Part 17 (1/2)
Still another great refornized as one of the e is associated with a single name The reform is the protection of duh
Born in New York City in 1823, the son of a wealthy shi+p-builder and inheriting his father's fortune at the age of twenty, Henry Bergh, after spending some years in Europe, a portion of them in the diplomatic service of the United States, returned to this country, determined to devote the remainder of his life to the interests of animals
It was a new idea which he presented to the public, met at first with indifference, then with ridicule and opposition But as a bold worker in the streets of New York, by a relentless activity in carrying cases of ill-treatment of animals to the courts, and an eloquent advocacy of his cause on the floor of the legislature, he soon won friends and support, as every great cause is bound to do, and finally succeeded in so winning over public sentiislature passed the lahich he had prepared, creating the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aniave not only his time, but his property to the work, and soon had the society in a prosperous condition, with branches for in other cities Indeed, the idea which he fostered has spread to the whole country, and nowhere may animals be mistreated with impunity The idea that man is responsible not only for the happiness of his fellows, but for the well-being of his beasts h's influence, indeed, extended beyond this country Not only did practically every state in the Union enact the laws for the protection of animals which he had procured froentine Republic, and h rescued a little girl from inhuman treatment, and this led to the formation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which has also done a great work
No doubt before Bergh's time, there were many people ere pained to see either children or anih did not pass by He made it his business, in the first place, to secure adequate laws for the punishment of cruelty, and in the second place, to provide means for the enforcement of those laws
There are many of us to-day who are shocked at the injustice and suffering in the world, and ould welcoot it Nor does philanthropy consistmen well It means labor and self-sacrifice, and frequently obloquy andThe reward of the refor worse But when a man's heart is in the work, stones and sneers see it white-hot And it is a wonderful cooodness of human nature that never yet, in the history of mankind, has a real and needed reforyreater personal popularity than Phillips Brooks Born in Boston in 1835, a graduate of Harvard, ordained to the Episcopal e of twenty-four, and ten years later called to the rectorshi+p of Trinity church, Boston, it was in this latter field, which he would never leave, that he showed hiest personalities and noblest preachers of his age No nificent physique, with a striking andthe very spirit of youth, in spite of his grey hair, he had the interest and attention of any audience before he opened his lips
Phillips Brooks has been cos they were alike But the former's culture, while perhaps less varied than Beecher's, was deeper and richer, his sermons were less brilliant but cast in better form, his appeal was narrower but to a far more influential class He was, in a word, the preacher of the intellectual No one who heard him preach ever failed to be startled at first by his tre two hundred words abehind the equal rapidity of thought But once accusto to hi of wits--his serht and noblest spiritual inspiration
Phillips Brooks often said that he had to preach rapidly, or not at all
In youth he had suffered fro an iave it a chance to recur
Certainly, no one who ever listened to his fluent and limpid utterance would have suspected it But he was far reat preacher By his broad tolerance, his lofty character and iure, the common property of the nation which felt itself the richer for possessing hiure, with a heart as wide as the huyman, whose concern is hus us to the life of the last man we shall consider in this chapter, a yman whose career we have just noted, and yet, like him, of broadest sympathies and most sincere convictions; a ainst fate was harder, and whose achieveelist the ht L Moody If ever a man labored for his fellow-men, he did, and the story of his life reads almost like a romance
He was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837, the son of a stone-mason, who, disheartened and worn out by business reverses, died when the boy was only four years old There were nine children, the oldest only fifteen, and when the father's creditors came and took every possession they had in the world, the future looked dark indeed The ed to place the children in various ho housework for the neighbors and tilling a little garden
As soon as he was old enough, Dwight was put to work on a fars were small, and finally, when he was seventeen, he started for Boston to look for soet a position in a shoe-store, and there came under the influence of Edward Kimball, who persuaded him to become a Christian and to join a church But he was not admitted to membershi+p for nearly a year; so poor was his coe and so aard his sentences that it was doubted if he understood Christianity at all, and even when he was adht him ”very unlikely ever to becoospel truth; still less to fill any extended sphere of public usefulness” How blind, indeed, we often are to the possibilities in huht reo, secured another position as shoe-salesman, and offered his services to abut a favorable iht teach provided he brought his own scholars The next Sunday he walked in at the head of a score of raga the wharves The divine fire see words hich to express hi for a wider field So he rented a room in the slum districts which had been used as a saloon and opened a Sunday school there It was an irew the little rooe hall, where, every Sunday, a thousand boys and girls attended For six years, Moody conducted that school, sweeping it out and doing the janitor work hihout the week But in 1860, at the age of twenty-three, he decided to devote all his time to Christian work
He had no income, and to keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a bench in his school, and cooked his own food Then the Civil War began, and he erected a tent at the caathered, and labored there all day, sos He ith the men to the front, and was at the desperate battles of shi+loh, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga The war over, he took up again his work in Chicago The great fire of 1871 swept away his church, but he soon had a temporary structure erected, and labored on
By this tireat opportunity caer of hyelist tour of Great Britain At his firstonly four people were present; at his last, thirty thousand crowded to hear him In Ireland, the crowds so the four months he spent in London, over two million people heard him preach Great Britain had never before experienced such a religious awakening; but it was as nothing to the reception given him when he returned to A who remember those wonderful revivals in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, with their great choirs, and Ira Sankey's singing, and Moody's soul-stirring talks Froelist in the world--perhaps the greatest the world had ever seen
It is doubtful if any man ever faced and preached to so ht, week in and week out In his themes he kept close to life, and few raphy vivid and realistic; in reconstructing scriptural scenes and setting them, as it were, bodily before his audience He was not a cultured ; perhaps such learning would only have weakened hio so far toward the equipment of the orator But he burned with an intense conviction, and his sermons were so free from art, so direct, so persuasive, that they were perfectly adapted to the end he sought--the conversion of hus
SUMMARY
GIRARD, STEPHEN Born near Bordeaux, France, May 24, 1750; sailed as cabin-boy to West Indies, and then to America; established in Philadelphia, 1769; financial overnment in war of 1812; died at Philadelphia, December 26, 1831
SMITHSON, JAMES LEWIS MACIE Born in France in 1765; land, 1782; Fellow Royal Society, 1786; distinguished as student of y and chemistry; died at Genoa, Italy, June 27, 1829
COOPER, PETER Born at New York City, February 12, 1791; apprenticed to carriage-ed in various enterprises and established Canton Iron Works, Canton, Maryland, 1830; Greenback candidate for President, 1876; died at New York, April 4, 1883
PEABODY, GEORGE Born at Danvers, Massachusetts, February 18, 1795; settled in London as a banker, 1837; died there, November 4, 1869
HOPKINS, JOHNS Born at Waterbury, Connecticut, May 19, 1795; founded house of Hopkins & Brothers, 1822; chairman of finance committee Baltimore & Ohio railroad, 1855; died at Baltimore, December 24, 1873
CORNELL, EZRA Born at Westchester Landing, New York, January 11, 1807; mechanic and miller at Ithaca, New York, 1828-41; member of State assembly, 1862-63; State Senator, 1864-67; died at Ithaca, New York, December 9, 1874
SLATER, JOHN FOX Born at Slatersville, Rhode Island, March 4, 1815; established Slater Fund, 1882; died at Norwich, Connecticut, May 7, 1884
STANFORD, LELAND Born at Watervliet, New York, March 9, 1824; Republican governor of California, 1861-63; United States Senator, 1885-93; died at Palo Alto, California, June 20, 1893