pith, or Spurgeon in evangelical fervor.  I used to tell Mr. Beecher that even after making full allowance for the novelty of a first hearing, I never heard him surpass that Wednesday evening lecture.  He was plucking the first ripe grapes of his affluent vintage; his “pomegranates were in full flower, and the spikenard sent forth its fragrance.”  The very language of that savory sermon lingers in my memory yet.

During my ministry in New York—­from 1853 to 1860—­I became intimate with Mr. Beecher and spoke beside him on many a platform and heard him in some of his most splendid efforts.  He was a fascinating companion, with the rollicking freedom of a schoolboy.  I never shall forget an immense meeting—­in behalf of a liquor prohibition movement—­held in Triplet Hall.  Mr. Beecher was at his best.  In the midst of his speech, he suddenly discharged a bombshell against negro slavery which dynamited the audience and provoked a thunder of applause.  For pure eloquence it was the finest outburst I ever heard from his lips.  Like Patrick Henry, Clay, Guthrie, Spurgeon and other great masters of assemblies, he was gifted with a richly melodious voice—­which was especially effective on the low and tender keys.  This gave him great power in the pathetic portions of his discourses.  Of his superabounding humor I need not speak.  It bubbled out so naturally and spontaneously that he found it difficult to restrain it even on the most grave occasions.  Sometimes he sinned against good taste, and I once heard his sister Catherine say that “Henry rarely delivered a speech or a sermon which did not contain something that grated on her ear.”  His most frequent offenses were in the direction of flippant handling of sacred themes and Scripture language.  This he inherited from his illustrious father.

Mr. Beecher is generally regarded as an extemporaneous preacher.  This is a mistake.  He prepared most of his discourses carefully, and full one-half of many of them were written out.  Among these written passages he interjected bursts of impromptu thoughts; and these were generally the most effective passages in the sermon.  While he repeated himself often—­especially on his favorite topic of God’s love—­yet it was always in fresh language and with new illustrations.  Abraham Lincoln said to me, “The most marvelous thing about Mr. Beecher is his inexhaustible fertility.”

During the Civil War he was at the acme of his power.  He was then the peerless orator of Christendom.  It was his intention (as he once told me) to resign his pastorate at the age of sixty and to devote the remainder of his life to a ministry at large.  But the tempest of troubles which struck him about that time forbade his cherished design, and he continued at his post until the touch of death silenced the magic tongue.  Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I sat by him on the crowning evening of his career, at his “silver anniversary,” in 1873.  As to his later utterances in theology, and on some questions of ethics, I dissented from my old friend conscientiously, and I expressed to him my dissent very candidly,—­as becometh brethren.  I am convinced that if there were more fraternal frankness between the living, there would be less hypocrisy over the departed.