A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel

his hand or voice, when there was a chance to help a struggling church, because it was of a different denomination from his own.

      He gave another account of these experiences and their effect upon his mind, in some remarks at one of his Friday-night meetings, suggested by the meeting, in the spring of 1869, of the Assemblies of the Old and New Schools, and their reunion as one body at that time:

      “My whole life has more or less taken its color from the controversy which led to the division of the Old School and the New School Presbyterians. I was brought up in New England, a minister’s son, the son of a minister who was doctrinally inclined and whose warmest friends were great doctrinarians. My father’s household was substantially a debating society. As early as I can remember I knew enough to discuss foreordination, and I could do it as well as my betters. I could go just as far as they could, could run against snags at the same spots that they did, and could not get off any better than they could. All those great doctrines which tend powerfully to enlarge the imagination and to sharpen the reason without feeding them were, I had almost said, matters of daily conversation in my father’s family. When I went to college I fell under the influence of a young minister who became an Old School Presbyterian. He was a man of large brain and marked ability. He had a naturally philosophic mind. He was noble-hearted and genial. I remember that my poetic temperament, alongside of his rigorous, logical temperament, used to seem to me mean and contemptible. I thought he was like a big oak-tree, while I was more like a willow, half-grown and pliant, yielding to every force that was exerted upon it. At any rate, he had a powerful influence upon my development. But as I came to the possession of myself more and more I took on the logical methods in the exercise of the reasoning faculty which God had implanted in me, and they came near wrecking me; for I became sceptical, not malignantly but honestly, and it was to me a matter of great distress and anguish. It continued for years, and no logic ever relieved me. My brother Charles went through the same process, and he came back in the same way that I did, through the instrumentality of a living Saviour. An abstract, philosophical statement of the truth never met my wants, but when there arose over the horizon a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ as a living Friend, who had the profoundest personal interest in me, I embraced that view and was lifted up. My heart did for me then what my head had failed to do. This was an experience which has constituted one of the greatest affirmative forces that have acted on my mind in preaching. All my life long I have had a strong disposition to so preach the truth as to meet the wants of men who stand not only outside of the churches but outside of belief. I suppose that as long as I live I shall think of the truth, not as it looks to those that are within the Church, but as it looks to those that are outside of the Church and outside of belief itself.

      “This has given to my preaching an element of naturalism. It has led me to seek for a ground on which I could stand and bring men to a knowledge of the love of Christ. I have gone far from the usual narrow ecclesiastical and theological rules to broader social methods by which men that are doubters can be reached.

      “My first settlement as a pastor was at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where I was two years in the Presbyterian Church. When I left Lane Seminary I went down there to preach, and I thought nothing about Church connection. My business, as I supposed, was to preach what little I knew and to lead men to the Saviour; but I soon felt, for the first time, the authority of the Church. I had not been ground; I was nothing but corn, and I had to be run through a mill. This Lawrenceburg church was in the territory of the Miami Presbytery. The Presbytery was not only a body of Presbyterians, but was composed of Old School Presbyterians; not only were they Old School Presbyterians, but they were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; and not only were they straight, but they bent like a hoop the other way. I had received an ordination license at the Cincinnati Presbytery—where my father belonged at that time—in about 1837; but it was necessary that I should undergo another examination. The Assemblies had not then divided; there was only the one Church; but there were two parties—the Old School and the New School. There was the one great body, but there were these two sections. There were presbyteries and synods of the New School, and there were presbyteries and synods of the Old School; but they were under the same authority.

      “I went on horseback from Lawrenceburg to Oxford, where the Presbytery was in session. And, by the way, I came near losing my life in crossing the river. The water was high, and I was thrown into it; but I got out and dried off, and started again, and reached my destination without any further mishap, and went through my examination.

      “At that time, under the instruction which I had had in my father’s family, under the college drill that I had gone through, and under the training to which I was subjected in Lane Seminary, I had become so familiar with the doctrines of theology that it was difficult for any one to put me down in a discussion of them. I could state them very glibly. I was ready with an explanation of every single point connected with them. I knew all their proofs, all their dodging cuts, all their ins and outs. Therefore I had no trouble in standing my ground with the men who examined me. They knew they had Dr. Beecher’s son before them; the questions came like hail, and I was very willing. Somehow I have always had a certain sympathy with human nature which has led me invariably, in my better moods, to see instinctively, or to perceive by intuition, how to touch the right chord in people, how to reach the living principle in them; and that faculty was fully awakened in me on this occasion. I recollect that the presiding clergyman at that Presbytery was a man that I had seen at my father’s house and that I had taken a sort of fancy to. He was probably fifty or sixty years of age. He was tall, and was thin in the face, and he had a shrill, ringing voice. I felt that he was like a file; but still I liked him. Well, he put questions to me. Some of them I answered directly, some ingeniously, some intelligently, and others somewhat obscurely. The examination extended over two or three hours; and I thought I perceived a warming and melting influence among those men. I was quite indifferent as to whether or not I came out with their endorsement, and I have a recollection of feeling very fine. They questioned, and questioned, and questioned; and it happened that the points on which they were very particular were man’s sinfulness, the influence of the Holy Ghost, its necessity, its work, the thoroughness of it, and so on.

      “Now, I was always immensely orthodox—thunderingly so; and when they thought they were going to get heresy they got a perfect avalanche of orthodoxy. This man whom I had seen at father’s was quite carried away with me; he shielded me and helped me over some rough places; and the Presbytery, without a dissenting voice, voted that I was orthodox—to their amazement and mine!

      “I thought then that the bitterness of death was past, when lo! a professor from Oxford University, Miami, introduced a resolution, which was passed, that that Presbytery would not license nor ordain any candidate who would not give in his adhesion to the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly. It was on that point that the Old and New Schools divided, and I, being my father’s son, spurned the idea of going over to the Old School; I felt as big as forty men; and when that resolution passed I simply said: ‘Well, brethren, I have nothing to do but to go back to my father’s house.’ They were kind to me; they seemed to have conceived an affection for the young man; they took the greatest pains to conciliate me; they endeavored to smooth the way for me, and tried to persuade me to comply with their wish; but I was determined, and said, ‘I won’t.’ I always had the knack of saying that and sticking to it!

      “So I turned my back on the Oxford Presbytery, and rode to Lawrenceburg again; and the next Sunday morning I announced to my congregation the result of my week’s pilgrimage, told them of the vote which declared their church vacant, and said to them: ‘Now, brethren, one of two things is necessary: you must get somebody else to preach for you, or you must declare yourselves independent of the Presbyterian Church.’ It was no sooner said than done. Before sundown on that day they declared themselves an independent church, and I decided to stay with them. I was then ordained by the New School Presbytery in Cincinnati, after which I went on with my work regularly.

      “Preceding all this, you should recollect that during the three years that I was in the Seminary the controversy between the Old and New School Presbyterians ran very high on questions of theology and on questions of Church authority. I had been stuffed with these things. I had eaten and drank them. I had chopped and hewed them. I had built up from them every sort of argument. I had had them ad nauseam.

      “When