THE REV. H. WARD BEECHER.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 151, 1 June 1877, Page 2

THE REV. H. WARD BEECHER.

(The World). " Mr Beecher," writes Dr Holmes, " is a strong- healthy man in mind and body. His nerves have never been corrugated with alcohol; his thinking-marrow-is not brown with tobacco fumes, like a meerschaum, as are the brains of so many unfortunate American's ; he is the same lusty, warmblooded, strong-fibred, brave-hearted, light-souled, clear-eyed creature that he was when the college-boys at Amherst acknowledged him to be the chiefest amongst the football-kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound in body, mental, and moral structure j and hiy self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers, who never forget their own interests." Dr ' Holmes' description of thirteen years ago is as true to-day as it was then. Beecher's form is sturdier, his neck more firmly set, his hair grayer ; but, notwithstanding- the excitements of the Civil War and of the political stiuggles that followed it, the increasing labour of his church and its cognate mission works, and of late years the exceptional strain on nerve and brain, due to exceptional and unfortunately notorious causes, he seems as elastic, as strong, as playful with children, as genial with friends, as quick in in wit, and as powerful 'in speech at the age of sixty- four as he did at fifty one. Mr Beecher has always given great care to what he characteristically styles "the running of the engine." His high colour and plethoric habit might be interpreted as the. signs of a large appetite liberally indulged. As a fact, his diet is singularly abstemious. He ell-inks coffee at his seven o'clock breakfast, eating- but little ; cold water with his two o'clock dinner, which is his heartiest meal ; and a cup of tea at sis o'clock. He does his work in the morning. After dinner he takes a short nap, then drives, walks, or reads the papers till tea-time. He retires early, sleeps soundly, and is up with the lark. He guards his feet from dampness, is careful about protecting himself from cold alter the glow of public speaking, and generally takes much pains to prevent avoidable ailments. As a consequence he is rarely ill j nnd has of recent ye»rs avoided the annual hay-fever, prevalent from the middle of August to the end of September, by spending the threatened season in the White Mountains. In the matter of mental, he practises lees abstinence than in that of physical nutriment. He is an omnivorous reader ; but always leads with a purpose, and has a great power of intellectual and literary assimilation. His public utterances ate the direct outbreaks of his private life. His tastes ore mirrored in his speech. His comfortable home on Columbia Heights in Brooklyn, over-looking the East River, New York, and the Bay, is well stored with the productions of artand literature. Fine paintings people the walls ; engravings, from the 'IWhis and Morghens and other masters, hang framed around the rooms, or lie in his portfolios ; bookcases cvowd the house, and books swarm. Elegant folios, with coloured plates of cathedrals and churches of the Old World ; brilliant tomes of the birds of the New ; Delphin Greek and classics, the rare Elzevir Horace' or the exquisite Virgil of Didot ; the old English dramatists, poets, theologians ; books of science and art, ; the physicists of the present day, and psychical writers in even great abundance, — all these are to be found in Beecher's library. At his Beckskill farm, on the Hudson River, about seventy miles from New York, one finds a simple frame-house, a century old in its main part, standing half-way up a long smooth hill, commanding a beautiful view of the river, which is about two miles distant. The farm is in superb condition, drained and dressed and highly cultivated, with a nursery of ever-greens and another of fruit trees, a garden of vegetables, and a wilderness of flowers. His barn and stables are the pride of his heart; his Alderney cows and Morgan horses make his summer life a rest and recreation. His tastes are strongly bucolic. He loves the soil, the "flowers, the trees, the grains and grasses, the weeds and mosses ; and his knowledge of them and their ways is both extensive and accurate. It is unnecessary to dwell on his work in Plymouth Church, with its 2600 members, its income of .50,000 or 60,000 dollars, its missions, schools, and labours among the poor — being real'y the vital centre of about 15,000 souls, who directly and indirectly depend on it for moral, and largely for social and i physical, aid; or his lecture trips about the country in the American style, packed houses and hearty welcomes awaiting 1 him everywhere; or of his weekly newspaper, or his volume of sermons, with which the New York Press perpetually teems. His greatest power undoubtedly is as an orator; when he rouses himself to, capture an audience, be it in play or in earnest, he does it. He is probably the most popular speaker' in America. More than that, it is strictly correct to say the he is the man of widest personal influence in the United States. Not politically, or pecuniarily, or theologically, or ecclesiastically, but personally, his wish, his feeling, his thought, move more Americans than any one man.

Many could be named of greater special influence than he, none of such general power. His future fame will be largely as an apostle of common sense in religion. He is a man radical in theory, conservative in action. An early antislavery agitator, he was never an unconstitutional abolitionist; he was for the education of the public conscience to a point logicallyleading to abolition. He was an earnest advocate of the Civil War for the Union, but also of the restoration of the South. He is an evolutionist, but not a materialist. He is a believer of new forms, but not a destroyer of the old. Thousands bless him for the light which he has flashed upon their perplexities. He is a man to arouse enthusiasm ; his friends clingto him. He is generous to a fault. He is, in fine, one whose name, despite the cloud that has shadowed it, is a powerful and a representative one in American history.