applauding. Mr. Beecher eulogized Virginia as a commonwealth who bred her sons for Presidents, and when he had wrought up his audience with enthusiasm, he exclaimed: "But what a change when she came to breeding her sons for the market!" For two hours and a half the lecture went on. Once in his room at the hotel Mr. Beecher sat back in his chair and laughed, Mr. Pond remarks, as much as to say, "We have captured Richmond, haven't we?" Many Richmond notables knocked at his door that night and tried to persuade Mr. Beecher to give another lecThis was impossible, but the people came in crowds the next morning at seven o'clock to see him off.1

Mr. Beecher appears to the least advantage in the oratory of memorial occasions, when protracted research, clearness, and accuracy of statement, longbrooding thoughtfulness and care, logical arrangement and historical imagination, and a conscientious enthusiasm for literary perfection, like that of Thucydides and Macaulay, work together to produce such masterpieces as Lowell's Harvard address, some of the discourses of Professor Park, several of the orations of Edward Everett, George William Curtis, Ex-Governor John D. Long, and Senator George F. Hoar, and, conspicuously, the greater efforts of Dr. Richard S. Storrs. Compared with Dr. Storrs's Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard, his Wycliffe oration and his sermon at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the American Board, Mr. Beecher's more elaborate written

speeches appear rhetorically crude. His genius

"Life," pp. 155-157.

worked habitually and most effectively in another way. Eloquence, with him, was a sudden, fiery inspiration, kindling his gathered materials into a rhetorical illumination, which, if not always seen at its highest glow, was sometimes more startling and marvelous than the deliberate and premeditated eloquence of other men.

It is hard to imagine Shakespeare correcting and polishing his plays, and it is almost equally hard to imagine Beecher combing the locks of his speeches, washing their faces, and straightening their clothes, in order to make the most presentable appearance to posterity. Furthermore, Mr. Beecher was so continually called upon to stand and deliver his thought, that he may be said never to have had time for that ceremonial eloquence so delightful to the more cultivated American people.

But, though it was not his to be great in every form of oratory, he surpassed others in the highest forms. His one speech, delivered in five parts before the English people, in 1863, is doubtless the grandest speech of the nineteenth century. It will bear and repay the most careful analysis and most prolonged study. Out of the materials gathered, and the convictions matured by many years of study, it sprang into life under the pressure of a great opportunity.

Speaking from his pulpit at an earlier time, as the voice of outraged humanity condemning the Fugitive Slave Bill, there flashed forth these words: "I would die myself, cheerfully and easily, before a man should be taken out of my hands, when I had the power to give him liberty, and the hound was after

him for his blood. I would stand as an altar of expiation between slavery and liberty, knowing that, through my example, a million men would live. A heroic deed, in which one yields up his life for others, is his Calvary. It was the hanging of Christ on that hilltop that made it the highest mountain on the globe. Let a man do a right thing with such earnestness that he counts his life of little value, and his example becomes omnipotent. Therefore it is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. There is no such seed planted in this world as good blood!" In quoting this passage, Washington Gladden writes: "It is impossible for me to give any indication of the power with which these words were spoken. It seemed as if the very walls quivered with the intensity of the feeling. In the crowded church men's eyes were blazing, and their chests were heaving, and tears were falling on the pale cheeks of women; it was one of those exalted moments that do not often visit us on this earth."'

Even when Mr. Beecher was far less than his greatest, his eloquence, with voice and pen, was one of the potent forces for the elevation of his countrymen. We rightly think of him during forty years of his life as the voice of the nobler sentiment of America, appealing for justice and humanity. "His pulpit

moved around in the daily press, and was on the banks of the Ohio and the Missouri, while, as the old Scottish clan sprang forth from the bushes when their chieftain gave a blast on his trumpet, the audiences of this evangelist issued at his call from all the hills

"Beecher Memorial," p. 91.

of the East and the waving grass of the West. The public services of Daniel Webster did not cover so wide a space of time, nor did the great career of Abraham Lincoln take in so many circles of the sun."

1

'Prof. David Swing, "Beecher Memorial," pp. 34-35.

CHAPTER XLVII.

HE PREACHED CHRIST.

A VOLUME might easily be written on Henry Ward Beecher as the most powerful and famous preacher of the nineteenth century. Professor Phelps has said: "The best test of a good sermon is the instinct of a heterogeneous audience. That is not good preaching which is limited in its range of adaptation to select audiences. The sermon is in kind the grandest thing in literature, because it sways the mind without distinction of class." Few men ever mingled "truth and personality" so absolutely as Mr. Beecher. He preached Christ as Christ was revealed in his own heart.

One difference between him and Mr. Spurgeon was this: Mr. Spurgeon received the truth as a pearl of great price, something beautiful, inestimable, unchangeable. Mr. Beecher received the truth as a seed, vital, germinant, expanding, capable of being transformed into higher manifestations. During his grand life, Spurgeon was telling with great force of language and fervor of feeling, how beautiful, how wonderful, was this divine jewel. During his long ministry Mr. Beecher was speaking with grateful enthusiasm of the Kingdom of God as it was expanding in his soul and in the world. Spurgeon was the