Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was one of the most famous abolitionists, preachers, and inspirational orators during America's long fight against slavery. He became one of the leading voices of moral reason for the North leading up to and all throughout the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln considered him the most influential man in America.
He preached from his famous Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, NY. The church, which is still active till this day, was referred to as the "Grand Central Station" for the Underground Railroad. The church helped usher run away slaves coming from the South through New York and heading up to Canada.
Beecher became popular for his love of America's freedom, liberty and democracy. He became a member and supporter of the Republican Party, helping establish its original party tenets and was one of the most effective supporters of Lincoln's presidential campaign.
Below is an excerpt from one of Beecher's famous sermons called "The Nature of Liberty" where he describes the unspoken laws of God here on earth. Beecher teaches his audience the benefits of obeying these laws of Christ, which leads to a more peaceful, happier, and fulfilled life.
- Editor, Keith Wright
The Nature of Liberty
Sermon By Henry Ward Beecher
Sunday Morning, JAN. 19, 1873. Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, NY
“Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." 一 JOHN XV. 15.
This is unquestionably a contrast between an enforced and a true religious condition. It is a transfer from a life compelled by fear, through conscience, to a life that is inspired and made spontaneous by love. The strength of the phrase does not come out in that term servant. This is the original meaning of the term slave. To be sure, the condition represented by the term slave was not at that time marked so sharply by the contrast of its misery with surrounding circumstances, as it is in our own day; nevertheless, it was a condition to be deprecated; and throughout the Scripture it is spoken of both as a misfortune and a disgrace.
Our Savior looked upon his disciples as if they had, as Jews, been tied up in a kind of bondage. He was a member of the Jewish commonwealth, and was of the Jewish church; he had never separated himself from any of its ordinances or observances, but was walking as the Jewish fathers walked; and his disciples were bound not only to the Mosaic ritual, but to him as a kind of Rabbi; as a reform teacher, but nevertheless a teacher under the Jewish scheme.
And so they were servants — slaves; they were surrendering to an enforced obedience. But he said to them, “Henceforth I shall not call you my servants - persons obeying me, as it were, from compulsion, from a sense of duty, from the stress of a rigorous conscience; I shall now call you friends."
And he gives the reason why. A servant is one who receives orders, and is not admitted to any consultation. He does not know about his lord's affairs. His lord thinks first about his own affairs, and when he has finished his plans, he gives his directions; so that all the servant has to do is obey. But a friend sits in counsel with his friend, and bears a part in that friend's thinking and feeling, and in the determinations to which he comes; and Christ said to his disciples, “You come into partnership with me hereafter, and you stand as friends, on a kind of equality with me. There is to be liberty between you and me hereafter.
Christ, then, raised men from religion as a bondage to religion as a freedom. I do not like the word religion; but we have nothing else to take its place. Its original meaning is to bind, to tie. Men were bound. They were under obligations, and were tied up by them. Christianity is something more than religion. That is, religion interpreted in its original meaning, and as it is popularly regarded. Christianity is religion developed into its last form, and carries men from necessity to voluntariness — from bondage to emancipation. It is a condition of the highest and most normal mental state, and is ordinarily spontaneous and free. This is not an accidental phrase. In the eighth chapter of John we shall find our Master speaking in this way, to the disputing Jews and Pharisees of the temple:
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant (slave) of sin. And the servant (slave) abideth not in the house forever; but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free (emancipate you), ye shall be free indeed."
Now, what is the nature of liberty? We shall throw some light upon the thoughts and practices of men, if we can come to an understanding of the root of this matter. What is your idea of liberty? Do you regard it as an exemption from bondage where a man exercises authority over you without having any right to do it? Do you understand that it is a special kind of liberty, as where one is set free from obedience to an intrusive government or a foreign power, by legislation or by an appeal to armed force? We know what it is to be liberated from such bondage. But what is liberty in its most comprehensive sense, as applied to the universal human family? Is it doing just what you please? Well, yes, when you please to do everything right, but never otherwise. When you please upward, the law is liberty; when you please downward, it is bondage.
What, then, is liberty? It is the condition of men who understand the laws which surround them and govern them completely and surely, and who submit to those laws. It is the condition of submission and obedience to all the laws which God has laid upon men. You cannot make anything else out of it. It is submission with cheerful spontaneity in regard to God's primary laws in society and in the material world. A man who knows what these laws are, and respects them, and heartily and fully obeys them, is free; and every time a man, from ignorance or indisposition, fails to obey one of these laws, he becomes a slave of that law. No man is free who does not respect laws. No man is free whose laws disrespect them. The fundamental idea of liberty is not that of throwing off law — although we have derived that impression from oppressive physical laws. In a general sense, liberty means finding out and obeying laws. God's constitution of men and life is that they receive their largest expansion in certain ways, and that these ways are marked out by divine laws; and he is the freest who knows them most perfectly, accepts them most cheerfully, and gives to them the most obedience. Nobody is free who does not know them, or who, knowing them, refuses to obey them.
Remember the glorious hour when you deliver yourself from the bondage of I can't, and born into the glorious liberty of I can. It should never leave you from that moment on. This is a conversion which stands without backsliding.
Skill comes to us through bondage — that is practice — hard work. Out of work comes leisure, and out of bondage liberty. If you want to be free, you must subdue bondage to get freedom.
Liberty is not dangerous. We see why it has in it the highest safety. It is the expression, not of impulsiveness, not of willfulness, not of pride, not of defiance: it is the expression of drilled and perfected obedience to law. There is no better expression of it in the world than that of the Psalmist: “How love I thy law!” He loves it. It became necessary to his very being.
Liberty is obedience to law. Therefore liberty is safe. And when a man becomes “a law unto himself,” what is that but the expression of such a knowledge and such a drill in that which is designed for manhood, that he has accepted himself, and his conditions, and the laws which are obligatory upon him, and made himself so familiar with them that they act spontaneously in him, so that he does not need to read the Bible, or ask the priest.
How much valuable, precious time have I wasted because I did not know that I was God's son? If only I had known that I had the liberty to go to my Father when I had an errand, and stay away from him when I had not; that I was free to pray if I desired to, but that otherwise I was not under obligation.
Don't you know that when you go to teach, it is not the Bible, but you, that is the Gospel to your pupils? The printer made the Bible, but God made you. That is ink and paper — that is the letter; but the Spirit is in you. The letter killeth; but the spirit maketh alive. If you be kind, and patient, and considerate, and unfailing in gentleness and devotion toward those who cannot repay you, then men will understand what you mean when you say that Christ “gave his life a ransom for many;" and out of you they will learn what it is to look up and adore a Saviour who is “God over all, blessed forever." Oh, that we might rise into this large liberty of an educated and perfect obedience -- into this "glorious light and liberty of the sons of God," who by love have been perfected in the things which are pleasing to God, and best for everyone!
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher |