Part 8
I have known many instances where friends would complain to Mr. Beecher that Dr. Abbott was working _The Christian Union_ to his own aggrandizement. He always gave a sharp rebuke to these suggestions, and lost no opportunity to defend his friend, whom he declared to be the most patient, long suffering, and forgiving man in the world, or he never could have stood the neglect he was constantly receiving at his (Mr. Beecher’s) hands. This tendency to impugn Dr. Abbott’s methods pervaded even Mr. Beecher’s household quite extensively, but to no effect, for if ever Mr. Beecher could rise in his might, it was when good motives of a friend were assailed, and he generally settled the matter on the spot. Mr. Beecher died. The great church was left without a pastor. There was not a minister in the world that this congregation, as a body, wished to even consider as his successor. His friend, Dr. Abbott, who was now at the head of _The Christian Union_ Company, its editor and business manager, had given up preaching for his present work. He was available and invited to supply the pulpit, pending the securing of a pastor. With hesitancy the doctor accepted, on the distinct understanding that he was not a candidate for the pastorate, and for months he preached to that great congregation, which seemed to show no signs of depletion from the loss of its pastor. Only a few famous preachers were thought of. When Rev. Dr. Parker, of London, came over in 1887 for a lecture tour and to deliver a eulogy on his friend, Mr. Beecher, the enterprising men of the press interviewed a large number of church members and printed their expressions, both kind, friendly, and unfriendly, to such an extent that before the doctor was in this country a week he was dragged through the newspapers as one who expected to be called to Plymouth Church, whereas he had his own great congregation eagerly awaiting his return. I don’t wonder that he was disgusted and discouraged and unable to finish his tour.
There was a young preacher in England who had made a great impression on Mr. Beecher by his speech of welcome before the Congregational board, at a reception given Mr. Beecher in Liverpool on our last day in England: Rev. Charles Berry, of Wolverhampton.
I had published Mr. Beecher’s remarks concerning Mr. Berry in my “Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher,” and some Plymouth people had seen them, and suggested that Mr. Berry be invited to come over and preach a trial sermon. Meanwhile Dr. Abbott was preaching every Sunday, and the church was always full. Mr. Berry was preaching in Wolverhampton on a salary of £200 a year. He came to Plymouth Church, preached two sermons and received a call, with an offer of $9,000 a year. Of course this first real recognition of Mr. Berry as a preacher of unusual ability, and a call to the most famous pulpit in the world, surprised the religious public of Great Britain, and more than quadrupled his value at home. The people of his own congregation at once strongly protested against his going away, and from then until the time of his death he was the leading minister of his denomination in his own country.
During all this time Dr. Abbott was occupying the pulpit and preaching twice every Sunday. It finally dawned upon the Church Committee that they were really having the finest and most acceptable preaching available in all the world. Dr. Abbott was called to be their pastor, and accepted. There was, of course, some protest, for it did not seem possible to a great many that there were not some “great” men somewhere, and Lyman Abbott had been all his life familiar to them. But the church interest and attendance showed no falling off; it rather increased; the sentiment in his favor became and remained unanimous, and for ten years Lyman Abbott held that pulpit, and, as all the world knows, held it to the highest grade among the pulpits of the land.
The most unanimous protest came in 1898, when Dr. Abbott surprised his congregation by telling them that he was going to resign, and asked them to look for his successor. They were not going to accept his resignation. He had so completely filled their ideal of a pastor and preacher that to lose him meant a certain calamity to the church. Only a few of the veterans--who had seen Mr. Beecher followed by another, without disaster--could believe that Plymouth Church could be satisfied with a substitute for Dr. Abbott.
During all this decade Dr. Abbott had carried on his editorial work and the management of his paper. He had dared to make some remarkable changes. To the great dissatisfaction of many of his readers, he had changed the name of his paper--that well-known, loved and appropriate name, _The Christian Union_--to _The Outlook_. Even the name _Christian Union_ was a magnificent property in itself, and the doctor had to answer a great many complaints and listen to prophecies of disaster, but it did not seem to worry him. There was an improvement in form and dress made at the same time, and the smaller page with wider columns was accepted cheerfully. It was a conspicuous and very welcome visitor in the household, and soon had an enhanced popularity. This ran for only a year or so, when another change was made to magazine form, with a neat greenish-gray cover, resembling more the old-fashioned almanac than anything else. This, many of the subscribers thought, was a fatal innovation, but it took only a few short weeks to convince them that the new size was more convenient to read, to carry, and to preserve; and so all the changes came to be acknowledged as advance movements in keeping with the times.
In my intercourse with Dr. Abbott during these ten years I saw that he was under great strain from his many duties. His two sermons a week, his editorial duties, and his lecture engagements were more than any man could keep up with, even had he the physique of an athlete. I learned that his ambition was to reach the great people more extensively than was possible through the pulpit. He told me long before he resigned that he wanted to stop preaching and try to make _The Outlook_ more nearly what it ought to be by giving it his best work. His sons were developing good business ability, and he wanted to leave them an established business. The fact that the increased growth and influence of his paper has placed it as the very first in its line is evidence that his head was level, for is not _The Outlook_ the paper above all others that voices public sentiment on all the important issues of the times? In all the improvements and continued elements of success he has been peculiarly aided by the discriminating taste and literary talent of his associate editor, Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, and by the intelligent enterprise and judgment of his publisher, Mr. William B. Rowland; yet, after all, _The Outlook_ is Lyman Abbott.
The Plymouth Committee was diligent in its search for a successor to Dr. Abbott. I heard Thomas G. Shearman say the evening that Mr. Abbott’s resignation was accepted: “We are going to have the greatest preaching in Plymouth right along. Your committee are not ready to report yet, but when they are ready, there will be no mistake.” This was at the close of the meeting that had been devoted to eulogistic speeches on Dr. Abbott in the doctor’s presence--speeches showing that, if one-half were true, the doctor was certainly a greater man than any that had yet walked upright on this terrestrial globe. It was for that congregation to bide their time with patience and see what the committee would present. In two weeks Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Chicago, was announced at a prayer meeting for the following Sunday. The committee reported very enthusiastically. They had heard the young man in Chicago, and were in love with him at first sight. Dr. Hillis came. The church had been prepared to do honor to an ideal minister. They did. Dr. Abbott was foremost in welcoming the young stranger to the pulpit, to which he certainly had reason to believe no other man could ever be so welcome as he had been, and then, in all simplicity and modesty, Dr. Abbott took his seat in the congregation and joined in the tide of enthusiasm which rolled over Dr. Hillis. The new pastor was then and there carried up to the highest possible place in the hearts of the congregation. Such a scene of joy and general expression of love and satisfaction could not often be witnessed in any other body of Christian men and women. Plymouth Church is a unique institution--the fruits of forty years of Henry Ward Beecher’s inspiration and harmonizing genius.
Since his retirement, Dr. Abbott seems to have been none the less busy. He has been addressing large audiences continually. He has delivered twelve lectures before the Lowell Institute, Boston, has been “preacher to the University” at Yale, at Harvard, at Cornell, and elsewhere, year after year, and at other important places all over the country has been a welcome speaker and, what is better than all, he has given, “without money and without price,” an extensive course of lectures before the People’s Institute, Cooper Union, New York, where thousands have rushed to hear him and many have been obliged to turn away because the houses were filled on each occasion long before the time to begin. This great crowd contains as intelligent people as exist anywhere, most of whom have seen better days, and who show their appreciation of their opportunities by expressions of joy that can come only from true, loving hearts. The poor have the gospel preached to them by Dr. Lyman Abbott.
Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, third and present pastor of Plymouth Church (A.D. 1900), is one of whom I hardly dare attempt to write or prophesy, as I fear my heart may outrun my head. He came to Plymouth Church in April, 1899, and has been preaching twice every Sunday to a congregation that tests the capacity of the famous church--the most critical and intelligent congregation to preach to that exists in Christendom--a congregation that seldom heard and never could endure a dull sermon from any of its pastors.
Twelve years ago the public believed that the work of Plymouth Church was sustained and carried on mainly through the tremendous personality of Henry Ward Beecher, and that it must greatly suffer by his death; yet Dr. Lyman Abbott surprised the religious world by infusing into the work of that church increased vigor and strength for ten years longer. Now comes this young minister from the West (more markedly Western than either of his predecessors), born in Iowa thirty-seven years ago, and takes up the work laid down by Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. Lyman Abbott, and carries it on as vigorously as ever. Truly he must be a great man to do this thing.
His preaching differs widely from any other that this generation has heard. It is nineteenth century preaching, embellished by all the intellectual appliances conceivable. I remember that while I was a printer, away back in the fifties, the New York _Sun_ announced a cylinder press that could print two thousand papers in an hour. What a sensation in the daily newspaper world! Now, one hundred thousand are printed on one machine in that time, and the demand for an increased output has constantly kept ahead of achievement The same wonderful progress in facilities for travel, in telephony and telegraphy and other applications of electricity, multiplying the efficiency of every conceivable faculty and resource, in every line of thought and invention, has extended even to the pulpit of Dr. Hillis. Such preaching! So much preaching, and such sound and commonsense preaching! Such showers of words and finished sentences, epigrammatic outpourings of sound thoughts, quotations from the best books on all subjects, ancient and modern! His head is a storehouse of knowledge. Such an encyclopedia of words and facts it seems impossible for one man to be. There is enough in a single sermon to make four good ones for four good ministers, and then there would be enough left over to supply four more.
I sit, just one in that great crowd, and listen spellbound, for it will not do to lose one of those sparkling sentences. I want him to stop, for he has given me more than I can possibly digest in one week; but yet I want him to go on, too, for it seems wrong to break the spell of enchantment. I catch a suggestion that I might surely profit by, but I cannot remember it, there is so much else that I must hear crowding it out. I risk a turn of my head to see if all the crowd are as intensely interested as I am. None of them see me, so intent is each one to catch every word. So it goes on for an hour. When he suddenly stops with, “Let us pray,” the whole congregation gives one simultaneous long breath. It is a short prayer. Then there is a hymn by the united choir and congregation--old Plymouth congregational singing, nowhere else to be heard. The great crowd rises to go away. I look in front of me and see there this young minister, meeting and shaking hands with the crowd that is rushing forward to greet him, as placid and quiet and as gently receiving his friends as though he had but just now stepped into the hall. There is not the slightest show of fatigue. And here I discover the greatest element in all this young man’s attractiveness. Dominating all else is his personality. All who meet him and have the privilege of speaking to him and shaking his hand are his devoted, loving friends.
Such is Dr. Hillis, and this the dawn of his career. What will he be at high meridian?
The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, minister of City Temple, London, and the greatest of living pulpit orators--I do not say the greatest preacher, for I think that distinction has belonged to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, during the past fifty-three years--has eccentricities that have retarded his friendships among strangers. Dr. Parker and his congregation in London were loyal, staunch friends of Mr. Beecher and his church during the time of the great preacher’s deepest sorrow. In 1886, while in England with Henry Ward Beecher, I engaged Dr. Parker to come over here and make a lecture tour.
Meanwhile his friend, Mr. Beecher, died, and as Dr. Parker was coming to America, it was arranged that he should deliver a eulogy on his friend in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn. The net proceeds I was to present to the Beecher Statue Fund, then being raised. It was the Doctor’s first appearance on the tour, and a large audience of Mr. Beecher’s friends nearly filled the Academy. The net proceeds were subsequently turned over to the Statue Fund as a contribution from me.
At the end of the first week I paid Dr. Parker for five lectures, which included the Beecher eulogy. I made no objections to this. In fact, I knew I had a perfect right to do so. Nothing was said about it in settlement. The Doctor delivered five lectures and I had paid him. The net proceeds of the first lecture I had donated to the Beecher Statue Fund. I should have sent in a check as the net receipts of the lecture, with no further explanation, and then everything would have been all right and no questions asked; but as many thought the net receipts--about $1,100--looked small for so large a house, and did not take into consideration the expense of the Academy of Music rental, advertising, etc., I made a confidential statement to a member of the Statue Committee of all items, including the fee of the speaker. The secretary happened to be the very last man I should have trusted. He at once had an item for the newspapers, and rushed to the office, and that evening appeared in all the daily papers sensational headlines:
“DR. PARKER TAKES PAY FOR EULOGIZING HIS FRIEND.”
“MAJOR POND WITHHOLDS MONEY BELONGING TO THE BEECHER STATUE.”
“DEACON WHITE DENOUNCES THE THIEF AND ACCOMPLICE, ETC.”
It was exciting. Dr. Parker was on the road filling lecture engagements. Reporters and interviewers found him in Chicago and told him he was charged with refusing to deliver a eulogy on his friend for less than $250. Had he any money belonging to the Beecher Statue Fund? He declared he had none.
The Doctor had been lecturing to crowded houses, but now the reporters completely demoralized him. He telegraphed me that he must stop. He was ill and could not go farther. He returned to New York. Reporters haunted him there. Every interview made matters worse. He engaged passage and sailed back home in a very few days. There was due to Dr. Parker $1,100 for lectures that he had delivered. Of course I had been making money on his lectures, and to stop and cancel was a financial loss to me; but as in all contracts, “illness or unavoidable circumstances render this agreement null and void,” I could only settle with Dr. Parker by paying what was due him. I made out the statement and accompanying check for $1,100. He sent for me the day before he sailed. As I came into his dignified and sombre presence the Doctor said:
“Major Pond, I sail for my home to-morrow. My health is such that I cannot go on. The long voyages frighten me, and I am so completely collapsed when I arrive at the end of a day’s journey that I cannot address my audiences. Under these conditions, and with this certificate of one of your most eminent physicians, I am legally released from any obligation to you. You owe me $1,100 according to this statement. I propose to go away from America owing no one and having no one owe me, and you wish to pay me? You give me this check, which I suppose is good.”
Holding the check in his hand, he proceeded to tear it up. “You are an honorable man. I want you to feel welcome at all times in my house in London. As to what you owe me, I propose to give you five hundred years to pay me, and if when due you cannot meet it I will renew it five hundred years more.”
That was Dr. Parker’s eccentric business way.
Comparisons were sometimes made between Mr. Beecher and Dr. Parker from the standpoint of pulpit and church resemblances. There were, in fact, few if any points of similarity. In the Englishman’s manner there is the note of social dominance and a full gamut of ecclesiastical supremacy. Mr. Beecher had none of this, but in his relation to the public exhibited only a loving paternalism. Dr. Parker directs as well as teaches. Beecher advised and sympathized.
In public affairs, taking their different conditions into view, Dr. Joseph Parker and Henry Ward Beecher would bear a closer comparison, not at all unfavorable to Beecher’s British compeer.
Dr. Parker was Mr. Beecher’s personal friend of many years’ standing, and was his host in England on several occasions, the last being in 1886. During Beecher’s English campaign in defence of the Union cause, in 1863, Dr. Parker, then living and preaching in Manchester, was among Mr. Beecher’s firmest and most active supporters. As a speaker, Dr. Parker’s manner, though essentially dramatic, is never melodramatic like that of Dr. Talmage. His intellect, and therefore his voice and style, is that of action--insistent, believing, combative, even aggressive. His manner is more emphatic and his tones deeper than were Mr. Beecher’s, striking as the latter’s often were. The small piercing eyes and peculiar voice hold his audience strongly; even the burr in his tones helps the orator’s control. It intensifies the air of sagacity, the expression of intellectual shrewdness, as well as sincerity, which make him one of the more notable personages I have been able to bring into the arena of brain and speech which our lecture forum offers. Dr. Parker does not possess the amazing versatility which made Mr. Beecher so attractive and gave him such a mental charm, nor does he possess at all times the sunny sweetness of disposition which men loved in Mr. Beecher.
Dr. Parker’s sincerity is always as apparent as his ability of thought and expression. He gives the impression that all his preparation and power are aimed merely to give suitable expression to the opinions and convictions that are his. Words, tones, mannerisms, gestures, are all simply vehicles. It is the thought and its purpose that dominate all, and this is the secret of his strength, success, and power.
His imagery is English; his poesy belongs to their flowers and verdure; the ruggedness of his speech and manner is that of the bleak moors of the north of England. A middle-class Englishman, the Doctor is the personification of all their sterling traits and sturdy characteristics. His speech is studied, polished, finished; his gestures are trained, and all climaxes are carefully arranged. One can only imagine what might be if the speaker ever broke loose; but he never did so far as I know. Our Beecher, on the contrary, was, while obedient to the law of his themes, free as the wind, fresh as the air, full of fancy and illustration as all out of doors, alive with the human glory and glow of life, sweeping in grandeur, glowing with sunshine or melting as with the dew and the joy of the eve. All these, and the deep, lifting, surging soul of the man were in his utterances.
But when all is said for Mr. Beecher, it must not be forgotten that Dr. Parker is a power, a unique personality, gifted with a remarkable intellect and endowed with a temperamental quality which makes all characteristics effective for his work. He is a contemporary whose force and value can be measured only by a comparison with one like Mr. Beecher. And I found him an honorable man.
The Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage made a lecture tour under my management in England in the summer of 1879.
One morning in early June of that summer I was passing a news stand in front of the Astor House in New York and was attracted toward a small placard which read “_Christian Herald and Signs of the Times._ Circulation half a million. Only authorized publication of the Rev. Dr. Talmage’s sermons in England.” I bought the paper, and read the attractive headlines of the sermons, and a leader by its editor, the Rev. Dr. Baxter, a clergyman of the Church of England, eulogizing the great preacher, describing his popularity as a preacher and lecturer in America and his extensive influence on the religious thought of Great Britain. I was on my way to Brooklyn, and while reading the paper on the ferryboat, I concluded to call on Dr. Talmage and see if he would not like to do some lecturing in England. I found him in his study, very affable, and disposed to look favorably on a proposition to go abroad. He had never crossed the ocean, but had heard that his sermons were extensively published and read in Great Britain. In fact, the last mail had brought a letter from the general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Leeds asking if he would consider a proposition to deliver ten lectures under the auspices of his association in the larger cities of England, Ireland, and Scotland, offering to pay his passage and give him £10 a lecture--£100 for ten cities ($500). The Doctor asked me to write out a proposition and to call in the morning. I sat down and wrote on a sheet of paper in his study, as follows:
* * * * *
“REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE.
“DEAR SIR: I will give you $10,000 for one hundred lectures in Great Britain this summer, paying all the travelling and hotel expenses for yourself and Mrs. Talmage from the time you sail from America until you return; settlement to be made weekly.
“Yours truly,
“J. B. POND.”
* * * * *
The following morning I called again at No. 1 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, the Doctor’s home, and he read me a letter which he had prepared in duplicate:
“J. B. POND.