Edward Beecher

Younger Edward Beecher

Edward Beecher's book
Conflict of Ages

   Lyman Beecher’s second son and third child was born in East Hampton, New York, in 1803, and was a pupil at the South Farms Academy in Litchfield. He graduated from Yale University, the valedictorian of his class in 1822 and also was a fine athlete. After Yale he took a position as a teacher at a high school in Hartford, taking a year off to study at the Andover Theological Seminary before returning to Yale as a tutor. At the end of 1826 he he took up his duties as pastor of the Park Street Church in Boston at about the same time as his father, Lyman, became the pastor of the Hanover Church, which was also in Boston.

   A strong believer in exercise and cold showers to keep his health, Edward would shovel sand from one side of his father’s cellar to the other and also used gymnastic equipment every day. In 1831 he left the illustrious Park Street Church to become the president of a new, one-building college in Jacksonville, Illinois. He took charge of the college in 1832, shortly before Lyman became president of Lane Seminary In Cincinnati.

   Edward did not have an easy time at Illinois College. In 1837 his friend, Elijah Lovejoy was murdered for printing anti-slavery slogans in his newspaper, The Observer. Edward had helped Lovejoy with his printing press the night before he was murdered. Beecher tried desperately to keep the little college afloat financially, but was unable to do so. In 1844 he accepted a call to become pastor of the Salem Street Church in Boston. In 1849 he helped found the paper of his denomination, The Congregationalist, and served as its editor-in-chief for four years.

   He became famous by the publication of his book, The Conflict of Ages, which literally demolished the doctrines of ‘original sin’ and total depravity’, subjects about which Lyman frequently preached. Marietta College had given Edward the degree of Doctor of Divinity, the only son of Lyman to be so honored. The Edward Beecher house was one of the stations of the ‘Underground Railway.’

   Edward helped to establish several Congregational churches in different parts of New Jersey, and in 1884, at the age of eighty-one, he returned to active preaching and stayed as pastor of the Parkhill Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. He was struck by a train in 1889 but recovered and lived in his home at 182 Macon Street, Brooklyn, until his death at the age of ninety-two. He was married to Isabella Porter Jones and had eleven children.