CORNELL 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BX7233 .B41 
 
 V.I 
 
 Notable sermons. , 
 
 olin 
 
 1924 029 457 318 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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W)ttt tuaai a man s:ent from (@ob 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS K. BEECHER 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE OSBORNE PRESS 
 ELMIRA, NEW YORK 
 
Copyright 1914 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCES FARRAR 
 
The following is from a pastoral sermon preached 
 June 21, 1874, A.M., the twentieth anniversary of Mr. 
 Beecher's pastorate. It is so characteristic of his spirit 
 that it is a fitting Preface for this, or any other selection 
 of his sermons. 
 
 I pine to see men, women, and children harmon- 
 ized in social helpfulness and happiness. When you 
 part from one another, and are distracted by fascina- 
 tions that take you away and keep you strange, I 
 ache. When you come together with dull, unloving 
 eyes, or speak ungenerous words of one another, or 
 show signs of pride because of wealth, or shame be- 
 cause of poverty, I hear a voice : "Not yet — not yet," 
 — and I wait. 
 
 As you enlarge your houses and beautify your 
 homes, and grow toward luxury, I wait, — at the 
 church center, — and long to see your society perfect- 
 ed as rapidly as your homes. How naturally we say 
 "I, and mine." I wait that you may learn to say "we, 
 and ours." 
 
 As the Israelites, in the old, old time, journeying 
 out of Egypt toward Canaan, consuming the years 
 with wanderings, builded a tabernacle, and set it at 
 their center, and camped around it in hope of an 
 inheritance, a fatherland, a city, and a temple; — so 
 we pilgrims journeying toward the New Jerur.alem 
 
PREFATORY 
 
 and the heavenly society, build here a tabernacle, 
 and camp around it. One is your father, all ye are 
 brethren. The father's house is roomy. 
 
 Come, brethren, let's practise the heavenly man- 
 ners. Let's rehearse the anthems of the redeemed! 
 Let us prove ourselves virhether we have passed 
 from death unto life by ascertaining that we do love 
 and live for each other. 
 
 And while the air is full of portents heralding dis- 
 tress of nations; while in our own restless land con- 
 tentions are ripening into hate, and society curdling 
 into classes, let us come together, — not to celebrate 
 sacraments and be frozen with fear in presence of 
 mystic acts and stately ceremonies, — but to know and 
 to care for one another, to shield one another, to 
 rejoice together, and together weep. 
 
 Let us come together, no man claiming anything, 
 no man counting aught that he has his own, sharing 
 our gifts and graces, be the same what they may ; and 
 so watch out the night in comfortable hope, and be 
 ready to answer when the Shepherd calls us in the 
 morning. 
 
Content? 
 
 Page 
 
 MY BROTHER HENRY ------ 3 
 
 MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU - - - . 19 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN - - - . - - 33 
 
 A VISION OF CREATION SI 
 
 MIRACLES 67 
 
 OUR WORK AS A CHURCH 83 
 
 JESUS AND PAUL 93 
 
 MEDITATIONS ON TREES lOS 
 
 PROHIBITION 123 
 
 THE SHIPWRECK OF PAUL - - - - 14S 
 
 THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY ■ - J 59 
 
iHp prober l^tnxp 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., March 13, 1887. It 
 was the Sunday following the death of Henry Ward 
 Beecher. 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 / have considered the days of old, the years of ancient 
 times. 
 
 I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune 
 with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent 
 search.— Ps. 77: 5-6. 
 
 You all know more about "Henry Ward Beecher" 
 than I do, but I know more about "brother Henry" 
 than you do. 
 
 A- little Boston boy five years old had a brother 
 Henry who was sixteen, and a brother Charles who 
 was fourteen. And though he knew of Goliath who 
 "fell down slam-bang," and David, "little David who 
 ran up and cut his head off," and though he knew 
 about Samson and the lion, yet for present strength 
 and greatness, Henry and Charles were his heroes. 
 Did they not own a long sled and coast down Copp's 
 hill and jump sixteen sleds at a bounce? Did they 
 not sharpen skates with enthusiasm, and go off to the 
 mill-dam alone? 
 
 By night when the tocsin rang, and the little boy 
 covered his head and shivered under the sheets, did 
 not Henry and Charles rush down two flights of 
 stairs and out of the door, yelling fire? 
 
 At prayers, family prayers, Henry and Charles 
 could sing, and so could the little boy. A frail, blue- 
 eyed, willowy mother sat in the rocking chair. Father 
 
 3 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 would read — the little boy knew not what. For 
 the singing from Village Hymns, Henry sometimes 
 fluted, making a queer mouth ; and then all kneeling, 
 father ever prayed, "Overturn and overturn, till He 
 whose right it is shall come and reign. King of 
 nations and King of saints." 
 
 Prayers over. Aunt Esther and the little boy, he 
 standing in a chair, washed the dishes, and Henry 
 and Charles stormed out to the Latin School. 
 
 Then they went away to Mt. Pleasant to fit for 
 college. Their hair-trunk was two days a-pack- 
 ing, and the stage took them away before daylight, 
 leaving the house so quiet and so empty ! Sixteen 
 and five — oh ! how magnificent the boy of sixteen to 
 the little boy of five! 
 
 Twice a year they came home, — at Thanksgiving 
 and the summer vacation. The expected stage drove 
 up, and the little boy in agony of delight that could 
 not be endured, hid himself on a trundle-bed under 
 mother's, and braided bed-cords, till searched out, he 
 was tossed above the clouds by great, strong brother 
 Henry. 
 
 At morning prayer :— "Thou has brought back our 
 boys in health;" the little boy heard that, and the 
 "overturn and overturn" part ; and that little boy, now 
 your pastor, bears witness in your ears that the boys 
 were guarded, and that since those days there 
 have been overturnings not a few. And further, he 
 tells you that those family prayers propagated the 
 
 4 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 ancestral religion in brother Henry, though they have 
 failed to hand down the ancestral theology. 
 
 The boys must go to college, and leave the little 
 boy to go to infant school, to learn to tell the hour 
 on a card clock, and to add, subtract, and count w^ith 
 an abacus. Henry was in the world of departed spirits, 
 Amherst ; Charles at Bowdoin. Every morning father 
 prayed for our boys at college, "May they become 
 good ministers of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 Brother Edward, preaching at Park St. Church 
 was no rival for Henry and Charles at college. Ed- 
 ward was a man, like father. But Henry and Charles 
 were heroes, doing things. How they could jump ! 
 How they whirled around the horizontal bar! How 
 Charles could flog a top ! And Henry had peanuts, 
 and red peppermints ! Charles could whittle graceful 
 boats, with sharp knife, out of pine sticks. Henry 
 had the full set of Walter Scott's works. True, 
 George had taught the little boy to sing and to say 
 the instead of ze. But now he had gone to Groton to 
 teach ; and he wrote long letters about something ; and 
 he was going to preach like Edward. But Charles 
 and Henry! Shall / ever be big and do things, and 
 run to fires and go way down Milk Street? 
 
 Yes, one vacation day brother Henry took the lit- 
 tle boy down on Milk street, past two Unitarian 
 churches, safely past Tremont Theatre, past an open 
 stable-door, where lay a red cow with monstrous 
 horns, chewing her big mouth, with nothing in it, 
 and looking oh, so strong and hungry at the little 
 
 5 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 boy! But Henry wasn't scared. He was whistling. 
 "Come along, Tom, that's only a cow !" 
 
 By and by father and eight of us were staging from 
 Boston to Cincinnati, leaving my heroes at college. 
 Amherst and Bowdoin loom large in my fancy still. 
 My heroes were to stay and grow! Tidings once a 
 month ! Charles has a fiddle. Henry has a six-keyed 
 flute. Charles and something about circles and Geom- 
 etry. Henry and phrenology and temperance lectures. 
 
 By and by they, too, come west to study theology 
 in Lane Seminary, a brick building in the woods of 
 Ohio. There we heard the whistle of the quail, 
 the scolding of squirrels, once the heavy, husky flight 
 of wild turkey; (my hero killed one and claimed a 
 second) ; the soft thump and pat of rabbit and the 
 breezy rush of wild pigeon. Over the foot-path thro' 
 the woods, came three times a day the heroes shout- 
 ing, — exploding the vowel sounds, and imitating cows, 
 frogs and crows — a laughing menagerie. 
 
 At the Academy of Music, two miles off down 
 town, Henry was primo-basso, Charles violin and 
 tenor, and the little boy, at last an alto, was permitted 
 to run between the heroes and sing, while his eyes 
 feasted on Charles' violin bow-hand and his ears were 
 filled with Henry's basso. The Creation, and the Hal- 
 lelujah chorus were our winter's work. 
 
 Henry was off sometimes, lecturing on temper- 
 ance and phrenology. Sometimes on a Saturday 
 morning, at family prayer, there were Catherine, 
 George, Henry, Harriet, Isabella, Tom and Jim, Aunt 
 
 6 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 Esther and father — still praying "overturn and over- 
 turn." After singing, 
 
 "Awake and sing the song 
 
 Of Moses and the Lamb, 
 Wake, every heart and every tongue 
 
 To praise the Savior's name. 
 
 Sing on your heavenly way. 
 Ye ransomed sinners, sing, 
 Sing on rejoicing every day," — 
 
 they had long discussions lasting till past midnight, 
 and resumed at every meal, of free agency, sover- 
 eignty, natural and moral ability, imputations, and 
 so forth. 
 
 Charles took lessons on the violin of Tosso in the 
 city. Henry wrote something that editor Chas. 
 Hammond printed in the Cincinnati Gazette! Oh 
 wonderful Henry! They both wrote long, long let- 
 ters to two far away beings and the little boy some- 
 times took them to the Post-Office and paid 25 cents, 
 wondering what they could find to write such long, 
 long letters about. 
 
 George was by this time at Batavia, Clermont Co., 
 preaching. To him and his marvelous flower-garden 
 went Charles and his violin, to teach singing school; 
 to them was sent little Tom, to study Geometry with 
 Charles, and with him to live on Bell-flower apples, 
 and dry brown-bread, and to ring the church bell that 
 hung on trestles in the little church-room. 
 
 But the hero Henry was now at Lawrenceburg, 
 7 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 and there was a revival ! And he was married to a 
 tall, blue-eyed, classic-featured woman, whom Tom 
 first saw by the light of a brass lamp undoing her bon- 
 net strings in the front entry, as she stooped to kiss 
 the little fellow, while he thought, "She's almost as 
 handsome as mother." 
 
 Here come in seven years. It was the little boy's 
 turn to go away to school and college. He left 
 father at home praying, "Remember our son in 
 mercy, and bring him back to be a good minister of 
 Jesus Christ." Henry had gone to Indianapolis, the 
 capital, and was having a revival there. Members of 
 the Legislature were "convinced of sin," and "indulg- 
 ing a hope !" 
 
 Then six years passed and brother Henry and his 
 wife came three hundred miles to see Tom graduate ; 
 and brother Henry sat on the stage with him; and 
 they rode back home in glory to Indianapolis', with 
 its peaches, its grey squirrels, deer and turkey. 
 There too, was Charles, a-playing Henry's organ, and 
 helping on the revival work, in which as yet he took 
 no stock. 
 
 Tom at home after a year of cavil and controversy 
 during which he was far smarter than he has ever 
 been since, used most easily to silence his old father 
 in argument, and demonstrate the shadowy nothings 
 on which the doctrines of the church are based — fee- 
 ble superstitions ! 
 
 Hearing of the great revival in Henry's church, he 
 asked leave to go and see Henry and try logical con- 
 
 8 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 elusions with him ; — which the old father was prompt 
 to grant, — ^writing long letters such as one physician 
 writes to another when he transfers a patient, de- 
 scribing the highly critical state of Tom's mind and 
 urging Henry to take him in hand, — "he's worth 
 saving." 
 
 All of which he proceeded to do. Tom and Henry 
 sawed and split wood together ; sat on rail fences and 
 told stories ; raised sweet potatoes weighing five 
 pounds each ; wrote articles for the "Farmer and Gar- 
 dener;" banked up celery till it was nearly three feet 
 tall, white and crisp; picked black-berries as big as 
 my thumb ; and hunted squirrels, rabbits, and smaller 
 game. Tom went down to meeting every night for 
 sixteen weeks, to laugh and sing and hear Henry talk 
 about Jesus Christ. 
 
 I did not know it at the time. There were no 
 arguments. Nothing was proved. Can you tell how 
 the bones of the unborn babe grow in the womb ? So 
 Christ was formed in Consciousness. 
 
 Like some white bird high-flying, that drops down 
 through the smoke into a walled city fortified against 
 all comers, carrying under its wing a message from 
 afar, so came to me the vision of Christ, as with 
 matchless words brother Henry told the story, with- 
 out theology or dialectic. Or: — 
 
 As the germ of life in the walnut is shut in by 
 double walls, the hull and the flinty shell, seemingly 
 never to get out, — no man can break into it and set it 
 free; — yet in soft decay the hull is dissolved, then 
 
 9 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 frosts split the shell, and afterward sun and rain 
 quicken the germ, which will grow through ages and 
 become a great tree: — so the Christ formed in me, 
 was shut in doubly by the hull of frolic and frivolity ; 
 and by the hard shell of intellectual pride and scien- 
 tific attainment. But there came humiliations and 
 sharp pangs of heart-break and loneliness ; and lo ! 
 at Philadelphia there stood before the session of the 
 Pine St. Presbyterian Church, a young man who told 
 them, "I don't believe the Bible, but I do believe on 
 Jesus Christ — Bible or no Bible." 
 
 That young man, no longer young, is now your 
 pastor. And many have been the entreaties he has 
 sent to brother Henry, "Come and preach Christ in 
 the ear of Elmira." 
 
 In those days, '40 — '46, brother Henry was a re- 
 vivalist without methods, fanaticism, or sham. Lone- 
 ly disciples throughout the state competed and beg- 
 ged for a meeting of the Synod of Indiana. It was 
 an assembly of apostles. Its week was a pentecost. 
 And brother Henry, astride his long-boned, fast- 
 walking sorrel, with well-worn and ill-filled saddle- 
 bags, rode hundreds of miles, as courageous as Paul, 
 as gentle as John. Fort Wayne, Logansport, Evans- 
 ville, Terre-Haute, Crawfordsville, Madison — visit 
 them now, and you shall find grey-haired old saints 
 that will tell you, "I remember the blessed days when 
 Henry Beecher and the Synod of Indiana came here!" 
 
 In 1846 I took service in Philadelphia. In May 
 1847, brother Henry came on from Brooklyn to the 
 
 10 
 
Henry Ward Beecher 
 Thomas K. Beecher 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 May anniversaries. His speech before the American 
 Board electrified all who heard it. It was like the 
 voice of Paul in Jerusalem telling of the wonderful 
 things that God had wrought by his hands. 
 
 Once a month or oftener I was with him. His 
 ministrations were crowded with perennial revival. 
 His days began with a six o'clock prayer-meeting, 
 and were consumed by conversations with inquirers 
 who came to him for counsel. 
 
 The little old meeting-house of Dr. Cox was burn- 
 ed. They builded a tabernacle (wigwam) on Pier- 
 pont street, while Plymouth church, since so famous, 
 was a-building. 
 
 And the Lord added daily unto the church of such 
 as should be saved. The work of the Lord prospered 
 greatly in the hands of "my brother Henry." 
 
 In 1838 or '39, in Philadelphia, quite a sum of mon- 
 ey had come to him to relieve debts that distressed 
 him. I see my hero still, grasping the roll of bills in 
 his left hand, swallowing a lump in his throat, as he 
 took ofif his hat, smoothed back his upturned forehead 
 and ejaculated "Tom! I shall do something yet. I 
 don't know what: — but I feel it in me." I was about 
 thirteen years old, I was awed, and we walked toward 
 Walnut and on to Main street in silence, — to me 
 unforgetting silence. 
 
 In 1854 I fled away from New York and Brooklyn 
 and "brother Henry," to Elmira, bringing with me no 
 equipment but the single one, "I believe in Jesus the 
 Christ of God." Since that time I have heard much, 
 
 11 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 and know but little of Henry Ward Beecher; but not 
 for a day has brother Henry failed to rise like a dream, 
 commingling in memory with that willowy fair-faced 
 being whom I called mother, and who fasted on my 
 birthdays and prayed to God to give me a new heart. 
 
 You, I said, know more about "Henry Ward 
 Beecher" than I do, but I know more about "brother 
 Henry" than you do. 
 
 "Other foundation can no man lay than is laid: 
 Jesus Christ. I believe that thou art the Christ, the 
 son of the living God. And on this rock I will build 
 my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail 
 against her." 
 
 On this rock I found brother Henry, like some 
 vine of beauty and of strength, thriving, and flinging 
 afar a vision of beauty, and the alluring fragrance 
 of heart-rest, love and hope. I loved brother Henry, 
 and climbing up to enjoy the vine, my feet found 
 the rock. Blessed be the vine! Blessed be the rock! 
 
 For your sakes, beloved, I wish that I could be as 
 brother Henry was. 
 
 Somehow I feel small interest in the current esti- 
 mates of Henry Ward Beecher nor any inclination to 
 add to them. 
 
 In those sad days when his good name was be- 
 smirched, and thousands of men took sides, brother 
 Henry, — my brother Henry, — solemnly asseverated 
 his innocence and his purity. Knowing him, I be- 
 lieved him and read no further. 
 
 I have heard of brother Henry — Henry Ward 
 12 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 Beecher, — reformer, war trumpet, our champion in 
 England, companion and counselor of Abraham Lin- 
 coln, lecturer in universal demand, advanced thinker, 
 prolific v/riter, inexhausti ble preacher, creed-destroyer, 
 friend of freedom and of man. I have heard of 
 ecclesiastical councils and their findings. And but 
 yesterday I have seen the great city of his home sad- 
 dened and still. Because he loved flowers, they bed- 
 ded and buried him in flowers. Hebrews and Roman 
 Catholics, Socialists, colored men, soldiers, sailors and 
 longshoremen, editors and lawyers : — mankind in the 
 city of his home paused and softly said, "I'm sorry." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher believed in man and his 
 destiny. 
 
 As the tides obey the sun and moon, so he held 
 that the ways of men obey the eternal God — whom he 
 loved. 
 
 Therefore he loved men, studied men, watched 
 men, and labored to introduce men to what is best in 
 themselves. 
 
 It is not for any man to fancy that he can lead 
 his fellows except as he be led of God. He was a 
 watch-man and, seeing the first turn of the tide, 
 shouted discovery. Men thought him the cause of 
 great movements. He never so esteemed himself. 
 "The man that sees the streak in the east is not the 
 cause of the sun-rise," he said. 
 
 He was wholesomely in tune with nature in all 
 her moods, and with man as part of nature. He 
 preached and he wrote on the beautiful theory that 
 
 13 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 because God is great and good and loving, therefore 
 man is not a failure and life is not tragic, nor eternity 
 one long wail. 
 
 He cared as little for logic and consistency as an 
 apple-tree that blossoms bountifully in the sunshine 
 to the song of robins and blue-birds. 
 
 He was a magniiicent success in every way. I 
 cannot name a man that without office, authority, or 
 organization of his fellow men to lift him up and 
 throne him, has yet reached so high, been seen and 
 known so far, and by his death thrills with regret so 
 many thousands or even millions. 
 
 Was it Oliver Cromwell that rode through London 
 'mid the shouts of thousands, and said to his com- 
 panions, "There would be twice as many if I were 
 riding to the scaffold or the block!" 
 
 Julius Caesar, to whom was declared I know not 
 how many triumphal receptions, died by a stab ! 
 
 I mind me also of Jesus Christ, on Wednesday the 
 people's hero, but on Friday dying alone in ignominy ; 
 and somehow I am not impressed by any verdict of 
 "the people." 
 
 I turn from Henry Ward Beecher and rest with 
 "brother Henry," who rode his long-gaited sorrel the 
 length and breadth of Indiana to tell of Jesus Christ. 
 
 I almost hear the colloquy renewed in restful Par- 
 adise: "Henry, son of Lyman, lovest thou me?" 
 "Thou knowest that I love thee." "Henry, son of 
 Lyman, lovest thou me more than these thro' which 
 
 14 
 
MY BROTHER HENRY 
 
 thou'st come?" "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou 
 knowest that I love thee." 
 
 And a strange gladness comes to me, as I call to 
 mind that the last pen-stroke by his hand and the last 
 thrill of his music-making brain was in the service of 
 "The Life of Jesus the Christ." I know not the book 
 will be worth reading, but I do know that it was 
 worth while to even try to write the unspeakable. 
 
 Jesus said of John, the geat reformer unto whose 
 preaching came forth Jerusalem and all Judea and 
 Galilee and the ten cities: "Among them that are 
 born of women, there hath not risen a greater 
 than John the Baptist; notwithstanding he that is 
 least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he." 
 
 Brother Henry was a Christian believer. 
 
 "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of 
 death, thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all 
 believers." 
 
 15 
 
Mv ^eace S #ibe Winto gou 
 
 Preached in 
 
 Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, May 15, 1852 
 Williamsburg, N. Y., June 15, 1853 
 Hartford, Conn., August 13, 1854 
 Elmira, N. Y., August 27, 1854 
 New Haven, Conn., April 8, 1855 
 Elmira, N. Y., August 12, 1855 
 Jacksonville, III., October 14, 1855 
 Chicago, III., June 15, 1862 
 Elmira, N. Y., March, 1866 
 Repeated by request, September 26, 1880 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth 
 do I give to you. — John 14:27. 
 
 Ye are not of this world, but I have chosen you out of 
 this world. — John 15:19. 
 
 Jesus spoke these words to a very small and select 
 number of men. They were men who had been for 
 years his almost daily companions; they were, if I 
 may so say, his family. Better than all others they 
 knew and understood him. Their appreciation, mea- 
 ger as we know it to have been, was still the richest 
 and most nearly true of any that Jesus found among 
 men. But now he must leave them and die. By the 
 words of the text, Jesus was, as it were, making his 
 last will and testament. He leaves a legacy : "My 
 peace I give unto you." Next he guards them from 
 false expectations and disappointments, by telling 
 them that this gift is not given in the way or after the 
 sort which they would be apt to expect. "Not as the 
 world giveth do I give to you." And lastly many 
 times over during this and ensuing conversations, he 
 teaches them that in every particular of personal ex- 
 perience, they are, and are to be, separate from and 
 unlike the world; in brief, that in perpetuating his 
 gospel in its spirit and deeds, they would verify and 
 reproduce item by item his experience, both of joy 
 and sadness, success and defeat. 
 
 19 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 All this he told them beforehand, and then, after 
 in so many words adopting them as friends and broth- 
 ers, he prayed for them. 
 
 Historically we know that these men did verify 
 these predictions, step by step. They drank of his 
 cup, they were baptised with his baptism. In this dis- 
 course, however, I am to speak of a prophecy and 
 promise made by Christ. I am to speak of peace, the 
 peace which Christ gives to all that are like him, that 
 is, to all that are Christians, in just the ratio of their 
 likeness to him. 
 
 1. "My peace," says the text; something which 
 Christ in particular experienced and enjoyed. Hence 
 we will seek to detect its presence and quality by 
 studying him. 
 
 2. Next I shall speak of it by contrast and de- 
 scription: appealing to our own experience and con- 
 sequent knowledge of our own powers and their 
 interplay. 
 
 Jesus was a man. Whoever has made himself 
 truly familiar with his biography is prepared to find a 
 peculiar result or reward to such a life. At a glance 
 it is evident that none of the usual rewards, such as 
 prosperity, fame, wealth, comfort, brilliant associa- 
 tions, power efficiency, attended upon Jesus. Nor 
 could they. The tenor of his life seems to smite all 
 these in the face. He was a man who lived contrary 
 to received notions. His most intimate friends were 
 disappointed daily and chid him often; and though 
 they loved him, yet when at last he died, there was 
 
 20 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 not a living man to assert the wisdom of such a 
 course of life, — not one. They put on the sackcloth 
 of disappointment, and mvirmured lamentations to 
 each other over their blasted hopes. 
 
 A life so peculiar must of necessity involve a pe- 
 culiar reward, if any reward at all. Jesus was by no 
 means a miserable man, even though he was a man of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief. He knew a re- 
 ward daily, hourly. There are some sufferings which 
 are in themselves a priceless reward. With all his 
 sorrows thick upon him, Christ enjoyed despite them 
 all — nay rather in consequence of them — a compen- 
 sation such as this world can neither give nor take 
 away. He was sorrowful but not miserable. You 
 will find it hard to select a word by which to describe 
 him in this regard. You shrink from saying, happy, 
 .joyful: equally from saying unhappy, joyless.. Calm 
 and contented he certainly was not. Cottagers, 
 simple-minded, with few hopes and fewer fears, are 
 calm and contented. Christ was torn with longings 
 unutterable, groaning in spirit ; he was often weary 
 and in tears. These are not symptoms of calmness 
 or contentment. But the words, sad, disconsolate, 
 despairing, describe him no better. Strong, self-re- 
 liant, courageous, fail just as fatally. 
 
 There stands the Judean Jesus, — an angel might 
 envy him, — and yet not a word which the world uses 
 to describe its estates whether of good or evil, harmo- 
 nizes with him, unless it be his chosen word, peace. 
 Study your own heart, scan closely the portraits of 
 
 21 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 men that hang in memory's gallery, and tell me 
 how many peace-full men you ever knew. And when 
 you have called the little, scanty roll, answer, were 
 they not all, every one. Christians? 
 
 A little while let us dwell upon this somewhat un- 
 usual contemplation, that is, the reward, the peculiar 
 reward, which this man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief, enjoyed even while he lived. This con- 
 sideration subtracts not an iota from the quantity and 
 quality of the suffering whose torment he keenly felt 
 in body and soul. No tongue can tell the agony of his 
 sorrow by whose stripes we are healed. Yet he, 
 about to die, offers his peace as a most precious gift. 
 Consider his life of humility, poverty, actual want: 
 his death, prefaced with scourges, a crown of thorns, 
 a weary, cross-burdened way, and in its last article 
 received with exquisite torture. These were real 
 agonies. A tithe of such upon us, and we should cry 
 out for death, and esteem ourselves utterly miserable. 
 
 Consider, too, his inward sorrows, his natural fear 
 and anxiety, for like us he was tempted ; his knowl- 
 edge of right, the pressure of temptation, the horror 
 of a possible fall ; his undying devotion to his divine 
 mission as yet so unrewarded, so visionary, so use- 
 less ; his large desires, never satisfied, yet upon which 
 he was steadily thoughtful ; his impending fate of 
 defeat and death, which brooded over his chosen path. 
 All these inward sorrows Jesus felt, yet there was a 
 reward here. He was not broken, or moved to 
 swerve or falter in a single step. 
 
 22 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 Consider also his social wrongs; for as men find 
 their most exquisite happiness in society, so also their 
 most exquisite torture comes from the same. He, so 
 sweetly hungering for love, and patiently waiting for 
 companions, met rude repulse on every side. His 
 affections were wounded, his love rejected! Here 
 was wrought an anguish of spirit that passes all com- 
 prehension. "Oh, Jerusalem! how have I loved and 
 longed for thee !" Ye that can let his gracious life pass 
 in rapid review before your memory, who can see his 
 acts, hear his words, and almost gaze upon his face ; ye 
 that have known Christ, tell me, did ever teeming, 
 mellow soil send forth its tender blades in spring 
 more beautiful and thick-set than were the acts and 
 words, and even silences of love with which his life 
 was verdurous? Tell me, too, was ever early 
 meadow so burnt with black frost, the life-sap in 
 every tender blade of promise and beauty driven back 
 rudely to the root,— as when Christ was scorned and 
 buffeted by men, in all his loveliness rejected by the 
 very ones he loved? 
 
 Oh, mother, smitten by the rude hand of thy un- 
 grateful son, the blow all painless, so sharper is thy 
 grief to have a thankless child ! and thou, long-suffer- 
 ing wife, thrice bound unto thy fallen husband, by 
 law, by sorrow, and by love; oh, faithful, unregarded 
 love wherever found, such tears as thine Christ often 
 wept: "I came unto mine own, but mine own received 
 me not." 
 
 Yet there was reward even here. It must have 
 23 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 been a soul of heavenly peace that could thus speak 
 from out of desolation and the very shadow of death: 
 "Father, forgive them." He endured the cross, 
 despised the shame, for the joy that was set before 
 him. And the brightness of this swift-coming joy and 
 glory, where it met and mingled with the darkness of 
 his present sorrow made the golden twilight, peace. 
 There his soul rested. 
 
 There, too, our souls may rest, if we choose to take 
 his aims, live his life, and reproduce his experience. 
 This is the victory that overcometh the world. Ex- 
 cept by experience, neither you nor I can learn the 
 quality of peace. Let us muse upon the experiences 
 we have had and waken, if possible, an appetite for 
 the opposite. For to many of you the past suffices, 
 and more than suffices to have walked as other men 
 walk. If you are satisfied as you are, I have no mes- 
 sage for you! Nor has Christ. He came not to the 
 well and satisfied, but to the sick, and weary, and 
 heavy-laden. 
 
 Peace is not an opiatic quietude. It is the result of 
 many commingling elements, the harmony of many 
 feelings, — a harmony that would be joy if this were 
 the kingdom of heaven; a harmony that is joy even 
 now in every assembly of true Christians, in every 
 true church. The joy of heaven shining through the 
 atmosphere of earth is Christian peace. 
 
 Peace comes to the soul as the resultant of causes, 
 not as a treasure snatched up like a diamond from the 
 sand, or given from soul to soul as coin is given. 
 
 24 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 When Christ gives it, he gives it as he does lilies and 
 hyacinths in spring time, by sunshine and shower and 
 fertile soil conspiring to reward the faithful gardener. 
 When a worldly man grasps after it under any of its 
 various names of competency, independence, stoicism, 
 contentment, it is but a dissolving delusion that he 
 gains. He chases hotly after it. But hot chases by 
 their very heat preclude the possibility of ever attain- 
 ing. As a boy might chase his shadow of a summer 
 morning, hoping ere noon to lie down in it and keep 
 cool, so they elude the pursuer. Hence it is instruc- 
 tion at once most needed and most beautiful that not 
 as the world giveth does Christ give to them that are 
 his. The weary man that has chased nine will o'the 
 wisps would hardly be persuaded to give heed to a 
 tenth, unless he could know that this time the manner 
 of the chase, the length of the running would be some- 
 what different from that he has already tried. "Try 
 another way," says Christ. "If you would receive my 
 peace, try my way." 
 
 Let me attempt to make our musings still more 
 definite. I have said that this peace is the resultant 
 of many antecedent things, the legitimate, the in- 
 evitable result of plans and purposes which may or 
 may not have had this peaceful attainment, as their 
 end. 
 
 Each act of righteousness, each self-denying act, 
 each act of love, brings with it not only its reward of 
 success, but also a constitutional reward; just as 
 violins, flutes, and organs, not only yield satisfactory 
 
 25 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 music, but are themselves improved by the melody 
 they make. This principle was true of Christ, and if 
 v^re dare try it, will prove true of us also. 
 
 All our powers are exercised at the risk of suffer- 
 ing, the intensity of which is accurately measured by 
 the nobleness of the powers exercised. To be wounded 
 and thwarted in benevolent aspirations is keener 
 pain than to be choked off and disappointed in money- 
 getting. But it is the law of our being, as it was of 
 Christ's, that when our noblest powers are habitually 
 exercised, no matter what be the immediate result, 
 success or failure, — there comes sooner or later an ex- 
 quisite satisfaction and reward in the very soul; as 
 music by night to tired watchers ; nay, as angels came 
 to Christ after the temptation. This principle is not 
 a fact of metaphysics alone. A farmer, whether or 
 not he reap a full harvest as the desired reward of his 
 labor, yet does invaribly receive a farmer's health, 
 strength, appetite, and sleep ; gifts in themselves so 
 precious that many an invalid is glad to take them as 
 his sole aim. So, too, a man of science who computes 
 a comet's orbit, or watches for years the silent stars, 
 or knocks patiently at every door of nature's arcana, 
 shall find a quickened intellect and intelligence al- 
 most God-like; even though he miscalculate the 
 comet, or die at the closed doors of nature's mysteries, 
 as Abraham died, not having received the promise. 
 There is always a reward, which, even in the tightest 
 hug of disaster, gives breath and roomy comfort to a 
 man who has worthily exercised his powers. Indeed 
 
 26 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 to a thoughtful mind this constitutional reward will 
 seem very soon to be the only thing worth the seek- 
 ing, so uncertain are all the others, and so uniform the 
 law of defeat and disappointment in this world. Our 
 present life will seem to him but as those long and 
 costly trial trips which English steamships make to 
 test their boilers, braces, and best ballast trim. All 
 the good the voyage does is to get the ship ready for 
 numberless voyages of pleasure and profit hereafter. 
 So the ship goes, hither and thither, with seeming 
 earnestness and aim, but really none. If anything 
 breaks, it is not much matter ; they went out to break 
 things, and they have troops of help at hand to repair. 
 All the good of the voyage is in the ship and to the 
 ship. Such is man on the voyage of life, training his 
 powers, developing strength under temptation, find- 
 ing out his weak points, and being made perfect 
 through suffering. "Herein do I exercise myself, to 
 have a conscience avoid of offence. Count it all joy 
 when ye fall into divers temptations; for the trial of 
 your faith worketh patience, patience, endurance, and 
 endurance, hope. Rejoice in the Lord always, and 
 again I say, rejoice. Be careful for nothing, but in 
 everything, by prayer and supplication, let your re- 
 quests be made known unto God. And the peace of 
 God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your 
 hearts and minds through Jesus Christ." 
 
 Christ's peace was light in darkness. He was like 
 a bird of sweet song caught in a tempest, hurried 
 hither and thither in the whirl, never having time to 
 
 27 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 sing out one entire carol of beauty, till at last thrown 
 out upon purer, brighter scenes, the whole, pent-up 
 melody gushes forth in triumph ; as even now the love 
 of Christ outflows amid the adoration of those who in 
 heaven are like him. But meantime, to know that 
 such music is possible, to utter faintly now and then 
 a note, to have such divine imaginings, such affluent 
 purposes of enduring love, and such radiancy of 
 hope, — in sort, to be like Christ, nay, even to want to 
 be like Christ, — is in itself a wealth to the soul. The 
 world is care-full to find peace; the Christian is care- 
 less, and finds it. Peter asks: "Who is he that can 
 harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?" 
 And Christ said: "These things I have spoken unto 
 you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye 
 shall have tribulation : but be of good cheer, I have 
 overcome the world." And so can you. No man can 
 try to be consistent in the same principle of self-denial, 
 and universal love, without finding very soon in his 
 own fevered soul that Christ does give his peace to 
 his followers, and in a way the world never dreams of 
 trying. As certain as that water, rippling along over 
 pebbles, will gurgle happily all day and all night long: 
 so certain is it that whatever soul of man, allured and 
 helped by Christ, will burst the bonds of cautious self- 
 love, and give himself away to God and man, will 
 hear perpetual murmurs of sweetness deep within his 
 spirit, and know the peace of God that passeth under- 
 standing. 
 
 Did you ever try the experiment? 
 28 
 
MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU 
 
 This is the whole matter: our souls are fevered 
 with unsatisfied wishes, desires, — lusts, the Bible calls 
 them. We superficial doctors, keep saying, "drink, 
 drink, drink." And the more we drink, the worse 
 the water tastes and the hotter the fever. Now comes 
 Christ, and prescribes "abstinence, abstinence, ab- 
 stinence. Deny yourself. It will come hard. But 
 by and by you will know my peace, and come into 
 your right mind." 
 
 The world proposes to gratify you. Christ pro- 
 poses to cure you. 
 
 My hearers, this is the gospel. It is good tidings 
 of great joy. It is peace on earth, and glory to and 
 with God. 
 
 29 
 
^brabam Hincoln 
 
 Sermon preached at The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., 
 Sunday, April 16, 1865, three days after the assassi- 
 nation of Lincoln. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 We trusted that it had been he which should have 
 redeemed Israel : and beside all this, today is the third 
 day since these things were done. — Luke 23:21. 
 
 You know why I have taken this text, for not 
 more sad than we were they who mourned the loss of 
 their leader, slain on Friday, 1800 years ago. And 
 their sadness was not unlike ours. They knew 
 not Christ and the nature of his kingdom. They 
 knew only Jesus, his recent triumphant entry, and his 
 worthiness to inherit the throne of David in Jeru- 
 salem, ruling over Israel in restored independence. 
 But when their expectation was highest, there came 
 the stunning blow. Jesus, their hope, was slain. 
 They talked of nothing else these three days, and the 
 essence of their sorrow was, "We trusted that it had 
 been he which should have redeemed Israel." 
 
 For two weeks, we and all the people have been 
 glad with victories and triumph. And on Friday, 
 called "Good Friday," there assembled a vast multi- 
 tude on the ruins of Fort Sumter, to raise again the 
 very flag which had been there first assailed by hot 
 rebels. Words of victory and hope have been spoken. 
 But at evening, he whom the nation leaned upon was 
 slain. And now on Easter Sunday, we are sad-heart- 
 ed, for we trusted that Abraham Lincoln had been he 
 
 33 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 which should have redeemed our institutions and 
 given us peace. 
 
 Christian brethren and good citizens all, is there 
 not a resurrection that may come to us, as many as 
 have manhood to see, understand, believe, and act? 
 
 The president recommends the humbling of our- 
 selves before God, the conduct of services in memory 
 of the good man murdered, that we recall his virtues, 
 and yield ourselves to a profitable sorrow. 
 
 As good citizens and humble Christians, let us en- 
 deavor to be guided by his recommendations, and in 
 earnestness think upon the good man gone, contem- 
 plate his virtues, indulge a wholesome sorrow, and 
 learn to walk in true humility before God and among 
 men. 
 
 From my soul, I congratulate thee, Abraham Lin- 
 coln, upon thy discharge and honorable retirement 
 from earthly labors. For thou wast burdened and 
 very weary. How heavy thy load was, we knew not 
 till it fell upon us, and we began to ask who can carry 
 it, as children who miss a mother or a father. May 
 thy resting be as thy labors, and thy refreshment with 
 thy Savior satisfy thee that thou hast not lived in vain. 
 
 God rest thee, Abraham Lincoln ! 
 
 You have read the history of Israel led by Moses; 
 of the Dutch republic, led by William of Orange; of 
 the French Revolution under Mirabeau; of the Eng- 
 lish under Cromwell; of the Americans under Wash- 
 ington ; and you, having thus read, do know, — for 
 they all teach the same lesson, — that the leadership 
 
 34 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of a great people through perils of disorganization is 
 a task that surpasses human ability. 
 
 Of all such tasks ever given to a ruler, the care and 
 leadership of the American people during the last four 
 years has been unquestionably the greatest; the 
 territory so vast, surpassing the empires of history; 
 the people so various, surpassing in efifective variety 
 the nations subjected by Rome ; the habits and pas- 
 sions, the plans and purposes of the people as discord- 
 ant and confused as nature and tradition could make 
 them. But one single tie of agreement there was, 
 which indeed was a torpedo rather than a tie, — name- 
 ly, love of freedom for one's self, and a determination 
 to have one's own way despite all contradictions. This 
 vast, proud, discordant people, educated by eighty-four 
 Julys, seventeen presidential elections, and eighty 
 years of prosperity, to boastfulness, self-conceit, and 
 headstrong will ; — this vast people called Abraham 
 Lincoln to be their ruler, and charged him to preserve 
 the constitution and execute the laws : a constitution 
 already far decayed by reason of disregardance, and 
 laws already habitually set at naught wherever public 
 opinion was not suited by them. 
 
 Well might the honest man feel feeble, and call for 
 the prayers of the good, as he left his home to take, not 
 the direction of a ship, which, though so great and 
 driven by fierce winds, is yet turned about by a very 
 small helm, but the leadership of a people, wilful and 
 impatient of contradiction. 
 
 And yet this man of the people had a profound 
 35 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 faith in the people. He walked by this faith and ac- 
 counted himself their servant. And like the sober 
 servant of a drunken master, he spoke gently, respect- 
 fully, and waited for time to bring a right mind, an 
 end to violence and raving. In common with thous- 
 ands, he looked to see the aroused heat pass off with 
 election day, and inauguration. 
 
 At Columbus he said, soothingly: "It is a good 
 thing that there is nothing more than anxiety, for 
 there is nothing going wrong, — there is nothing that 
 really hurts anybody. We entertain different views 
 upon political questions. But nobody is suffering 
 anything. All we want is time, patience, and a reli- 
 ance upon that God who has never forsaken his peo- 
 ple." 
 
 At Pittsburg he said : "My advice is to keep cool. 
 Let the people on both sides keep their self-posse.s- 
 sion, and just as other clouds have cleared away in 
 due time, so will this great nation prosper as hereto- 
 fore." 
 
 At Philadelphia, standing in old Independence 
 Hall, he said : "I have often inquired of myself what 
 great principle or idea it was that has kept this union 
 so long together. It was, I think, that sentiment in 
 the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, 
 not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to 
 the world for all future time." 
 
 And he says in his inaugural, — which I pray you 
 all to read once more that you may see how honestly 
 and consistently this man has kept his faith steadfast 
 
 36 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to the end;— "I shall take care that the laws of the 
 Union shall be faithfully executed in all the states. 
 Doing this, which I deem to be only a duty on my 
 part, I shall perfectly perform it as far as is practica- 
 ble, unless my rightful master, the American people, 
 shall withhold the power, or in some authoritative 
 manner direct the contrary." 
 
 You remember how his heart yearned and at the 
 last hour overflowed with eloquence, as he penned the 
 paragraph the like of which no ruler ever spake 
 before, or state-paper ever preserved : "We are 
 not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must not break 
 our bonds of aflfection. The mystic cords of memory 
 stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to 
 every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, 
 will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when touched 
 again, as they surely will be, by the better angels of 
 our nature." 
 
 With this clear and cool, yet hopeful and fatherly 
 confidence in the people, our president began his 
 work. 
 
 And as of old some conspicuous criminal was 
 brought into the forum and laid at center; while to 
 arms and legs four prancing horses were harnessed 
 one to each and then headed to the four quarters of 
 the empire to run furiously: so our president found 
 himself at Washington, the feeble center, tugged at 
 by sectional fury in every direction. 
 
 Every lawyer, every office-holder, every preacher 
 37 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 in the land knew just what ought to be done. Mas- 
 sachusetts was not less hot and certain than South 
 Carolina. New York was at issue with Kentucky. 
 Pennsylvania and Missouri were far apart. In short 
 the whole blessed people, the president's accepted 
 masters, were in a clamor: "Let something be done 
 right quickly." And our president waited to find 
 what. 
 
 "Oh, how slow he is !" 
 
 Christian citizens, history will record of Abraham 
 Lincoln this as his chief distinction : that believing in 
 the right and ability of the people to order their own 
 affairs., he was patient of their clamor but miracu- 
 lously quick to note their agreements and be guided 
 by them. 
 
 Of the four years that he has led us, I will not 
 speak in much detail. Ere many months had passed, 
 all began to see that a greater work was on hand than 
 any man could measure. Forces were at play which 
 no man could control. Issues multiplied. In the 
 army began to be felt the rivalry of ambitious officers 
 in every degree. In the south colored men and wo- 
 men began to hang around forts and camps to be fed 
 or die. In foreign lands lay ambushed sharp-eyed 
 conspirators to improve any and every blunder or 
 rashness, to our ruin. In cities north and south civil 
 suits began to obstruct prompt military activity. Up- 
 on the ocean were pirates, we called them, but other 
 nations called them privateers men. We won prison- 
 ers, rebels, but we lost soldiers ; and we dared not 
 
 38 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 punish because we shuddered at retaliation. Slaves 
 brought information to our armies and food to our 
 prisoners escaping homeward, but the people were 
 not ready to call them freemen and citizens. Plots 
 that never came to your ears have gone far toward 
 ripeness, and then been quietly nipped. 
 
 Committees from New England have gone to ex- 
 postulate with our President for his course, and have 
 met Kentucky committees equally aiiflicted for op- 
 posite reasons. Wall Street has run to Washington 
 several times to impress sound views in finance upon 
 the President. Assemblies and conferences of clergy 
 have brought up their unanimous votes and laid them 
 before him. Friends of starving prisoners have called 
 upon him to do something, and that right speedily. 
 In short the whole land has been clamoring its wants 
 and its opinions, its injuries and its demands ; and 
 for four years Abraham Lincoln has sat in the very 
 focus of all the noise, good-natured and listening. I 
 think he has not spoken a hasty word. And he has 
 heard any unity of popular demand a little sooner 
 than the people could hear it themselves. Not one 
 step backward has he ever made. And if you will lay 
 the inaugural of 1865 side by side with that of 1861, 
 you will see that the same fatherly heart and cool 
 head is author of them both. He vowed before 
 heaven to preserve the nation, and whoever else may 
 have failed, he did not fail. 
 
 Added to his cares of state have come sickness to 
 himself and bereavement to his household; while all 
 
 39 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 around his southern horizon has brooded a sullen ma- 
 lignity of personal hate which no patience or mag- 
 namimity of his has been able to scatter. 
 
 That he was fair-minded, just, and honorable, is 
 certified in that he was abused by extremists on both 
 sides of every question issued. 
 
 That he was clear-headed and strong-hearted, is 
 certified in that to this day our terrible war has not 
 drifted into side issues. 
 
 His last great act was to say through Lieutenant- 
 General Grant to the defeated armies of Virginia: 
 "Lay down your arms, and go home, and be quiet. 
 Let there be peace and order." 
 
 And so, as Moses stopped at his Jordan while the 
 people went over to possess, Abraham Lincoln has 
 led us to the borders of a peaceful land and we go for- 
 ward to possess it, but he is with his God. 
 
 Say I not well that of all cares ever laid upon a 
 ruler, the leadership of the American people during 
 the last four years has been unquestionably the great- 
 est? Nor do we any wrong, nor show unmanliness, 
 when with aching hearts we say one to another as we 
 walk and are sad : "We trusted that it had been he 
 which should have redeemed Israel." 
 
 But not altogether of our loss shall we speak 
 together if we speak wisely. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, dying, does not remove the 
 great people of whom he aimed to make himself the 
 agent and executor. The experiment of popular gov- 
 ernment is still in progress. Where the people rule, 
 
 40 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 no one man imports much. President Lincoln felt 
 this. No man could rate his personal consequence to 
 mankind at less worth than he himself would have 
 fixed. And the moment the first shock is over, we 
 shall see that the same question is still at issue : Can 
 a free people preserve their own government? 
 
 Harrison and Taylor, in peaceful times, have died, 
 and their lieutenants have come into place without 
 any jar. Can a free people do as much when the air 
 is electric with intense passion, and every pulse is at 
 fever rate? Have we gained wisdom which we so 
 much need, that we may abjure the sins and follies 
 which have cost us so much in the past? Have we 
 learned that the tongue of a reviler setteth on fire the 
 course of nature and is set on fire of hell? Oh men, 
 now while our hearts are sad and tender, I ask you: 
 Are there not words of yours about Abraham Lin- 
 coln which you do now regret? Has there not been a 
 boyish wilfulness and certitude of speech which made 
 the work of government harder? 
 
 Last Sunday I read a hasty proclamation for 
 thanksgiving. I did so against my will, for I felt that 
 the rejoicing of the people was premature, thin, boy- 
 ish. When Richmond was evacuated, when the army 
 of Virginia surrendered and gladness was every- 
 where, I was sad, for it was in so many cases unprin- 
 cipled gladness, the crow of a fighting cock victo- 
 rious. I think of the temper and behavior of the people 
 at large amid present astounding circumstances; will 
 they, can they, act reasonably? Will Elijah's mantle 
 
 41 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 fall upon Elisha, and the moderation of Abraham 
 Lincoln regulate Andrew Johnson? 
 
 The death of President Lincoln ought not to 
 change the temper of any man toward the southern 
 people. With the fall of Richmond, and the surrender 
 of Lee, there began to be spoken words of true 
 dignity and Christian forgiveness. The assassination 
 of the President ought not to change your feelings 
 and opinions on any question. The murderer is a 
 man and but one man. The only lesson to be drawn 
 from this fatal success is this, that presidents need 
 body-guards. Alas for democracy ! which must needs 
 learn by experience that body-guards are not merely 
 the pomp of royalty, but the wise and proper se- 
 curity of him who wields the magistrate's sword. 
 
 This lesson, then, is all that the murder teaches us. 
 But I fear that many will feel out blindly some new 
 and implacable wrath against southern men. Not so 
 would our fatherly president exhort you. "Keep 
 cool," he would say. "Southerners are proved neither 
 better nor worse by that pistol-shot of a mad-man." 
 And if we were settling as one man into purposes of 
 magnanimity and amnesty before we lost our father, 
 surely we should even more sacredly carry out his 
 policy, now that he is gone from us. 
 
 As to Andrew Johnson, upon whom so suddenly 
 fall the cares of state ; — remember that he too 
 is a man of the people. In the hour of garrulity, he 
 poured out his convictions in the maudlin speech of 
 drunkenness. That is passed now. Andrew Johnson, 
 
 42 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sober and repentant, Andrew Johnson by the coffin 
 of Abraham Lincoln, is another man from Andy 
 Johnson the partisan from Tennessee, flushed with 
 political strife and victory. And as we in days by- 
 gone have prayed for and followed Abraham Lincoln, 
 the people's president, so let us pray for and follow 
 Andrew Johnson, a president from the people. 
 
 Indeed but that we loved Abraham Lincoln, we 
 should hardly miss him. He was but one man; and 
 no man is very important in this world's movements. 
 But when a nation's heart is given to one man, when 
 at least 15,000,000 people have a restful respect for 
 honest old Abe Lincoln, the loss when he is taken can- 
 not be measured. It is a true bereavement. 
 
 When such sorrows come into a household, they 
 often elevate and purify the lives of the mourning 
 ones. And so after some sort may not we approach 
 and attain a higher and nobler standard of character, 
 because of the stunning blow and bereavement we 
 pass through? 
 
 Of many, let me select and set forth two or three 
 surpassing virtues of our president that we may be 
 quickened toward the same. 
 
 First, the depth and unaffected outgo of his affec- 
 tions. Abraham Lincoln loved, and was not ashamed 
 to say so. In his first inaugural was the first intru- 
 sion of heart into state papers. It burst in. He 
 could not withhold himself. Professors of rhetoric 
 regretted the blemish; diplomats smiled at the sim- 
 plicity; enemies laughed derisively. But all over our 
 
 43 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 land the fountain leaped in good men's hearts, as they 
 read these last extemporised words of a president, — 
 not ashamed to be like God, and let his love be without 
 dissimulation. 
 
 We remember his grief for Colonel Ellsworth, 
 whose death shocked the nation. Alas, what an army 
 have since followed the lead of this boy colonel, loved 
 by the President ! 
 
 At Fortress Monroe, in that hour of deepest gloom 
 and disaster, when the President was receiving mes- 
 sages of the conflict every hour, he sat in cheerless 
 quarters, and toward evening to his acting military 
 secretary, "Colonel," he said, "have you ever felt that 
 the dead are yet by us? My Willie is always in my 
 mind. Have you a Shakespeare?" And he read from 
 "King John" the words of Constance, when her son 
 was prisoner, and from her separate and gone. They 
 came in a trialogue. King Philip, Pandulph, and Con- 
 stance speaking. 
 
 Constance: Father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven. 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again. 
 For since the birth of Cain, the first male child. 
 To him that did but yesterday suspire. 
 There was not such a gracious creature born. 
 But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, 
 And chase the native beauty from his cheek. 
 And he will look as hollow as a ghost. 
 And so he'll die ; and rising so again, 
 
 44 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 When I shall meet him in the court of Heaven, 
 I shall not know him ; therefore never, never 
 Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. 
 
 Pandulf : You hold too heinous a respect of grief. 
 Constance : He talks to me that never had a son. 
 Philip : You are as fond of grief as of your child. 
 Constance: Grief fills the room-up of my absent- 
 child. 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
 Thus have I reason to be fond of grief. 
 
 There amid the rack and bedlam of a vast and un- 
 decided military movement, among rude men, the jin- 
 gle of spurs, the clatter of sabres, the noise of wagons 
 and gallop of horses, the raining in of telegrams, the 
 conflict of counsels, the fears of the timid, the threats 
 of the disappointed and the bluster of the bold : — sat 
 our president in a little eddy of transient silence, and 
 thought him of his boy, and spoke of it. He was 
 stronger as a man for that he loved, and did not care 
 to hide it. 
 
 Second, another striking virtue of Abraham Lin- 
 coln was his ability to recognize and respect the opin- 
 ions of men who hated him, men who were his ene- 
 mies; and as to himself ever discriminating between 
 Abraham Lincoln the man, and Abraham Lincoln the 
 president. As a man, he never put himself above any 
 fellow-man, was never dogmatic. As a president, he 
 
 45 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 never sought to gratify or assert with official power 
 his personal convictions. For instance, he never dis- 
 guised his dislike of slavery, his desire that all men 
 should be free. But he never became an anti-slavery 
 president. 
 
 There never yet was a visitor who came to see him 
 but went away impressed that he was understood. 
 We all need this rare quality. Look not every man 
 on his own things, but every man on the things of oth- 
 ers. Every one felt toward Lincoln : "He under- 
 stands me and respects me. If he differs from me, it 
 is, as he thinks, for a good reason." 
 
 But time fails me. I would gladly speak of his 
 humor and story-telling, as illustrating a virtue that 
 we should emulate. Mirth is a peace-maker when it 
 is mirth from an honest, loving heart. And peace- 
 makers are the children of God. He who remembers 
 the skill of Jesus Christ as a popular teacher, because 
 of his parables, will scarcely less admire the power of 
 Mr. Lincoln's stories. I will say no more except this : 
 if it pleases God to give you his indwelling spirit, and 
 being thus a child of grace, you would ask for graces 
 more abundant, I know of no one more desirable than 
 good-natured humor, loving wit, logical story-telling. 
 You shall have power among men to persuade, to 
 amuse, to attract, and, please God, to lead them by 
 your good-natured graces to love him who makes you 
 good-natured. 
 
 Already, citizens, the rush of events has almost 
 effaced the dimple in the tide where Lincoln sank. 
 
 46 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Already Joshua leads the host toward the river, leav- 
 ing Moses in the mountain with his God. Already 
 we study each day's news to read what is, and ask 
 what's next. 
 
 Our soldiers are coming home. Are you ready to 
 make room for them? Our southern states, collapsed, 
 lie in a cold sweat, and warm life must be poured 
 through their veins. Our colossal debt looms up like 
 a mountain, and we are talking about digging it down 
 with pick and shovel of industry. Millions of eman- 
 cipated slaves are on the soil, and what to do with 
 them causes good men to differ. Already long-headed 
 politicians are adjusting issues for the people to foam 
 and fight about. The end is not yet. The end never 
 comes till Christ brings it in the new heaven and the 
 new earth. And we have drawn aside today to recall 
 our great man gone, our leader laid low, our father 
 slain. Our meditations are ended, and their profit 
 should begin. 
 
 Not in vain doth any man die who dying leaves his 
 fellows wiser, because more thoughtful men. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, God rest thee! 
 
 Andrew Johnson, God guide thee! 
 
 Brethren all, God save us! 
 
 Amen. 
 
 47 
 
^ "^isiion of Creation 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., September 18, 18'," 
 
 Repeated September 26, 1875 
 
 Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., November 24, 18'i , 
 
 Repeated in Elmira November 21, 1880 
 
 Gleason Health Resort, Elmira, July, 10, 1887 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
 formed by the word of God.—Heb. 11:3. 
 
 We have many books of history and we know the 
 names of them: Bancroft's United States, Macauley's 
 England, Hallam's Middle Ages, Prescott's Peru and 
 Mexico. We might speak of them as being books of 
 Bancroft, books of Macauley, and so on, and be well 
 understood. In like manner we have certain books 
 of our Bible called the historic books of Moses. We 
 have Moses not only as a law-giver, but Moses as a 
 historian as well. 
 
 Modern writers of history usually annex to their 
 books a list of the authorities and original documents 
 consulted. Their story is a "mosaic," a skilful putting 
 together of ascertained facts so as to make a continu- 
 ous narrative. A historian does not make his facts. 
 A historian does not vouch for the truthfulness of his 
 witnesses. He examines them, listens to their testi- 
 mony, compares one with another, and gives the best 
 results that he can attain to. He states nothing of 
 his own knowledge. Historians with one consent 
 must say as the apostle Paul did, "That which I have 
 received, that also delivered I unto you." 
 
 We have in the books of Moses a history, but un- 
 like modern histories, he has not attached to them a 
 list of authorities, nor a statement of documents con- 
 
 51 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 suited. Upon these questions we are left altogether 
 in the dark. Did God tell him all these facts while he 
 was in the fastnesses of Sinai? Did Moses discover 
 these truths while he was a theological student in the 
 temples of old Egypt? Did he find and decipher 
 these facts written on copper or on skins, and handed 
 down from Abraham as we hand down heirlooms? 
 How did Moses get at his history? Who knows? 
 Who can tell ? If nobody knows and nobody can tell, 
 what harm is there in guessing? 
 
 Scholars are pretty well agreed that Moses the 
 historian, when he tells of events previous to his own 
 day, depends upon at least two or more documents or 
 traditions. He makes extracts from them. These 
 extracts sometimes overlap like the shingles of a 
 house, so that the same story is told twice : as we find 
 for instance in the first and second chapters of Gene- 
 sis, the second chapter telling in part of events more 
 perfectly told already in the first ; while as touching 
 the creation of man, the story in the second chapter 
 is more in detail than the story in the first. 
 
 Who was the author of these old documents or 
 traditions? Answer: we do not know. But in the 
 nature of the case, who alone is able, or could ever 
 have been able, to tell of the five days of creation pre- 
 vious to the creation of man? Who was there in the 
 beginning with God? Who can declare his mighty 
 works except he himself declare them? 
 
 It must needs be that the story of the creation, if 
 it be at all trustworthy, must have originated with 
 
 52 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 God himself. The next qtiestion is, in what way did 
 he make his revelation. Sometimes God has caused 
 words to be spoken, as to the little boy Samuel in the 
 temple ; at other times he has filled men with the 
 spirit of prophecy and caused them to speak words 
 not their own ; at other times still he has visited men 
 by dreams in sleep ; at other times he has raptured 
 men, as he did the apostle Paul, caught them up into 
 the third heaven to see and hear; at other times still 
 he has granted visions as to Peter on the house-top 
 or to John in Patmos. 
 
 Of these various ways in which God has revealed 
 wonderful facts to men, I "guess" that the story of 
 the creation came to man in a vision. The words de- 
 scribe a picture, a panorama. The man who wrote or 
 .spoke them describes what he saw, or thought he saw. 
 Just so John the apostle describes what he saw 
 and heard when he was in the spirit on the Lord's day. 
 Putting into words what he saw in his trance, he gives 
 us the last book of the Bible, with its wondrous 
 sights and sounds. 
 
 The Bible opens with a vision of what went before 
 and closes with a vision of what is to come after, the 
 world as it now is. 
 
 The story of creation may have passed before 
 Adam in the Garden, prior to his transgression and fall. 
 Perhaps it came to Seth who began to call on the 
 Lord, perhaps to Enoch, who walked with God. Per- 
 haps it came to Abraham after his act of faith, or to 
 Tacob at Beth-el, or to Moses in Midian. I'm sure I 
 
 53 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 don't know who first saw the vision or told the story. 
 But:— 
 
 To whomsoever the vision came, it came in six 
 acts or steps, or days ; perhaps in six successive hours ; 
 perhaps in six successive nights. The time was long 
 enough to imprint the scene upon the memory of the 
 seer. When he reduces his vision to words, he 
 describes not The Creation, but A Vision of the 
 Creation. 
 
 Our late civil war lasted four years. In each year 
 there were, let us say for illustration's sake, six 
 marked and critical events, now of victory and now of 
 defeat. There comes to this city a traveling enter- 
 tainment called, "Pictures of the War." There are 
 twenty-four pictures of the war. We throng the 
 Opera House. The room is darkened, and beginning 
 with Fort Sumter, the beginning and the end of that 
 scene is the first day or period of the war. Then 
 comes Bull Run and we look at it, fix it in memory, 
 and so ends the second day or vision, step or scene, 
 of the war. So we go on until we have seen the 
 whole twenty-four in their order. We look at our 
 watches, and find that the war lasted just an hour. 
 We say to the showman, with indignation ; "Do you 
 mean to say, sir, that our great war was fought 
 through in an hour?" To which he replies: "These 
 are only pictures of the war. It takes but an hour to 
 show the pictures, and to hear what I have to tell you, 
 but the war itself was another matter. Between my 
 first picture and my second was six months, between 
 
 54 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 my second and my third, three months. I have 
 showed you in an hour that which it took four weary 
 years of blood and agony to bring to pass." 
 
 In like manner we have in the first chapter of Gen- 
 esis, successive scenes, or rather descriptions of 
 scenes. A man, living I know not when, was in the 
 spirit on a day of the Lord's choosing. And as the 
 apostle John saw on one Sabbath day the panorama 
 of ages to come, so this unknown man, servant of God 
 that he was, saw the panorama of ages bygone. We 
 must therefore always read the book of Revelation, 
 and the first chapter of Genesis as being an account 
 of a vision which a certain man beheld and preserved 
 for our instruction. 
 
 To make my meaning plainer, and to give you 
 what I suppose to be a true impression from these 
 earlier chapters of Genesis, I have thought to take the 
 place of the seer myself, and, as if I had been that 
 chosen medium of revelation, tell you the story of cre- 
 ation over again as it was enrolled in successive pic- 
 tures before my eyes. Thus I shall be writing a sec- 
 ond book of Genesis, differing from the first in this 
 onl}'-, that I shall borrow my facts from the first book 
 of Genesis, and all adornments of these facts will be 
 guesses, and embroideries, my fancyings. 
 
 Sleepless I tossed from side to side while the night 
 wore slowly by, in my home by the ocean. The rum- 
 ble and rush of the surf wearied me. I got up to 
 
 55 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 escape the intolerable restlessness. I went down 
 on the hard white sand by the sea. I walked along 
 the oscillating margin of the waters, I breathed deep 
 the cool air from the ocean, and was quieted, rested. 
 I walked and thought, and thought and spoke. I con- 
 sidered the heavens, the work of God's hands, the 
 earth which he had made, and the stars to whom he 
 gave their places. I considered the waves, rushing 
 yet never overstepping their bounds, I looked at the 
 old moon in the east paling at the coming of the sun. 
 (Scene First) A ghostly grayness overspread the 
 land and sea, a strange unreality as if all things were 
 about to be dissolved; a wildness, a dreaminess, 
 seemed to possess all things, and me with them. I 
 wondered if they did exist. I wondered at the sea. I 
 wondered at the shore. I questioned the stars. I 
 wondered at myself. What are they? What are 
 these? What am I? Whence came they? Whence 
 came I? I washed my face, I cooled my head, and 
 came back to common sense, yet my deep question- 
 ings remained. 
 
 The enchantment of the hour returned, and 
 whether in the body or out of the body I 
 know not, whether awake or asleep I cannot tell, 
 but through the whole arch of heaven the enclosed 
 space seemed filled with sounds that were not words, 
 yet they tided meaning in upon my spirit: — "In the 
 beginning or ever the world was, before the mount- 
 ains were brought forth, from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting, I AM GOD. The heavens declare my glory, 
 
 56 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 the firmament my handiwork. Day unto day but 
 speaks of me. Night unto night declares my power 
 and shows forth my splendor." And after the sound 
 there was silence and there was space, and I alone 
 remained. No more land. No more sea. No more 
 twinkling stars, nor paling moon, nor rising sun. Be- 
 side me nothing. Around me darkness, emptiness. 
 I felt that I was stationary, yet fancied myself rush- 
 ing like a falling star. Where was I? How know or 
 how answer where there is naught to start from, and 
 naught to measure by? I alone in silence and in 
 space. 
 
 The darkness began to lighten, redden, glow. 
 Commandment seemed to fill all space. Words with- 
 out voice, resistless as fate, seemed to start the glow- 
 ing particles: "Light is coming. Let light be!" 
 Warmer and warmer grew a presence breathing on 
 every side. With the warmth came rosiness, shining. 
 More than I could bear grew the heat. I shot through 
 it as fishes dart through water. Vast spaces, up or 
 down, I stabbed like a rocket in my flight, but every- 
 where was stir, and light, and strange, resistless mo- 
 tion. Escape I could not, and with an outcry I 
 awoke. So the first scene began and ended. 
 
 I stood up dizzy, walked a few steps, dashed 
 water in my face, and turned land-ward. How far I 
 walked, I cannot tell, nor whether 'twas in sleep or 
 rapture that I fell. 
 
 (Scene Second) I seemed extricated and set far 
 oflf at one side of the rush and whirl, the heat and 
 
 57 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 light. I saw the glowing in the distance as one sees 
 clouds that change their shapes, driven of winds, and 
 far away. I knew not where I was, but this I saw, 
 that the rosy mists grew denser, brighter. They 
 curdled into flakes, incandescent, shooting forth vast 
 shafts of light like spurts of slag from underneath the 
 heavy hammer of the forgeman. The dazzle I could 
 not look upon, so bright it was ! One and another of 
 these glowing flakes rushing seemed to roll, and roll- 
 ing rounded, and rounding seemed to spin away one 
 by one till they were lost in the shining haze that 
 gave them birth. Some were large, and some were 
 small. Some seemed white with heat, and some 
 seemed dark and red, or even colorless. As music, and 
 processions bearing banners, draw near, pass by, 
 and go out of sight ; so these volleying suns and satel- 
 lites I saw come into being, pass glowing by me and 
 disappear. , Thus began and ended the second vision 
 of that strange night by the sea, and I awoke. 
 
 I had fallen on the sand. Clouds hid the moon 
 and darkened all the east. This I knew in a moment 
 or two of consciousness. I heard also, and recognized 
 the swash and rumble of the surf. Helpless I fell 
 away again. 
 
 (Scene Third) In the body or out of it I know 
 not, but I seemed to have fled after and to have over- 
 taken the retreating worlds whose creation I had seen 
 but now, and down into the steaming atmosphere of 
 one I dropped. The waters around me fled away. 
 Down they rolled from the mountains round about, 
 
 58 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 roaring and foaming. Carrying all before them, they 
 hurried down into the valleys, unto the place appoint- 
 ed. As great whales rise suddenly from the deep, 
 while cataracts pour down on every side of their 
 hugeness, so the mountains and the highlands came 
 up from underneath the water, and their sides were 
 cut into ribs and channels by a thousand rivers. A 
 strange, auroral light pervaded everything. Vapors 
 still hugged the steaming earth. If, borne away by 
 the wind, they lifted long enough for me to look 
 around and see the waters and dry land, they soon 
 returned and brooded all things with their warmth 
 and dampness. Death itself with such solicitation 
 must needs have come to life, and hugely sprouted 
 unto growth. But there was no death. On the contra- 
 ry, here was the teeming womb of very life. All 
 things came to pass and took on growth as in an in- 
 stant;— grass and herbs, tall reeds, and ferns that un- 
 rolled themselves an acre to a leaf. All things vege- 
 table grew up, filled their measure, and gave their sub- 
 stance to the roots of greater things thereafter. The 
 verdure overgrew me, and struggling with the tangle, 
 I awoke. The beginning and the ending, the morn- 
 ing and the evening, of that strange scene, was the 
 third vision that overtook me that wild night by 
 the sea. 
 
 As I awoke, stripes of crimson and orange, white 
 and blue were flung out like pennants all along the 
 eastern sky. I could see through the moon into the 
 blue beyond it. My eyes were held a moment by the 
 
 59 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 sight, forever new, of sunrise, but the sleep or some 
 high rapturing power snatched me again from 
 consciousness. 
 
 (Scene Fourth) The vapors lifted and were rolled 
 up before the wind into dark, frowning, impenetrable 
 masses. Opposed to them were higher piles of vap- 
 ors that were as the glistering sun for brightness. 
 Through their broadening rift I looked into the deep 
 blue heaven. As I looked, the sun himself seemed to 
 come forth in majesty. The darkness of the one mass 
 took on splendor, and the brightness of the other put 
 on a veil. The sun shone supreme. 
 
 (Scene Fifth) As I looked, the waters parted, 
 little fish leaped forth, and other things so monstrous 
 that I could not call them fish. Leviathans stretched 
 their vast length along the water and slowly turned 
 themselves to feel for, if not to see, the sun. Croak- 
 ings from swamps that had been voiceless hitherto, 
 came upon the air. The reeds parted to give way to 
 enormous alligators. Winged lizards came through 
 the taller ferns, flapping heavy wings laborious. 
 Great birds came wading out ; serpents showed them- 
 selves and seemed the longer because of what they 
 did not show. As a city pours forth its population to 
 some fete-day's fireworks, so from sea and swamp, 
 from intervale and table-land, from grass and high- 
 grown trees, from caves and crannies, things great 
 and small came trooping forth to see the new-born 
 sun, the late-come glory. At evening when the sun de- 
 clined, another seemed to rise, and sharper shadows 
 
 60 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 thrown westward turned the sleepy eyes of all things 
 toward the rising moon. Like to other suns and moons 
 not yet grown, the stars appeared. 
 
 I awakened. Long time had I lain there. The birds 
 had sung their morning songs. The cattle had gone 
 afield to their scanty pasture. The risen sun was new 
 to me as if I had seen him for the first time. Sounds 
 of birds and beasts came to my ears melodiously, re- 
 minding me of their beginnings. With unsteady steps 
 I started toward my home. Men and women came to- 
 ward me, familiar faces, and voices of surprise and 
 reproach: "Where have you been? What have you 
 done? You are wild! You are sick!" 
 
 They reached out their arms and caught me as I 
 fell ; and again, whether I was in the body or out of 
 the body, I cannot tell. 
 
 (Scene Sixth) The rankness of the weeds and 
 grass was softened down to velvet. The trees stood 
 apart, touching and kissing at their branch-tips, and 
 parting to let the sunshine through. Vines climbed 
 up the great trees, shrubs shot up, blossomed, fruited, 
 and wondered what they were for. Little creatures, 
 squirrels, rabbits, field-mice ; larger ones, the antelope 
 and deer; larger still, the lion, tiger, and unwieldy 
 elephant, — walked peacefully around the garden and 
 wondered what they waited for and why they lived. 
 Four ways the sparkling rivulets ran down the hill 
 that was the high place in the garden ; — a pedestal 
 that lacked its image, a throne that lacked its king. 
 Strangely drawn, the birds and beasts small and 
 
 61 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 great, were tending thitherward, and I with them. 
 That same compelling voice that spoke not, yet was 
 heard by every living thing, that voice that came to 
 me so often in visions of that night, seemed speaking 
 once again : "All these are beautiful. All these are 
 perfect. Pictures are they of what I have known 
 from everlasting to everlasting. But there is no cen- 
 ter. Come, I will set among these creatures of my 
 hand one who shall be to them as God. And I will 
 give him company." As it was spoken, so it was. I 
 saw upon the garden-throne both man and woman in 
 state, for the first and last time royal and innocent. 
 That which otherwheres has since been simulated, 
 there took place. The garden and all that lived there- 
 in knew the coming of the master. They thronged 
 around the throne, looked upon him, and he called 
 them all by name. They went their ways and knew 
 their service. He knew his care, to keep and dress 
 and beautify and rule o'er all. Thus the heavens and 
 the earth were finished and all the host of them. And 
 God rested from all his work which he had created. 
 So I understood my visions. 
 
 After this sort, my friends, in some far-off age, 
 some man of God, living near the fountain-head of in- 
 nocence and inspiration, received, I doubt not, a vis- 
 ion of creation, each vision a sample snatched from 
 the very heart of its age. He saw things that 
 marked the energy of God, to whom a thousand years 
 are as one day. He measured as it were one step of 
 
 62 
 
A VISION OF CREATION 
 
 God's stately pacings. Waking from his vision, he 
 told his story in his scant language, as I have told to 
 you in mine, the best he could. Perhaps among the 
 heirlooms in the house of Abraham was the short rec- 
 ord which Moses has transcribed and given to us as 
 the first chapter of Genesis. I know not whence it 
 came, but I am certified by the spirit of God that it 
 is true ; and when slow science has crept along the 
 base of all things and measured miles by inches and 
 eternity by seconds; and at last has laboriously map- 
 ped and mastered the secrets of history as they are 
 written in the vestiges of creation : it shall be then 
 found that the toiling industry of the ages has merely 
 verified the truth of what our children learned long 
 ago ; — what Adam told to Enoch ; what Enoch told to 
 Noah ; what Noah told to Abraham ; how that the 
 heavens and the earth were created of God, how in 
 six magnificent visions the story was made known to 
 man, and how God rested from his works, and rules 
 in the armies of heaven as man should do ; and as man 
 will do when, redeemed, he sits on the right hand of 
 God with Jesus Christ the first-born, according to the 
 prophecy of the Gospel which looks forward and pre- 
 dicts, as clearly as Genesis looks back and tells of the 
 beginning. 
 
 63 
 
PARTS OF TWO SERMONS ON 
 
 Jiliraclejs 
 
 First one preached in 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., January 31, 1864 
 
 Second one preached in 
 
 Ely Hall, Elmira, February, 12, 1865 
 
 Repeated in The Park Church October 13, 1867, and 
 April 11, 1880 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 And he did not many mighty works there because of 
 their unbelief. — Matt. 13:58 
 
 A recent and very able French writer has compiled 
 a life of Jesus, according to the last and highest re- 
 quisitions of critical, historic, and physical science. I 
 refer, of course, to Renan's "Life of Jesus." In his 
 introduction or preface to the biography proper, he 
 gives emphasis to the simple truth declared by our 
 text: as if men of science and reason had after long 
 and patient research, established the fact that mir- 
 acles occur only in times and places and among peo- 
 ple who believe in miracles. Says he: "Observation, 
 never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles 
 occur only in periods and countries in which they are 
 believed in, and before persons disposed to believe in 
 them !" 
 
 "He did not many mighty works there because of 
 their unbelief." The Bible, a book of miracles and it- 
 self a miracle, is beforehand with these patient ob- 
 servers. So let it be. Miracles occur only among 
 people inclined to believe them. To unbelievers the 
 mighty works of God come not. 
 
 Therefore, it is argued, such credulous observers 
 are not competent witnesses as to facts. Their tes- 
 timony is worthless because they were ready to be- 
 
 67 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 Heve the thing they certify. In the words of M. 
 Renan, "No miracle was ever performed before an 
 assembly of men capable of establishing the mirac- 
 ulous character of the act." "A supernatural relation 
 cannot be accepted as such : it always implies impos- 
 ture, or credulity, or both. The duty of the historian 
 is to interpret it." 
 
 These conclusions have been very happily termed 
 by Mr. Greeley, "the bigotry of science." The times 
 have changed. Once science in her feeble infancy was 
 oppressed by the bigotry of churches. Now we find 
 reason and science tending toward retaliation and 
 equal bigotry. 
 
 The supernatural and spiritual gifts of the church 
 today are very feeble. The direct power of God work- 
 ing in and through men is hardly prayed for or ex- 
 pected. And these days of spiritual weakness are 
 well-chosen by men of science to visit upon the church 
 a scepticism and denunciation which in former days 
 the church poured out upon infant science. 
 
 Religious teachers have, I think, invited this ser- 
 ious assault upon Scripture and supernaturalism by 
 an over boastful line of mistaken argument. Military 
 men sometimes find that they have fortified the 
 wrong position. When the assault comes, they some- 
 times perceive their error, and gain strength by evac- 
 uating the defenses upon which they had expended 
 much toil. 
 
 Religious teachers, or, if you please, champions, 
 have in days bygone, challenged and made possible 
 
 68 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 the assaults of science by what I think an untenable 
 defense of supernaturalism. 
 
 The error has been this : to attempt to defend and 
 propagate religious truths by scientific methods and 
 processes. I remember to have learned at college, 
 and to have heard repeatedly since from my brothers 
 in the ministry, that there is and can be no way of at- 
 testing the will of God to men except by miraculous 
 works such as no man can do except God be with 
 him. So they say, the word of God is proved by mir- 
 acles. He that believeth shall be saved. He that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned. 
 
 Thus as a railway engine working through deep 
 snow-drifts, puts a snow-plow ahead, to push aside all 
 opposition ; so these miracles have been put ahead of 
 the church and pushed with energy, if not with 
 wisdom. 
 
 This is the fatal mistake. Miracles may over- 
 whelm all beholders and compel belief. They do so 
 astound that they enforce conviction. But for this 
 very reason, — that they are so astonishing, — it be- 
 comes nearly or quite impossible so to certify and at- 
 test them that after ages will credit them. Eye-wit- 
 nesses feel the power of miracles, but with the great- 
 est difficulty can they make others feel it. Here then 
 is a discrimination which religious champions have 
 failed to make; that is, the value of miracles to eye- 
 witnesses and contemporaries, and their steadily-les- 
 sening value as evidence to minds at a far remove 
 from the events. 
 
 69 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 A monstrous event overwhelms a man like an ava- 
 lanche. But a monstrous event needs itself monstrous 
 certification. Miracles break down under ordinary- 
 testimony and so cease to be what they once were, 
 convincers, and become the very opposite, causes of 
 unbelief. 
 
 I am grieved to find how extensively this pious 
 error of religious teachers has laid the church and the 
 Scriptures open to successful assault. Every man 
 who hears me knows that the hardest parts of Scrip- 
 ture to accept are these very miracles, which are mis- 
 takenly put forward as the coulter of the Bible plow, 
 to rip up unbelief and compel obedience. Speaking 
 for myself only, and not for my brethren, I am willing 
 to evacuate that defense. I give up that line of 
 argument entirely. 
 
 If, as our text says, Christ did not many mighty 
 works there because of unbelief, so that he used mira- 
 cles least where unbelief was strongest, I shall not 
 attempt to convince unbelievers 1900 years afterward 
 by using weapons which Christ disused at the time. 
 If Jesus wrought no miracles to compel belief, I sure- 
 ly will not boast of miracles as the foundation of 
 belief. 
 
 While conceding thus much to the honest de- 
 mands of science and reason, I am far from conceding 
 the falsity of the Scripture record ; far from calling all 
 stories of miracles mere legends. In short, while 
 giving up the mistaken bigotry of church champions, 
 I am not ready to accept the equal bigotry of ration- 
 
 70 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 alists and men of science. On the contrary, every 
 year adds intensity to my spiritual and intellectual 
 conviction of the truth of Scripture, and the actuality 
 of miracles and supernaturalism. 
 
 Return now to our text: He did not many mira- 
 cles because of unbelief. Restate the text in 
 the language of the French doctor: "Miracles occur 
 only in countries and periods which believe in them." 
 What follows? Surely it is a long stride to infer 
 that all narratives of miracles must be set down as 
 legends ! 
 
 Grant that before any miracle is wrought, the 
 people must believe in the possibility of it and be ex- 
 pecting it ; grant that only the credulous can see won- 
 ders and mighty works : what follows ? That they 
 are untrustworthy witnesses, answer the doctors. 
 
 Admit that too. 
 
 Now it is my turn. Is incredulity any better than 
 credulity? Admit that round-eyed, open-mouthed 
 wonder-seekers are poor observers and poor witness- 
 es. Are their opposites any better? 
 
 One man opens his mouth and swallows gravel- 
 stones with his oysters. Another pinches his lips 
 tight against everything that cannot force its way in ! 
 Of the two I prefer the man with the big mouth and 
 the easy swallow. He will be, on the whole, best fed. 
 
 Men of science, when they approach a question of 
 miracles, begin by suspecting; and guarding against 
 all knavery and collusion, they make artificial condi- 
 tions, they multiply dififerences, they require repeated 
 
 71 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 experiments. In short they prejudge the case quite 
 as fatally by their incredulity, as common folk by 
 their credulity. 
 
 Now observe. At whatsoever time God may pur- 
 pose confounding men by his resistless will, he can do 
 so in spite of all scepticism. Build your altar, lay on 
 wood, slay your bullock: pour on water, float the 
 wood and flood the trenches : but if God please he can 
 cause his fire to consume the ofifering and lick up the 
 water, and his wrath to chase down the sensuous 
 critics that denied his power. Whenever, therefore, 
 God undertakes to do mighty works in spite of men, 
 I have no doubt he will succeed in face of all scien- 
 tific precautions. 
 
 But such was not the spirit of the works of Christ 
 as recorded in the New Testament. 
 
 The Gospel is an adventure of grace and conde- 
 scension in which God proposes to work with and for 
 and in men to do of his own good pleasure. He 
 stands at the door and knocks. He sojourns with 
 men and is touched with sympathy. He suggests and 
 promises renovation of spirit, contentment, health, 
 peace. He lays by the crown and sceptre, and is found 
 in fashion a man. He utters no decree. He thunders 
 no denunciation. He simply invites: "Come unto 
 Me." And as this incarnate God fares up and down 
 the land, there proceed from him at times certain 
 emanations of grace and healing, naturally as fra- 
 grance from a flower or song from a bird. He bade 
 the people not to talk about them. He set small store 
 
 72 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 by them himself. But he unfolded a spiritual and 
 religious scheme : if you do thus and so, my disciples, 
 you will experience thus and so. Such and such signs 
 will follow them that believe. Such and such works 
 ye will do. 
 
 Now I protest that common sense teaches every 
 man who undertakes to try an experiment, to accept 
 the conditions laid down by his teacher before he pro- 
 nounces judgment upon that teacher. 
 
 Here stands Jesus Christ avowing: "I don't 
 belong to this world. I am not aiming to carry on 
 research, to extend the domain of science, or the lux- 
 uries of civilization. I am the Son of God and of Man. 
 I found an invisible kingdom. I appeal not to sense 
 but to faith." It is absurd though unconscious big- 
 . otry, for men of reason and science to stand forth 
 and say, in effect: Change all your professions, work 
 with our tools, submit to our tests, or we will brand 
 you visionary, and your disciples fools! 
 
 Christ never pretended that he would raise some 
 Lazarus from the dissecting-table, after his veins were 
 blue with arsenic, to show the doctors his power. 
 Jesus Christ never bragged his miracles. That error 
 belongs to the blundering defenders of Christianity. 
 Peter and John never pretended that they could go to 
 some theatre, and after a committee of citizens had 
 chosen a notorious cripple and fenced him round with 
 sceptical suspicion, heal him by a word. Oh, men of 
 science, can ye never believe in God unless he jerks 
 your galvanometers! May not the father of angels 
 
 73 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 and of men lay his hand at will upon his children to 
 bless them ? And if he comes nearest to them who do 
 most love him, does that shock your science? 
 
 I am perfectly free to grant that I cannot stop the 
 mouths of sceptics by reading miraculous stories to 
 them. But I am not ready to grant that the gracious 
 ways and works and words of Christ, whenever they 
 transcend our sensuous experience and materialistic 
 science, are to be set down as the legendary fancies of 
 weak-minded disciples. I urge any and every mature 
 and fair-minded person to read the "Life of Jesus," as 
 presented by Dr. Renan, and notice how excessively 
 difficult he finds it to explain away in any plausible 
 manner the supernatural occurrences narrated by the 
 evangelists. 
 
 The modest miracles of the New Testament are in 
 keeping. There is an artistic unity between them and 
 the actors of whom they are predicated. A man of 
 science can reject the entire history, but he will find it 
 very difficult to reject portions of it and construct an 
 expurgated story that will not show the painful twists 
 and ingenious contraints to which he is compelled to 
 resort. 
 
 You have often been urged by me to cultivate your 
 senses, your reason, and heap up wealth of science. 
 But at the same time remember that there are experi- 
 mental truths of human experience that transcend 
 science. There are passions in man, there are hopes 
 and fears, there are emotions, over which reason has 
 as yet no control. There are facts of experience 
 
 74 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 which science cannot classify and account for. As if 
 God had reserved to himself avenues of approach to 
 the imprisoned soul, and modes of communication 
 that are not of the earth. We have the testimonies 
 swarming up from all history. 
 
 [From a sacramental sermon touching upon the same subject.] 
 
 // that evil servant shall say in his heart, my Lord 
 delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow 
 servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the Lord 
 of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for 
 him, in an hour that he is not aware of. — Matt. 24:48. 
 
 Brethren, we are this day those very servants, 
 some of whom say, "The Lord delayeth his coming," 
 and we are liable to be swept away from our only 
 hope, the power and coming of our Lord Jesus. And 
 more than you suspect are our own hearts growing 
 incredulous, saying, "Where is the promise of his com- 
 ing, for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue 
 as they always have done." 
 
 Men of science have a sober, plausible way of 
 talking about the end of the world. "We are not to 
 expect any sudden convulsions of the globe." Geo- 
 logists have proved the slow and sure motions of the 
 earth's crust, the rise and fall of continents, the ebb 
 and flow of oceans. Astronomers have figured out 
 cycles and periodic motions so vast that they are 
 ready to insure a million or two of years to old earth. 
 
 75 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 Chemists have ascertained the laws of composition 
 and recomposition, and assure us that matter is in- 
 destructible. Historians have noted the rise and fall 
 of nations, and learned philosophers have detected 
 the come and go of ideas among men. There's noth- 
 ing new. By and by men drift toward a sort of fatal- 
 ism. They count themselves passengers in a vast roll- 
 ing ship; seasick, — the ship rolls; homesick, — the ship 
 rolls ; sporting, — the ship rolls ; sleeping, — she rolls ; 
 dying, — she rolls. Resistless law and regularity 
 everywhere. She always has rolled ; she always will 
 roll. 
 
 In this short sermon I aim to relieve the minds of 
 the thoughtful and intelligent among you who are 
 troubled by the tendencies of science, and the plaus- 
 ible feeling that things always will be as they always 
 have been. Let me state your difficulty and perhaps 
 remove it. 
 
 You cannot make it seem probable that God ever ■ 
 has interfered or ever will interfere to break or change 
 the order of nature, and bring this present world to an 
 end. You find it difficult to credit the miracles of past 
 ages, and more difficult still to expect the convulsions 
 of the future. You see, or at least hope for, a very slow 
 but sure progress of mankind to an exalted destiny. 
 To any such I say: You must think further, or else 
 not so far. Having outgrown blind and childish faith, 
 you must go on to a manly, intelligent faith. 
 
 You do not doubt the existence of a personal and 
 powerful God. Nay, you see him in his works and 
 
 76 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 adore him as the architect of Nature. And because 
 he has framed this world so perfectly, with such har- 
 monious laws, you can conceive no better. God has 
 not done so much, merely to throw it aside as a worn- 
 out garment, you say ; it is incredible that this world 
 is to be destroyed and another created ! 
 
 There is power in this argument. It can be ma- 
 jestically heaped up till it overwhelms us. But there 
 is a fallacy, too. Grant that for countless ages all 
 things have continued as they were from creation. 
 Grant that every new discovery harmonizes seeming 
 irregularities. Grant that a pious imagination can 
 conceive no better order, nor any reason to change 
 this. Does it follow that the resources of God are ex- 
 hausted? Is the versatility of God henceforth to be 
 cramped by his own machinery? Has he, like teleg- 
 rapher Morse, made one invention and exhausted him- 
 self? A boy sits and for a full half-hour draws what 
 he will on his slate, rubs it out, and draws again. Has 
 God drawn his picture and gone to sleep ? A superla- 
 tive picture ! For thousands of years men have stud- 
 ied it and found new points at each inspection. Will 
 God create no more? 
 
 "But all things continue. God worl:s by law. 
 What has been, will be. There's nothing new under 
 the sun." Very good. Does regularity and fixed 
 habit take away from you the power to change? For 
 twenty years you have attended to your store. Punc- 
 tual and incessant you have been. They say you took 
 a run to Saratoga once, another to Illinois once. I 
 
 77 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 saw a man who said he saw your store closed at 
 noon. But I don't believe any such marvelous 
 stories. For observation teaches me that you 
 live and work by rule. I heard that you intended 
 selling out, quitting business, and going to the coun- 
 try. "Nonsense," said I. "He never has quit. He's 
 been regular for twenty years. He's a methodic man. 
 I could set my watch by his movements. He'll never 
 change !" 
 
 Such incredulity on my part is simply absurd. 
 Now they do say that the operations of nature have 
 been at times suspended. A man dead three days 
 was called to life again. There was a voice heard out 
 of heaven, and a great blaze of light. Once some 
 water was changed to wine. "Nonsense," says the 
 man of science. "I've been watching nature a thou- 
 sand years, and she's as regular as a clock. Anything 
 out of the usual way is incredible." 
 
 That is, my brother, no man can live and work by 
 rule so long and so wisely but you admit that he can, 
 when he will, be irregular, and do sudden, unexpected 
 things. Yes, he can give up one life, and begin an 
 entirely new one. But God, when he gets a-going, 
 can't or won't stop. He builds an engine, lays his 
 rails, leaps on board, pulls wide open the throttle of 
 his omnipotence, and henceforth is a run-away ; and 
 any man is a fool who believes that he ever has stop- 
 ped, or ever will stop for any purpose whatsoever. In 
 short : you know in your soul that you do what you 
 
 78 
 
MIRACLES 
 
 please. But God can't, or at least won't, do as he 
 pleases. You are a free agent. God is not. 
 
 My brethren, think soberly clear through this sub- 
 ject and you will see that this scientific scepticism is 
 in fact simple atheism. It exalts law above the law- 
 giver. And I am sure that any devotee, however 
 superstitious, has a better sense of God and honors 
 him more than you when you say that miracles are 
 incredible. The day when I begin to explain away 
 miracles and doubt God's glorious appearing here- 
 after, I shall make a clean sweep altogether and 
 account myself a mere passenger on the train of fate. 
 I'll listen to the dead grinding of nature's laws, and 
 when my turn comes, drop under the wheels and be 
 no more. If I believe in God at all, it shall be in a 
 God at least as great and free as my own soul. You 
 shall not scare me by your geologic ages. God 
 needs not hurry. You shall not unsettle me by your 
 regular laws. When I please, I let my watch run 
 down. So may God. You shall not trip my hope by 
 the millions of years that astronomy figures up. God 
 shall outlive them, and when he pleases, will create a 
 new heaven and a new earth. 
 
 Happy is he who has been so led through this life 
 that he needs and seeks and finds the power of our 
 Lord's coming. 
 
 Are you an invalid, useless henceforth in life, un- 
 able to take an energetic part in labor or pleasure ? Re- 
 member that our Lord at his coming shall change this 
 
 79 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 our vile body and fashion it according to his glorious 
 body. 
 
 Are you a slave to lust and appetite? Are you 
 every day cast down by the power of the flesh which 
 you find contrary to the spirit? Be not destroyed. 
 Thank God who giveth us the victory through Jesus 
 Christ and the promise of his coming, to be the Savior 
 of his people from their sins. 
 
 Are you grieved by the falsehood and childishness 
 of men, disheartened by your disappointments in those 
 3'ou loved and trusted? Jesus at his coming shall 
 assort mankind as a shepherd that divideth his sheep 
 from the goats. 
 
 Are you afflicted in that you, a Christian, are so 
 little Christ-like, though so long a professor of him? 
 Remember the promise of his' coming. Persevere in 
 hope. In this life only, you have not your hopes in 
 Christ. 
 
 Do larger cares oppress you? Are you grieved 
 and disgusted with church government, and states? 
 Have patience, brethren, unto the coming of our Lord 
 who alone has right to reign. Be subject to the 
 powers that be for the Lord's sake. In due time your 
 loyalty shall have a worthy object and a prosperous 
 outflow, for Christ shall be king. 
 
 80 
 
©ut OTorfe aji a Cfturcfj 
 
 MR. BEECH Elf S IDEAL 
 
 Preached in 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., July, 1872 
 
OUR WORK AS A CHURCH 
 
 [From a sermon preached in May, 1872, before the present building 
 of The Park Church in Elmira was erected.] 
 
 To know with certainty that one is a redeemed 
 and growing Christian, and thus a son of God, is sure- 
 ly a great good. There are many tests by which men 
 are wont to prove themselves, and they are good tests 
 as far as they go. Have I felt and confessed my sins ? 
 Have I repented? Have I trusted myself to God in 
 Christ? Have I been baptised? Do I penitently yet 
 hopefully receive the Lord's supper? Do I read the 
 Bible? Do I pray daily? Do I attend upon church 
 meetings? Do I hold fast the catholic faith? Am I 
 true to my household as parent or child, brother or 
 sister? Am I industrious, clean-mouthed, contented? 
 Am I just in my dealings, and generous according to 
 my ability? 
 
 These and similar questions are valuable tests of 
 piety. But such questions of one's self, and examina- 
 tion of one's habits, will never bring to pass an assur- 
 ance of health and hope. With most men they wear 
 out sooner or later; for slow-growing character does 
 not bear frequent examination. The would-be Chris- 
 tian is left dissatisfied and dull, behaving reputably 
 according to the church standards, and hoping that he 
 was truly converted "under the preaching of Rev. Mr. 
 Revival." To a few humble and sensitive souls these 
 
 83 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 questions may easily bring a diseased conscience, self- 
 condemnation, melancholy, semi-insanity. 
 
 But there is a better way of testing ourselves. 
 
 In a modern watch-factory, the eighty or hundred 
 pieces called for each watch are made by as many dif- 
 ferent workmen in different parts of a great building, 
 each man doing his best to perfect his piece. But it 
 often happens that faults which no skill can detect in 
 the pieces when examined one by one, show them- 
 s-elves plainly when the pieces are assembled, one or 
 more of each kind, and set up in a watch. The su- 
 preme test of perfect workmanship in each and every 
 part, is the accurate performance of the watch as a 
 whole. Each workman in such a factory may say: 
 Hereby I know that my blank bits of metal have 
 passed from shapelessness to use, because they work 
 well in a watch. So every Christian believer, striv- 
 ing to become perfect as God is perfect, if he finds him- 
 self working smoothly and lovingly in society, may 
 say : "Hereby I know that I have passed from death 
 unto life, because I do love the brethren." 
 
 Now, every watch-factory has its light and bright 
 and clean assembly-room ; and every church needs its 
 assembly-room, in which Christian may come near 
 to Christian, and prove himself, whether he have 
 passed from death unto life. 
 
 An assembly-room, I say — not merely a room for 
 song, or worship, and preaching. Sworn enemies can 
 go to church, and sit in pews to hear song and prayer 
 and preaching, and even take part in the same; yet 
 
 84 
 
OUR WORK AS A CHURCH 
 
 they are not assembled. Going to church proves 
 nothing one way or the other, as to the love one bears 
 toward his brother. 
 
 The church must provide a home to which men, 
 women, and children shall come, and come together; 
 come into personal relation so intimate that each one 
 will feel, I like the folks, or, I don't like the folks. 
 Hereby we may know that we have passed from death 
 unto life, if we like the folks. 
 
 The Christian church is an experiment in socialism. 
 Three hundred people convinced of sin, and confess- 
 ing the same; three hundred people finding pardon, 
 and hope through Jesus Christ; three hundred people 
 asking day by day for the guidance and indwelling of 
 the Holy Spirit of God ; three hundred people called 
 to be saints, and expecting to be members of one fam- 
 ily, with one father, — God ; three hundred such peo- 
 ple come together, saying: "I count not myself to 
 have attained ; I am not yet perfect ; I would like to see 
 how far the work of grace has gone in me ; so then, 
 let us meet often and intimately; let us form a so- 
 ciety together. Let us see whether the rich can love 
 the poor, and not feel them a burden. Let us see 
 whether the so-called refined and the unrefined, can 
 find some common bond. Let us see whether the 
 aversions of race and caste are somewhat mitigated 
 in us. Let us see whether people with dififerent sorts 
 of clothes can come together and be happy. Let us 
 see whether smart people and foolish people can asso- 
 ciate. Let us see whether we can love other people's 
 
 85 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 children besides our own. Let us see whether we can 
 enjoy paying the price of other people's happiness, 
 which is one of the chief pleasures in the kingdom of 
 heaven,— paying the price of other people's salvation. 
 We admire it when we see Christ doing it, and Peter 
 doing it, and all the martyrs. Suppose we do it, then ; 
 for we shall never have the pulse of God's life throb- 
 bing in our arteries until we begin to act like God. Let 
 us see whether we can help one another to escape the 
 snare and temptation which come through fear of pov- 
 erty. Let us see whether we can help one another to 
 habits of accurate speech and polite manners. Let us 
 see whether we can make our children happy in fel- 
 lowships and sports that are without taint of envy or 
 sin. Let us see whether we can make a home for the 
 widow and the fatherless, and the penitent outcast. 
 In a word, let us see whether we have passed from 
 death unto life by finding out whether we do in any 
 practical way love the brethren." 
 
 When I used to propose any of these things to my 
 brethren of established churches in New-England, 
 they would say, "Why, you will have a 'row' in your 
 church every day in the year." "Very good," I replied, 
 "there will be a worse 'row' at the judgment-day, a 
 remediless one ; too late, alas ! they will then discover 
 that brethren can not dwell together in unity. If the 
 demonstration must come that all my people are de- 
 ceived, I would rather have it come now, today, when 
 there is possibility of repentance, than quiet or please 
 then by some holy sham, until they shall be astonish- 
 
 86 
 
OUR WORK AS A CHURCH 
 
 ed to find that, though they have said, 'Lord, Lord,' all 
 their lifetime, yet the Lord never knew them — they 
 never loved the brethren." 
 
 It is no doubt true that unsanctified or half-sancti- 
 fied people, when brought together in an experiment 
 of Christian socialism, (I love this word despite some 
 of its associations) have usually bred heat and hatreds. 
 But what of it? I hope better things of you, — things 
 that make for peace and true piety. For see : — 
 
 Because of these heats and hatreds engendered in 
 churches whenever the endeavor has been made to 
 handle any practical question of money, morals, or 
 manners, the endeavor has been for two centuries to 
 rule out such questions, and beseech church members 
 not to think or talk about such things, but to follow 
 the things that make for peace. Instead of which, I 
 should say the better exhortation would have been : 
 Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? Have you not 
 reason to doubt your own calling and election if you 
 can not talk about such things without quarreling? 
 You don't run well. Would you not better give up any 
 thing and every thing, and learn to love each other 
 upon that very point where now you have collisions 
 and frictions? Is it your impression that the com- 
 munion of saints is a society where there shall be no 
 difference of opinion, no apparent collision of in- 
 terests ? 
 
 Suppose I put five hundred square-cornered bits of 
 marble into a revolving barrel for the purpose of 
 rounding them, and making them into toy marbles, 
 
 87 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 the delight of our boys. At the first turn of the bar- 
 rel, each unshapen little block gets a blow. They 
 make outcry from within, saying: "Let us out! Let 
 us out !" I lift the lid, and inquire what is the matter. 
 And with unanimity they say: "We can't agree." 
 "Very well," I reply, "then I'll shut you in until you 
 can agree ; for that is the very purpose for which you 
 were put in there." 
 
 This preserving of church unity by banishing all 
 live questions of personal interest from the church- 
 home has gone on for so many j'ears, that in this land 
 the remedy for all collisions has come to be divorce or 
 schism. And instead of making men and women 
 ready for the perfect unity that is at last to be 
 achieved in the church of Christ, we have been offer- 
 ing premiums to angularity and willfulness, declaring 
 that freedom is better than society, and liberty better 
 than love. Hence our churches have degenerated, 
 and have become, in the main, organizations for the 
 maintenance of choirs and speakers. Brethren, I cer- 
 tify you that a Christian church worthy of the name 
 is more than a company of men and women who agree 
 to listen to the speeches of some man, and to sit to- 
 gether in quadrangular pews, without noise or tumult. 
 Except as a church furnishes preparation for, and op- 
 portunity of, a more perfect and intimate association 
 and fellowship of its members, it does not deserve the 
 name of a Christian church. 
 
 I am not only willing to peril the existence of a 
 church by multiplying the relations and interests by 
 
 88 
 
JESUS AND PAUL 
 
 which our natural selfishness will be irritated, but I 
 believe and would teach that any amount of wealth 
 and costly endeavor is wisely used, if by it a demon- 
 stration is flashed in the faces of all concerned that 
 they have never found true religion. I would count 
 five hundred thousand dollars wisely invested in a 
 costly apparatus of social experiment, if by trying the 
 experiment I could show you before it is too late that 
 you have not learned the first principles of the gospel 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. For if we or any that call 
 themselves Christian are not by our religious exper- 
 ience prepared for more and more intimate relations 
 here upon earth, I know no good ground for hoping 
 that we shall be ready for the communion of the saints 
 on high. 
 
 I fear that there are thousands who find in religion 
 only a disguised form of self-love. They serve God 
 through fear of hell and hope of heaven. But you 
 serve God that you may grow into his likeness ; that 
 you may make the heaven ; that you may find it among 
 you. For, as Jesus taught, the kingdom of heaven is 
 "among you," if it is anywhere. Our English says it 
 is within you ; but he in his Greek said it is among 
 you. Now, I would bring you together, and see if it 
 is among you. 
 
 I set before you, then, as part of the dividend we 
 are to receive from our investment in church build- 
 ings, the means of testing in a satisfactory way our 
 own personal piety. By the buildings and common 
 property that we shall bring together under one roof, 
 
 89 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 and enjoy as one family, I expect to make you see 
 one of four things: Either (i) that you do "^care for 
 society, in which case, of course, you do not care for 
 the kingdom of heaven ; or (2) that you can not or will 
 not fit yourself to society, but require that society 
 shall fit itself to you, in which case I shall ask you, 
 Do you expect that the Lord will fit heaven to suit 
 you, or you heaven? or (3) that you can not be a 
 member of society without feeling and causing fric- 
 tion, heat, unrest, and perhaps schism, in which case 
 I shall say. If you can not love the brethren now, what 
 reason have you to suppose you ever will? or (4), if 
 as I hope we all ascend together to a higher plane of 
 comprehension and Christian love, we will sit together 
 in the heavenlike places of our new home, and feel 
 sure of our acceptance with God hereafter, because by 
 his grace we have learned to dwell in love today ; and 
 he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God. Thus it 
 seems to me our proposed enterprise sustains a very 
 intimate relation to our personal piety and final sal- 
 vation, and this is a great good. 
 
 90 
 
3fegU2! anb ^aul 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., April 12, 1885 
 
 Repeated January 25, 1891 
 
 Reformatory, Elmira, April 3, 1887 
 
 Gleason Health Resort, June 9, 1887 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y., November 17, 1889 
 
 Port Jervis, N. Y., December 21, 1891 
 
 Welhburg, N. Y-, June 14, 1891 
 
 Cornell Y. M. C. A., Ithaca, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1892 
 
JESUS AND PAUL 
 
 This discourse \yas heard by some of you in April 
 six years ago. I bring it to you again, hoping to in- 
 crease your interest in the career and writings of this 
 most remarkable Christian, I might say the only 
 Christian who has been endowed to add light to the 
 path first traced by Jesus the Christ. Follow either 
 one and you shall find the other. 
 
 The first article of a Christian's faith might read : — 
 I believe that the Son of God became a man in order 
 that men may become sons of God. God in Christ 
 came down, that man in Christ may grow up. Jesus 
 said, "Follow me," again and again. Paul has written 
 again and again : "I beseech you be ye followers of 
 me." "Be ye followers of me, as I also of Christ." 
 "Be followers together of me, and mark them that 
 walk so as ye have us for an example." Such 
 words seem immodest, sound presumptuous. Who 
 is this man that he should bid his fellowmen 
 "Follow me!" Yet if it may please the spirit of 
 God to own the teaching of this hour, the ofifense 
 against modesty and good taste will fade from our 
 attention, as we perceive that the descent of God in 
 Christ and the ascent of Paul by Christ, trace the same 
 shining path of life. Or, to change the illustration : 
 in limestone caves of Kentucky and Virginia, — Mam- 
 moth and Luray, — the visitor is attracted by columns, 
 snowy-white, broad-based yet slender, and reaching 
 
 93 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 Up till lost in darkness. He sees not only these tin- 
 ished columns, but others like them yet in process of 
 formation. There are stalactites like icicles, .slender, 
 shapely, white, that hang from the dome above, and 
 drip, drip. On the floor beneath hit by every drop, 
 lies the stalagmite, spattered and earth-stained, 
 but virhitening as it rises to meet the stalactite that 
 hangs above and gives it growth and quality. The 
 axis of the one agrees with the axis of the other. By 
 and by they will join into one pillar. He who comes 
 to one will find the other, for their axes agree. That 
 I may be found in him, says Paul. To live is Christ. 
 Stalactite Jesus; 
 Stalagmite Paul. 
 
 Or as when a water spout is forming, the sailor 
 notes that the cloud reaches down like the trunk of an 
 elephant, while the troubled water below, not disobe- 
 dient to the heavenly call, reaches up a little restless 
 mound. By and by the two are joined. The mound 
 is raptured, caught up, and the watery column moves 
 on mile after mile, mysterious and majestic. 
 
 So when the believer, troubled, lifts his little un- 
 stable mound of aspiration, the down-reach from 
 above overpasses all the distance ; and the established 
 Christian moves over restless waters obeying laws 
 and influences mysterious and majestic. As Paul de- 
 scribes it : "The life I lead no longer after the flesh or 
 the will of man, but to the will of God." 
 
 Thus by prolonged illustration I seek to make 
 thinkable the coming down of Jesus the Christ, and 
 
 94 
 
JESUS AND PA UL 
 
 the growing up of Paul. Jesus was the son of God, in 
 fashion a man; Paul was a son of man, growing up 
 into God. Understand either, and you will find the 
 other. 
 
 In no mean city, Tarsus by name, a boy was born 
 one day. Jesus was yet a boy in Nazareth, helping 
 his mother, and learning his trade with Joseph the 
 carpenter. 
 
 The father and mother of this Tarsus boy were 
 Greek-speaking Jews. The father had been admitted 
 also to full Roman citizenship, and so his son Saul was 
 free-born. Strictly religious in the Hebrew faith, his 
 parents circumcised him the eighth day ; taught him 
 the law as they taught him to talk ; taught him a trade 
 as well. A boy, said they, who is not taught to work 
 is the same as a thief. 
 
 His parents visited Jerusalem on some pious 
 errand. The boy, as Jesus had been, was taken along ; 
 was permitted to wear the talith and be called a son of 
 the law ; to leave his mother and keep company with 
 men, asking and answering questions. 
 
 He was left in Jerusalem to be educated. In those 
 days an education meant to know and do the will of 
 God as found in the law of Moses. The boy Saul was 
 not only a brainy student of the law, keen and in- 
 genious, but also a strict doer of the Word. He was 
 prompt to translate thoughts into deeds. His ability 
 and behavior were such that he early came to dignity 
 and office. With him office meant duty. He knew 
 no such word as temporising, or compromise. As a 
 
 95 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 favorite student of Gamaliel, he may have been pres- 
 ent when Jesus was before the council for condem- 
 nation. It would have been like him to be of the 
 party that arrested him and brought him to Annas 
 and Caiaphas. Perhaps he was. 
 
 Anyway, — less than five years afterward, he, as a 
 member of the Grand Council, voted and acted for the 
 death of Stephen, the first martyr. He noted his 
 manner, and heard his prayer: "Lay not this sin to 
 their charge ! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 
 
 True churchman that he was, energetic to stamp 
 out disorders and heresies, and compel righteous con- 
 formity, he journeyed to Damascus on an errand of 
 duty. 
 
 He saw a vision, heard a voice, and lost his eye- 
 sight. Some wise and honest men say that he had a 
 sun-stroke, followed by acute ophthalmia. In a week 
 or so, this persecutor Saul began to tell in public and 
 private the story of Jesus whose voice he said he had 
 heard, and whose glory had struck him blind. The 
 honest persecutor had become an apostle. 
 
 To escape the fviry of the zealots among whom he 
 had been leader, he fled from Damascus to the moun- 
 tains of Arabia, the regions where Moses and Elijah 
 communed with God long ages before; — perfecting 
 there the union between himself and his master, bring- 
 ing every thought into the obedience of Christ. He 
 emerged from his retirement at the end of two years, 
 and visited Jerusalem to be rejected by the Jews and 
 distrusted by Christians. He retired to Tarsus and 
 
 96 
 
JESUS AND PAUL 
 
 lived in repressed but active and costly obscurity for 
 many years, until fatherly Barnabas, who knew of him, 
 his history, his zeal and his power, brought him to 
 Antioch to testify that the Jesus whom many Jews 
 were believing, in a timid way, to be the Messiah for 
 whom Israel was waiting, was indeed more ! a prince, 
 a Savior, to be preached to all the world, to the Jews 
 first, but also to the Greeks, and to all men. 
 
 "Wake ! Break out ! The grace of God that bring- 
 eth salvation to all men hath appeared !" 
 
 Now our apostle vibrates between Antioch and 
 Jerusalem, a beat or two, on errands. Then he pushes 
 off into unknown lands, is gone two years, and comes 
 back with welts and scars, to tell that Gentiles as well 
 as Jews are believing and proving their faith by gifts 
 and costly works, by the witness of signs and wonders 
 wrought by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 A year or more he tarries at Antioch, and visits 
 Jerusalem to argue, and to testify: "God is able to 
 make man stand erect in righteousness by faith, with- 
 out the splints and bandages of law and ceremony." 
 The timid apostles accepted the cash he brought, be- 
 lieved his stories, and allowed: "Yes, perhaps, in 
 those out-of-the-way regions, among the Gentiles, 
 God may get along without Moses' help: but, — well, 
 yes, we won't oppose you. Go! and don't forget 
 mother church at Jerusalem." 
 
 Off he shot, into regions whose very names were 
 strange to Jerusalem : Lycaonia, Galatia, Phrygia ; the 
 
 97 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 cities Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, — and Corinth, 
 the great world-city. He was gone three years. 
 
 Back he came, with more welts, scars, and bruises, 
 and more money for the poor saints at Jerusalem. 
 
 Oflf he went again : supporting himself, revisiting 
 all the sites where he had left churches, writing cos.tly 
 letters to churches that he could not visit. At Eph- 
 esus, planting himself without help from man, he 
 evangelized all the regions around. He came back at 
 the end of five years to be arrested by a religious mob 
 at Jerusalem, condemned by a council of which he 
 was once a member, rescued by Roman soldiers, and 
 sent a prisoner to Rome! But wherever he was and 
 with whomsoever associated, he was the same en- 
 thusiast, scintillating with the testimony of the 
 Gospel, and the grace of God. 
 
 At Rome, after several imprisonments, he was put 
 to death. 
 
 Here then is a man ! Of his experiences in detail, 
 in his career for fifteen years, — and such years! 
 ^we have only a hint here and there. What mem- 
 ories arose in his mind, as, sorely against his taste, 
 he recounted them as proofs of his sincerity, strength, 
 and apostleship! 
 
 "Are they apostles? I more. Are they servants 
 of Jesus Christ? My service is more costly. Of the 
 Jews five times received I the forty stripes, thrice 
 was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned. Thrice was 
 I shipwrecked [and this was before his wreck recount- 
 ed by Luke]. A night and a day have I been in the 
 
 98 
 
JESUS AND PAUL 
 
 deep. I have had journeyings often, perils of water 
 [freshets in the mountains], perils of robbers, perils 
 of my own countrymen, perils in cities, perils in the 
 wilderness, weariness and painfulness. I have been 
 in watchings often, in hunger and thirst and fastings 
 often, in cold and nakedness ; and beside my daily 
 duties, I have had the care of all the churches !" 
 
 What shall we say? What shall we think of this 
 man? this man who blushes and apologizes, and calls 
 himself a fool for recounting his costly heroisms ; who 
 would rather glory in his infirmities! "By the grace 
 of God I am what I am! Were it possible, I would 
 make up in my own body what is lacking of the 
 suffering of Christ!" 
 
 There are soft-handed, big-headed scholars sitting 
 at their desks in matted libraries, who write books 
 called rational criticism. "Yes, Paul was no doubt a 
 very able man, an enthusiast, a fanatic. He never 
 fully recovered from his sun-stroke. Genius to mad- 
 ness is near akin. His career is a notable illustration 
 of the power of hallucinations to support the body." 
 
 Nay, good sir, but see that there is method in 
 this madness. This rhapsodizing lunatic has dashed 
 ofif letters in haste so profound and so broad, that for 
 nineteen hundred years the strongest minds have 
 builded on them the theologies that rule the thinkers 
 of the world. He knew, too, that he was handling 
 sublime and eternal truths that would be acknowl- 
 edged by the thoughtful. 
 
 99 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 This meteoric mad-man it was who sang this 
 immortal song: 
 
 Charity suffereth long and is kind. 
 
 Charity envieth not. 
 
 Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. 
 
 Doth not hehave itself unseemly. Seeketh not 
 her own, is not easily provoked. 
 
 Thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
 rejoiceth in the truth. 
 
 Beareth all things, believeth all things. 
 
 Hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
 
 Charity never faileth ! 
 
 This hallucinated ranter wrote to the Christians at 
 Corinth who delighted in noisy excitements : "I would 
 rather speak five words with my understanding, that 
 I might teach others, than ten thousand words in an 
 unknown tongue." It was this sun-struck fanatic who 
 taught: "Except a man work, neither shall he eat; let 
 him that stole steal no more ; be quiet ; work with your 
 own hands ; provide things honest in the sight of men ; 
 speak the truth one to another; be kind one to anoth- 
 er ; forgiving, even as God in Christ has forgiven you." 
 
 Try him, logician. He is a close reasoner. 
 
 Prove him, oh moralist! He loves the right and 
 scorns the wrong. 
 
 Test him, oh man of heroic mould. His constancy 
 and courage shall shame you into silence. 
 
 Listen to him, oh woman ! for he bids men to so 
 love their wives as Christ the church. 
 
 This man is not mad. He speaks the words of 
 tenderness, truth, and love. 
 
 100 
 
JESUS AND PAUL 
 
 How shall we account for such an exceptional man? 
 
 God, by his spirit and providence, keeps guard over 
 the character and reputation of the two who upon 
 earth and among men have witnessed for him as no 
 other two, — Jesus, and Paul. 
 
 And have we not in these two precisely what we 
 need to perfect our faith in the otherwise unthinkable 
 union of man to God. The Son of God made man ; 
 and the son of man rising to become a son of God. 
 As I said: 
 
 Stalactite Jesus; 
 Stalagmite Paul. 
 
 Amid the darkness of our world-cave, where men 
 grope and die in their ignorance and unbelief, and 
 leave their bones upon the floor, I see the snow-white 
 pillar, and am drawn to it. Where its purity is lost 
 to sight in the upper mystery, I hear the voice, "Come 
 unto me ; the pure in heart shall see God." 
 
 And as I wonder, "How can this ever be?" I hear 
 at my side, "I also am a man. Follow me even as I 
 follow Christ. I count not myself to have attained. 
 But I follow after. Come on. Follow me." 
 
 The vision is from above ; the interpretation is at 
 hand, it is near me,— the words of Paul. Blessed be 
 God, neither the vision nor the interpretation shall 
 fail from among men, until the need of them ceases. 
 
 Bow, oh heaven ; be lifted up, oh earth ; for the 
 kingdom of God is at hand. 
 
 Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he 
 will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and 
 God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 
 
 101 
 
iHebitationsf on Wvttsi 
 
 Preached in 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., August 24, 1S79 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 He shall be like a tree — Ps. 1:3 ; Jer. 17:7-8. 
 
 Instruction suggested by trees and forests is found 
 in all the Scriptures. Even when the tree is not men- 
 tioned, the tree picture comes in, — thus: "Lifting up 
 holy hands to heaven without wrath or doubting:" 
 "Rooted and grounded in love, grow up into him." 
 But I will not stay to remind you of the Bible trees. 
 They begin in Eden, the trees of Paradise, they appear 
 in the glorious consummation, the trees of life on 
 either bank of the river of life. There are few books 
 of the Bible from which I might not take a text to 
 justify a sermon of trees, and their suggestions to a 
 thoughtful spirit. To such a sermon I invite you now, 
 of the truths that have been whispering or roaring in 
 my ears for six weeks. 
 
 I think there is more of the law of the Lord to 
 meditate upon in the woods than in a city, like Elmira. 
 The thoughts that run in the minds of men and wom- 
 en in a city are not usually uplifting, but rather out- 
 reaching. We think too much about each other. So 
 I say I verily think that the good man thriving like 
 a tree planted by rivers of water, will be more com- 
 panied by God in the woods than in the city. Like 
 Adam he will hear the voice of the Lord God walking 
 in the forest garden, and will not hide among the 
 trees, but rather listen. 
 
 105 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 Here in my camp, a bowl among surrounding tree- 
 clad mountains, with a quiet pond at its lowest parts, 
 there is rarely, if ever, a driving storm. The mount- 
 ains lie about us and guard us from the winds high 
 up. Which drive the clouds. Quite often we can look 
 up and see three levels of clouds, each obeying a dif- 
 ferent wind, while our little pond is unvexed by any, 
 reflecting all. Thus is it with the meek and poor in 
 spirit, open-faced toward heaven ; storms pass over 
 them, but they have great peace in their low estate, 
 reflecting truly the deepest heavens, and noting, them- 
 selves unvexed, the storms that drive men above them 
 three ways at once. 
 
 I. But the trees, not lakes, preach to us to-day. I 
 note that there is no silence deeper than I have felt 
 under their shadow, and we have no noises here louder 
 than the roaring of the wilderness. On still nights I 
 hear the sound of a coming wind full three miles away. 
 Steadily the volume of tone increases, draws near, 
 passes over our bowl in silence, and takes up the roar 
 as the wind strikes the forest of the opposite 
 mountain. 
 
 This roaring of the woods always reminds me of 
 the roaring of the people when a cyclone of passion 
 sweeps along, and men add each his unintelligent 
 voice to the storm, public sentiment. The sound is 
 impressive, awe-inspiring. He is indeed a brave man 
 who can hear the wind in the woods and sleep tran- 
 quilly, or, like Lloyd Garrison in Baltimore, St. Paul 
 at Lystra, or Jesus in Jerusalem, stand rooted in the 
 
 106 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 truth, while the heathen rage and the people imagine 
 a vain thing. 
 
 Poor trees, I say, they think they are saying 
 something. They sway and roar in company. Their 
 voices are terrible. But after all, it is only the wind 
 that sets them a-going. Come whence it may, they 
 cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. 
 So are the people, obeying inspirations that few stop 
 to examine. The noise of the multitude is equally 
 empty whether it shout "Hosanna, blessed is he that 
 cometh in the name of the Lord!" or, "Crucify him, 
 crucify him," — the very next day. 
 
 The prince of the power of the air is the best name 
 for him whose influences sweep over and through the 
 forests of men and set them a-roaring, now for war, 
 now for peace; one day for a king, next day for his 
 head; one day for a great church, next day for the 
 blood of arch-bishops and confessors. 
 
 Men, more than they know, are trees, and the 
 noises they make are but winds that come sweeping 
 every whence. Men make a noise, a great noise, 
 crying out for a half hour at a time: "Great, great, 
 great is Diana," or some other vanity. Wait long 
 enough and the wind ceases and men are still, know- 
 ing but little one by one, and saying less. 
 
 So the winds have preached to me many a night in 
 my tent, and having learned to bear their noisiness, it 
 seems a little easier to listen to the talk of men and 
 to read the papers, without being moved by the 
 noise they make, instead of the amount of truth 
 
 107 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 and reason that commends itself to the listening 
 spirit within. Try the spirits (winds) whether they 
 be from God. And further, since all men are more 
 played upon than playing, and most men have little 
 thought as to what wind it is that moves them, surely 
 he is wise who prays: "Come, oh breath of God, — 
 come, oh wind from the Lord and breathe upon me, 
 that I may have a little song in the night, and deep 
 thoughts by day." How precious these thoughts! 
 — gentle as the sun-quivering breath of summer 
 among the waiting trees, in the presence of God, the 
 life-giver. Not in the storm, not in the fire, not in the 
 earthquake found the prophet his God, but in the still, 
 small, voice. 
 
 The roaring of our helpless trees has made me love 
 the quivering, sunshiny silence of this Sabbath hour, 
 and taught me further to wait, wait, wait, when great 
 popular movements are upon us, until such time as, the 
 blast spent, there shall be revelations and warmings of 
 spirit, and gifts of truth to every prayerful man that 
 stands like a tree in his place, lifting up holy hands to 
 heaven without wrath or doubting. 
 
 Let us never fear the storms. They will pass. 
 The silent sunshine alone gives life. Remember this 
 the next time some great excitement comes. Re- 
 member this, citizens, when October comes and all 
 hands help on the noise of the storm before election. 
 Do your duty, thoughtfully, not passionately ; quietly, 
 not noisily. 
 
 2. Our camp is high compared with the Chemung 
 108 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 valley, low compared with the higher lands that en- 
 girdle our pond. We are so high that all our water, 
 whether from lake or spring, is nearly as pure as when 
 it fell from heaven. It will be hard water by the time 
 it reaches the lower Delaware; and the soil is some- 
 how simpler, less unctuous, and less complex in qual- 
 ity than far down the valleys where are gathered the 
 washings of many a square league of all sorts. The 
 trees that grow here are few in kind, not very large, 
 but what there is of life in them seems to be pure, 
 fresh, fragrant, uninfested. We have the beech, birch, 
 hard and soft maple, ash, now and then a wild cherry, 
 and old hemlocks on swamp lands. They make a 
 forest of singular suggestiveness both in sound and 
 seeming. 
 
 Seeming, we all see and say. For who has not 
 noted the fresher green of birch compared with beech, 
 of beech compared with maple, of maple compared 
 with oak, of all compared with hemlock? 
 
 Herein our tree society sets an example. Each 
 tree dresses and undresses for itself and not for soci- 
 ety. I cannot see why men and women should seek 
 to uniform themselves by disguising clothes. Why 
 not wear always revealing garments? I do not mean 
 garments voluptuously revealing, but garments such 
 as will show the taste and honorable industry of the 
 
 wearer 
 
 ? 
 
 Trees have new clothes, but they have no dis- 
 guising best clothes for ceremony ; no dress suits and 
 business suits ; no work clothes and Sunday clothes. 
 
 109 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 It would be indeed difficult to decide just what the 
 uniform of our professional men should be ; wherein a 
 lawyer should dress unlike a doctor, and both unlike 
 a preacher, and all of them unlike a teacher. But 
 surely any way of dressing is better than the costly, 
 inconvenient, and meaningless habits to which we 
 submit. 
 
 The white, shining, smooth birch grows beside the 
 ridgy, buggy hemlock. The beech is thinner than the 
 birch but smoother than the hemlock. The ash soft- 
 ens the ruggedness of hemlock, yet avoids the spotty 
 sandiness of beech, — and so on. 
 
 Why not, oh men and women, why not more and 
 more as we grow old and are rooted in our grooves, 
 should we not dress as we please? And why not, as 
 we age, gracefully allow something of our history to 
 show itself in our dress? 
 
 A forest, I said, of singular suggestiveness both in 
 sound and seeming, and the seeming preaches to us 
 of dress. 
 
 The sovmd of the trees when played upon by the 
 wind teaches the same lesson. Do you know how 
 many voices there are in the woods and among the 
 trees? I cease to wonder that in days of old when 
 men were susceptible, these voices made the woods 
 weird and solemn places where unseen divinities 
 dwelt. I wonder not that they talked of dryads, 
 —the nymphs incarnate in the trees. For trees have 
 voices. When one sings solo in the wind, a blind 
 man might know the voice and call the tree by 
 
 110 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 name. A pine-grove sighs, and so does a hem- 
 lock. But the pine is the sigh of a woman, the 
 hemlock the lower, shorter sigh of a man. The 
 winter woods, waiting spring, sigh unanimously. In 
 summer, rejoicing and forgetting the evil days of 
 frost, they roar together like a prosperous people. 
 Still, as I said, no two trees talk alike. They none of 
 them say "the proper thing." They say the true thing 
 or nothing. There's no creed or profession of faith 
 for these trees. They grow in the same sunshine ; 
 their roots feel round in the dark of the soil. Their 
 trunks are all wooden, and will burn with blazes on 
 the log heap. Still the tree as long as it lives and 
 grows, in seeming and in sound is itself and not 
 another. Oh happy day in all our churches, when 
 Christians speak each man for himself the truth 
 that is in him ; — swift to hear, slow to speak, and yet 
 when speaking, speaking as an oracle of God ! 
 
 3. As I write these suggestions of the trees, the 
 question, the doubt, may arise in "practical minds," 
 whether all these and other thoughts are fairly sug- 
 gested by the trees, and are not rather the mere fancies 
 and notions and hobbies of me, the writer. A bark peel- 
 er goes through the woods, lounges into camp and says, 
 "There's full ten cord of bark in that swamp!" He 
 has an eye for bark. He has no other thought. The 
 man prospecting for a farm notes the plateau, counts 
 the maples, and says : "This is good grass land." The 
 lumber man counts up the ash and cherry trees, and 
 the dainty girl gathers mosses and with ferns weaves 
 
 111 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 crowns for the little ones, or with brighter wild ber- 
 ries, little vine sprigs, and star-like blossoms, puts to- 
 gether an ornament for herself. So every one gets 
 from the woods according to fancy, — and all this long 
 essay or sermon of trees is only a preacher's fancy, — 
 proves nothing, — mere sentiment. 
 
 There's value in the suggestion, my practical 
 friend. Hold on to it. What any man sees and 
 thinks and says anywhere, depends upon (i) what 
 is round him, and (2) what he is. Every witness 
 testifies the impression made upon him, and nothing 
 more. Hence the importance of becoming one's self 
 more and more something, in order to see and hear 
 and think more and more as we pass along the jour- 
 ney of life. 
 
 Remember, too, that as it is with these woods, so 
 also is it with the Bible. These woods suggest, accord- 
 ing to the character and habits of the one visiting 
 them. And the Bible suggests to the reader, very 
 largely according to what he is, rather than according 
 to what the Bible says. And in general: 
 
 Every man at all times by his culture or non-cul- 
 ture, by his largeness or littleness, by his hope or his 
 despair, colors and shapes all things that impress him. 
 If he be a true, upright, healthy man, he derives true 
 impressions ; if he be a pinched pattern — pinched im- 
 pressions. Hence again I say — the prime importance 
 of being such a man in consciousness and character 
 that the woods, or the Bible, or the ocean, or the 
 throngs of men, shall make right and true impressions ! 
 
 112 
 
MEDITA TIONS ON TREES 
 
 4. Now I turn again to my preachers, to tell you 
 what other things they seem to say to me, — the 
 thoughts they suggest or even compel. 
 
 Some years ago, I know not how many, a fire 
 swept over these mountains and burned all the light 
 stuff in the woods. The wind drove the flames against 
 the trees, but the heat was not great enough to destroy 
 them. It killed one side of all the beeches — our tree 
 of thinnest bark. The other side remains vigorous. 
 Most of the trees show no sign of damage, and we 
 have to trust the testimony of settlers that there has 
 been a fire. Still on one side they are almost all dead 
 or decaying. The ax goes into the eye at the first 
 blow. So I have learned to look upon every beech tree 
 with compassion, — in just the same way that with 
 years I have learned to have compassion upon all men 
 and all women who have passed the age of thirty. I 
 know that they have been scorched. However cheer- 
 ful and thrifty they may seem, I know that they have 
 secret death in consciousness. However enviable they 
 may be reckoned, I know that, if the whole story were 
 told, no man would be willing to take the evil with the 
 good. Have compassion for all men, for there's been 
 a fire among us and all have suffered. All of us are 
 numb — dead — here or there. 
 
 There was a fire, — a great war, — and today are 
 among us silent, deep-hearted fathers and mothers 
 who can only remember — the war took my boy. There 
 was a fire, a great fire of drunkeness, and there be 
 wives and parents not a few who have been burned on 
 
 113 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 that side, never to be whole again. There was a 
 pestilence, and graves were made, and they who dug 
 and filled them can never be again the same thrifty 
 trees of hope they once were. They are burned on 
 one side. 
 
 Lay open for me at one ax-blow the secret texture 
 of my fellow men, and they all show like these fair- 
 skinned beeches. Let no man try to tell what a proud 
 man suffers when he fails, and tumbles from credit to 
 bankruptcy; what another suffers who has been 
 grossly deceived by one whom he trusted. He's dead 
 on that side. He trusts no one ever again. 
 
 So the fire of experience sweeping among the 
 groves of men incessantly bring to pass great sorrows 
 and secret dyings from which none are exempt. The 
 hard stateliness of towering men no longer impresses 
 or deceives me. I remember my beech trees, burnt 
 on one side, and I know that, if let into the secret 
 places, I shall find much to love and much to 
 pity, much hidden strength and heroism. Have com- 
 passion upon them in bonds as bound with them, and 
 them that suflfer affliction as yourself also in the flesh. 
 For all are partakers, sooner or later. 
 
 5. A short half mile from camp, just at the up- 
 spring of a hill, stood until this year a large, crooked, 
 warty, mossy birch. 'Twas not tall. 'Twas not in all 
 directions broad. It conformed to no rules of tree sym- 
 metry. It was hollow, far, far up. One monstrous 
 limb had been wrenched off, and the raw spot had 
 rotted down through, till the tree was hollow as a 
 
 114 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 ■•1 
 
 chimney. Describe to me the perfect tree, and then 
 reverse each item for its opposite, and you have my 
 tree. Tall? — no, short. Graceful? — no, fat and awk- 
 wardly scraggy. Fair? Smooth? No, rugged and 
 warty — monstrous seed warts big as hay-cocks. 
 Healthy? Thrifty? No, dying, rotting. 
 
 All this ! And yet I tell you that in all the woods I 
 have found no one object which so arrested and charm- 
 ed the eye as this gnarly old birch tree, — that fell, 
 alas, since last year. Everyone remembered it. And 
 it was eye-satisfying. It leaned, and its roots were 
 half out of ground on one side ; but mosses covered 
 the exposure as with a garment. It was warty, but 
 through the splits came up green,oh such an exquisite 
 green, of birch twigs. Little birds dropped seeds 
 there, and grasses and flowers grew on these huge 
 excrescences. It was life victorious over death ; beauty 
 surviving strength ; songs after crashes of the storm ; 
 and to it turned the eyes of even the dullest. It was 
 a way-mark when the road was but a pathway. Now 
 that it has fallen, in memory it is by far the most 
 impressive object these woods have given me. 
 
 And I say to myself: Is death, death? Is evil, evil 
 wholly? We wonder, and theologians spin theories as 
 to the origin of evil — the use of the Devil. Left to 
 ourselves we should prattle together of straight and 
 perfect men stuck in rows of good order like pins on 
 a paper. But somehow there is a sublime beauty in 
 the grand, defiant, yet decorated ugliness. That fallen 
 birch tree makes me think of Milton's archangels fal- 
 
 ns 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 len. Or better still, the tree reminds me of the gospel 
 word spoken by Paul : Where sin abounded, grace doth 
 more abound. Or that sublimest word of prophetic 
 thought in all Scripture — Have I created good and not 
 evil also, said the Lord. Or as Job spake : Shall we 
 receive good at the hands of the Lord, and not evil 
 also? 
 
 This question, the nature and origin of evil, is one 
 of the deepest, if not the deepest question, with which 
 a man ever grapples. All thinkers worthy the name 
 have brooded it, and all saints shadowed by sorrows 
 have waited for God to throw light upon it in his own 
 good time. But somehow that old birch tree standing 
 up so superbly beautiful, its age, decay, rifts, warts, 
 crooks, to the contrary notwithstanding, comforts me. 
 It seems to tell me of grand men ruined by vices, yet 
 beautified as they die out of their rooting. Or more 
 it seems to prefigure and prophesy a vision of Elmira, 
 city of my home and love — vision which shall one day 
 come to me at the spring of the hill that leads to my 
 heavenly home. I shall see the vices, the rugged 
 men, the missing enterprises, the seams and scars ; but 
 I shall see the churches, the schools, the loving and 
 laborious women, and the spring of life and frolic ! I 
 ■s-hall yet see Elmira from afar and say, "How beauti- 
 ful !" 
 
 [Evidently a week intervenes here before Mr. 
 Beecher takes up the subject again.] 
 
 Brethren, I have been living for a summer among 
 the trees^ — and that too without one instant of thought- 
 lie 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 lessness. Can I put these thoughts all on paper, sit- 
 ting on this damp day, my last Sunday here, in my 
 damp tent, writing with unwonted pen on damp 
 paper? 
 
 I think there's not a tree in sight but has some 
 curious crook, and that crook has a history. It's an old, 
 old crook. Its cause lies far back in sapling days. Is 
 there a straight man listening to me? And is there a 
 crooked man who. does not see back to the cause, the 
 time and place? Deliver me also, O Lord, from the 
 sins of my youth. 
 
 There be leanings and stretchings of the trees that 
 are superlative in their beauty. On the rocky runway 
 down which the overflow of our ice-cold spring goes 
 prattling night and day to the little lake— between 
 these stones no tree can grow. There's a great space, 
 or was, of clear sunshine. And all the trees around 
 have leaned over into the light, and filled in the space, 
 until there they are, huge birches twining their tops 
 together in a cathedral arch, so graceful that in all 
 days our highest praise of Gothic architecture is to 
 say : "Its arches and tracery and long aisles remind 
 one of groves." And these over-growing trees are all 
 in search of sunlight. So men, great men who love 
 the truth, lean away from their fellows and overhang- 
 spots by themselves sterile and ugly. All our lake, 
 too, is overhung by these sun-loving trees. They are 
 bowed like mourners over a grave, and at every puff 
 of wind drop tears down. The eye does not soon 
 weary of their bowing graces. And there be bowed 
 
 117 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 men and women not a few whose curved backs and 
 stiffened joints tell of searches and services. One old 
 man comes to mind whom I never saw until he was far 
 on in his sixties ; but his back told of labors, home- 
 making, in lands like this, rocky, high, pure-watered. 
 He saw days of greater ease and affluence, but his pos- 
 terity will hardly take shape that will remind us of 
 labor so admirable and manly. 
 
 The great trees are not all of the woods. The low- 
 growing ferns, nettles, shin-hopples, mosses, and un- 
 der-growth generally ; — but for them and their cling- 
 ing shade the moisture and fertility of soil were soon 
 gone, and the great trees would suffer, and the springs 
 go dry, and rivers fail. Oh, the carpet of these woods, 
 the lower classes ! Only about forty trees to the acre 
 that reach up like pillars, but sixty million little live 
 things growing and dying, modest and serviceable. I 
 can't think of great trees and great men without think- 
 ing of the little spears and sprigs of life, and the little, 
 obscure common people, servants and slaves, without 
 whom the greatness of the greatest were impossible. 
 A general without an army is no general, a king 
 without subjects no king, a conspicuous priest or 
 preacher nothing, without the wide-lying contentment 
 of a pious people. 
 
 The trees keep preaching to me. See ! Only 
 because of the mould slowly accumulating for thou- 
 sands of years is to-day's forest possible. Vegetation 
 never began big trees first. Soil-making goes before 
 crops. And soil is dead, earthy matter enriched by de- 
 
 118 
 
MEDITATIONS ON TREES 
 
 posits from the dead that have died. Leave the forests 
 to themselves and nothing dies in vain. Nay, our gar- 
 deners go to the woods to gather leaf mold! And 
 men to-day are rooted and groviring up out of the 
 mould of a long ancestry. Experience accumulated 
 is but a pile of warnings from the past. The biggest 
 trees grow on deepest soils. The greatest men grow 
 on the mounds heaped up by deathful blunders by- 
 gone. Nothing suffers or dies in vain. The God of 
 life gives life. Squander it and die; someone after 
 you shall gather up the fragments and be the greater 
 man because of your fool's end. 
 
 And then those patient, persisting roots, that I 
 never see with the eye, also speak to me. The trees 
 defy the storm, thanks to the roots. How they grow in 
 the dark, obeying the call of spring long before the 
 snow-shroud has been dissolved, sending up sugar- 
 sap, thawing its own way through frost-crusts, and 
 praying, "How long, how long ere we shall receive as 
 well as give ?" And these roots are of kin to the trees 
 they ser\'e. As we grade our little roads, we know 
 the beech, the birch, the hemlock roots by the odor of 
 their bruises as surely as we know the trees by their 
 flaunting leaf. Moreover, for culture and propagation 
 we can spare the showy tops, but we have care of the 
 roots; and in the great transplantings of men to the 
 groves of God, the obscurest among men may have 
 a vital value surpassing that of the most famous. 
 There are last that shall be first. 
 
 Thus my life, exempt from public haunts, finds 
 tongues in trees, Emd good in everything. 
 
 119 
 
$rof)tlittton 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., October 17, 1886 
 Hornell, N. Y. 
 Waverly, N. Y. 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 On Sunday Oct. 17, 1886, hundreds, if not thou- 
 sands, of pastors and preachers, spoke in favor of "pro- 
 hibition," and of a third party to push this question to 
 the front. 
 
 Not thinking for a moment that any appeal of a 
 preacher can perceptibly afiFect an election — except it 
 be by the rule of contraries — I joined myself to the 
 goodly fellowship of the prophets, and on that day 
 made my argument and appeal. 
 
 This same argument, I shall lay before you at this 
 time. 
 
 Politics — as we use the word — is the art of carry- 
 ing the next election. The game of politics, we say. 
 All is fair in love, in war, and in politics. With pol- 
 itics in this sense, preachers ought not to meddle. 
 
 I have noticed that the players of this game of 
 politics do not much respect or trust each other; nor 
 are they as a general thing highly esteemed or trusted 
 by their fellow-citizens. 
 
 It is this aspect of politics that compels a faithful 
 pastor and teacher to consider the subject, — quite as 
 much to save young men from the degradations of 
 politics, as to save the land by prohibition. 
 
 On the one hand I long to see young men wide- 
 awake, intelligent, well-informed, active and pushing, 
 in public affairs. On the other hand it grieves me 
 beyond expression when I see them swept into dis- 
 
 123 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 honorable, secret, unlawful and corrupting associa- 
 tions by the party with which they decide to act. 
 I observe : 
 
 When there is a live question of great importance 
 submitted to the people for their consideration, polit- 
 ical controversies promote intelligence and patriotism ; 
 but when there is no question of importance before the 
 people, straightway politics becomes a game, played in 
 the interest of the leaders only. The voting citizens in 
 large masses are bought and sold and traded ofif be- 
 tween party-leaders, as if they were so many sheep or 
 cattle. It grieves me to meet with a young man 
 enthusiastic as a Democrat, or enthusiastic as a Re- 
 publican, when I know beyond a peradventure that 
 the leaders of the two parties are ready for all sorts of 
 trades and dickers by which to further their own 
 personal ambition. It grieves me to see young men, 
 and ignorant men, misguided and treated as so many 
 chips to gamble with, or checkers for a game. It 
 grieves me to find the laws of the State defied, and the 
 conscience of all right-thinking men insulted, when 
 our election days degenerate into mere auctions, and 
 almost without disguise men come to the election pre- 
 cincts in Elmira, asking "How much is there in it 
 today?" "What is a vote worth today?" 
 
 This state of things proves that there is no vital 
 question or issue in controversy between the two old 
 parties. There is no question of policy as to the city, 
 county, state, or nation, upon which the Democratic 
 
 124 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 party differs from the Republican, or the Republican 
 from the Democratic. 
 
 I invite you to prove the truth or error of this 
 statement, by laying side by side the platforms of the 
 two parties. I know of no other way in which to 
 learn what they propose — or to what high controversy 
 they invite us. 
 
 Now the remedy for this state of things is to find 
 some new issue, some important question, some gen- 
 eral evil to be removed, or some public good to be 
 attained ; some danger to ward off, or some prosperity 
 to win by high deserving. Therefore I remark: 
 
 1. For the clearing and purifying of our political 
 atmosphere, we need a live issue of some kind. 
 
 2. Issues cannot be invented or fixed up by in- 
 genious men, however well-meaning. Burning ques- 
 tions come to a head of themselves. 
 
 As long ago as 1866 when the whole land was 
 throbbing with prosperity by reason of an inflated 
 currency, and cautious, conservative statesmen began 
 contraction, with the necessary accompaniment of 
 distress, an issue offered itself between green-backs 
 or treasury notes on the one side, and gold and silver 
 on the other, as a proper basis for the currency of a 
 civilized people. That was a good issue. I had 
 hope that it would be thoroughly discussed and set- 
 tled, but this was not to be. The green-back party, 
 with its live question, could not so popularize its de- 
 mands as to command the intelligent consent of the 
 Nation. Its absurdities and extravagances repelled 
 
 125 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 the judicious, and the country will probably go on for 
 some generations yet suffering from evils which this 
 well-meaning party sought to remedy. 
 
 The so-called "green-back caze" is gone by. The 
 two old parties are left like two old hulks, with Quaker 
 guns, loaded with mud to squirt and spatter at each 
 other. But this cannot go on for ever. And you wit- 
 ness today the growth of the so-called "labor move- 
 ment," — which is in fact organized discontent of the 
 poor, those called, by only the test of money, the 
 lower classes ; against the compact organization of the 
 rich, held together by the subtle ties of self-interest 
 and finance. The labor movement is coming to a 
 head ! 
 
 The "labor movement" has many subordinate 
 counts. I do not yet see what particular count will 
 first come to the front for trial and demand settle- 
 ment; but I frankly acknowledge that as a Christian 
 and patriot, I dread this class of issues. I would 
 rather have some other questions for political contro- 
 versy than those that appeal to the envy and hatred 
 of the rich by the poor, and the timid caution of the 
 rich seeking to protect their power and property by 
 strong government. If this issue shall come, I shall 
 do what one man can to temper the infernal heats and 
 hatreds that it will engender. 
 
 Happily, however, another issue is coming to a 
 head, namely the demand that the manufacture and 
 traffic in alcoholic drinks shall be, by vote of the peo- 
 ple, brought to an end. 
 
 126 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 For various reasons I would gladly see this pro- 
 hibition issue thoroughly discussed and settled, by an 
 enthusiastic vote one way or the other. 
 
 I ask you then, in passing, to notice that the labor 
 reform issue most damages the Democratic party. 
 The prohibition question most damages the Repub- 
 lican party. Both of them are alike in this, that the 
 discussion of them grieves the long-time lovers of 
 either party, and the trimming politicians of both. 
 But I repeat, if the two old parties are too timid or too 
 time-serving to risk something by inscribing on their 
 banners a demand worth making or worth resisting, 
 they must not be surprised if watchful, intelligent, 
 courageous, thinking men insist upon rescuing poli- 
 tics from corruption, and upon making our controver- 
 sies as they once were, an education for the whole 
 people. 
 
 Now the way is clear, I trust, for a temperate 
 presentation of the considerations which in my judg- 
 ment justify an earnest advocacy of constitutional 
 prohibition. 
 
 The exact question, viewed politically, is not, (a) 
 is it wrong per se to drink intoxicants? or, (b) is 
 total abstinence for any reason a duty? or, (c) can 
 men be made morally good by legislation? or, (d) 
 have we the right to abridge personal liberty and 
 enact sumptuary laws? But it is, (e) has the manu- 
 facture and sale of intoxicants as a beverage become 
 so injurious to the country, economically, industrially, 
 
 127 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 socially, politically, morally, that it ought to be sup- 
 pressed? That is the sole question to be asked. 
 
 Putting this question in my own language, would 
 we be better off with or without whiskey, yes or no? 
 With or without distilleries, saloons, beer gardens, 
 etc? Those of you who say, "Yes, we would be bet- 
 ter off," come vote with us. Those of you who sin- 
 cerely think that we are better off with these things 
 than without them, vote no. I will answer not only 
 for myself, but for nearly all the prohibitionists with 
 whom I am acquainted, that as soon as we have got a 
 square answer from the people for or against wine, 
 beer, and whiskey, and the traffic in them, we will sub- 
 mit without a murmur; but as things now are, we 
 insist that this plain, simple question, "Do you favor, 
 or do you oppose, the manufacture of, and traffic in, 
 alcoholic drinks," is a proper one to ask. The people 
 should have a chance to answer it. 
 
 I can make a very strong argument myself on 
 either side of this question. I can easily see that a man 
 may be intelligent, as well as conscientious, and vote 
 either way. For this very reason, it is a good question 
 with which to go to the people. For, next : — 
 
 I pray you observe, we are not proposing to organ- 
 ize a crusade against bad men, but we are organizing 
 a crusade against what we think is a dangerous and 
 damaging commodity — alcohol. 
 
 I deeply regret all denunciations of distillers, wine- 
 manufacturers, brewers, and liquor-sellers generally, 
 as if they were sinners above their fellow-men. Not 
 
 128 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 for the first time by any means, I desire to put it on 
 record, that in my judgment, my fellow-citizens en- 
 gaged in liquor-manufacture and traffic, if they knew 
 of any other way in which they could make as much 
 money, would gladly give up the business. They, 
 better than we, know the drawbacks which cause 
 them at times a profound disgust. 
 
 But in this commercial age, the received maxim of 
 political economy is that "demand regulates the sup- 
 ply," and that it is right from a business point of view 
 to sell any commodity that another man wishes to 
 buy; and I am not willing to demand that distillers, 
 wine-merchants, and saloon-keepers, be judged by a 
 higher standard of righteousness than any of my fel- 
 low-men accept in their callings. 
 
 In a dispassionate way we may all see that, while 
 we find no fault with the men, leaving them to give an 
 account each to his God, we have great fault to find 
 with the stuff they manufacture and sell. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago we became familiar with 
 the phrase, "contraband of war." Civilized nations 
 have a list of things which a neutral must not sell to 
 either party. They are contra-banda, — against the 
 proclamation. If he attempt to sell and is caught at 
 it, his contraband goods are forfeited, and no one mur- 
 murs. May not an intelligent and patriotic people 
 make up their minds and declare that liquor is con- 
 traband of peace, and thus put it beyond the pale of 
 law, liable to be seized wherever found, and no longer 
 
 129 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 to be manufactured openly, or dealt in as are other 
 commodities ? 
 
 Right here I ask you; if, taught by experience of 
 dishonesty, disorder, and free-fights, liquor is contra- 
 band on election day, why is it not just, lawful, and 
 reasonable to make it, if we can, contraband also for 
 the other three hundred and sixty-four days in the 
 j^ear ? 
 
 Again. This issue is a good one because it is so 
 simple. Destruction is always more simple and prac- 
 ticable than restraint or regulation. As a thinker and 
 moralist, I confess that I ever incline to fine and deli- 
 cate distinctions; but as an observer of my fellow-men 
 and a regarder of history, I am compelled to admit 
 that nicely-shaded opinions and cautious discrimina- 
 tions can never be wrought into the heads and hearts 
 of the whole people. I for myself frankly admit that 
 which few prohibitionists would admit, that I see so 
 many uses for alcoholic beverages and have myself 
 derived from them so great a benefit, and find them as 
 a matter of history to have been used by so many peo- 
 ple whom we all consent to reverence, that I shrink 
 from a sweeping condemnation of their use. I think 
 that temperance is a higher virtue than total absti- 
 nence. I think that a regulation of the liquor traffic 
 would be better than a prohibition of it. And if I 
 were permitted to shape an issue for the people, I 
 should try to teach them to use this and all other 
 agents and not abuse them. 
 
 But I perceive as a matter of history that no such 
 130 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 adjusted and discriminating policies can ever 
 commend themselves to the total mass of American 
 voters. What we need is something flat-footed, right 
 out, black and white. Whiskey or no whiskey. The 
 simplicity then of this prohibition-issue marks it as 
 an available one. Take sides, gentlemen. Whiskey 
 or no whiskey. 
 
 Again : — It is sometimes pleaded that if we cannot 
 regulate the manufacture and traffic, how can we ever 
 hope to prohibit it and eradicate it? If we cannot 
 close the saloons and drink shops on Sunday, how can 
 we hope to close them all days? 
 
 This plea is sound in words, but unsound experi- 
 mentally. If an elephant break loose from a menag- 
 erie and run amuck down Broadway, the keepers fol- 
 low, laying nooses, throwing lassoes, trying to reg- 
 ulate and restrain the beast; until by and by, he 
 having slain a dozen men, they find it more easy to 
 put a musket ball in his eye, — although he is worth ten 
 thousand dollars, — than it is to restrain or regulate 
 him. 
 
 If there be leprosy and contagion in the walls and 
 joinings of a house and we have scraped and white- 
 washed, and used disinfectants, but found that who- 
 ever lives in that house takes the disease, — fire will 
 cure it, and our word purify really means make pure 
 by fire. 
 
 If through centuries, at least three, the history of 
 legislation in England and in this country has been 
 one ever-increasing, conspicuous, disastrous failure in 
 
 131 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 the task of regulation, the proper experiment to try- 
 next is prohibition. For if a majority of the people are 
 once aroused, and have declared in an orderly, poli- 
 tical way, and have bedded their verdict in the consti- 
 tution itself, that alcoholic drinks are henceforth con- 
 traband in time of peace and, being no longer pro- 
 tected by law, are liable to destruction wherever 
 found, you see at once how simple the process of law- 
 execution becomes. 
 
 Constitutional prohibition is our watch-word and 
 war cry! We are tired of legislative tinkering, and 
 legal pettifogging. 
 
 Here I remark again, it never enters the mind of 
 a well-informed prohibitionist that he can change 
 human nature and bring wines and beers and whiskeys 
 to an end. I daily wonder at seeing men pay from 
 two to six dollars a gallon for whiskey, when, at an 
 expense of twenty dollars, any man could make it in 
 his own house as easily as he makes bread, and at a 
 cost of not more than twenty-five cents a gallon. 
 
 While the world stands, and the sun ripens fruit, 
 there will be wines, and ciders, and fermenting juices. 
 
 No law can restrain men from manufacturing what 
 they please for their own use in their own houses ; 
 but when for commercial purposes the manufacture 
 of the same thing has been stimulated by the 
 enormous gains of the traffic, so that in addition 
 to its own fierce temptation addressed to the 
 appetite, is brought the solicitation of active busi- 
 ness men, making a market and alluring customers; 
 
 132 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 then it is right for the people to step in if they 
 please and forbid the manufacture and sale, 
 just as they may forbid the importation of foreign 
 rags, or dynamite, or any other traffic that you choose 
 to name. What a man may do in his own house is 
 one question, with which law will not meddle. What 
 a man may do under the protection of law in the dis- 
 tillery or brewery,— in the market and for the market, 
 — is a very different question. 
 
 Other considerations suggest themselves, all of 
 them cumulating to the one result, — that the people 
 not only have a right to, but ought to, take this step 
 forward in behalf of prohibition of the manufacture 
 and traffic in intoxicants. 
 
 I forget how many years ago it was that gun- 
 powder was found under the House of Commons, but 
 I know that the tradition of that scare continues to 
 this day, and the secret places and cellars of that vast 
 palace at Westminster are searched with lighted 
 candles every year to see that neither powder nor 
 dynamite has been lodged there. All this to save the 
 Lords and Commons. 
 
 Now it is a matter of shameful, sorrowful experi- 
 ence that at least three of our Presidents, I dare not 
 say how many Senators, a greater number still of 
 Congressmen, a brood of lobby men in our capitol at 
 Washington, and an answering company in our capitol 
 at Albany, have been notoriously and disgracefully 
 unfit for their high duties because of strong drink. 
 And this strong drink under various names has 
 
 133 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 entrenched itself in committee-room and at lunch- 
 counters. It pervades the public buildings at Wash- 
 ington and Albany and the city of New York, and 
 no resolution of the Senate or of the House is able to 
 drive it out. 
 
 Now suppose that the article itself had been con- 
 traband of peace so that any courageous citizen,wher- 
 ever he was, was at liberty to smash every bottle 
 wherever he found it, smash it as he would kill a rat. 
 Do you not see that the problem has become wonder- 
 fully simplified? 
 
 Again. There are at least three, and I suspect 
 more, of the larger rail-roads of the United States 
 that have taken a long step in advance. They have 
 caused it to be distinctly understood that any em- 
 ployee taking so much as a glass of beer, is liable to 
 immediate dismissal. Does anyone complain of 
 this prohibiten in a little world? 
 
 Again: — Our ships of war when taking in stores 
 have a guard at the gang-way inspecting every pack- 
 age. Except the surgeon, there is not a man on the 
 ship, from commodore to messenger-boy, who is 
 allowed to take a pint of intoxicating drink on board. 
 To the surgeon, the dangerous agent is sent in sealed 
 packages from the surgeon-in-chief. Here we have pro- 
 hibition again, very nearly absolute, yet nobody com- 
 plains. And all over our land I can find you men 
 who are moving heaven and earth to get their beloved 
 sons into the navy, so that they may have their feet on 
 
 134 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 an American deck, and their heads under an American 
 flag where blessed prohibition is enforced. 
 
 Now a policy which is good for a rail-road, good 
 for a 'ship of war which has in it a thousand men, 
 is certainly good for Elmira. Whatever arguments 
 justify the salvation of the navy by prohibition, 
 would equally justify the salvation of Elmira by pro- 
 hibition. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, you perceive that I am not dis- 
 cussing the temperance question. I am discussing a 
 political question. Is the manufacture and sale of 
 intoxicating drinks a benefit in your judgment to the 
 city of Elmira, the county of Chemung, the state of 
 New York and the United States ? Yes or no ? If 
 you say, "Yes, it is a benefit," join the Democratic 
 party, honest man that you are, and with them de- 
 clare your steadfast opposition to any reform of this 
 kind. If you say "No," then stand out, honest man 
 that you are, join this now rising party, and by your 
 voice and vote do what you can, by peaceable and 
 constitutional methods, to banish from our borders 
 this or any other agent whose banishment will in your 
 judgment be for the public welfare. 
 
 This is the issue pure and simple. Is the manu- 
 facture and sale of intoxicating drinks a benefit or a 
 damage to our city, state, and nation? For myself I 
 answer, it is a damage, and I shall act accordingly. 
 Strangely enough, I think that ninety-nine men in 
 every hundred agree with me perfectly, and yet will 
 not act accordingly. Let me show you what I mean. 
 
 135 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 There is not a business man here, not one, who 
 would not feel a little repelled from employing a clerk 
 if he were told that the young man drinks quite reg- 
 ularly, and is a capital judge of liquor. There is not 
 a house-keeper here who would employ a cook if that 
 cook were to stipulate, "I find it necessary to have a 
 gill of whiskey every day." I challenge you to find 
 a single father, whatever his own habits may be, who 
 will not admit that he would rather his son would not 
 drink. You cannot find a single school-committee but 
 would feel shy of appointing a teacher who was an 
 habitual drinker. And there is not a man or woman 
 who uses intoxicating drinks, but does it apologetic- 
 ally. The fact of using them puts him or her on the 
 defensive. 
 
 Now while I am very far from saying that all who 
 drink beer or wine or even whiskey are thereby 
 proved to be bad and dangerous men, yet the verdict 
 of the Christian world is against the use of this agent. 
 Therefore any man who uses it must be prepared not 
 merely to say before his God, "I see no harm in it," 
 but, "I see a good so great that it were a sin for me 
 not to use it." 
 
 I say that ninety-nine in every hundred of my fel- 
 low men agree with me that it would be a great bene- 
 fit to this entire land if intoxicating drinks were alto- 
 gether exterminated. But they will not agree with 
 me in my action, and cheerfully, good naturedly, stand 
 up on election day and be counted a prohibitionist. 
 
 They say: 
 
 136 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 "But you can't do it ! Prohibition won't prohibit ! 
 And in this state the majority are not in favor of it." 
 
 Again : — It is urged by some that it is not wise to 
 drag down a great reform like this of temperance, and 
 make it a political issue. I reply that the manufacture 
 and traffic in intoxicating drinks has grown to such 
 proportions that it has intruded itself into the political 
 arena already, and stands defiantly asking, "What are 
 you going to do about it?" 
 
 I remind you that this traffic pays into our treasury 
 at least 150 million dollars every year, and urges be- 
 cause of this its right to continue. I remind you 
 that the Democratic party does not wish, and the Re- 
 publican does not dare, to insult or deny this enormous 
 power in politics. I remind you that nine in ten of 
 all the caucuses where the political game is made up 
 and candidates are settled upon for both parties, are 
 held in liquor-saloons. I remind you that the bribery 
 that is now unblushing at our elections in the state of 
 New York began with drinks and cigars. 
 
 I remind you of what I suppose to be a fact, that 
 in every city in the United States as large as Elmira, 
 except the cities protected by prohibition, the liquor 
 interest is the controlling power in the common 
 council. Intentionally so. 
 
 I remind you that distillers have their organization 
 for political purposes ; that brewers have their or- 
 ganization ; that saloon-keepers have their organiza- 
 tion. If, then, this enormous interest has organized 
 to control the legislation of this country, what re- 
 
 137 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 mains but for sober men to organize, and, if we can, 
 take this control out of tlieir hands? 
 
 It is too late in the day to reproach us prohibition- 
 ists with dragging temperance into politics. The 
 question is already in politics in a most inexorable, 
 determined, and abominable form, all the more de- 
 filing because not openly avowed, spending its energy 
 in corrupting both parties. 
 
 I thank you for listening to me so long. My re- 
 marks, if they have not satisfied you, I assure you 
 have satisfied me still less. They have not been 
 well arranged. Let me then in conclusion sketch in 
 outline that which I wish I had been able to set up as 
 an argument, and illuminate with eloquent illustration. 
 
 (i) Every citizen entitled to vote should aim to 
 be intelligent, active and conscientious in politics 
 (2) Parties must necessarily come to pass. Agree- 
 ing citizens must act together. (3) The two ex- 
 isting parties offer us no policy, formulate no demands 
 by which one is distinguished from the other. Hence 
 (4) political activity has degenerated. Party lead- 
 ers are no longer teachers of the people, but have be- 
 come secret managers, venal conspirators, bribers, 
 and corrupters of the people. (5) For any young 
 man to become an enthusiastic Democrat or enthusi- 
 astic Republican is a disgrace to his intelligence, and 
 a damage to the cleanness of his hands. (6) The 
 crying need of the hour is a live issue, an evil to be 
 abated, or a good to be accomplished. (7) We can- 
 not manufacture issues. They come to pass. (8) 
 
 138 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 Envy and discontent of the laboring and poorer classes 
 have come to a head threatfully. Men by thousands 
 are gathering around the labor party, much to the 
 damage of the Democratic party. The prohibition- 
 issue also is coming to a head and thousands are run- 
 ning to its standard, much to the damage of the vot- 
 ing power of the Republican party. (9) Between 
 these two issues forced upon our attention, the prohi- 
 bition-issue is far the simpler, safer, and more promis- 
 ing question to discuss at present. (10) A man can 
 be an honest man, earnest and enthusiastic, and take 
 either side of this question. (11) It is in every way 
 a good question for political organization, for (a) the 
 issue is extremely simple. The stupidest thinker can 
 declare an opinion, whiskey or no whiskey, (b) The 
 interest is wide as the nation. It is therefore a good 
 foundation for a national party, (c) The end aimed at 
 not only, but the method of it, is grandly simple. We 
 demand constitutional amendments in every state and 
 in the United States Constitution, (d) The evils to 
 be remedied are within the observation and easy 
 knowledge of every voter, (e) The enemy of our 
 public welfare is not a man or men, or a class. It is 
 a commodity. Wine, beer, whiskey, brandy, gin, rum, 
 we wish to get rid of them. (f) Three-hundred 
 years' experience shows that we cannot regulate this 
 matter, but to prohibit and destroy is simpler and 
 easier always than to regulate, (g) The agent that 
 we would exterminate is already defiantly in the field 
 
 139 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 of politics, demanding protection and offering bribes 
 on every hand. 
 
 The issue then, my fellow citizens, is not of our 
 making. I do not pretend to foretell what the out- 
 come of our controversy is to be. I neither know nor 
 care to. I am, however, certain that no young 
 Christian citizen will be the worse in his mind or heart 
 or conscience for doing what he can to exterminate 
 intoxicating drinks. I am sure that with this issue 
 he can go into politics, and do his level best ; and come 
 out, whether defeated or victorious, without a smirch 
 upon his reputation, with the glow of self-respect and 
 the approval of God. 
 
 This is more than I can promise to any of you if 
 you go into the game of politics as it is played today 
 in the city Elmira. 
 
 For the purifying of our political methods, for the 
 education of our young men, for the betterment of our 
 legislation, for the diminution of crime, for the pro- 
 tection of families, all of them threatened by this 
 subtle, fascinating agent which but few men are able 
 to use with benefit, and most men find a curse and a 
 destroyer — I am ready to stand forward with my 
 fellow-citizens of agreeing mind and temper, and de- 
 mand that this public enemy shall be declared contra- 
 band in time of peace, and beyond the pale of legal 
 protection. 
 
 This conclusion, not hastily matured, I submit to 
 your consideration, my fellow-citizens, entreating you 
 
 140 
 
PROHIBITION 
 
 not to toss if from you as fanatical, hare-brained, 
 impracticable. 
 
 It were better to die in defeat, endeavoring a great 
 betterment, than to live playing the game of politics, 
 — hurrahing for victories that bring no benefit. 
 
 141 
 
Wbt ^i)tpb3reck of $aul 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., April 20, 1884 
 Reformatory, Elmira, May 10, 1885 
 Stamford, Conn., May 17, 1885 
 Hancock, N. Y., March 28, 1886 
 Gleason Health Resort, Elmira, September 18, 1887 
 Richford, N. Y., September 28, 1887 
 Cincinatus, N. Y., August 5, 1888 
 Repeated in The Park Church, Elmira, Jan. 20, 1889 
 Brookton, N. Y., February 23, 1890 
 _ Buffalo, N. Y., First Presbyterian Church, February 
 11, 1892 
 
THE SHIPWRECK OF PAUL 
 
 About midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew 
 near to some country. — Acts 27:27. 
 
 The story of Paul's shipwreck as told by Doctor 
 Luke who was with him, is a masterpiece of narrative. 
 It merits the attention that has been lavished upon it 
 by critics, navigators, geographers, and even govern- 
 ments. Stories like this have their place in our Bible 
 not by accident, nor by whim of the writers or compil- 
 ers. Our Bible is of God. See : — 
 
 Any sagacious man can frame a prophecy. Any 
 romancer can draw on his imagination for a novel or 
 a parable. But God only can so control the forces of 
 nature and the acts of men that the resulting story or 
 history shall teach like a parable and shine like a 
 prophecy. The story of Abraham down to Joseph 
 the Viceroy, his great grandson, is history and proph- 
 ecy. The story of Moses and Joshua, — the exodus, 
 wilderness, and holy land, — is both history and proph- 
 ecy. The story of David, from Goliath to his throne 
 of glory in Jerusalem ; the story of Ruth the constant ; 
 of Daniel the wise; of Elijah the mysterious and 
 sublime ; and finally this elaborate story of Paul's 
 shipwreck : all these gems of narrative, cut to many 
 faces that shine, are (i) true stories, and (2) they 
 teach like so many parables or prophecies. God only, 
 I repeat, can so control the forces of nature and the 
 
 145 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 acts of men that the true story of them shall teach. 
 As it is written : — Now these things happened to them 
 by way of a figure; and they were written for our 
 admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come. 
 
 To return to our shipwreck story, and its lessons. 
 
 I. We speak of the "voyage of life." The phrase 
 is old, trite, and prosy. We embark at birth. We 
 debark at death. We are bound somewhither, as 
 Paul to Rome, the imperial city. That which lies be- 
 tween birth and death is indeed a voyage in a very 
 little boat, a mere canoe easily upset, — a body all too 
 frail. Considering this voyage of life as a strictly 
 personal matter, I note that it ends in a break up ; a 
 little shipwreck, as it were. We go to pieces one by 
 one. Our little canoe after many a hard knock and 
 narrow escape, gets a harder one still, — more than it 
 can stand, — and we go ashore upon some unknown 
 country. 
 
 Most men are a little timid about dying. They 
 "hedge." They counsel with the doctors to cure them 
 and keep them alive ; and with the priests to make it 
 all right if the doctors fail. 
 
 Brethren! it may be that death balances all ac- 
 counts. It may be that "the debt of nature" once paid, 
 or the bankrupt having surrendered, all is discharged, 
 that he may begin again a new life. It may be so, but 
 I dare not teach that it ^ill be so. Even Shakespeare 
 meditates : — "In that sleep of death, what dreams may 
 come?" And a greater than Shakespeare has said, 
 
 146 
 
THjE shipwreck of PAUL 
 
 "Fear him that hath power to cast both soul and body 
 into hell." 
 
 Sooner or later comes the evening; the shadows 
 deepen unto midnight. Heart and flesh fail. Happy 
 he, who, nearing that undiscovered country, hears 
 within a cheery voice, "There shall be no loss of 
 life, but of the ship only. The body is dead because 
 of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." 
 This voice of hope shall surely sound for him who has 
 feared God and wrought righteousiiess all along the 
 years of his voyaging. For who is he that will harm 
 you, if ye be followers of that which is good? 
 
 2. But there be ships bigger than canoes, and 
 wrecks more disastrous than the dying of one man. 
 Many of you by this time should have risen to higher 
 ranges of thought, and be exercised by profounder 
 longings, hopes, and fears, than the loss of one soul or 
 one body. More and more you should be realizing 
 the higher vision of a church, a society, a common- 
 wealth, throbbing with life whereto the individual is 
 contributant, and of it a constituent part. Society is 
 so grand in its possibilities that in all ages the noblest 
 men have agreed that to live, labor, and if occasion 
 demand, die, for one's country and one's kind, is an 
 aim so lofty that failure is a success more dazzling 
 than success with other and lower aims. That is to 
 say that the individual will, if truly wise, ever hold 
 himself subordinate to the commonwealth. In other 
 words still : we make our voyage of life, not in birch- 
 bark or skin canoes, able to float one man and only 
 
 147 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 one, — each man owning and sailing his own little 
 canoe-body whither he pleases : but rather, as we rise 
 above savagery, we make our voyage of life in ships of 
 larger and larger tonnage. In these great three-decker 
 ships larger and larger numbers sail, for a season har- 
 monized and unified in their interests. By and by it 
 seems as if these united men had solved the problem 
 of association and cooperation, and are able to float 
 themselves in safety above the solemn silences and 
 dark mysteries of death. In which, notwithstand- 
 ing, the strongest ship, as well as the frailest canoe is 
 seen to founder with all on board. 
 
 Consider then this voyage of life from mainland to 
 mainland of two eternities, which men rarely, if ever, 
 make alone ; and we may note : 
 
 The society or ship, in which we voyage, if it make 
 account of our whence and our whither, is now-a-days 
 called a Church. Another society is called a State, 
 whose citizens busy themselves with the prosperities 
 of today, the production and distribution of wealth so 
 as to attain happiness. 
 
 Church and State used to be one ship, but now 
 they are two. Of the State I have nothing to say to- 
 day. Of the ship or society called Church, I remind 
 you : churches multiply their ceremonies, their threats, 
 and their promises, at and about the two mysteries of 
 birth and death. Churches, all churches, keep order 
 among the crew and passengers by their real or sup- 
 posed power to land all hands upon the shores of life 
 and safety when the voyage is over. From time to 
 
 148 
 
THE SHIPWRECK OF PAUL 
 
 time, however, there have been mutinies in these ships 
 of salvation. The crew not infrequently has risen 
 and murdered the officers. The passengers almost 
 uniformly complain that the rates for passage are too 
 high : "The church is getting too much power, making 
 too much money. Moreover it is doubtful that the 
 officers know any more about the unseen world than 
 other men do. They do not earn their salaries. And 
 their ships' of salvation are far from justifying their 
 cost." 
 
 So for one reason or another these famous great 
 churches that come booming down the ages, are often 
 wrecked, leaving the passengers to get ashore as best 
 they can ; the swimmers swimming, and the rest, some 
 on planks, some on pieces of the ship. 
 
 In some notable particulars all these churches, 
 adrift in the dark, have been much alike, and all of them 
 very like Paul's ship. See ! there's the captain and his 
 sailors, — the civil authorities ; there's the ship's cargo, 
 — golden grain for the market ; there are also criminals 
 in chains, and Paul on parole, in charge of military 
 authorities ; all bound to imperial headquarters, Rome, 
 and caught in a storm. I can tell in strong outline 
 the story of State and Church in the very words of our 
 true story. 
 
 About midnight the sailors deemed that they drew 
 near to some country; and when it was broad day- 
 light, they did not know the land ; but the Church fell 
 into a tight place where two seas met. They that 
 could swim cast themselves first into the sea and got 
 
 149 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 to land; the rest on boards and broken pieces of the 
 ship, and so they escaped all safe to land. 
 
 3. For our instruction and profit, let me note in a 
 more orderly way of detail the third division of my 
 discourse. Strictly and severely speaking, we make 
 the voyage of life from the unknown to the unknown. 
 Our lives are meteoric. As when from the depths of 
 space a little mass of blackness fleeter than a cannon- 
 ball, whence originating or whither bound none can 
 tell, cuts through the upper regions of our at- 
 mosphere; reddens, ignites, blazes, emerges, cools, 
 darkens and disappears on its mysterious journey, 
 — leaving men gazing upward and wondering: 
 so come into life and depart out of life the souls of 
 men which, while they live, have all the warmth, 
 rush, and glow of intelligence; for a season while 
 it is called today they are much ; departing they leave 
 us awe-stricken and questioning whence and whither. 
 Of knowledge we have nothing whatever in the prem- 
 ises. Science is the child of experience, and we have 
 no voice of experience save One that professes to tell 
 whence I come, whither I go, and why I live. 
 
 Yet as men flame out from the mystery of an un- 
 known origin through the business of today, unto and 
 into the mystery of an unknown destiny, it is alto- 
 gether seemly that they run together in churches. 
 Awed by the unknowable, they join hands and call up- 
 on God. As they watch and wait, unequal gifts will 
 appear among them. Some will see further toward the 
 unknown land than others. The hearts that are full 
 
 15P 
 
THE SHIPWRECK OF PAUL 
 
 will overflow to the refreshment of hearts that have 
 no wells of water springing up. In that ship of salva- 
 tion called the Church, shall come to pass ofificers, 
 crew, and passengers. For some generations the voy- 
 age goes on prosperously, — so prosperously that all 
 forget the solemn awe that first brought them together. 
 By and by, ofificers, crew, and all hands, having 
 lost their reckoning in some storm ; or being tossed on 
 strange seas of new experiences — find themselves 
 wrenched and strained. They hear strange noises of 
 distress pervading the ship. Even the shipmen them- 
 selves begin to have fears. Passengers are ordered 
 off deck and down below: "Leave church matters to 
 churchmen. Shut your eyes, stop your ears. We are 
 the one true ship, bound to the city of the great king." 
 About midnight even the shipmen deem that they are 
 drawing near to some country, they know not what. 
 And when it is day, they know not the land. 
 
 When great churches are in danger of going to 
 pieces, it is a time of peculiar sinking of heart and 
 distress of mind. To take an example from present- 
 day travel, many go to sea in a well-found ship, 
 carrying with them the comforts and luxuries 
 of land-life, — nay, to not a few the ship-life is more 
 abundant and luxurious than their home-life: 
 many meals of many courses, games and amusements 
 on deck, music and books in cabin, steam-heat and 
 electric light, concerts, parlor-theatricals, lectures and 
 recitations to fill up the long evenings; — and so all 
 except the few sea-sick ones get into a matter-of- 
 
 151 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 course, land-like, home-like way, and have their little 
 frets, quarrels and politics, until, mayhap by a storm, 
 or a collision, or a fire, or lightning, the sense is sud- 
 denly awakened : "We are afloat. This is a mere ship. 
 It may sink. The caves below are deep and dark. 
 The ship is in distress ! They are clearing away the 
 boats and provisioning them. We may have to leave 
 the ship and go afloat." So there is alarm, perhaps a 
 panic. Thus it is when great churches are caught in 
 a place where two seas meet and get aground, the 
 forepart stuck fast, immovable, the hinderpart broken 
 by the violence of the waves. There will ever be 
 more or less of confusion, doubt, and distress in that 
 church ; timid souls will suffer. Happy the church 
 that has on board some bright-eyed apostle who can 
 stand forth and testify: "There shall be no loss of life 
 among you, but only of the ship." 
 
 Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe on 
 God. Churches are very precious and comfortable 
 devices and helps along the voyage of life. Doubt- 
 less it is in every way desirable to come on board at 
 birth by baptism, to live enjoying the decent usages 
 of piety and established religion, and when the time 
 comes to go ashore by the appointed gangplank, while 
 officers in uniform see us safely off, and wish us 
 goodbye ! 
 
 Still we shall live and learn somehow. We shall 
 all get ashore some way. He who started us forth 
 from the unknown awaits us in the unknown. Living 
 or dying we are the Lord's. 
 
 152 
 
THE SHIPWRECK OF PA UL 
 
 4. Finally : the sorting out of the people and their 
 several ways of getting to the land, as told us in the 
 ship-wreck story, seem to me suggestive. Some 
 could swim, and went overboard bravely, equal to the 
 occasion. And there be in all ages sound and sober 
 thinkers, long-visioned seers, illuminated men, to 
 whom the world to come seems nearer and its land 
 more solid than the tossing world that now is. Strong 
 swimmers they. They call on God and go ashore. 
 
 Some escaped on planks. Such are the diligent, 
 who all their voyage through have kept themselves in 
 training by familiarity with the best thoughts and 
 words, of the best men. Some vision of a poet comes 
 to mind, some scrap of a simple hymn, some assur- 
 ance of faith read long ago in a book or heard in a 
 memorable sermon, some sound philosophy mastered 
 until the studious soul is mastered by it and kept in 
 composure ! A sound way of thinking is a grand 
 plank to seize and by its help to go ashore from rest- 
 less society, or a shattered church. 
 
 Some escaped on pieces of the ship, the ship things, 
 the hatch covers, the hen-coops, the cook's galley, 
 spare spars, deck seats, chairs, and all the light stuff 
 that floats when the ship breaks up. From all the old 
 churches and societies that ever sailed and sank, have 
 survived salutary usages and habits; and men this 
 day are staying up by them. Often without knowing 
 it, they are profiting by pieces of some old sunken ship 
 or church. All, or nearly all, the sound morality of 
 this present age, is a piece of some old church. The 
 
 153 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 finger of God has given commandments ! And men 
 are getting safely ashore on these pieces of God's 
 church. If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the 
 commandments ! 
 
 The names of God, the ways of outcry and call 
 upon him in time of extremity, the solemn rites which 
 somehow comfort even the unbelieving in the hour of 
 birth, marriage, and death, the refreshment of prayer; 
 these, all these, are blessed fragments of old ships 
 which went to pieces, but these fragments still float, 
 and men get safely to shore by their help. 
 
 Leaving unspoken far more than I have voiced, I 
 hasten to make an end of words. It came to pass that 
 they escaped all safely to land. What a ship-load ! 
 master and crew, and merchant super-cargo, centurion 
 and soldiers, prisoners, Paul the apostle, and Luke the 
 evangelist! Out on that ocean all boundless they 
 rode, all Romeward bound! 
 
 Said I not well that this story told by Luke teaches 
 like a parable, and shines like an allegory? 
 
 154 
 
'Father Tom" 
 
tEJe (^teatesit iHitacle of Jlisitorp 
 
 Preached in 
 
 The Park Church, Elmira, N. Y., Feb., 11, 1877 
 Austinburg, 0., September 26, 1877 
 Wellsville, N. Y., June 24, 1877 
 Binghamton, N. Y. 
 
 New Bedford, Conn., October 30, 1877 
 Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, April 29, 1877 
 Newark Valley, N. Y, February 5, 1878 
 Milwaukee, Wis., June 16, 1878 
 Norwich, N. Y., 1879 
 Alfred Center, N. Y., May 15, 1880 
 Buffalo. N. v., July 4, 1880 
 Washington, D. C. and Lincoln Hall, Dec. 26, 1880 
 Schenectady, N. Y., November 27, 1881 
 Reformatory, Elmira, N. ¥., July 20, 1884 
 Hancock, N. Y., July 22, 1884 
 Bridgeport, Conn., August 19, 1888 
 West Warren, Pa., January 9, 1889 
 Cornell, Ithaca, N. ¥., February 22, 1891 
 
Mr. Beecher, upon being requested to give an autograph ser- 
 mon to a young friend, sent him this one with a letter, of which the 
 following is a part: — 
 
 "I enclose with this the sermon above all sermons that I ever 
 wrote in its origin and value. 
 
 "Feb. 11, '77, I was at eight A. M. in great travail of spirit, not 
 having a message for the saints. In agony of prayer, I lifted my 
 prostrate face, seized a pen, and wrote madly until ten-fifty. 
 
 "This sermon is what I wrote in those hours, a sermon that I 
 received by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 ' 'I give it to you. It has comforted and strengthened me, silenced 
 doubts, quenched arrows all aflame with learned denials, again and 
 again. The name and fame of Jesus the Christ needs no defenders. 
 God himself perpetuates the story of his son our Lord," 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY 
 
 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given 
 him a name which is above every name. — Phil. 2:9. 
 
 "Name" means fame, reputation, glory, honor. 
 When given by God himself, the fame or reputation 
 is well-grounded; something more than notoriety or 
 popularity, — a well-earned fame, deserving glory and 
 honor. Says Paul, God has given to Jesus a name and 
 fame world-wide, a name above all names. 
 
 This was and is a startling assertion. A certain 
 wandering enthusiast whose name was Paul, wrote a 
 short letter to a handful of mere nobodies who lived 
 at Philippi eighteen hundred years ago. In that let- 
 ter he said that for certain reasons God had highly 
 exalted one Jesus and given him a name and fame 
 above all other names known among men. 
 
 If we find that this most unlikely prediction has 
 been conspicuously and continuously fulfilled, I reckon 
 the prophecy and its fulfilment among history's most 
 marvelous facts. I speak this morning of the most 
 enduring miracle that the world has ever seen; a 
 marvel so great that its many-sided greatness makes 
 delineation well-nigh impossible. 
 
 It is with it as with a mountain. The peasant who 
 has his little cottage at its base has no conception 
 of its majesty and uplift. If seen from afar, its soft 
 outlines so mingle with the sky that we forget that 
 it rests upon the earth. 
 
 159 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 In like manner the marvel to which I call your 
 attention is a mighty accumulation of details. If I 
 speak of them one by one, we are like the peasant 
 picking stones and planting vines and milking goats, 
 unconscious of the mountain. If we look at my marvel 
 from afar, we are in danger of forgetting the facts and 
 stories by which it lifts up from earth to heaven. In 
 other words if I give myself to historic detail of my 
 miracle, we miss the mountainous whole. If I deline- 
 ate the whole, the picture seems cloudy, fanciful, 
 unreal. Nevertheless I make the attempt, assuming 
 that some of you at least will be able to distribute into 
 affluent details of familiar facts a statement requiring 
 but ten seconds to make. I ask your attention to a 
 simple story, which so far as I know is denied by 
 no one. 
 
 Of obscure parents in an obscure village, — no one 
 can tell just where for certain, — a babe, a boy, was 
 born; by name Joshua or Jesus, a very common 
 name. In another little village, infamous as well as 
 obscure, one of many in a rude, illiterate province, 
 this boy grew up, learning the trade of a carpenter. 
 
 By and by when he became a man, he passed his 
 life in such a way that at his dying he left no visible 
 token that he had ever lived ; no sample of his handi- 
 craft that we know of ; no house, if he ever owned or 
 builded one ; no scrap of writing if he ever wrote ; no 
 organized society or party ; no portrait or children ; — 
 nothing whatever left. 
 
 Never did a famous man make more obscure en- 
 160 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY 
 
 trance into life, or more disastrous exit ; never did man 
 so seem, as it were, to have evaporated, leaving no 
 trace of himself anywhere upon earth, or among men. 
 
 I speak of Jesus the Christ, who was crucified, 
 dead, and buried. 
 
 Shortly after his disappearance, the few men who 
 had known him began to tell to crowds stories about 
 him, astounding stories, incredible stories. They said 
 that this obscure babe, born nobody knows when, was 
 in fact a son of God and had no man for his father. 
 To gathered strangers from all over the world, they 
 said that this man who had been tried and put to 
 death as a blasphemer outside the gates of Jerusalem, 
 was in very deed the Christ of God for whom the ages 
 had been waiting. 
 
 They spoke openly and boldly: "With wicked 
 hands ye have killed him. But he will come again. 
 God has set a day in which he will judge the world by 
 that man." In proof of which they alleged that he 
 had already risen from the dead. They said that they 
 had seen him ; and that he was caught up into heaven, 
 and a cloud received him out of their sight. 
 
 And as they told these stories, oh, marvel of mar- 
 vels! thousands of people believed them. Such 
 astounding stories! Such offensive accusations! Such 
 preposterous claims! Yet thousands believed, when 
 to believe was very costly, all to lose and nothing to 
 gain. 
 
 How do you account for it? 
 
 Reasonable, sensible men began to object to these 
 161 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 Stories and claims, nearly every objection which rea- 
 sonable men use in this city today, priding themselves 
 upon their non-belief in the Christian legends. 
 
 Risen from the dead ?, you say. No, you've stolen 
 his body, fixed up your story. It's all a put-up job. 
 
 Born of a virgin ! No, no, she vja^s but a wild 
 Galilean maiden. You glorify and worship her 
 natural son. 
 
 With wicked hands we crucified him? What higher 
 court could have tried and condemned him? Your 
 hero is a convicted betrayer of his people, and a 
 blasphemer of his God. 
 
 He is coming again to judge the world? Pray 
 where is the promise of his coming? All things con- 
 tinue as they were from the foundation of the world. 
 "The uniformity of the operations of nature is the 
 foundation of science." 
 
 He wrought great signs and wonders? He only 
 juggled and fooled a few wide-eyed and open-mouthed 
 common people. Did any of the rulers believe on him? 
 
 He raised the dead? You yourselves keep saying 
 that he couldn't save himself. How then could he 
 bring others to life? Self-preservation is nature's 
 first law. 
 
 But despite these cavils and unanswerable objec- 
 tions to the marvelous stories, thousands believed. 
 
 How do you account for this? 
 
 Our text asserts that God hath given him a name 
 and a reputation. Let him who cannot accept this, 
 account for it in any other way if he can. 
 
 But let us go on with our story. 
 J62 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN HISTORY 
 
 Very shortly they began to kill off the leaders of 
 this new, strange faith. One deacon they stoned to 
 death. An apostle they slew with the sword. But 
 these thousands of timid men and women spoke out 
 more and more boldly every day. 
 
 As burning shingles from a fire at midnight curl 
 out of the heat and spin up the fiery pillars, — to dart 
 of? in the dark, and where they fall kindle a new burn- 
 ing, so these simple men and women, escaped from 
 persecution's fires, were scattered throughout the 
 world as then known. And where they stopped, as 
 they told the wonderful stories of Jesus, a new fire 
 started. Ahead of the apostles, and over regions that 
 never enjoyed an apostolic visit, these singular zeal- 
 ots roamed, and men believed wherever the story was 
 told. 
 
 In the heart of China are deserted and ruined 
 temples signed with the cross and inscribed with 
 Christian legends. Travelers that stab their way into 
 Africa find church buildings, convents, and manu- 
 scripts that arrest the eyes of the learned all over the 
 world. On both sides of the Mediterranean are yet 
 to be found clear to the pillars of Hercules the traces 
 of apostolic labor. All Europe has been overrun by 
 the fame of this babe, 
 
 born of a virgin, 
 
 dying in infamy, 
 
 rising in mystery, 
 
 ascending to glory. 
 Across the ocean came the story, (adulterated with 
 163 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 greed and cruelties), and has overrun the Americas. 
 The oldest monuments of modern civilization in South 
 America are adobe churches and monasteries. The 
 oldest settlements in North America, east coast, west 
 coast, and along the great river, are scribed in their 
 origins with this name of Jesus. He has a name and 
 fame this day that is above every name. 
 
 How do you account for it? 
 
 The pressed and persecuted church disappeared 
 from among men. She hid in caves and catacombs. 
 She fled to the wilderness and solitary places. 
 
 By and by came a greater danger than persecu- 
 tion. The fragrance of Christian faith came floating 
 up from the servants' quarters, and noble women be- 
 gan to believe. Noble men caught the story. An 
 emperor heard it, believed and began to patronize the 
 church ! 
 
 Patronage is more dangerous to purity than perse- 
 cution. To believe on Jesus Christ became a paying 
 act. Ambitious men, military men, court climbers, 
 began to make obeisances to the Church. Instead of 
 faith toward God came pious Church-craft. Gold 
 flowed into her treasuries. Heathen temples became 
 churches. Heathen rites and festivals were rechrist- 
 ened in the name of Jesus. Basilicas remodeled and 
 consecrated, were proud cathedrals, and kings kneeled 
 to bishops to receive their crowns. Warriors all gory 
 brought back booty, and compounded for slaughters 
 by building churches and abbeys, prayer-places to the 
 Prince of Peace ! 
 
 164 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY 
 
 The cross became an ornament for decoration, a 
 golden finial for the architect, a jewel for the neck of 
 beauty. Fugitive apostles and martyrs reappeared 
 on canvas with the glory-hoops about their heads ; 
 their very bones were dug up and enshrined in gold. 
 In short, — that mighty thing, an established church, 
 grew up with a history and a tradition ; with bishops, 
 theologians, fathers, councils, decrees, — a mighty or- 
 ganization, filling the eye and arousing enthusiasms 
 like the great image of gold that Nebuchadnezzar the 
 king had set up. 
 
 By and by, huge and top-heavy, this monstrosity 
 tumbles and man goes free; when lo! from amid the 
 ruins comes flowing forth the little silver stream : 
 Jesus, son of Mary and of God 
 Jesus, lover of mankind 
 Jesus, slain and first to rise 
 Jesus, judge and savior 
 Jesus Christ is coming, coming! 
 As the ages have gone by, metaphysicians have 
 split hairs to define and class him properly. In his 
 name, theologians have dogmatized, and the next gen- 
 eration has called them babblers. In his name and for 
 his glory, bishops have wrangled for their chairs, and 
 torn robes in the councils of the Church. In his name 
 armies have crashed together bloodily in the old days 
 of sword and spear, grimy and thundrous in modern 
 warfare. 
 
 Because of him, statesmen and diplomats are this 
 hour toiling at that great eastern question, the roots 
 
 165 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 of which strike into religion. In his name and for his 
 glory, painters, sculptors, architects, and poets, have 
 wrought their highest works, unapproachable by their 
 followers today. Also at this very time 1900 years 
 after the birth of this obscure babe, the commercial 
 world dates its papers, emperors their decrees, and 
 legislatures their laws, Anno Domini 1877. And of 
 all topics discussed in this day of universal ferment 
 and countless books, tracts, and papers; more essays, 
 more sermons, more speeches, more study, and more 
 scholarship are lavished upon the name and fame of 
 Jesus than upon any other topic that you can suggest. 
 
 How do you account for it? 
 
 To go back to the beginning of my sermon : — 
 1840 years ago, long before these things had come to 
 pass, a restless zealot, Paul by name, wrote to a hand- 
 ful of obscure religionists, that the same mind ought 
 to be in them that was in Christ Jesus, 
 
 Who was in form God ; equal with God : 
 
 But he emptied himself and was found a man : 
 
 He went down further and became a servant : 
 
 He died on the cross: 
 Wherefore, he adds, God hath highly exalted him, and 
 given him a name that is above every name. 
 
 What a prophecy! You are witnesses to its ful- 
 fillment. God hath cared for the reputation of Jesus 
 his Christ. God, in whose hands are the hearts of 
 men, hath by his spirit taught and led men of all 
 degrees to believe. 
 
 Say not in thy timid spirit, oh, trembling church- 
 166 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY 
 
 member, that we have fallen on evil times of scepti- 
 cism ! Churches are deserted and strong men make 
 light of religion ! Jesus the Christ of God does not 
 lose or win his empire according to the many or few 
 who fill our meeting-houses or pay pew-rents. 
 
 "Why do the heathen rage and the people im- 
 agine a vain thing? Behold I, even I, have set my 
 king in Zion. Hear the decree: I will give you the 
 nations for an inheritance and the uttermost parts of 
 the world for a possession." 
 
 I speak to you, I said, of what seems to me the 
 greatest marvel, the most stupendous miracle that the 
 world ever saw, the preserved name and fame of Jesus 
 Christ. It has outlived the assaults of enemies, it sur- 
 vives the fond and feeble apologies of friends. The 
 eternal God has watched over the reputation of his be- 
 loved son. Paul said he would. We see that he has. 
 
 Do not, I pray you, slip off into the shallowness of 
 comparative religions, and take up the cant of the 
 learned patrons of all religions. Do not fall to talking 
 about Sakya Muni, Socrates, Confucius, Zoroaster, 
 Moses, and Jesus, as religious geniuses to whom the 
 world is indebted. Remember that for more than fifty 
 years Buddha lived and taught, Jesus but three. 
 Buddha left a small army of trained disciples and mis- 
 sionaries. There is nothing marvelous about the rise 
 and spread of his doctrines, which are indeed in many 
 particulars so exalted and like the teachings of Jesus 
 that the Church of Rome has inadvertently made a 
 saint of him. But there is no rally round his person, 
 
 167 
 
NOTABLE SERMONS 
 
 no pretence made by any of his millions that they 
 receive daily life by gift from him. 
 
 And Socrates! Why, the world of critics divide in 
 opinion whether Socrates be not after all a mere 
 dummy through whom Plato speaks, a lay-figure used 
 by Plato to display his refined and far-reaching 
 philosophy. 
 
 And Mohammed ! I detect nothing marvelous in 
 the rise and spread of Mohammedanism. The sword 
 in the hands of zealots will make converts by tlie 
 million. 
 
 More than all I see that these great world religions 
 wax old and dry, and nothing grows from their roots. 
 But the faith of Jesus Christ seems somehow like a 
 root-sprout out of dry ground. 
 
 Yes, yes, churches grow, organize, extend, get rich, 
 respectable, and all that. But up rises anywhere a 
 man of sincerity and tells the story of Jesus, and in 
 every city believers are multiplied. And this zealous 
 and successful evangelist is wisest and most success- 
 ful because he has nothing to say about church, but 
 with singleness of mind preaches the old, old story. 
 
 Yet of all the incredible stories ever told by man to 
 man, of all the myths and traditions ever handed 
 down from the venerable past, none is in its terms 
 more incredible than this same story which the 
 mightiest as well as the feeblest of men have believed 
 with rapture, unto a life of righteousness and hope, 
 and an exultant dying. Not one great witness, as the 
 world reckons greatness could or did testify, not a 
 
 168 
 
THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF HISTORY 
 
 priest, not a governor, not a line of writing. All, all 
 has been swept into oblivion, save only the hero and 
 his fame, this God and his worship. 
 
 Like the majesty of the mountain that the sailor 
 sees from afar, its broad foundations asking no leave 
 to be, its uplift blending with the clouds and sharing 
 with them the transfiguring glories of morning and 
 evening: so the name and fame and fact of Jesus the 
 Christ is broadly based upon twenty centuries. It 
 asks no leave to be. And from far away, the sailor 
 on life's ocean, tired of tossing and weary of laborious 
 computations and watchings, when he catches the 
 vision of Jesus the Christ, lifted up to draw all men 
 unto him, knows then his place and his destiny: "I 
 believe on Jesus Christ. There where he is, is my 
 fatherland, there my home." God was in Christ, 
 reconciling the world. 
 
 Look! Look! Look! Learn of him. Let his 
 mind be in you, your feet in his foot-prints. Deny 
 yourself. Take up your daily cross, and follow him. 
 Say in your soul: I believe on Jesus Christ, Son of 
 God and Savior of Man, and receive the Holy Ghost 
 unto life. 
 
 169 
 
The following sermons have been asked for, but could not be 
 printed in this volume: 
 
 The Valley of Baca. 
 
 Our Value to God. 
 
 What is the New Testament? 
 
 David. 
 
 Faith. 
 
 Death. 
 
 If a man die, shall he live again ? 
 
 It doth not yet appear what we shall be. 
 
 The Resurrection. 
 
 God will have all men to be saved. 
 
 Thanksgiving. 
 
 I have fought a good fight. 
 
 The fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man. 
 
 Dr. Wales had in his possession, with a view to publication, a 
 collection of prayers by Mr. Beecher. It may be that in another 
 year, if there be a sufficient desire for it, a selection from the above- 
 named sermons and these prayers will be embodied in another vol- 
 ume, uniform with this. Dr. Booth will contribute a chapter on "An 
 unknown side of Mr. Beecher," showing the unique work Mr. 
 Beecher did for a class of boys and what he has meant to them in 
 their lives. There will be some illustrations selected from the follow- 
 ing subjects : Mr. Beecher at his study desk ; the Beecher family ; 
 Mr. Beecher at seventeen; Mr. Beecher at seventy ; the choir in the 
 old Park Church : Park Church today. 
 
 Some of the sermons mentioned above are missing. If any per- 
 sons have copies of them, will they kindly inform Miss Frances 
 Farrar, Beecher Cottage, East Hill, Elmira, N. Y.? Miss Farrar 
 would also be glad to hear whether another volume would meet the 
 hearty interest and support that have been the underpinning of the 
 present one. The two volumes, together with "In Time with the 
 Stars," and "Our Seven Churches," already published, would give 
 quite a complete rendering of Mr. Beecher 's message.