American Men of Mind Part 17

Still another great reform, ridiculed at first, but now recognized as one of the most beneficent movements of the age is a.s.sociated with a single name. The reform is the protection of dumb animals, and the name is that of Henry Bergh.

Born in New York City in 1823, the son of a wealthy ship-builder and inheriting his father's fortune at the age of twenty, Henry Bergh, after spending some years in Europe, a portion of them in the diplomatic service of the United States, returned to this country, determined to devote the remainder of his life to the interests of animals.

It was a new idea which he presented to the public, met at first with indifference, then with ridicule and opposition. But as a bold worker in the streets of New York, by a relentless activity in carrying cases of ill-treatment of animals to the courts, and an eloquent advocacy of his cause on the floor of the legislature, he soon won friends and support, as every great cause is bound to do, and finally succeeded in so winning over public sentiment that, in 1866, the legislature pa.s.sed the laws which he had prepared, creating the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with himself as president. He gave not only his time, but his property to the work, and soon had the society in a prosperous condition, with branches forming in other cities. Indeed, the idea which he fostered has spread to the whole country, and nowhere may animals be mistreated with impunity. The idea that man is responsible not only for the happiness of his fellows, but for the well-being of his beasts marks a long stride forward in ethics.

Bergh's influence, indeed, extended beyond this country. Not only did practically every state in the Union enact the laws for the protection of animals which he had procured from the state of New York, but Brazil, the Argentine Republic, and many other foreign countries did likewise.

In 1874, Bergh rescued a little girl from inhuman treatment, and this led to the formation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which has also done a great work.

No doubt before Bergh's time, there were many people who were pained to see either children or animals mistreated and who pa.s.sed by with averted eyes. Bergh did not pa.s.s by. He made it his business, in the first place, to secure adequate laws for the punishment of cruelty, and in the second place, to provide means for the enforcement of those laws.

There are many of us to-day who are shocked at the injustice and suffering in the world, and who would welcome its regeneration. But wishing for a thing never got it. Nor does philanthropy consist merely in wishing men well. It means labor and self-sacrifice, and frequently obloquy and misunderstanding. The reward of the reformer is usually a stone and a sneer, if nothing worse. But when a man's heart is in the work, stones and sneers seem only to spur him on. They are like wind to a flame, fanning it white-hot. And it is a wonderful commentary on the essential goodness of human nature that never yet, in the history of mankind, has a real and needed reform failed, in the end, of success.

Among latter-day clergymen in America, none has achieved a wider reputation or a greater personal popularity than Phillips Brooks. Born in Boston in 1835, a graduate of Harvard, ordained to the Episcopal ministry at the age of twenty-four, and ten years later called to the rectorship of Trinity church, Boston, it was in this latter field, which he would never leave, that he showed himself to be one of the strongest personalities and n.o.blest preachers of his age. No more striking figure ever appeared in a pulpit. Of magnificent physique, with a striking and ma.s.sive head and handsome countenance, breathing the very spirit of youth, in spite of his grey hair, he had the interest and attention of any audience before he opened his lips.

Phillips Brooks has been compared to Henry Ward Beecher, and in many things they were alike. But the former's culture, while perhaps less varied than Beecher's, was deeper and richer, his sermons were less brilliant but cast in better form, his appeal was narrower but to a far more influential cla.s.s. He was, in a word, the preacher of the intellectual. No one who heard him preach ever failed to be startled at first by his tremendous rapidity of delivery--averaging two hundred words a minute--or failed to find himself, at first, lagging behind the equal rapidity of thought. But once accustomed to these--once realizing that, in listening to him there could be no inattention or wandering of wits--his sermon became a source of keenest intellectual delight and n.o.blest spiritual inspiration.

Phillips Brooks often said that he had to preach rapidly, or not at all.

In youth he had suffered from something resembling an impediment in his speech, and more measured utterance gave it a chance to recur.

Certainly, no one who ever listened to his fluent and limpid utterance would have suspected it. But he was far more than a great preacher. By his broad tolerance, his lofty character and immense personal influence, he became, in a way, a national figure, the common property of the nation which felt itself the richer for possessing him. A gracious and courtly figure, with a heart as wide as the human race, he lives, somehow, as the true type of clergyman, whose concern is humanity and whose field the world.

Which brings us to the life of the last man we shall consider in this chapter, a man the opposite in many ways of the great clergyman whose career we have just noted, and yet, like him, of broadest sympathies and most sincere convictions; a man whose life was more picturesque, whose battle against fate was harder, and whose achievement was even more remarkable--the greatest evangelist the modern world has ever produced, Dwight L. Moody. If ever a man labored for his fellow-men, he did, and the story of his life reads almost like a romance.

He was born at Northfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1837, the son of a stone-mason, who, disheartened and worn out by business reverses, died when the boy was only four years old. There were nine children, the oldest only fifteen, and when the father's creditors came and took every possession they had in the world, the future looked dark indeed. The mother was urged to place the children in various homes, but she managed to keep them together by doing housework for the neighbors and tilling a little garden.

As soon as he was old enough, Dwight was put to work on a farm, but his earnings were small, and finally, when he was seventeen, he started for Boston to look for something better. He managed to get a position in a shoe-store, and there came under the influence of Edward Kimball, who persuaded him to become a Christian and to join a church. But he was not admitted to membership for nearly a year; so poor was his command of language and so awkward his sentences that it was doubted if he understood Christianity at all, and even when he was admitted, the committee stated that they thought him "very unlikely ever to become a Christian of clear and decided views of gospel truth; still less to fill any extended sphere of public usefulness." How blind, indeed, we often are to the possibilities in human nature!

At the age of nineteen, Dwight removed to Chicago, secured another position as shoe-salesman, and offered his services to a mission school as a teacher. His appearance made anything but a favorable impression, but finally he was told that he might teach provided he brought his own scholars. The next Sunday he walked in at the head of a score of ragam.u.f.fins he had gathered up along the wharves. The divine fire seems to have been working in him; he was finding words with which to express himself, and burning for a wider field. So he rented a room in the slum districts which had been used as a saloon and opened a Sunday school there. It was an immense success, soon outgrew the little room, and was removed to a large hall, where, every Sunday, a thousand boys and girls attended. For six years, Moody conducted that school, sweeping it out and doing the janitor work himself, attending to his business as salesman throughout the week. But in 1860, at the age of twenty-three, he decided to devote all his time to Christian work.

He had no income, and to keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a bench in his school, and cooked his own food. Then the Civil War began, and he erected a tent at the camp near Chicago where the recruits were gathered, and labored there all day, sometimes holding eight or ten meetings. He went with the men to the front, and was at the desperate battles of Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga. The war over, he took up again his work in Chicago. The great fire of 1871 swept away his church, but he soon had a temporary structure erected, and labored on.

By this time, his fame had got abroad, and finally in 1873, his great opportunity came. Accompanied by Ira D. Sankey, the famous singer of hymns, he started on an evangelist tour of Great Britain. At his first meeting only four people were present; at his last, thirty thousand crowded to hear him. In Ireland, the crowds sometimes covered six acres, and during the four months he spent in London, over two million people heard him preach. Great Britain had never before experienced such a religious awakening; but it was as nothing to the reception given him when he returned to America two years later. There are many people still living who remember those wonderful revivals in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, with their great choirs, and Ira Sankey's singing, and Moody's soul-stirring talks. From that time forward he was easily the first evangelist in the world--perhaps the greatest the world had ever seen.

It is doubtful if any man ever faced and preached to so many people. He spoke to thousands night after night, week in and week out. In his themes he kept close to life, and few men were his equal in making scriptural biography vivid and realistic; in reconstructing scriptural scenes and setting them, as it were, bodily before his audience. He was not a cultured man, as we understand the word--not a man of broad learning; perhaps such learning would only have weakened him--nor did he have the presence and voice which go so far toward the equipment of the orator. But he burned with an intense conviction, and his sermons were so free from art, so direct, so persuasive, that they were perfectly adapted to the end he sought--the conversion of human beings.

SUMMARY

GIRARD, STEPHEN. Born near Bordeaux, France, May 24, 1750; sailed as cabin-boy to West Indies, and then to America; established in Philadelphia, 1769; financial mainstay of government in war of 1812; died at Philadelphia, December 26, 1831.

SMITHSON, JAMES LEWIS MACIE. Born in France in 1765; matriculated from Pembroke College, Oxford, England, 1782; Fellow Royal Society, 1786; distinguished as student of mineralogy and chemistry; died at Genoa, Italy, June 27, 1829.

COOPER, PETER. Born at New York City, February 12, 1791; apprenticed to carriage-maker, 1808; engaged in various enterprises and established Canton Iron Works, Canton, Maryland, 1830; Greenback candidate for President, 1876; died at New York, April 4, 1883.

PEABODY, GEORGE. Born at Danvers, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 18, 1795; settled in London as a banker, 1837; died there, November 4, 1869.

HOPKINS, JOHNS. Born at Waterbury, Connecticut, May 19, 1795; founded house of Hopkins & Brothers, 1822; chairman of finance committee Baltimore & Ohio railroad, 1855; died at Baltimore, December 24, 1873.

CORNELL, EZRA. Born at Westchester Landing, New York, January 11, 1807; mechanic and miller at Ithaca, New York, 1828-41; member of State a.s.sembly, 1862-63; State Senator, 1864-67; died at Ithaca, New York, December 9, 1874.

SLATER, JOHN FOX. Born at Slatersville, Rhode Island, March 4, 1815; established Slater Fund, 1882; died at Norwich, Connecticut, May 7, 1884.

STANFORD, LELAND. Born at Watervliet, New York, March 9, 1824; Republican governor of California, 1861-63; United States Senator, 1885-93; died at Palo Alto, California, June 20, 1893.

ROCKEFELLER, JOHN DAVISON. Born at Richford, New York, July 8, 1839; partner of Clark & Rockefeller, 1858; built Standard Oil Works, Cleveland, Ohio, 1865; organized Standard Oil Company, 1870; Standard Oil Trust, 1882.

CARNEGIE, ANDREW. Born at Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland, November 25, 1837; came to United States, 1848; telegraph messenger boy, 1851; introduced Bessemer steel process to America, 1868; formed Carnegie Steel Company, 1899; merged into United States Steel Corporation, 1901, when he retired from business.

BEECHER, LYMAN. Born at New Haven, Connecticut, October 12, 1775; pastor of various Congregational churches, 1799-1832; president Lane Theological Seminary, 1832-51; died at Brooklyn, New York, January 10, 1863.

BEECHER, HENRY WARD. Born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813; graduated at Amherst, 1834; pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, Brooklyn, 1847-87; founder of the _Independent_ and the _Christian Union_; died at Brooklyn, March 8, 1887.

CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY. Born at Newport, Rhode Island, April 7, 1780; graduated at Harvard, 1798; pastor of Federal Street Church, Boston, 1803-42; died at Bennington, Vermont, October 2, 1842.

JUDSON, ADONIRAM. Born at Malden, Ma.s.sachusetts, August 9, 1788; graduated at Brown, 1807; started as missionary to Burmah, 1812, and remained in far East until his death, April 12, 1850.

MOTT, LUCRETIA. Born at Nantucket, Ma.s.sachusetts, January 3, 1793; entered ministry of Friends, 1818; a.s.sisted at formation of American anti-slavery society, 1833; called first woman suffrage convention, 1848; died near Philadelphia, November 11, 1880.

DIX, DOROTHEA LYNDE. Born at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, 1805; devoted her whole life to work for paupers, convicts, and insane persons; superintendent of hospital nurses during Civil War; died at Trenton, New Jersey, July 19, 1887.

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. Born at Medford, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 11, 1802; editor _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, 1840-43; published a number of novels; died at Wayland, Ma.s.sachusetts, October 20, 1880.

GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD. Born at Newburyport, Ma.s.sachusetts, December 10, 1805; began publication of the _Liberator_, 1831; president American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-65; died at New York City, May 24, 1879.

PARKER, THEODORE. Born at Lexington, Ma.s.sachusetts, August 24, 1810; studied at Cambridge Divinity School, 1834-36; Unitarian clergyman at Roxbury, 1837; head of an independent society at Music Hall, Boston, 1846; died at Florence, Italy, May 10, 1860.

PHILLIPS, WENDELL. Born at Boston, November 29, 1811; educated at Harvard; admitted to the bar, 1834; leading orator of the Abolitionists, 1837-61; president of the Anti-Slavery Society, 1865-70; Prohibitionist candidate for governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, 1870; died at Boston, February 2, 1884.

ANTHONY, SUSAN BROWNELL. Born at South Adams, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 15, 1820; became agitator in cause of woman suffrage, organized National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation and was its president for many years; died March 13, 1906.

STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY. Born at Johnstown, New York, November 12, 1815; graduated at Willard Seminary, 1832; met Lucretia Mott, 1840; held first woman's suffrage convention, 1848; a.s.sociated with Susan B. Anthony; died at New York City, October 26, 1902.

BROWN, JOHN. Born at Torrington, Connecticut, May 9, 1800; removed with parents to Ohio, 1805; emigrated to Kansas, 1855; won battle of Osawatomie, August, 1856; seized a.r.s.enal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, October 16, 1859; captured, October 18; tried by Commonwealth of Virginia, October 27-31; hanged at Charlestown, Virginia, December 2, 1859.

BARTON, CLARA. Born at Oxford, Ma.s.sachusetts, 1821; superintended relief work on battle-fields during Civil War; laid out grounds of national cemetery at Andersonville, 1865; worked through Franco-Prussian war, 1870; distributed relief in Strasburg, Belfort, Montpelier, Paris, 1871; secured adoption of Treaty of Geneva, 1882; president American Red Cross Society, 1881-1904.

BERGH, HENRY. Born at New York City, 1823; secretary of legation at St.

Petersburg, 1862-64; organized American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1866; founded Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1874; died at New York City, March 12, 1888.

BROOKS, PHILLIPS. Born at Boston, December 13, 1835; graduated at Harvard, 1855; graduated from Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia, 1859; rector of Trinity Church, Boston, 1870-93; elected Bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Ma.s.sachusetts, 1891; died at Boston, January 23, 1893.

MOODY, DWIGHT LYMAN. Born at Northfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 5, 1837; started missionary work at Chicago, 1856; conducted revival meetings in Great Britain, 1873-75; and devoted the remainder of his life to this work; died at Northfield, December 22, 1899.

CHAPTER IX

MEN OF AFFAIRS