190
BEECHER
gives the filled the church to overflowing with people unaccustomed to churchgoing. He studied men rather than books , became acquainted with the vices in what was a pioneer town ; Fallow, and in his Sermons to Young Men treated these with genuine power of realistic description and with youth16,901 ful and exuberant rhetoric. Eight years later (1847) he 13,250 accepted a call to the pastorate of Plymouth church (Con12,203 gregational), then newly organized in Brooklyn, New York. 13,235 The situation of the church, within five minutes5 walk of the 7,954 chief ferry to New York, the stalwart character of the men The following table gives particulars regarding the live stock for who had organized it, and the peculiar eloquence of Mr Beecher, combined to make the pulpit a national platform. the same years — The audience-room of the church, capable of seating 2000 Cows or heifers Total Total Pigs. Sheep. in milk or or 2500 people, frequently contained 500 or 1000 more. horses. cattle. in calf. Mr Beecher at once became a recognized leader. On 152,084 28,526 10,751 the all-absorbing question of slavery he took a middle 1880 12,082 31,552 151,813 32,545 12,187 ground between the pro-slavery or peace party, and 1885 11,882 37,525 121,994 33,958 12,233 1890 11,665 33,467 abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell 32,826 96,278 11,092 1895 12,103 30,023 Phillips, believing, with such statesmen as W. H. Seward, 25,280 104,759 11,876 1900 11,991 34,833 S. B. Chase, and Abraham Lincoln, that slavery was to be Industries and Trade.—According to the report of the inspector overthrown under the constitution and in the Union, by of factories for 1898 (1900), there were no persons employed m forbidding its growth and trusting to an awakened contextile factories, while 6383 were employed in non-textile factories, science, enforced by an enlightened self-interest. He was and 6788 in workshops. Between 1895 and 1896 there was an always an anti-slavery man, but never technically an increase of 7'4 per cent, in the number of persons employed m non-textile factories, and between 1896 and 1897 an increase ol abolitionist. In the earlier days of the agitation, he chal15'S. Of those employed in workshops no fewer than 5901 are in lenged the hostility which often mobbed the anti-slavery the “returns” stated to be employed in clothing.” This in- gatherings; in the later days he consulted with the cludes chiefly those employed in the point pillow lace manufacture, political leaders, inspiring the patriotism of the North, which is an extensive female industry, and in the straw plait manufacture carried on mainly at Luton and Dunstable. In t le and sedulously setting himself to create a public opinion manufacture of machines, conveyances, tools, etc., nearly 2300 which should confirm and ratify the emancipation propersons are employed, there being at Bedford extensive agricultural clamation whenever the President should issue it. When implement and engineering works. In 1899, 611, / 45 tons of chalk danger of foreign intervention cast its threatening shadow were raised, 166,829 tons of clay, and 78,420 tons of gravel and across the national path, he went to England, and by his sand. Authorities.—The more important works are : Abbot. Flora famous addresses did what probably no other American Bedfordiensis, 1798.—Fishe. Collections, Historical, Genealogical, could have done to strengthen the spirit in England favourand Topographical, for Bedfordshire. London, 1812-16, and also able to the United States, and to convert the doubtful 1812-36.—Parry. Select Illustrations of Bedfordshire, London, and the hostile. For a little while he acted as one of the 1827; Bedfordshire Domesday Booh, Bedford, 1881 ;, Visitation of Bedford 1566, 1582, and 1634, in Harleian Society s Publica- editors of the Independent, then a Congregational newstions vol. xiv., London, 1884; Genealogica Bedfordiensis, 1538, paper j and his editorials, copied far and wide, produced a isoo’ London, 1890 ; and Illustrated Bedfordshire, Nottingham, profound impression on the public mind by clarifying and 1895). See also Bedfordshire Notes and Queries, ed. F. A. Blades, and Transactions of the Bedfordshire Natural History and Field defining the issue. Later, he founded and became editorin-chief of the Christian Union, afterwards the Outlook, a Club Beecher, Henry Ward (1813-1887), American weekly religious undenominational newspaper. His lectures preacher and reformer, was born in Litchfield, Connec- and addresses had the spirit if not the form of his sermons, ticut, 24th June 1813. He was the ninth child of just as his sermons were singularly free from the homiLyman and Roxana Foote Beecher, and brother of Harriet letical tone. Yet his work as a reformer was subsidiary Beecher Stowe. Entering Amherst College in 1830, he to his work as a preacher. He was not indeed a parish ■ he inspired church activities which grew to large gave more attention to his own courses of reading than to pastor proportions, but trusted the organization of them to laymen college studies, and was more popular with his fellows than withthe faculty. With a patience foreign to his impulsive of organizing abilities in the church ", and for acquaintanc e nature, he submitted to minute drill in elocution, and with his people he depended on such social occasions as became a fluent extemporaneous speaker. Reared in a were furnished in the free atmosphere of this essentially Puritan atmosphere, he has graphically described the New England church at the close of every service, but during mystical experience which, coming to him in his early his pastorate the church grew to be probably the largest youth, changed his whole conception of theology and in membership in the United States. It was in the pulpit that Mr Beecher was seen at Ins determined his choice of the ministry. “I think,” he best. His mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic says, “ that when I stand in Zion and before God, the power, his instinctive art of impersonation, which had highest thing that I shall look back upon will be that blessed morning of May, when it pleased God to become a second nature, his vivid imagination, his breadth reveal to my wondering soul the idea that it was His of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, his nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping passionate enthusiasm, which made for the moment Ins him out of them.” In 1837 he graduated from Lane theme seem to him the one theme of transcendent importTheological Seminary in Ohio, of which his father was ance, his quaint humour alternating with genuine pathos president, and entered upon his work as pastor of a and above all his simple and singularly unaffected missionary Presbyterian church at Lawrenceburg, a village devotional nature, made him as a preacher without peer in his own time and country. His favourite on the Ohio, a few miles below Cincinnati. The member- atheme was love; love to man was to him the fulfilship numbered nineteen women and one man. Mr ment of all law; love of God was the essence of all Beecher was sexton as well as preacher. Two years later Christianity. Retaining to the day of his death the forms he accepted a call to Indianapolis. His unconventional and phrases of the New England theology in which he preaching shocked the more staid members of the flock, but
the former is gradually increasing. The following table principal acreages at intervals of hve years from 1880 j Area Green Clover. PermaCorn nent | Year. under crops. crops. pasture. crops. 81,090 1880 •260,375 109,878 31,810 20,696 87,944 1885 260,298 101,026 35,283 22,795 1890 259,396 99,350 29,932 21,028 96,703 99,773 1895 254,997 89,571 29,813 22,317 102,794 1900 257,346 88,043 31,752 26,471
