it out.  In other churches where congregational singing is attempted, there are usually a number of languid Christians who remain seated, and a large number of others who remain silent; but here there is a strange unanimity about the performance.  A sailor might as well try not to join in the chorus of a forecastle song as a member of this joyous host not to sing.  When the last preliminary singing is concluded, the audience is in an excellent condition to sit and listen, their whole corporeal system having been pleasantly exercised.

The sermon which follows is new wine in an old bottle.  Up to the moment when the text has been announced and briefly explained, the service has all been conducted upon the ancient model, and chiefly in the ancient phraseology; but from the moment when Mr. Beecher swings free from the moorings of his text, and gets fairly under way, his sermon is modern.  No matter how fervently he may have been praying supernaturalism, he preaches pure cause and effect.  His text may savor of old Palestine; but his sermon is inspired by New York and Brooklyn; and nearly all that he says, when he is most himself, finds an approving response in the mind of every well-disposed person, whether orthodox or heterodox in his creed.

What is religion?  That, of course, is the great question.  Mr. Beecher says:  Religion is the slow, laborious, self-conducted EDUCATION of the whole man, from grossness to refinement, from sickliness to health, from ignorance to knowledge, from selfishness to justice, from justice to nobleness, from cowardice to valor.  In treating this topic, whatever he may pray or read or assent to, he preaches cause and effect, and nothing else.  Regeneration he does not represent to be some mysterious, miraculous influence exerted upon a man from without, but the man’s own act, wholly and always, and in every stage of its progress.  His general way of discoursing upon this subject would satisfy the most rationalized mind; and yet it does not appear to offend the most orthodox.

This apparent contradiction between the spirit of his preaching and the facts of his position is a severe puzzle to some of our thorough-going friends.  They ask, How can a man demonstrate that the fall of rain is so governed by unchanging laws that the shower of yesterday dates back in its causes to the origin of things, and, having proved this to the comprehension of every soul present, finish by praying for an immediate outpouring upon the thirsty fields?  We confess that, to our modern way of thinking, there is a contradiction here, but there is none at all to an heir of the Puritans.  We reply to our impatient young friends, that Henry Ward Beecher at once represents and assists the American Christian of the present time, just because of this seeming contradiction.  He is a bridge over which we are passing from the creed-enslaved past to the perfect freedom of the future.  Mr. Lecky, in his ‘History of the Spirit of Rationalism,’