The Damning Delusion of Wrong Notions

  By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None Of His Benefits:

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren, James 1:16.

Henry Ward Beecher, born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1813, was the most famous man of the nineteenth century. His father was the prominent, last of the Puritan preachers, Lyman Beecher, and Henry’s siblings accomplished remarkable things. One brother was a prominent theologian.[1] A sister began a women’s school in Hartford, another sister was a leader in the women’s voting rights movement of the day, and of course, his most prominent sibling, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the early 1850’s. Henry was a gifted orator and pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. His salary from the church, when adjusted to present day dollars, was $1.8 million per year, and he signed a book deal in 1865 to write a novel, the advance being the equivalent of $3.4 million. When examined by Congregational pastors upon coming to take the Plymouth Church, he was asked if he believed in the doctrine of original sin. He said that he did not think too much about that since there was plenty of sin to go around today. When asked about the doctrine of predestination he said that he did not think too much about that either, preferring, instead, to think on the love of God. He was so winsome and so dynamic that the pastors accepted him, though some had reservations about his theological orthodoxy. He made even more money as an author and regular contributor to some of the largest newspapers in America. He traveled the country making speeches for which he also was paid handsomely. He had a summer home at Lenox, Massachusetts and regularly discussed philosophy and world events with his neighbors, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, leaders in the “free thought” movement of the day. Some say his sermons bore an uncanny resemblance to Emerson’s thought. While never proven, a cloud of serial, marital infidelity perpetually hung over him. In fact a civil trial for adultery in the late 1860’s caused a feeding frenzy by the tabloids of the day. One of his antagonists said that Henry preached on any given Sunday night to seven or eight of his mistresses from the congregation. By the end of his ministry he said that he did not believe God would send anyone to hell. The Old School Presbyterian Princeton Review wrote that the Beecher children had done more to eradicate Biblical Calvinism in their day than any other people.[2]

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