Faith & Spirit Quote by Henry Ward Beecher

Hatred, Beecher suggests, is the one human talent you never have to teach. The line lands with the bluntness of a pastor who has watched congregations sing hymns on Sunday and sharpen grudges by Monday. Calling hatred a "faculty" is the trick: he elevates it from a passing emotion to a built-in capability, something almost anatomical. That framing carries a quiet accusation. If hatred is this persistent and universal, then moral failure isn't an anomaly committed by villains; it's a default setting that decent people rationalize, sanctify, and even mistake for principle.

The intent is less to revel in cynicism than to strip away comforting myths about human goodness. Beecher preached in a 19th-century America that loved to talk about progress while living through abolitionist conflict, sectional panic, and the moral adrenaline of revival culture. In that world, hatred wasn't only personal; it was political and pious, a social glue disguised as righteousness. The quote reads like a warning to religious audiences who believe faith automatically refines character: no amount of spiritual vocabulary cancels the pleasure of having an enemy.

The subtext is also strategic. By naming hatred as universal, Beecher avoids letting his listeners outsource it to "those people" - the irreligious, the other party, the other region. He forces recognition: you carry this too, and it will outlast your good intentions unless you actively discipline it. It's a line built to unsettle, because a sermon that comforts you is rarely the one that changes you.