Edward Everett Hale
Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) was one of the most prominent
American ministers of the last half of the nineteenth century and a
popular journalist, editor, and author.
His short story, “The Man
Without A Country,” has been read by generations. (See pic below) An
active social reformer, he founded the Lend a Hand Society to help
people needing financial assistance.
Hale was born in Boston. His father, the owner and editor of the
Boston Daily Advertiser, had a great influence on Hale, who stated that
he found it “hard to think of any real knowledge of any sort which I
have ever had, on any subject, of which I did not trace the ‘origins’ to
him.”
When Hale was thirteen he entered Harvard. “I was sternly
old-school; thought Mr. Emerson half crazy; disliked abolition; doubted
as to total abstinence, and in general, followed the advice of my
Cambridge teachers, who were from President down to janitor, all a
hundred years behind their time.” Still, he graduated second in his
class, Phi Beta Kappa, and the commencement poet.
He wanted to be a minister as long as he could remember, but his
first job was as a Latin teacher. Then he worked for his father as a
journalist and began to try his hand at fiction. The first story to be
published was in 1842. He was ultimately the author of almost countless
stories, novels, and articles.
This period, 1839-46, also found him training for the ministry.
On being accepted, he spent the next four years preaching whenever he
had the opportunity. As his ministerial skills improved so did his
writing ability. More importantly, his mind and intellect matured and
the subjects that he wrote about broadened to include historical and
moral matters. His March 1845 pamphlet, “A Tract for the Day: How to
Conquer Texas, Before Texas Conquers Us,” was issued as Congress debated
annexing Texas as a slave state. Hale argued that it should be admitted
but as a free state. He was by now an abolitionist.
Hale was ordained and installed as minister of the Church of the
Unity in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1845. He thought of a church “as
one of the active social factors in American Life, working by whatever
personal or institutional means suggested themselves, toward the
up-building of the community in which it existed.” That view remained
constant throughout his life, as did his religious faith, which he
defined succinctly as “Our Father who art.” “I can tell you in very few
words what I believe. I believe that God is here now, and that I am one
of his children whom he dearly loves . . . the truth is, that what a
man needs is to live as much as he can . . . For faith, the soul needs
to pray simply to God, ‘Father—help me,’ [and] that is quite enough and
to act bravely on what faith it has already.”
As he became comfortable in his new role, he enlarged his
ministry. He refused to serve on the school board, choosing instead to
work with the poor. Such “practical philanthropy,” along with private
generosity, became a hallmark of his ministry.
When Congress opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories for
settlement in 1854, Hale urged non-slave holders to emigrate to keep
these future states “free.” To achieve this goal, he helped form the New
England Emigrant Aid Company.
In spring 1856 the South Congregational Church in Boston,
Massachusetts asked him to be their minister. He returned to Boston and
served them for the next 43 years.
In 1858 Hale formed a society called “The Christianity Unity.”
Its purpose was for mutual friendship and assistance, accomplished “by
strict temperance and purity of life, and by fulfilling the duties of
good citizens and friendly neighbors.” For years he was its president,
seeing it as part of his regular church duties.
During the Civil War Hale worked with the United States Sanitary
Commission and its president Henry Whitney Bellows to improve the dire
health and medical situation facing wounded soldiers and those living in
army camps. Throughout the war Hale urged military enlistment. To
promote patriotism, he composed his most famous short story, “The Man
Without a Country.” It was published in the Atlantic Monthly for
December 1863, and told the tale of the traitor Philip Nolan who, when
convicted, declared that he never wanted to hear again of the United
States. As a result his punishment was imprisonment at sea for the rest
of his life. The story’s call for patriotism during the Civil War
influenced Hale's generation, and those that followed, and made him a
national figure. Before, he wrote, “I was only known in Boston as an
energetic minister of an active church; then the war came along and
brought me into public life, and I have never got back into simple
parish life again.”
Hale’s second most popular and influential story, “Ten Times Ten
is One” had been published in 1870. Its hero Harry Wadsworth and his
motto to “Lend a Hand” immediately resulted in the formation worldwide
of hundreds of “Lend-a-Hand Clubs,” “Look-up Legions,” and “Harry
Wadsworth Clubs.” Eventually the Ten Times One Corporation was formed,
becoming in 1898 the non-sectarian Lend A Hand Society. Its headquarters
was in Boston and Hale served as president until his death. Working in
collaboration with other charities it still offered programs and
services in 2014, even though all the clubs had long ago ceased to
function.
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Edward Everett Hale 1902 |
Hale died on June 10, 1909. The day before he had attended the
annual meeting of the Lend a Hand Society. It was an appropriate final
activity for, as The Boston Transcript declared, next to “unity among
the religious denominations” that Society “was probably the nearest to
his heart of his many interests.” In 1913 a life-size bronze statue of
Hale was erected in the Boston Public Garden. Funded by public
donations, it was created by sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt. It shows an
elderly Hale, hat in one hand, cane in the other, strolling through the
Boston Public Garden. A fitting tribute for an optimist who taught
people to, “Look up and not down. Look forward and not back. Look out
and not in. Lend a hand.”
Blair adds this personal note: This is a favorite quote of mine – we have it in our church hymnal as a reading.
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale.
Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
Below:Book Cover
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