Beecher

Finished a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the 19th century preacher/pastor Henry Ward Beecher. Lincoln called him the most important man in America during the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee said the South would have won the war had it not been for Beecher and his sister Harriet, who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

When the US flag was re-raised at Fort Sumter, Lincoln sent Beecher to do it, saying, "We wouldn't have a flag to raise without him."

Why is Beecher, this larger than life man, not well remembered? Because of the sex scandals that besmirched the last decade of his ministry. Mark Twain said of his friend Beecher that adultery was the means whereby this Samson was shorn.

I have read few books in my life which more remind me, holiness matters most.

Twitter @john316marshall
www.facebook.com/john316marshall