Henry Ward Beecher
(1813 – 87)

"The less pain, the less life-capacity. The less pain-power, the less life-power."
Henry Ward Beecher (1872)

Henry Ward Beecher was America's most famous preacher. His sister Harriet was author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. An eloquent orator, Beecher was Congregationalist pastor from 1847 of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. His impassioned sermons were immensely popular.

Beecher was a proponent of women's suffrage. He defended the theory of evolution. He was a vehement opponent of slavery. Yet Beecher was also a vitalist - and not the sort of abolitionist who seeks to eradicate earthly pain.

Beecher's later years were darkened by scandal after he was accused of adultery with a parishioner's wife.