A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel

that a theological seminary established at Cincinnati, in the very centre of this district, afforded the most effective means for attaining the great object in view; that the best man in the whole country should be secured to stand at its head; and that that man, all things considered, was Dr. Beecher. He would bring energy, enthusiasm, and practical wisdom; would secure confidence in the work among Eastern capitalists, and conduct the enterprise to assured success.

      Out of this conviction sprang the Seminary and the call to Dr. Beecher to be its head. He was in perfect and enthusiastic sympathy with the object in view. He says of the project: “There was not on earth a place but that I would have opened my ears to for a moment. … But I had felt and thought and labored a great deal about raising up ministers, and the idea that I might be called to teach the best mode of preaching to the young ministry of the broad West flashed through my mind like lightning. It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it, and displaced everything else.”

      Coming to this definite work under the inspiration of this great thought, from a church which had been for years in the midst of a continuous revival, he had naturally given the Seminary a markedly practical tone of spiritual earnestness. A strong man himself, he attracted men of like stamp; and there had come, soon after he took charge of the institution, “a noble class of young men, uncommonly strong, a little uncivilized, entirely radical, and terribly in earnest.”

      Dr. Beecher’s method of instruction was peculiar and in harmony with his spirit and purpose. It was not so much of the formal lecture order as of the free conversational kind, in which questions were invited, objections were answered, thought was quickened, and feeling was awakened, with the result that the great truth which was the subject of the lecture was likely to be not only in a large measure comprehended but felt and appropriated by the students.

      One of the professors, Calvin E. Stowe, for whom Henry Ward conceived one of those ardent friendships which distinguished him through life, helped him in the same direction. “He led him to an examination of the Bible and to an analysis of its several portions, not as the parts of a machine, formal and dead, but as of a body of truth instinct with God, warm with all divine and human sympathies, clothed with language adapted to their fit expression and to be understood as similar language used for similar ends in every-day life.” And we have now in our hands a roll of manuscript in which, in line with this idea, the young student wrote out during his theological course a careful analysis of the miracles and parables of the New Testament.

      Without doubt this tone of the institution and method of instruction had an important and very beneficial influence upon him at this formative period of his professional life, giving him a genuine enthusiasm for his work, and training him to investigate carefully and analyze clearly the truths brought under examination.

      And, that there might be lacking no element for his fittest training for the great work that was before him, the question of slavery had arisen among the students, creating such a disturbance that forty, under the leadership of Theodore Weld, had withdrawn just before he appeared on the ground.

      Of the place, his coming, and some of the incidents in his life his brother, Rev. T. K. Beecher, says:

      “By and by they two, Henry and Charles, came to study theology in Lane Seminary, a brick building in the woods of Ohio. The whistle of the quail, the scolding squirrels, once the heavy, busky flight of wild turkeys—my hero killed one and claimed a second—the soft thump and pat of a rabbit, the breezy rush of wild pigeons, were here heard.

      “A foot-path led through the woods, over which came three times a day the heroes, shouting, exploding the vowel sounds, and imitating cows, frogs, and crows—a laughing menagerie.

      “The Academy of Music, two miles off down-town—Henry primo-basso, Charles violin and tenor; and the little boy, at last an alto, permitted to run between the heroes and sing, while eyes feasted on Charles’s violin bow-hand, and ears were filled with Henry’s basso, are well remembered.

      “The ‘Creation’ and ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ were our winter’s work, and Henry was off sometimes lecturing on temperance and phrenology. Sometimes on a Saturday morning, at family prayer, there were Catharine, George, Henry, Harriet, Isabella, Tom and Jim, Aunt Esther, and father still praying ‘Overturn and overturn,’ and singing by all hands:

      “ ‘Awake and sing the song

      Of Moses and the Lamb;

      Wake, every heart and every tongue,

      To praise the Saviour’s name.

      Sing on your heavenly way,

      Ye ransomed sinners, sing!

      Sing on rejoicing every day

      In Christ the Heavenly King.’

      Long, long discussions, lasting till past midnight and resumed at every meal, of ‘free agency,’ ‘sovereignty,’ ‘natural and moral ability,’ interpretations, and such.

      “Charles could whittle graceful boats with sharp knife out of thick sticks.

      “Henry had the full set of Walter Scott’s works.

      “Charles took lessons on the violin of Tosso, in the city. Henry wrote something that Editor Charles Hammond printed in the Cincinnati Gazette. O wonderful Henry! They both wrote long, long letters to two far-away beings, and the little boy sometimes took them to the post-office and paid twenty-five cents, wondering what they could find to write such long, long letters about.”

      His brother Charles says:

      “The glorious old forest lay between the Seminary and father’s house, and we made it ring with vocal practice and musical scales and imitations of band-music. The house father occupied was of brick, and Henry whitewashed it with a kind of whitewash that was equal to paint, of a sort of cream color. I can see him now, on his tall ladder, with his spattered overalls, working away.

      “One of our professors was B———, a nice, dapper, rosy little man, in the chair of history. We naughty boys made fun of him. Henry took notes. I would give something handsome for that note-book. B———was fond of quoting authors with sounding names, Bochart among others, and Henry would have it ‘Go-cart,’ and made a hieroglyphic to that effect.

      “We walked to and from the city, up and down the long hill, and attended father’s church, Second Presbyterian, on Fourth Street. Henry had a Bible-class of young ladies, for which he made preparation by writing.”

      For three years young Beecher was again a member of the home-circle, from which he had been so long separated. This home had apparently lost none of that broad, open-doored hospitality and cheerful spirit that so markedly characterized it in Litchfield. “The house was full. There was a constant high tide of life and animation. The old carry-all was perpetually vibrating between home and the city, and the excitement of coming and going rendered anything like stagnation an impossibility.” “It was an exuberant and glorious life while it lasted. The atmosphere of the household was replete with mental oxygen, full charged with intellectual electricity. Nowhere else have we felt anything resembling or equalling it. It was a kind of moral heaven, the purity, vivacity, inspiration, and enthusiasm of which only those can appreciate who have lost it and feel that in this world there is, there can be, no place like home.”

      Of two of its members and some of their make-shifts we have this account, copied from his journal:

      “The Economical Family.—My father was an excellent man (for no one provided better dinners—soups, codfish, mutton-chops; even, upon great days, he has been known to have a turkey). He was a man of enlarged mind and great sagacity. He was before his age in his views, and always before his salary in his expenses. This was from no want of calculation: nobody ever was longer and shrewder in that. But he was aspiring, and by nature seemed to go beyond things seen, far into the region of things hoped for.

      “His sister, an antique maiden lady, differed vastly from him and could in no sense be called enlightened. It was astonishing to see how his example and his reasoning were thrown away upon her. To the last she clung to those earthly, low notions