness; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association with the revered memories of father, brother, and friend! But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors; and States vie with States in an infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of a Commonwealth; then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend, before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the causes of growing dishonesty among the young, and the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments? Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier—its duel and defaulter; and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villanies of each week obliterate the record of the last. The mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local causes; it is the result of disease in the whole community; an eruption betokening foulness of the blood; blotches symptomatic of a disordered system. 10. Financial agents are especially liable to the temptations of Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and visionary schemers; sagacious adventurers, and rash speculators; frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, are constantly around them. Every word, every act, every entry, every letter, suggests only wealth—its germ, its bud, its blossom, its golden harvest. Its brilliance dazzles the sight; its seductions stir the appetites; its power fires the ambition, and the soul concentrates its energies to obtain wealth, as life’s highest and only joy. Besides the influence of such associations, direct dealing in money as a commodity, has a peculiar effect upon the heart. There is no property between it and the mind;—no medium to mellow its light. The mind is diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality of soils; the durability of structures; the advantages of sites; the beauty of fabrics; it is not invigorated by the necessity of labor and ingenuity which the mechanic feels; by the invention of the artisan, or the taste of the artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, and sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an intense regard of riches, steals in also the miser’s relish of coin—that insatiate gazing and fondling,by which seductive metal wins to itself all the blandishments of love. Those who mean to be rich, often begin by imitating the expensive courses of those who are rich. They are also tempted to venture, before they have means of their own, in brilliant speculations. How can a young cashier pay the drafts of his illicit pleasures, or procure the seed, for the harvest of speculation, out of his narrow salary? Here first begins to work the leaven of death. The mind wanders in dreams of gain; it broods over projects of unlawful riches; stealthily at first, and then with less reserve; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of being dishonest and safe. When a man can seriously reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and profitable thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so tainted, will flock stories of consummate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy cliff on whose edge they poise, or over which they fling themselves like sporting sea-birds. But these imaginations will not be driven from the heart where they have once nested. They haunt a man’s business, visit him in dreams, and vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim whom they will destroy. In some feverish hour, vibrating between conscience and avarice, the man staggers to a compromise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to steal; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows the funds;—not openly—not of owners—not of men: but of the till—the safe—the vault! He resolves to restore the money before discovery can ensue, and pocket the profits. Meanwhile, false entries are made, perjured oaths are sworn, forged papers are filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder from what fountain so copious a stream can flow. Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flourishes, is called prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he safe, or honest? He has stolen, and embarked the amount upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms; where wreck is the common fate, and escape the accident; and now all his chance for the semblance of honesty, is staked upon the return of his embezzlements from among the sands, the rocks and currents, the winds and waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At length dawns the day of discovery. His guilty dreams have long foretokened it. As he confronts the disgrace almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect of his deed, from that fair face of promise with which it tempted him! Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the prospect of open shame, of his wife’s disgrace, and his children’s beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide. Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with success. The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of affairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool, calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing community. In the broad road slanting to the rogue’s retreat, are seen the officer of the bank, the agent of the state, the officer of the church, in indiscriminate haste, outrunning a lazy justice, and bearing off the gains of astounding frauds. Avarice and pleasure seem to have dissolved the conscience. It is a day of trouble and of perplexity from the Lord. We tremble to think that our children must leave the covert of the family, and go out upon that dark and yeasty sea, from whose wrath so many wrecks are cast up at our feet. Of one thing I am certain; if the church of Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her altar a refuge to such dishonesty, the day is coming when she shall have no altar, the light shall go out from her candlestick, her walls shall be desolate, and the fox look out at her windows. 11. Executive clemency, by its frequency, has been a temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, and the prelude of pardon? What can the community expect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at acquittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon; when honest men and officers fly before a mob; when jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not relinquished; when the Executive, consulting the spirit of the community, receives the demands of the mob, and humbly complies, throwing down the fences of the law, that base rioters may walk unimpeded, to their work of vengeance, or unjust mercy? A sickly sentimentality too often enervates the administration of justice; and the pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic; yet our heart turns to water over their merited punishment. A fine young fellow, by accident, writes another’s name for his own; by a mistake equally unfortunate, he presents it at the bank; innocently draws out the large amount; generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly hides the rest. Hard-hearted wretches there are, who would punish him for this! Young men, admiring the neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and curse a stupid jury that knew no better than to send to a penitentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashiership. He goes to his cell, the pity of a whole metropolis. Bulletins from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards[1] is doing, as if he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length pardoned, he will go forth again to a renowned liberty! If there be one way quicker than another, by which the Executive shall assist crime, and our laws foster it, it is that course which assures every dishonest man, that it is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest, easy to escape punishment, and easiest of all to obtain a pardon. 12. Commercial speculations are prolific of Dishonesty. Speculation is the risking of capital in enterprises greater than we can control, or in enterprises whose elements are not at all calculable. All calculations of the future are uncertain; but those which are based upon long experience approximate certainty, while those which are drawn by sagacity from probable events, are notoriously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, we shall forever tread an old and dull path; therefore enterprise is allowed to pioneer new ways. The safe enterpriser explores cautiously, ventures at first a little, and increases the venture with the ratio of experience. A speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a far-away landscape, whose features are softened to beauty by distance; upon a hope, he stakes that, which, if it wins, will make him; and if it loses, will ruin him. When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. But commerce has no such alternatives; only speculation proceeds upon them. If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow a noble steed and ride among incitements which he knew would rouse up his fiery spirit to an uncontrollable height, and borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a precipice, his destruction might excite our pity, but could not alter our opinion of his dishonesty. He borrowed property, and endangered it where he knew that it would be uncontrollable. If the capital be one’s own, it can scarcely be risked and lost, without the ruin of other men. No man could blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric, woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a common fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to cut off my hand; I defraud myself, my family, the community, and God; for all these have an interest in that hand. Neither has a man the right to throw away his property. He defrauds himself, his family, the community in which he dwells; for all these have an interest in that property. If waste is dishonesty, then every risk, in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. To venture, without that foresight which experience gives, is wrong; and if we cannot foresee, then we must not venture. Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and almost necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his own interests to rash ventures, will scarcely do better for others. The Speculator regards the weightiest affair as only a splendid game. Indeed, a Speculator on the exchange, and a Gambler at his table, follow one vocation, only with different instruments. One employs cards or dice, the other property. The one can no more foresee the result of his schemes, than the other what spots will come up on his dice; the calculations of both are only the chances of luck. Both burn with unhealthy excitement; both are avaricious of gains, but careless of what they win; both depend more upon fortune than skill; they have a common distaste for labor; with each, right and wrong are only the accidents of a game; neither would scruple in any hour to set his whole being on the edge of ruin, and going over, to pull down, if possible, a hundred others. The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunkard’s appetite, and a fiend’s desperation. The revulsion from extravagant hopes, to a certainty of midnight darkness; the sensations of poverty, to him who was in fancy just stepping upon a princely estate; the humiliation of gleaning for cents, where he has been profuse of dollars; the chagrin of seeing old competitors now above him, grinning down upon his poverty a malignant triumph; the pity of pitiful men, and the neglect of such as should have been his friends,—and who were, while the sunshine lay upon his path,—all these things, like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tranquility of honesty, but casts up mire and dirt. How stately the balloon rises and sails over continents, as over petty landscapes! The slightest slit in its frail covering sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, whirling and pitching hither and thither, until it plunges into some dark glen, out of the path of honest men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So have we seen a thousand men pitched down; so now, in a thousand places may their wrecks be seen. But still other balloons are framing, and the air is full of victim-venturers. If our young men are introduced to life with distaste for safe ways, because the sure profits are slow; if the opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great, only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and the romantic; then we may stay our hand at once, nor waste labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have determined to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen’s ventures. All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless compared with a bankruptcy of public morals. Should the Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and roll sheer across to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of cultivation, and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared our wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields and vineyards, what are stores and manufactures, and what are gold and silver, and all the precious commodities of the earth, among beasts?—and what are men, bereft of conscience and honor, but beasts? We will forget those things which are behind, and hope a more cheerful future. We turn to you, young men!—All good men, all patriots, turn to watch your advance upon the stage, and to implore you to be worthy of yourselves, and of your revered ancestry. Oh! ye favored of Heaven! with a free land, a noble inheritance of wise laws, and a prodigality of wealth in prospect,—advance to your possessions!—May you settle down, as did Israel of old, a people of God in a promised and protected land;—true to yourselves, true to your country, and true to your God. Footnote: [1] Monroe Edwards, a notorious forger.—Ed. ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-henry-w-beecher/ ========================================================================