A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville SamuelЧитать онлайн книгу.
near the close of his Freshman year, shows the bent of his mind at this period:
”My dear Sister:
“I write principally to tell you that I have sent the ‘Book of Nature,’ and that it is probably at the stage-house.
“But I want to consult you on a plan that I have formed—for I possess real Beecher blood in the matter of planning. It is this: In my six weeks’ vacation, and in the four weeks’ one, I mean to attach myself as some kind of agent to the Bible, or Tract, or Education, or some other society, wherever I can, and travel round to the small towns at a distance, and collect funds or distribute Bibles and tracts, or something like that, or do something or other—of course I can’t tell what they may want me to do.
“I shall in a month or two be eighteen years old, and I think that that is old enough to begin to do something. I can get letters of the president and professors here and of gentlemen of Boston to establish my mission, so that folks will not think that I am collecting for my own purposes under the name of some society. Will you write to me about it? Tell C. that I have engaged one to hear me recite botany. I am going to establish a daily prayer-meeting here, and pray for a revival. Pray for us, too. Mount Pleasant is in a very bad state. Lotteries are here without number—five dollars is the highest prize—and books and everything else, morals and all, are going, I believe, and the masters (blind fellows) know nothing of it, although one of the monitors handed in to Mr. Fellowes a lottery scheme instead of his report in the division.
“Give my love to Mary and husband, Catherine, Cos. Elizabeth, and all who care for me, taking a goodly portion to yourself.
“Your Brother,
“H. C. B.”
Lest we get a stronger impression of his sanctity at this time than the facts would warrant, we add this incident, related by himself, of one of his vacation experiences in Boston that has in it a very decided flavor of humorous and unsanctified humanity: “Looking for a friend, I rapped at the door where I thought he lived. The door stuck, but at last flew open after a good deal of tugging from the other side, and a very red-faced woman appeared and asked in a very cross tone what I wanted. ‘Does Mr. ——— live here?’ I asked very meekly. ‘No, he don’t!’ snapped the woman, and slammed the door in my face. I thought I would teach her a lesson; so, after I had walked a little ways to give her time to get to work, I went back and rapped again as if I wanted to tear the knocker off. And when the same woman opened the door I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Who said he did?’ and then turned and walked away. When I reached the corner the woman was still gazing after me in amazed silence.”
It was at Amherst that young Beecher began his anti-slavery career, as he tells us in his sermon upon the death of Wendell Phillips:
“Fifty years ago, during my college life, I was chosen by the Athenian Society to debate the question of African colonization, which then was new, fresh, and enthusiastic. … Fortunately I was assigned to the negative side of the question, and in preparing to speak I prepared my whole life. I contended against colonization as a condition of emancipation—enforced colonization was but little better than enforced slavery—and advocated immediate emancipation on the broad ground of human rights. I knew but very little then, but I knew this, that all men are designed of God to be free, a fact which ought to be the text of every man’s life—this sacredness of humanity as given of God, redeemed from animalism by Jesus Christ, crowned and clothed with rights that no law nor oppression should dare touch.”
Of his religious life at this period we give the story in his own words:
“When I went to college there was a revival there, in which I was prodigiously waked up. I was then about seventeen years old, and I had begun to pass from boyhood to manhood, but I was yet in an unsettled state of mind. I had no firm religious ground to stand upon. I was beginning to slough hereditary influences without being able to take on more salutary influences, and I went through another phase of suffering which was far worse than any that I had previously experienced. It seemed as though all the darknesses of my childhood were mere puffs to the blackness which I was now passing through. My feeling was such that if dragging myself on my belly through the street had promised any chance of resulting in good I would have done it. No man was so mean that I was not willing to ask him to pray for me. There was no humiliation that I would not have submitted to ten thousand times over if thereby I could have found relief from the doubt, perplexity, and fear which tormented me.
“I went to Dr. Humphrey in my darkness of soul and said: ‘I am without hope and am utterly wretched, and I want to be a Christian.’ He sat and looked with great compassion upon me (for he was one of the best men on earth; if there is a saint in heaven Dr. Humphrey is one), and said: ‘Ah! it is the Spirit of God, my young man; and when the Spirit of God is at work with a soul I dare not interfere.’ And I went away in blacker darkness than I came, if possible.
“I went to an inquiry-meeting which Professor Hitchcock was conducting, and when he saw me there he said: ‘My friends, I am so overwhelmed with the consciousness of God’s presence in this room that I cannot speak a word.’ And he stopped talking, and I got up and went out without obtaining rescue or help.
“Then I resorted to prayer, and frequently prayed all night—or should have done so if I had not gone to sleep; I tried a great many devices; I strove with terrific earnestness and tremendous strength; and I remember that one night, when I knelt before the fire where I had been studying and praying, there came the thought to my mind: ‘Will God permit the devil to have charge of one of his children that does not want to be deceived?’ and in an instant there rose up in me such a sense of God’s taking care of those who put their trust in him that for an hour all the world was crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and I sprang to my feet and began to cry and laugh; and, feeling that I must tell somebody what the Lord had done for me, I went and told Dr. Humphrey and others.
“I endeavored, from that time out, to help those who were in trouble of mind like that in which I had been whelmed; and yet I was in a sort of half-despair.”
It was in one of these half-despairing moods, doubtless, that he sought counsel from Moody Harrington, of whose piety and wisdom in directing inquirers he has often spoken. Harrington’s room-mate writes:
“It was in the midst of this great religious movement that one day Henry Ward Beecher came to our room—how distinctly I remember it!—and, with a countenance betokening a mighty pressure upon his spirit, said substantially: ‘Harrington, I am in great distress, in spiritual darkness; I don’t think I have any religion. I’ve come to talk with you.’ My room-mate took him into his bedroom and talked and prayed with him a long time, and when the young man came out from that interview his face seemed radiant with hope and peace. Years after Beecher had become famous he would repeatedly speak of Harrington as having been to him a spiritual helper beyond that of any other man he had known.”
His first talk in a religious meeting outside the school or college is thus described:
“I think it must have been late in my Freshman career at Amherst College or in my Sophomore. My mind was much stirred and distressed at that time on the subject of religion. In the class above, one Moody Harrington took much interest in me. He was in some respects a remarkable man for profound religious feeling, for fervid imagination, and for remarkable eloquence in exhortation. He lifted me by his personal sympathy and his encouragement out of great despondency and set me on my feet with some tremblings of heart. On one occasion he asked me to walk with him one evening to Logtown to a little prayer and conference meeting. After Harrington had spoken for a while he turned to me all unexpectedly and asked me to make some remarks. I was confounded. I rose and said something—I do not know what, nor did I quite know then, for everything was whirling darkness while I was speaking, but it was the letting out of waters. I never ride past the Dwight house without going out of the cars to look over the place and to bring back to memory that dismal night, and that dismal speech, and the dismal walk back to college, ashamed and silent.”
Another important event took place in his Sophomore year, January 2, 1832. He became engaged to Eunice White Bullard, daughter of Dr. Artemas Bullard, of West Sutton, Mass. Of