The Freedom Ring

Darwin, A Sun of the 19th Century - Puck Magazine 1884 Deeply attuned to the progressive intellectual and social currents of the day, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher believed that religion must adapt to changing times. He extolled temperance, embraced women's suffrage, was a staunch abolitionist, and argued that Darwin's theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible.  The following is one of the famous "Evolution Sermons" preached by Beecher in 1885 at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. Henry Ward Beecher offering his “Evolution Sermons” across the science/religion divide to Herbert Spencer and other evolutionists - Puck Magazine 1885 From Henry Ward Beecher’s Evolution & Religion SINFULNESS OF MAN LESSON : Romans viii: 19–22. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature itself...

Puck Magazine Passage from "Evolution & Religion"  By Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,  -Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, NY, Sunday Morning, May 17, 1885- “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning. It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. Oye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"   — Matthew xvi : 2 , 3 . This could mean nothing unless it meant that, as the weather changes, God's miraculous developments are presenting a diversified appearance throughout time. He was in the world and the world did not recognize him. He was among the then most religiously cultivated people, and he was developing a higher conception of morality and spiritual religion than theirs, and they could not understand it.  They looked upon all the miracles that he brought, the transcendent works of goodwill and of grace, as if they were in a circus, watching the athletic fea...