Charles Beecher

Background

Charles Beecher was born on October 7, 1815, in Litchfield, Connecticut, the last of the nine children of Lyman Beecher by his first wife, Roxana Foote.

Education

Charles prepared for college at the Boston Latin School, and Lawrence Academy, Groton, Massachussets, graduated from Bowdoin College (1834), and studied theology under his father at Lane Seminary.

Career

Charles Beecher taught music, for which he had much aptitude, in Cincinnati, and later was a shipping clerk in New Orleans. Settling in Indianapolis while his brother, Henry Ward, was pastor there, he took charge of the music in the latter's church, and finally, November 9, 1844, having become more settled in his views, he was ordained pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two sermons preached there he published in 1846 under the title, The Bible a Sufficient Creed.

His career was a varied one. In 1851 he became pastor of the Free Presbyterian, later the First Congregational Church, Newark, N. J. , where his antislavery views separated him and his church from the fellowship of the other churches of the city. Here he published in 1851 The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws, a Sermon on the Fugitive Slave Law. For a short time he was professor of rhetoric in Knox College, Ill. From November 19, 1857, to May 4, 1881, he was pastor of the First Congregational Church, Georgetown, Massachussets.

In 1863 he was convicted of heresy by the Essex North Conference because of his belief in the preexistence of souls, but his church sustained its pastor, and later the Conference rescinded its action. In 1864 he represented the town in the Massachusetts legislature. Charles made his home in Florida from 1870 to 1877, and was superintendent of public instruction in that state (1871 - 1873). From 1885 to 1893 he was acting pastor of the church in Wysox, Pa. , and he spent his closing years in Georgetown, Massachussets.

In 1851 Beecher published in collaboration with John Zundel, organist of his brother Henry's church in Brooklyn, The Metronome or Music Teacher's Assistant, a New Manual of Sacred Song. He also wrote several hymns, and selected the music for the Plymouth Collection (1855). In 1849 he published The Incarnation, or Pictures of the Virgin and Her Son, which portrays Gospel narratives in the aspects which they present to an imaginative mind, with the appliances of geographical, historical, and critical knowledge. He wrote two books on spiritualism, A Review of the "Spiritual Manifestations" (1853), and Spiritual Manifestations (1879), in which he states his view of the spirit world, and expounds a kind of "Christian spiritualism. "

Based in part on ingenious and sometimes fantastic symbolic interpretations of portions of the Bible, he evolved a theology, or cosmology, which is presented in the last mentioned work and in Redeemer and Redeemed (1864), The Eden Tableau (1880), and Patmos, or the Unveiling (1896). He also edited the Autobiography, Correspondence, etc. , of Lyman Beecher, D. D. (1864).

Achievements

• Clarles Beecher was known as a man of wide learning and of musical as well as literary ability. During his life he wrote a great number of religious hymns and theological works. Beecher’s major publications include: The Incarnation, or, Pictures of the Virgin and her Son (1849); The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws (1851); David and his Throne (1855); Pen Pictures of the Bible (1855); The Life of David King of Israel (1861); Autobiography, Correspondence, etc. of Lyman Beecher (1863); Redeemer and Redeemed (1864); Spiritual Manifestations (1879); The Eden Tableau, or, Object Bible-Teaching (1880); Patmos, or, the Unveiling (1896), etc.

Works

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  • The Eden Tableau, or Bible Object-Teaching: A Study (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Eden Tableau, or Bible Object-Teaching: ...)

  • Spiritual Manifestations: Read Before the Congregational Association of New York and Brooklyn (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Spiritual Manifestations: Read Before the Co...)

  • The Bible a Sufficient Creed: Being Two Discourses Delivered at the Dedication of the Second Presbyterian Church, Fort Wayne, Iowa, February 22, 1846 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Bible a Sufficient Creed: Being Two Disc...)

  • A Sermon on the Nebraska Bill (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Sermon on the Nebraska Bill He that backb...)

  • Autobiography, Correspondence, Etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D. Ed. by Charles Beecher

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Pulpit and the Pew: Lyman Beecher Lectures Delivered 1913 Before the Divinity School of Yale University

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Redeemer and Redeemed: An Investigation of the Atonement and of Eternal Judgment

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • A review of the Spiritual manifestations

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • The God of the Bible against slavery

    (The God of the Bible against slavery 20 pages.)

Views

Quotations: Almost forty years later Charles Beecher prefaced his Redeemer and Redeemed with the words: "To her who gave me birth; consecrated me to the ministry; died before I knew her; whom, next to my Redeemer, I most desire to meet in the Resurrection, to Roxana Beecher, I dedicate this work, for the execution of which I am chiefly glad to have lived; in the hope that she will not, on account of it, be sorry for having borne me. "

Membership

Charles Beecher was also a prominent member of the Peucinian Society.

Connections

On July 23, 1840, Charles Beecher was married to Sarah, daughter of Nathaniel and Mary (Porter) Coffin of Jacksonville, Illinois.

Father:

Lyman Beecher

Mother:

Roxana (Foote) Beecher

Sister:

Mary Foote (Beecher) Perkins

Sister:

Isabella (Beecher) Hooker

Sister:

Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

Sister:

Catharine Esther Beecher

Wife:

Sarah Leland (Coffin) Beecher

Daughter:

Edith Harriet Beecher

Daughter:

Helen Louisa Beecher

Daughter:

Mary Isabella (Beecher) Noyes

Daughter:

Esther Lyman Beecher

Son:

Charles McCulloch Beecher

Son:

Frederick Henry Beecher

Brother:

Thomas Kinnicut Beecher

Brother:

Edward Beecher

Brother:

William Henry Beecher

Brother:

James Chaplin Beecher

Brother:

Henry Ward Beecher