The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this new world always haunts the outskirts of his or her time. Our history is written in the lives of such individuals.
The Beecher family reunion in Cincinnati is in full swing. All eleven children have come to help Lyman Beecher celebrate his sixtieth birthday, and his successful defense at his heresy trial.

NARRATOR : It is early morning on the second day. Lyman Beecher is in his study, watching out the window for the sunrise. His son Charles, the doubtful one, comes to the door.

LYMAN : Come in, Charles. I’ve been thinking about you. Am I wrong to think that you are questioning your course of study?

CHARLES : My life, father.

LYMAN : Calvin Stowe has mentioned a certain hesitancy on your part about the ministry.

CHARLES : I’m not fit, that’s all. I never will be. I’m not like you, or Edward, or George, or even William.

LYMAN : It’s not the same with anyone else, Charles. We guess, we observe, we suggest—that’s all. Let me tell you how it was with me.

CHARLES : All right.

LYMAN : It was not before the middle of my junior year that I was really awakened. Up to then I had only a traditionary knowledge; alive without the law; sense of sin all outward; ignorant as a beast of the state of my heart, and its voluntary spiritual state toward God. Sound familiar?

CHARLES : Yes, yes—go on.

LYMAN : One day, as we were sitting at home, Mother looked out of the window, and saw a drunkard passing, ‘‘Poor man,’’ said she. ‘‘I hope he’ll receive all his punishment in this life. He was under conviction once, and thought he had religion; but he’s nothing but a poor drunkard now.’’
There was no perceptible effect from these words, only, after she left the room, I felt a sudden impulse to pray. It was but a breath across the surface of my soul. I was not in the habit of prayer—yes, Charles, it’s true. But I rose to pray, and had not spoken five words before I was under as deep a conviction as ever I was in this life. The sinking of the shaft was instantaneous. I understood the law and my heart as well as I do now, or shall in the day of judgment, I believe. The commandment came, sin revived, and I died, quick as a flash of lightning.
‘‘Well,’’ I thought, ‘‘it’s all over with me. I’m gone. There’s no hope for such a sinner.’’ Despair followed the inward revelation of what I had read, but never felt. I had never had any feeling of love to God, and all my affections were selfish and worldly.
After a while that entireness of despair—for I was sure I was lost, as I deserved—lessened so that I could pray without weeping; and then I began to hope I was growing good. Then my motives in praying came up before me, and I saw there was no true love in them. I then tried reformation, but seemed no better. God let down light into the dark places, and showed me there was no change of character. I turned away from this self-righteousness, and turned in, and laid hold of my heart like a giant to bring it round so as to pray aright, but could not. Couldn’t make a right prayer with a wrong heart. Worked away at that till I gave up. Then Election tormented me. I fell into a dark, sullen, unfeeling state that finally affected my health.
I can see now that if I had had the instruction I give to inquirers, I should have come out bright in a few days. Mine was what I should now call a hopeful, promising case. Old Samuel Hopkins had just such an awakening, and was tormented a great while. The fact is, the law and doctrines, without any explanation, is a cruel way to get souls into the kingdom. It entails great suffering, especially on thinking minds, such as yours, Charles.

CHARLES : If I were able to attain such a state. I doubt even that.

LYMAN : Anyway, during all this struggle I had no guidance but the sermons of Dr. Dwight. When I heard him preach on ‘‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,’’ a whole avalance rolled down on my mind. I went home weeping every step. One reason I was so long in the dark was, I was under law, was stumbling in the doctrines, and had no views of Christ. They gave me other books to read besides the Bible—a thing I have done practising long since.
For cases like mine, Brainerd’s Life is a most undesirable thing. It gave me a tinge for years. So Edwards on the Affections—a most overwhelming thing, and to common minds the most entangling. The impressions left by such books were not spiritual, but a state of permanent hypochondria—the horrors of a mind without guidance, motive, or ability to do anything. They are a bad generation of books, on the whole. Divine sovereignty does the whole in spite of them. I was converted in spite of such books.
Charles, I wish I could give you my clinical theology. I have used my evangelical philosophy all my lifetime, and relieved people without number out of the sloughs of high Calvanism.
It was many months that I suffered; and, finally, the light did not come in a sudden blaze, but by degrees. I began to see more into the doctrines of the Bible. Election and decrees were less a stumbling-block. I came in by that door. I felt reconciled and resigned, yet with alternations of darkness and discouragement, and a severe conflict whether it would be right for me to preach, which extended even into my Divinity year.
Come, Charles, I hear feet stirring down below, in the kitchen. Breakfast’ll be sizzling in the pan.

CHARLES : Thank you for your concern about me, Father. I appreciate everything, though at times I may seem ungrateful.

LYMAN : Let it come, Charles. There are so many ways of making it hard on yourself.

NARR : Now Lyman Beecher and his eleven children gather around for the second day, each telling their recent histories. Catharine, the oldest, has finished her tale, and William, the eldest son, is next.

CATHARINE : So, shall we begin with William, or continue with the famous heresy trail?

LYMAN : Go ahead, William.

WILLIAM : There’s not a lot to tell. I’m the new pastor at Putnam, Ohio, which is a very small town with ambitions to become a small town. I have a wife, Katherine, and a family. We live simply. Putnam doesn’t even have a church building yet, so my work is double.

GEORGE : And where were you before?

WILLIAM : Newport, Rhode Island. Middletown, Connecticut. In Middletown, the old pastor returned and asked for his post again. They gave it to him. Not much more to say.

LYMAN : Yes, William spent a little time with us here in Cincinnati before being posted to Putnam. Now that William is indeed gone from the fold, Henry is the oldest son still at home.
Let me continue on about my trial at Synod—you only heard the opening chapter last night. We’ve barely begun to thicken the plot.

HENRY : Ah, but before we arrive at Synod, we first must undertake to leave. Now, this might seem like a solemn day to some, but this man, our father, manages to make every day extraordinary. Picture a slightly wet day, everyone bringing down boxes and cases until all are assembled under a large beech tree.
At length we are ready to start for Synod. A trunk tumbles out of one side as Thomas tumbles in the other. At length all are aboard and Father drives out of the yard, holding the reins in one hand, shaking hands with a student with the other, giving Charles directions with his mouth—at least that part not occupied with an apple; for, since apples are plenty, he had made it a practice to drive with one rein in the right hand and the other in the left, with an apple in each, biting them alternately, thus raising and lowering the reins like threads on a loom. Away we go, Charles’s horse on the full canter down the long hill, the carriage bouncing and bounding over the stones, Father alternately telling Tom how to get the harness mended, and showing me the true doctrine of original sin. Hurrah We thunder alongside the boat just in time, and we walk in the door with at least twenty minutes extra.

LYMAN : Anyway, when I got there and looked around, I thought the vote would run very close. My Presbytery, being appealed from, could not vote. The Old School had raked and scraped all the old dead churches where they could get an elder, and thought they might carry the day. It looked squally.
When Wilson got up and made his speech—the best he ever did make, as he misrepresented things—it made the issue look dubious. The house grew dark; it didn’t look dark to me; I knew what artillery I had got; I had some letters of his as a kind of masked battery. But there was an Old School majority, and his speech made a sensation.
There was one time, though, he came near getting overset; it came near terminating the trial. Previously, in his argument before Presbytery, he had said that man has no ability of any kind to obey God’s commands. At the time, I told him then he was the first man I ever knew to march boldly up to that without flinching, and I praised him for his courage.
But the fact was, that did not set well on Princeton. They wrote to him. Dr. Miller wrote—tutored him—hints, you know. He found he had gone too far; it was too rank. He undertook to change front. He went on, and changed his phraseology, and stated what he did hold. I jumped up and said, ‘‘Dr. Wilson, that is precisely what I believe; let’s have no more trials; give me your hand’’ He was astounded—hung back. We adjourned till afternoon, and it lacked but a hair’s breadth of his giving up the case.
When my turn came, I went on from one point to another, and by-the-by the tide turned; and when the time came to vote, there was a majority against him of ten to one.
They came round me like bees, some that had been on his side, as cordial as could be. The next day, when Wilson came in in the morning, he was as pale as a ghost—first time I ever saw him look down.
;He said he did not know what course he should take—whether to appeal to General Assembly or not; but finally he grew stronger, and appealed.
Edward, Edward, let me catch my breath. Tell us of the far West, Illinois.

EDWARD : As of a month ago, when i left to travel East for fund-raising, my college was thriving. It’s a small school, really, but abuilding.
You know, Father, I sympathize with your plight here as a target of both pro-slavery and anti-slavery elements. My position is somewhat the same. As a college president, I am expected to serve as a model for the community, but Jacksonville is so near the Mississippi that the slave trade on the river cannot but affect our whole community.
;It took me all of three years to secure a charter for the school from the Illinois legislature, so unsure were they of the value or necessity for an institution of higher education.
;Up to last year, I avoided direct involvement with the anti-slavery movement, while following the abolitionist debates closely. Now, I have joined Elijah Lovejoy in calling for the first Illinois state anti-slavery convention. The issue now is freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

HENRY : So, you too are an abolitionist.

GEORGE : Hurrah

LYMAN : Now, let’s not get started on that; matters of individual conscience are not to be pried into so lightly.

GEORGE : If it were only so easy as conscience.—

HENRY : Nay, it is We shall educate and educate this nation until slavery dies away, just as it did in the North.
But let’s let Mary tell her news, she’s next oldest.

MARY : I’m not like you, Catharine; oh, I may have helped you in the Hartford school, and even tended business while you were away. But mine is no career, but a wonderful life with Thomas Clap Perkins, an outstanding attorney even in Hartford. I have four children, who take up all my time. Yet I can claim no small distinction in the circles we move in. Thomas’s career has brought us into contact with prominent citizens and wealthy ones. Belle, I do not speak to boast, but I have learned so much that I could teach you. Do come back East with me; Father, may she come?

LYMAN : Mary, you should ask Isabella. So, Belle, have you slept on Mary’s kind offer? We will miss you if you go, but somehow we’ll manage. Isn’t that right, Hattie?

HARRIET : Yes. Do tell us, Belle.

ISABELLA : Mary, I would be pleased to come to live with you in Hartford.

LYMAN : Well, then, it’s settled. Bravo. You’ll have some news for our next reunion, eh?

CATHARINE : Who’s next? George?

GEORGE : I have naught to say, except I’m installed at Batavia, New York, having been ordained here not so long ago. For a short time I was principal of Lawrence Academy in Boston.

HARRIET : Now, if any of you have missed an ordination, here’s your chance to hear George’s.

CATHARINE : Father, this was one of Harriet’s ‘‘HITS’’ at the Semi-Colon Club, a dramatic reading of a rather dry session, you’ll admit, once you hear it.

HARRIET : We’ll begin in media res: We will go into the side aisle; all the body pews are engaged by the Presbytery. Do you see them all seated en masse, each one with the Confession of Faith by nearby, to turn to at a moment’s warning?
;That handsome, modest, amiable-looking young man in the chair in front of the pulpit is Brother Rankin, the moderator. He was an Old School man once; for a long time lately he has been wavering; this Presbytery he was nominated and appointed by the New School Party, and this, together with the abuse received from the other side, has fixed him, and he is now counted on as a vote. At a table sits Brother Graves, the recording secretary, with paper, pen, and ink. The meeting has not begun. Some are walking about, some talking, some reading.
At last the moderator calls the meeting to order. They proceed to business. They are to examine a candidate. The candidate is Mr. George Beecher, a New School man; but that is not the worst—a Taylorite
Do you see, in the front pew, a tall, grave-looking man, of strong and rather harsh features, very pale, with a severe seriousness of face, and with great formality and precision in every turn and motion? Well, if you see him, that man is Dr. Wilson. His great ivory-headed cane leans on the side of the pew by him, and in his hand he holds the Confession of Faith.
The candidate sits on the pulpit stairs, so that he may face the Presbytery, and the examining committee are called on: Dr. Wilson, in Philosophy. Here follows, ‘‘Mr. Beecher, what is matter and what is mind, and what is the difference twixt and tween, and what is Mechanics, and Optics, and Hydrostatics, and what is Mental Philosophy, and what is Moral Philosophy, and what is right and wrong, and what is truth, and what is virtue, and what are the powers of the mind, and what is intellect, susceptibilities, and will, and conscience’’—and everything else, world without end, amen After this the doctor’s grave face gradually relaxes into a smile, which seems like the melting of a snow-drift as he says that he has ‘‘pursued this branch of the examination as far as might be deemed expedient.’’
‘‘Mr. Moderator,’’ says one, ‘‘I move that the examination be sustained.’’ ‘‘I second it,’’ says another.
The moderator then says, ‘‘Those who sustain this examination say Ay.’’
Now hark—‘‘Ay ay ay’’
‘‘Those of contrary mind, No.’’ No answer. So this is over.
Next topic is announced: ‘‘Theology’’ Now you may see the brethren bending forward, and shuffling, and looking wise. Over in the pew opposite to us are the students of the Lane Seminiary, with attentive eyes. There is Theodore Weld, all awake, nodding from side to side, and scarce keeping still a minute together.
‘‘The examiner in Theology, Brother Gallagher.’’ This is the great Goliath, whose awful brows and camp-meeting hymns used so to awe and edify me. He rises very leisurely, and gives a lunge forward, precipitating his unwieldy size into a chair without much regad to graceful disposition, and with a deep, deliberate voice begins.
The beauty of it all is that Gallagher is a warm friend to George, and of similar sentiments. The appointing him to examine was a friendly motion of the moderator. He confined his examination merely to the broad and obvious truths of Christianity, and then sat down.
But now comes the fiery trial. The moderator announces, ‘‘Any of the brethren have a right to question the candidate.’’ You must have been before now some of them fidgeting on their seats, and waiting their turn. Then such a storm of questions rains in:
‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you believe in the doctrine of election? Will you please to state your views on that subject?’’ ‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you believe in the imputation of Adam’s sin?’’ ‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you believe infants are sinners as soon as they are born?’’ ‘‘Do you believe that infants have unholy natures?’’ ‘‘Do you believe that men are able of themselves to obey the commandments of God?’’ ‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you believe men are active or passive in regeneration?’’ ‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you make any distinction between regeneration and conversion?’’ ‘‘Mr. Beecher, do you think that men are punished for the guilt of Adam’s first sin?’’ ‘‘Do you believe in imputed righteousness?’’
There was George—eyes flashing and hands going, turning first to right and then to left—‘‘If I understand your question, sir—’’ ‘‘I do not understand your terms, sir.’’ ‘‘Do you mean by nature thus and so? or so?’’ ‘‘In what sense do you use the word imputation?’’ ‘‘I don’t exactly understand you, sir.’’ ‘‘Yes, sir’’ (to right). ‘‘No, sir’’ (to left). ‘‘I should think so, sir’’ (in front).

EDWARD : I missed this examination by a day.

HARRIET : Yes, you poked in like a ghost upon us just afterward.

LYMAN : The first that I knew of it was seeing you go by the window, and exclaiming, ‘‘There’s a man looks like Edward’’ and the next minute there you were, standing among us.

HARRIET : And then you all had a long chat, until at last Father and Edward went down cellar to saw wood. Don’t that seem natural I heard the word ‘‘foreordination’’ through the parlor floor, so I knew what they were talking about. Oh, it seemed like old times.

HENRY : Hattie, why don’t you finish your account? Some of us might learn something of value for the near future.

HARRIET : Someone named Henry or Charles, perhaps? Well, the examination lasted nearly two hours and a half, after which the further consideration of that subject was postponed till examination had taken place in other branches. The next day the Presbytery were called upon to see if they had any remarks to make upon the examination thus far. Then such a war of words
The discussion lasted all day. In the evening we came, and they went at it again. All the Presbytery had finished their remarks except Father and Dr. Wilson, who, as the oldest, came last on the list. Father, as first called on, rose, and went through a regular statement of what he conceived to be the views expressed by the candidate, and a regular argument to show that they were in agreement with the Confession of Faith. He spoke well, clearly, and persuasively, and was occasionally a little humorous.
When Father sat down Dr. Wilson rose up, and made a speech of about half an hour, in which he stated that he believed that the candidate was not a Christian, and knew nothing experimentally about Christianity, and that he finally believed that he, and all those who held the same sentiments with him ‘‘would never see the gates of eternal bliss.’’ Many people say that it is altogether the mildest and most temperate speech they ever heard him make.
After this speech the question was taken, though with much difficulty and opposition; and on calling the roll, the examination was sustained by a majority of 23.
About 12 o’clock at night we found ourselves once more at home and in a state of high excitement, and sat up about half an hour longer to fight over the battle to Catharine, who had not been able to go out.

GEORGE : So now you know what I’ve been doing. Don’t everybody jump on me for saying this, but isn’t it Harriet’s turn?

HARRIET : Oh, but there’s very little to say about me. I won a fifty dollar prize for writing, and I help Catharine in her school. But mostly I write. Some projects with Catharine will be schoolbooks; I also publish in the Christmas annuals. Some sketches may go together to make a book of history.

LYMAN : The hour is getting late; you young ones ought to be getting up to bed.

THOMAS : Not until you finish the trial story—please.

LYMAN : Well, all right. Where was I? Just before the appeal to General Assembly came on at Pittsburgh, I sent two or three dozens of the report of my trial up to be distributed in the Pittsburgh Synod. When I got there they flocked round me. ‘‘Why, your doctrine is just that of our great favorite, Dr. So-and-so, and we are not going to see you hung.’’ The third day of the session, Dr. Wilson rose and said he was prepared to prosecute the appeal, but that his friends had told him they could not sustain him, and he was willing to withdraw.
That, however, depended on my consent. I rose and said meekly that I was ready for trial, but that if Dr. Wilson wanted to cease, I supposed that, according to the Book, after being dragged through all the Church courts, I had a right to claim that my prosecutor ought to be treated as I should have been if condemned.
Dr. Wilson bounded from his seat and blazed out—he had no concessions or confessions to make.
And that is the end of the story. Your father is no heretic. Period. Now skedaddle. Up, up, up with you.
As for the rest, you may stay and talk as long as you please. This old head needs a pause in this remarkable day, in this fretful year. Good night all, and good rest.

ALL : Good night, good night, Father.

HENRY : Come into the parlor, Edward, George—you too, William—we’ll get into this abolitionist affair some more. Catharine?

CATHARINE : Not I. Come, Hattie, I want to find out how the school has been progressing.

ISABELLA : Can I come, too?

HARRIET : For a time, Belle.