60 



BEECHER. 



instruction, 50 schools and 1,650 pupils were 

 superintended by the mission, and 20,000 pa- 

 tients were cared for in the dispensaries. The 

 work of the society is chiefly carried on in the 

 large cities of India, including Calcutta, Delhi, 

 and Agra. 



The autumnal meetings of the Baptist Union 

 were held in Sheffield, beginning October 3. 

 The proceedings consisted chiefly of meetings 

 in behalf of the societies connected with the 

 Union, and addresses on subjects pertaining to 

 the work and interests of the Baptist churches, 

 among which were the address by the Presi- 

 dent, Rev. Dr. Culross, on " Belief on the Son 

 of God " ; " The Churches and the Coming 

 Ministry," by the Rev. C. P. Gould; "The 

 Work of the Church among the Young," by 

 the Rev. S. R. Aldridge; " Christian Fellow- 

 ship," by the Rev. E. Medley; "The Practical 

 Aspect of Christian Fellowship," by the Rev. 

 Dr. Landels, and addresses to workingrnen. 



The Rev. 0. H. Spurgeon gave notice of his 

 withdrawal from the Baptist Union, by publi- 

 cation in his journal, " The Sword and Trowel," 

 for November, and in a letter to the secretary 

 of the body, dated October 28. As a reason 

 for taking this step, he affirmed that the Union 

 was tolerating error, and permitting a "down- 

 ward tendency " of ministers in points of doc- 

 trine, in that some persons were allowed to 

 remain in it who make light of the atonement, 

 deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, call 

 the fall of man a fable, speak slightingly of 

 justification by faith, refuse credence to the 

 dogma of the plenary inspiration of the Holy 

 Scriptures, and hold that there is another pro- 

 bation after death, with possibilities of a future 

 retribution of the lost; while efforts to induce 

 him to reconsider his decision were without 

 avail, he declared that he remained as much a 

 Baptist as ever, his denominationalism not 

 being affected by his relations with the Union, 

 a voluntary, unofficial body. 



The Baptist Union of Scotland consists, ac- 

 cording to the report made by the secretary to 

 the annual meeting in October, of 85 churches, 

 with 10,380 members. The number of bap- 

 tisms during the year had been 928. There 

 were connected with the Union 76 Sunday- 

 schools, with 1,015 teachers, and 8,961 pupils. 



Geueral Baptists. The annual meetings of the 

 General Baptist Assembly were held in Lon- 

 don, beginning May 31. The Missionary Soci- 

 ety returned an income of 7,625, 8 ordained 

 and 9 woman European missionaries, 24 native 

 ministers, 1,286 communicants, and 3,366 ad- 

 herents. The principal mission is in India. 



BEECHER, HENRY WARD, an American clergy- 

 man, born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813 ; 

 died in Brooklyn, N. Y., March 8, 1887. He 

 was the eighth child of Lyman and Roxana 

 Foote Beecher. His mother died when he 

 was but three years old, and his stepmother 

 was by birth and early education an Episcopa- 

 lian. Thus the early influences that surround- 

 ed Mr. Beecher tended to that catholicity which 



was so characteristic of him. For both mother 

 and stepmother he had a profound reverence, 

 which showed itself in habitual reference in 

 his public ministry to the sacredness of mother- 

 hood. His home education was of the severe 

 New England type, alleviated by the irrepress- 

 ible sense of humor in his father, and by the 

 poetic and mystical influence of his stepmother. 

 He was graduated at Amherst College in 1834. 

 His college life was fruitful, though not in 

 the ordinary sense studious; he made his mark 

 chiefly outside the recitation -room, and yet he 

 was a great reader, following the bent of his 

 own inclination rather than the lines laid down 

 by his instructors. He made even then a 

 careful study on English literature, analyzing 

 the elements of style in different writers and 

 orators, submitted himself to a thorough course 

 of training in elocution, took hold of phrenol- 

 ogy not, of course, a college study with 

 great zest, gave lectures upon it, and upon 

 temperance, and participated in class-room 

 meetings and religious labors in the neighbor- 

 ing country towns. The time was one of great 

 religious ferment ; reaction had already set 

 in against the purely intellectual in theolo- 

 gy, the literalism in Biblical interpretation, 

 the hardness in spiritual thinking, and the 

 lack of what we may call the humanities in 

 religion, which characterized the early epoch 

 of New England history. The Unitarian de- 

 fection from the orthodox Congregational 

 faith had already taken place ; the first great 

 missionary organization of the Puritan churches 

 the American Board had just been formed, 

 and incipient indications pointed to that bitter 

 struggle between the New School and the Old 

 School theology, in both Presbyterian and 

 Congregational churches, which was the most 

 eventful feature in church history during the 

 early years of Mr. Beecher's manhood. 



Mr. Beecher himself was thoroughly ground- 

 ed in the intellectual elements of Congrega- 

 tional evangelical belief; for his father was an 

 intensely polemical and orthodox though lib- 

 eral divine. In Mr. Beecher's case, the reac- 

 tion against the excessive intellectualism of a 

 too rigorous Puritanical faith, took the form 

 of a spiritual experience, as it must necessarily 

 have done in one of his emotive temperament; 

 an experience that transformed his entire be- 

 ing, and pervaded all his subsequent life. U I 

 know not," he says, describing this experience, 

 " what the tablets of eternity have written 

 down; but I think that when I stand in Zion, 

 and before God, the brightest thing which I 

 shall look back upon, will be that blessed 

 morning of May, when it pleased God to re- 

 veal to my wandering soul the idea that it 

 was his nature to love a man in his sins, for 

 the sake of helping him out of them ; that he 

 did not do it out of compliment to Christ, or 

 to a law, or a plan of salvation, but from 

 the fullness of his great heart ; that he was a 

 being not made mad by sin, but sorry ; that 

 he was not furious with wrath toward the sin- 



