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Tappan Presb. Hesse.

1-9-1933

OPENING FOR THE DEFENSE.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1875.

37TH DAY.

Mr. TRACY-MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY: The time having arrived when the defendant is permitted to be heard in his own behalf, my associates have assigned to me the duty of stating his case to this Honorable Court and to you. I am sure, gentlemen, when you consider for whom and in whose presence I speak, you will believe that it is for me an occasion of great personal embarrassment. When I think of the interests involved in this trial and the effects which may follow it, when I contemplate the deep and painful anxiety which it everywhere excites, I am oppressed by the burden of responsibility which the over-kindness of my associates has laid upon me, and would gladly surrender it to other and abler hands. Nothing, indeed, prevents me from sinking beneath the task I have undertaken, but a clear conviction of the absolute innocence of my client, and the assurance of my eminent associates that his case is too strong to be injured by my unskillful advocacy. And moreover, I am assured by the knowledge that comes to me from every quarter, that, in my effort to make his innocence as plain to you and to the world as it has long been to his counsel and his people, I have the universal sympathy of mankind.

the defendant from his representative character.

Not that I would endorse the remarkable statement of the plaintiff's counsel in his opening, that" upon the result of your verdict, to a very large extent, will depend the integrity of the Christian religion. God forbid that the integrity of the Christian religion should depend upon the character or the fortunes of any man, however learned, eloquent or devout. The Christian religion is founded upon the eternal rock of God's nature and God's decree. It is from everlasting to everlasting; and will abide when the remotest records of future history shall have faded from the annals of time, and the heavens "shall have been rolled together as a scroll.” My client expects no other support from the Christian religion than such as may be found in its promises. He takes his stand here alone upon his own integrity, sustained only by God and the justice of his cause. And yet, gentlemen, I repeat, you cannot consider him altogether without reference to that sacred faith of which he has been for a long time one of the most honored ministers, which would acquire lustre in his vindication, and which could not but be deeply wounded in his fall.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

The son of one of the most eminent clergyThe magnitude and importance of the ques- men of the last generation, a member of a tions here involved, cannot be over-estimated, large family of which all the men are clergyfor they go down to the very foundations of men and all the women authors of repute-a our social, moral, and religious life. If the family, let me say, gentlemen, on whose fair effect of your decision in this case could be fame the shadow of reproach has never rested limited to determining whether the plaintiff hitherto the defendant early devoted himhas suffered a wrong at the hands of the de-self to the self-denying pursuit of a minister fendant, for which he is entitled to be compensated in money, this trial would not excite the wide-spread interest which has attached to it from the beginning, and which must follow it to the end. But, gentlemen, I need not remind you how utterly impossible it is to circumscribe the effect of this trial within such narrow limits. Either this defendant is to go forth from this court-room vindicated by your verdict, or you and I and all who take part in this day's work are actors in one of the greatest moral tragedies which has ever occupied the stage of human life. Look at it as we may, it is impossible to separate

of the Gospel. For it was no bed of roses in a luxurious abode that he spread for himself; he made no use of a dominant family influence to secure the refinements and privileges of a wealthy city parish. He struck boldly out into the wilds and hardships of the far West. He rode the rough circuit of a homemissionary life. With his own hands he made the fires, swept the floors and rang the bell in his forest church; with his own hands, assisted only by the faithful wife who stood by him then, and who-to the honor of womanhood-stands by him to-day, he ministered to the necessities of his forest home.

When the thunders of his manly eloquence abled him to summon the race to a higher, had reached even this distant coast, and the nobler, and purer life. Though a Protestant, imperative demand of the church had sum- he has ever been able to discern the common. moned him to a wider sphere of action, he Christian faith in all churches bearing the left neither his simplicity nor his indepen-Christian name. Moral integrity, sincere dedence behind. He has been the same genu-votion, and an earnest consecration to the ine, true-hearted, unaffected man here that common Lord, have always been recognized he was in the West. In the midst of all the by him, without reference to the question of refinements and luxuries of city life, his his own recognition by those to whom his motto has been that of the great apostle he charity has extended. Every honest soul so much resembles, "I know how to be that labored for the salvation and elevation abased, and I know how to abound." To of mankind, whether minister, priest or some who, in the early days, when he was monk, or only self-sacrificing layman, has less known than now, undertook to control been to him a Christian brother, a minister his utterances by threatening loss of place, he of God. It is then no wonder that, besides made this memorable reply: "You may unthe power of his personal teaching, the deseat me, but you cannot control me. I came mand for his printed sermons should be befrom the woods, and I can go back to the yond all precedent. Their weekly issue is woods again." read in every town and hamlet throughout this broad land; they are met with in the cabin of the backwoodsman, in the hut of the miner, in the forecastle at sea. Not only this, but they have been translated into every European language. In England alone, as I am informed, their circulation is thrice as large as that in all this country.

This man, so introduced to us, has wrought and taught for near thirty years in our midst. He is no longer a stranger, and no longer a new acquaintance. Genial and unassuming in his manners; inspiring in his speech as new wine; accessible to all, from the gravest citizen to the humblest child,the life he has lived before us has been as warm and fruitful as God's summer, as open and beneficent as His day.

Thus has he-alone-almost fulfilled the divine command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." I estimate the full force of my words when I affirm that no man ever exerted in his own lifetime so wide-spread and beneficent an influence. The far-reaching and abiding power of this Christian minister, has long been a

No truth struggling with error has ever failed to find in him a champion; no phase of human sorrow has sought him in vain for sympathy and relief. Nay, as we have too much reason to know, the very excess of his sensibility has at times become to him an ele-marvel to the people of two continents, and ment of weakness, and left him for the mo- theories both friendly and hostile have been ment at the mercy of colder and harder men. advanced to explain it. Gentlemen, shall I And, if this is a fair picture of his private solve the problem for you? The reason of and domestic life, what shall be said of his the power of this man's preaching is, that life and influence as a preacher of the Gos- behind his sermons there is a life-and bepel? Let the immense assemblies that for hind the life, a MAN. It is because they have nearly thirty years-without abatement, come from the heart, that they have gone to without fluctuation-have thronged his chap- the heart. It is because his preaching is known el, more numerous and enthusiastic to-day by those who know him best to be illustrated than ever before, bear testimony. To this by his daily living, that he is, in this sugreat congregation, presenting an unusual preme emergency of his life, girded by milproportion of able and thoughtful men, helions of faithful hearts and walled to heaven has ministered all these years untiringly. That his ministrations have been marked by a rare spirituality, and a wonderful mastery over the various motives of human character and moods of human experience, is universally acknowledged. He has been empathically a preacher of the people. Living himself ined for the emancipation of a race. When the constant communion with the unseen, he has interpreted the mysteries of the soul and given voice to those dim intuitions--those immortal yearnings-which spring up in every human breast, but which so few can ever utter. A clergyman of the Congregational Church, he has labored for the aggrandizement of no sect, for the building up of no denomination. His creed is as broad as humanity itself; and his deep, warm heart, instinctively responding to the feeling of all, has en

by the unfaltering love and confidence of his people.

But if there are those who are not interested in the minister of the Gospel, I invite them to contemplate the patriot and philanthropist. Espousing the cause of the oppressed, he laboragitation resulted in a conflict of arms, imperiling the Union of the States, his clarion voice was heard everywhere arousing the nation to the holy strife. When danger threatened from abroad, he was prompt to plead the cause of "American union on the basis of American liberty" in the face of infuriated thousands set on by a foreign aristocracy to revile him and to strike him down. Mr. Beecher's handto-hand fight with the English masses on English soil, is a thrilling page in history,

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