Letters: Oct. 17, 1927

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Hibben Flayed

Sirs:

I have not read Paxton Hibben's book on Henry Ward Beecher, nor do I intend to so waste my time after reading your review of it. But for the first time I am thoroughly disgusted with TIME. My first impulse, after reading page 48 of the Oct. 3rd issue, was to cancel my subscription. That page, with its rehashing of the foul Beecher scandal, would have a familiar setting in the Daily News or the Graphic. It is altogether out of place in TIME. For printing such a scurrilous attack upon one of the most gifted and cultured men who has appeared in the American pulpit you deserve to lose many subscribers. And you will. What I regret most is that to the man who doesn't know Beecher—and he is in the vast majority— you give the impression that he was both a rogue and a fool. I wondered at times whether I was reading a review of Henry Ward Beecher or Elmer Gantry. You put them in the same class. "Uncouth. . . buffoon. . . pastor of a flock of golden sheep . . . women fainted when he shouted and roared. . . met charges with a stupid sarcasm." I say I have not read Hibben's book, but if you have reviewed it fairly it must be the most unsympathetic and prejudiced study of a man in the whole realm of biography.

I wonder if either the reviewer or Hibben has ever read Beecher's brilliant Yale lectures, or his marvelous sermons, replete with intellectual insight and humanity of feeling, or in fact anything that he ever wrote, with an open mind.

So Mr. Hibben thinks Beecher was guilty. Well, better men than he do not think so. His own church, after long and painstaking investigation, fully exonerated him. A jury failed to convict him. A congregational council of 200 earnest men acquitted him without a dissenting vote. His own wife knew him better than any scandalmongering writer, and she knew him to be guiltless.

Hibben is out of his element when he attempts to write a biography of Beecher. It has already been done so much better than he could ever hope to do it. He reminds one of a second-rate doctor who was called to prescribe for a sick child. His medicine was not beneficial and the child grew worse. Finally the family doctor, a first class physician, was called. He did not criticise the parents for calling the other. He simply said: "Dr. Jones knows something about the disease he thinks is afflicting little Freddie ; but he doesn't know Freddie." And Freddie was an important factor in the case. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Perhaps Mr. Hibben knows much, very much, about the weakness he ascribes to Henry Ward Beecher; he certainly does not know Mr. Beecher.

I would suggest that he take a walk around the Beecher statue in Brooklyn, and note that on the pedestal is the figure of a Negro girl raising a branch of palm to show the gratitude of her race. And perhaps, if the deep truth of that symbolism strikes home, he will doff his hat in salutation to a man the latchet of whose shoes he is unworthy to unloose.

HAROLD J. BORTLE

Red Creek, N. Y.

Beecher Defended

Sirs: