has shown the process by which truth is advanced.  Old errors, he says, do not die because they are refuted, but fade out because they are neglected.  One hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors were perplexed, and even distressed, by something they called the doctrine of Original Sin.  No one now concerns himself either to refute or assert the doctrine; few people know what it is; we all simply let it alone, and it fades out.  John Wesley not merely believed in witchcraft, but maintained that a belief in witchcraft was essential to salvation.  All the world, except here and there an enlightened and fearless person, believed in witchcraft as late as the year 1750.  That belief has not perished because its folly was demonstrated, but because the average human mind grew past it, and let it alone until it faded out in the distance.  Or we might compare the great body of beliefs to a banquet, in which every one takes what he likes best; and the master of the feast, observing what is most in demand, keeps an abundant supply of such viands, but gradually withdraws those which are neglected.  Mr. Beecher has helped himself to such beliefs as are congenial to him, and shows an exquisite tact in passing by those which interest him not, and which have lost regenerating power.  There are minds which cannot be content with anything like vagueness or inconsistency in their opinions.  They must know to a certainty whether the sun and moon stood still or not.  His is not a mind of that cast; he can “hover on the confines of truth,” and leave the less inviting parts of the landscape veiled in mist unexplored.  Indeed, the great aim of his preaching is to show the insignificance of opinion compared with right feeling and noble living, and he prepares the way for the time when every conceivable latitude of mere opinion shall be allowed and encouraged.

One remarkable thing about his preaching is, that he has not, like so many men of liberal tendencies, fallen into milk-and-waterism.  He often gives a foretaste of the terrific power which preachers will wield when they draw inspiration from science and life.  Without ever frightening people with horrid pictures of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time.  How needless to draw upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences of violating natural law!  Suppose a preacher should give a plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature exacts for the crime, so common among church-going ladies and others, of murdering their unborn offspring!  It would appall the Devil.  Scarcely less terrible are the consequences of the most common vices and meannesses when they get the mastery.  Mr. Beecher has frequently shown, by powerful delineations of this kind, how large a part legitimate terror must ever play in the services of a true church, when the terrors of superstition have wholly faded out.  It cannot be said of his preaching, that he preaches “Christianity with the bones taken out.”  He does not give “twenty minutes of tepid exhortation,” nor amuse his auditors with elegant and melodious essays upon virtue.