Stowe

SETTLED CONVICTIONS

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F.B. Meyer (1847-1929) spent the last few years of his life working as a pastor in England’s churches, but still made trips to North America, including one he made at age 80 (his earlier evangelistic tours had included South Africa and Asia, as well as the United States and Canada). A few days before his death, Meyer wrote the following words to a friend: “I have just heard, to my great surprise, that I have but a few days to live. It may be that before this reaches you, I shall have entered the palace. Don’t trouble to write. We shall meet in the morning.”

O, the glorious, comforting certainty of the Christian! Our settled convictions concerning life, death, and the glory to follow are based on the promises God has given us in His Word. Whatever your circumstances may be today, remember that God is faithful, that He will meet your every need (Philippians 4:19).

As the late Roby Duke (1956-2007) sang: “You can’t hurry God, you just gotta wait…He may not come when you want, but He’s ‘a right on time!”

Sometime before her death Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) penned these wonderful words of encouragement: “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

Social reform in America

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Humanitarianism took two forms in America in the nineteenth century: the improvement of lives through relief measures and an attempt to eradicate the roots of social evils. Groups like the Quakers were especially sensitive to suffering and injustice. Others, unfortunately, did not see a need to end evils like slavery, cruel methods of punishment for criminals, or the life sentences given to debtors. Quakers took the lead in reform in Pennsylvania and obtained a better legal code from the state legislature. Other states soon adopted improvements. Religion was carried into the prisons and methods of education were introduced. The Volunteers of America and the American Prison Association were also Christian agencies engaged in prison reform. Lyman Beecher of Connecticut and other ministers preached against alcohol abuse while the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, helped form a Prohibition political party. The greatest evil of the age, though, was slavery. Entrenched in the South after the cotton industry became profitable, it became the defining issue of the nineteenth century. Slowly church people in the North came to believe that they could no longer cooperate with slaveholders, and the denominational organizations of Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians split apart. When Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin became a sensation, its story depicting the horrors of slavery fully awoke the Northern churches to the necessity of abolition. When the Civil War began in 1861 it was not only a war for the preservation of the Union against the secession of the slaveholding states, it was also a crusade for the emancipation of the slaves. Churches provided chaplains for the armies on both sides. The end came with a victory for the Union and the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had issued in 1863.

Impact: While some reform efforts were successful, others failed over time. The net result to the churches, however, was an increased fervor to apply the Christian message of hope to every aspect of life.

STILL, STILL WITH THEE

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Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight,
Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee.

Alone with Thee, amid the mystic shadows,
The solemn hush of nature newly born;
Alone with Thee in breathless adoration,
In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.

When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,
Its closing eye looks up to Thee in prayer;
Sweet the repose beneath the wings o’ershading,
But sweeter still to wake and find Thee there.

So shall it be at last, in that bright morning,
When the soul waketh and life’s shadows flee;
O in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning,
Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with Thee.

About the writer: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the daughter of the famous preacher Lyman Beecher, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1812. Her father became President of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832; and in 1833 she was married to Calvin E. Stowe, a professor in the seminary. Her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in 1852 as a serial in the National Era magazine and later in book form, is one of the most widely known and historic volumes in the entire range of American literature. It is a work of fiction which, by means of the pathetic picture which it draws of the ills of slave life and the cruelties involved in slave ownership, did much to precipitate the American Civil War (1861-1865). Mrs. Stowe published more than forty volumes in all, many of them being works of fiction. Her Religious Poems appeared in 1867. She died in 1896.

Key Verse: I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me! –Psalm 139:18

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

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Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), the daughter of the famous preacher Lyman Beecher, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1812. Her father became President of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832; and in 1833 she was married to Calvin E. Stowe, a professor in the seminary. Her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in 1852 as a serial in the National Era magazine and later in book form, is one of the most widely known and historic volumes in the entire range of American literature. It is a work of fiction that, by means of the pathetic picture that it draws of the ills of slave life and the cruelties involved in slave ownership, did much to precipitate the American Civil War (1861-1865). Mrs. Stowe published more than forty volumes in all, many of them being works of fiction. Her Religious Poems appeared in 1867. Her book about the evils of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is credited with raising the passions that ignited the American Civil War.