Beals, Harry - Putnam

Yesterday afternoon at half past 3 o’clock a large assemblage of citizens and students of the university gathered at Locust Street Church to pay their last mark of tribute to the memory of Prof. Harry L. Beals. Every seat I the church was occupied, while some of the friends were obliged to stand during the services. As the organ breathed forth Chopin’s beautiful funeral march, the funeral cortege entered the church, with the members of the faculty in advance of of the casket, Dr. Gobin reading the burial service from the Methodist ritual. After the singing of a hymn, Dr. Martin led in prayer: ‘scriptural readings by Dr. Poucher followed the prayer. President John gave a brief and touching sketch of the Christlike character and life of the deceased, in which he expressed the great sorrow of all by the loss of Prof. Beals. After the doctor had concluded, the congregation followed the remains to Forest Hill cemetery.

Dr. John’s remarks in full which give a complete history of the young life were as follows: Harry Lincoln Beals was born in Cass County, Illinois on the 6th of Feb 1864.  He entered the freshman class of DePauw University in the fall of 1882 and graduated from the college of liberal arts in June 1886. During his senior year he was pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Monrovia, Ind.  In 1886 he joined the Indiana conference and was reappointed to the church in Monrovia in 1886 and 87. In the summer of 1888 he was elected by the executive committee of the university to the instruction in English in the preparatory school.  He filled this position until the winter of 1889-90 when he was elected to the instructorship in systematic theology. In 1891 he was promoted to a full professorship in the same department. In the summer of 1892, his health having failed the previous winter he was granted an indefinitely leave of absence with the hope that he might regain his strength and return to his work.  In this hope that he might regain his strength and return to his work.  In this hope we were all to be disappointed.  He went with his family to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the fall of 1892. Alternating between hope and discouragement, he spent the winter and spring in the land of strangers. These were months that tried his faith in God. A little angel came from heaven to smile for a few short weeks upon him and his heroic wife, and then went back to God, a reflected ray of heavenly purity and a distinct echo of immorality.  Later on the devoted wife must come back to her northern home to gird her physical strength for almost superhuman burdens. During all these trying months his faith faltered not.  In the summer just passed the family were reunited in Wichita, Kansas which on the morning on Thursday Oct 19, his spirit took its flight to the throne of God.  Such is the brief story of a brief life, but who will undertake to measure the results of the force which these 29 years of activity set in motion?  Physical force, they tell us, is indestructible and I believe it. The dead atom which vibrates but once across its infinitesimal path lives forever in the vibration of other atoms in other worlds. But if physical force is imperishable, which more shall intellectual and spiritual forces set in operation by the intellectual and spiritual activity of Harry Beals will reproduce themselves in time and in eternity.

The physical force of the universe is a constant quantity and can neither increase nor diminish itself but the intellectual and spiritual forces of the universe are self-propagating and will increase forever. The forces created by our department friend in his brief 29 years will multiply through all the future.

What were some of his characteristics?   

1. The Student: as a student he sought the truth. If his student life could be described in a single sentence, it would be that he was utteraly abandoned to the truth.  He was not afraid of the truth: on the contrary he was in love with it and we are not afraid of what we love. He was like Dr. Lyman Beecher in his readiness to follow a it if it took him over Niagra.  For to him all truth was divine and no two truths of God could conflict.  

He was a hardworking student.  Indeed, he pushed his intellectural endeavors beyond the capacity of his physical powers.  He was poring over his books in the late hours of the night, after his fellows had long been asleep. It was during these protracted sieges of intellectual work in his college days without sufficient compensating physical activity that he laid the foundation of disease. But he was a towering student. That word best expresses it. When the faculty at one time during his college career was asked to name the strongest student in all four college classes the vote accorded that honor to him.  His four years of college life were years of personal religious activity and of singular personal benediction to professors and students alike. He had no reason to fear his record, for during his college career he had followed or rather anticipated the dying admonition of John B. Gough: “Tell the young men to keep ptheir record clean!”  

2.  The Teacher – if as a student he sought first of all the truth for its own sake, it was equally true of him as a teacher that his highest ambition was to lead his pupils into the truth.  He keenly realized his responsibility as an instructor of youth and he was thoroughly in love with his high work. While he never ceased to regard the holy task of leading young people into the truth as akin to that sacred call and indeed as a part of it. He felt that he was preaching the truth from higher summits and to wider horizons when he was molding the future teachers and preachers of the land than even when he stood in the sacred desk and directly preached Christ to the multitudes.  It was this profound conviction of his multiplicative influence in the school room and this alone, which tempted him from the pastoral work, and it was this sense of high opportunity that held him to his choice and that led him to reject flattering offers both as to salary and distinguished position from some of the most influential pulpits in the State.  As a teacher, whether in the preparatory school, the college or the school of theology he made a profound impression on the entire university. Professor and student alike respected him for his manliness, admired him for his ability, honored him for his integrity and loved him for his Christlikeness.  He was a conscientious teacher as he had always been a conscientious student.  He was not satisfied himself with the outer show of truth, nor was he satisfied to give to others as the truth that which he did not clearly see as such, himself.  He had no evasive answers to eager persons who were inquiring for the truth.  If he clearly saw the way, he led them on; if the way was obscure to his vision, he took no forward step that could mislead.  

He was an apt teacher. If one method failed, he had another at command and he was sufficiently familiar with the philosophy of teaching to be able to bring the mind and truth together.  He was an inspiriing teacher and that after all is the greatest thing that can be said of an instructor of youth, provided his inspiration be transformed in the student into a worthy aspiration.  Lofty inspiration means lofty aspiration. A teach of pure spirit and of correct life who possesses the inbreathing power is sure of an outbreathing of pure spirit and correct life from his pupils. Prof. Beals was an inspiration to his students and only eternity can reveal the high aspirations that he awakened.

3.  The Preacher – he was a king in the pulpit. As a preacher he was clear, forcible, logical, spiritual.  He had a message and he delivered it in the name of his Master. He did not preach himself but Christ, crucified, risen, ascended and returned again to earth.  You thought not of the preacher, but of the Christ whom he preached.  You felt as though God were speaking to you through his servant. I do not know his habits of pulpit preparation but I am sure that the very first and last preparation he made for each sermon was the invocation of Divine help.  He must have come directly from the closet to the pulpit for like his Master, he spoke as one having authority and any preacher called of God, who comes fresh from communion with Him must __ as if by authority.  He was a well-rounded preacher.  He proclaimed the law as well as the Gospel; and he proclaimed the whole Gospel --- he equally believed in sanctification and one both these central Gospel themes he gave no uncertain sound.  When he preached on holiness, the people listened, for we are glad to hear one preach holiness if we have reason to believe that he lives it.  He had a burning love for souls and he preached to the people with the one great end in view, the salvation of human souls.  It was little to him that the people should say that --- great; it was much to him that they should say that his sermons were effective in producing the end in view. Ah how much better for us all, my brethren in the ministry that one saved soul in heaven should say of our sermons, They Saved Me, that the multitudes who fail to reach heaven should say that our sermons were eloquent.  It is not so much the eloquence of fine thinking and charming delivery that we need in our pulpits, as that diviner eloquence that can show Christ to sinners. What sermon more eloquent that that which turns a sinner from his sin and starts him on a career of immortality.

Brother Beals preached not to please the ears of men but to win their hearts. He did not neglect to reason with men, for his sermons were master pieces of art; but he did not reason in order that men should exclaim: What a masterpiece. Rather he reasoned because that is one of God’s ways of bringing men to the truth.  His reason was on fire with the Holy Ghost. God, give us more such preachers!  Behold the student Behold the instructor Behold the preacher! What more shall I say? Behold the man!  A man like the favored disciple of old, whom Jesus loved.  This is enough.  It is not for me to speak when his beautiful life stands out so eloquently before our gaze. Daniel Webster, in his memorable address dedicating Bunker Hill monument, said in substance: “This silent shant speaks words more eloquen than mine.” What did he mean that those granite stone were eloquent or the heroism of those whom that monument honored? There is that today which speaks more eloquently that human lips can speak.  Is is a coffin? No. This form inclosed therein? No. These tears of stricken friends? No. These are eloquent but that which towers above them all in matchless eloquence is that beautiful life of 29 years. Young men, let that life speak to you.  Fellow teacher and preachers, let that life speak to us. Beloved friends, whose hearts are now so sore, thank God for that beautiful life. Thank God that his precious children shall be permitted to grow up under the hallowed memory of such a father, a legacy he has left them infinitely more valuable than a worldly fortune. And now we shall follow him to his last resting place – and yet, not HIM, than God, not HIM. We shall not bury him; how easy it is for us to forget this inspirint truth.  That intellect of his that coped with giants of thought for many a year have they nailed that under his coffin lid? That loving heart of his that attracted every on that came within his reach – did they smother it in the folds of his winding sheet? That royal will of his, can you crowd it into the waiting hearse? 'That burning conscience of his will you extinguish it under the sod ?

There are some things that you can bury, but the human soul is not one of himself. The Christian soul will not be buried. The Christian soul defies the coffin and the shroud; it defies the hearse and the funeral train; it defies the grave digger and the rattling clods.  Bury the Christian? Who will undertake it? Who will seize him as he leaps from his old home in the body, and starts for his new home in the bosom of God or who will overtake him in his swift flight, arrest him and bring him back a prisoner and crowd him down under the earth? Do you wonder that Socrates should say before his death in answer to the question Where shall we bury you?  Bury Me? You may bury me if you can catch me!”  No, we shall not bury Harry Beals. We shall put away the house he lived in; but for four days he has been walking upon the high places of immortality and has seen vision s such as “eye hath not seen,” and has listed to melodies such as “ear hath not heard,” and has grasped truths such as have not entered in the heart of man to conceive.” - kbz