IV. Henry Ward Beecher-Finally Repudiates Dogma of Eternal Torment

HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813-1887), noted Congregationalist pulpit orator, author, and editor, was trained at Amherst and at Lane Theological Seminary (of which his father, Lyman Beecher, was president). Henry Ward Beecher was pastor of the famous Plymouth Congregational church, of Brooklyn, for forty years-1847-1887. During this period he was one of the founders and editors of the Independent, a politico-religious journal, and in 1870 assumed editorship of the Christian Union, later continued as The Outlook.CFF2 508.2

Popular preacher and author that he was, in his later years he became frankly committed to some of the basic principles of Conditionalism, according to Dr. Lyman Abbott, his successor at Plymouth, and who followed Beecher as editor of The Outlook. Beecher was outspoken in his denunciation of the doctrine of Endless Torment, as various of his sermons testify. But this did not, it is to be observed, affect his pulpit standing and relationships. One citation must suffice:
“‘He that lives to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption-shall. It is sure to come. What shall it be? Future torment? No; I do not mean that; I mean that he that cultivates his lower nature, mere animal nature, with the animal perishes.... It is to my mind a relief that if a man never rises any higher than the animal life, the universe will never see a God enthroned that looks down upon the infinite and prolonged torments of an unconceived number of men shut up simply for the purpose of suffering. If there be anything more infidel than that I do not know what it is, or anything which more effectually blots out the possibility of respecting and loving any God than this-continuing to create men with some foresight of their perpetual suffering.’” ^{7979) Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in F. L. Piper, Conditionalism, Its Place in Eschatology, History and Current Thought, pp. 211, 212.}CFF2 508.3

Thus the renowned Beecher was another in a growing chorus of noted American pulpiteers and theological teachers, paralleling those of the Old World in the latter half of the nineteenth century, openly breaking with the traditional tenet of Eternal Torment.CFF2 509.1