rial life as pastor of a Home Missionary
(Presbyterian) church at the little village of Lawrenceburg, twenty
miles south of Cincinnati on the Ohio River; was both sexton and pastor,
swept the church, built the fires, lighted the lamps, rang the bell, and
preached the sermons; was called to the pastorate of the First
Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, where he
remained for eight years, 1839 to 1847, and where his preaching soon won
for him a reputation throughout the State, and his occasional writing a
reputation beyond its boundaries; thence was called in 1847 to be the
first pastor of the newly organized Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he
remained with an ever increasing reputation as preacher, lecturer,
orator, and writer, until the day of his death, March 8th, 1887.

Such is the outline of a life, the complete story of which would be the
history of the United States during the most critical half-century of
the nation's existence. Living in an epoch when the one overshadowing
political issue was pre-eminently a moral issue, and when no man could
be a faithful preacher of righteousness and not a political preacher;
concerned in whatever concerned humanity; believing that love is the
essence of all true religion, and that love to God is impossible without
love to man; moral reformer not less than gospel preacher, and statesman
even more than theologian: throwing himself into the anti-slavery
conflict with all the courage of a heroic nature and all the ardor of an
intensely impulsive one,--he stands among the first half-score of
writers, orators, reformers, statesmen, and soldiers, who combined to
make the half-century from 1835 to 1885 as brilliant and as heroic as
any in human history.

The greatness of Henry Ward Beecher consisted not so much in a
predominance of any one quality as in a remarkable combination of many.
His physique justified the well-known characterization of Mr. Fowler,
the phrenologist, "Splendid animal." He was always an eager student,
though his methods were desultory. He was familiar with the latest
thought in philosophy, had studied Herbert Spencer before his works were
republished in the United States, yet was a child among children, and in
his old age retained the characteristic faults and virtues of childhood,
and its innocent impulsiveness.

His imagination might have made him a poet, his human sympathies a
dramatic poet, had not his strong common-sense kept him a