of retribution? This intense affirmation of safety adds much to the evidences of danger.

And what importance are we to attach to such expressions as the following, from one claiming to be an orthodox author? (Rev. C. F. Hudson.) He calls the doctrine of everlasting punishment "the most appalling of all doctrines," and says it "is still a just occasion of offence, notwithstanding the modifications that have been put upon it."""The doctrine retains all its substantial difficulties, and remains infinitely burdensome, notwithstanding all the attempted mitigations of it." "For thinking men, who look at the logical bearings of the doctrine, the full temptation remains to say: If this be the religion of the Bible, the alleged truth of Revelation, let my soul be with the God of Reason and Nature." Yet he is encouraged by the belief that "the doctrine is almost wholly withdrawn from practical use. Even in our last general revival it was but slightly apparent. It is expected only in the theological treatise, or lecture, or sermon. But thus retained, it retains its whole power of mischief with thinking minds." And he proposes this relief. "Let the distinction between that which is fundamental and that which is not, be plainly made and carefully guarded. On all points not clearly essential, where truthloving men may honestly differ, let each one be fully persuaded in his own mind. But from the symbol in which, as a psalm of confession, all Christian voices should freely unite, let the burdensome test be removed." It is not too early to have suspicions, and examine the positive proofs of departures from the ancient faith. We remember the cry for peace, and for the culture of brotherly love, and the earnest defence of "practical preaching," when, a half century ago, so many of the churches of Massachusetts went out from us. We confess to the charge. We are "heresy-hunting."

ARTICLE III.

THE THEOLOGY OF PLYMOUTH PULPIT.

THAT Henry Ward Beecher is writing his own name for the next generation to read, there is no one, we presume, who will be disposed to doubt. How they will read, with an increased or a diminished admiration, in characters luminous and indelible, or fading already into a shimmering, it is full early to prophesy. Time makes strange work with the reputation of a people's idols and benefactors, they are not always identical,

reversing popular verdicts, lifting up the humble and self-forgetful, and dissolving the dreams of the proud, recording its irreversible decree with the coolness of a Rhadamanthus. It is a curious piece of history, and furnishes a study in human nature, the reputation of a living man, and the same man's reputation when he has passed away. In how many cases it is an appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober, all thinking persons must have observed.

The London Times keeps on hand, it is said, a collection of brilliant obituaries of eminent living men, far advanced in years, that it may astonish the world by exhibiting a finished fulllength portraiture of a great statesman or philosopher in the selfsame sheet which contains the announcement of his departure. Some twelve years ago, all London was startled one foggy morning to find in the leading journal a most elaborate and eloquent sketch of the late Henry Lord Brougham, with a masterly critique upon his genius and character, thus affording to his lordship, who was as well as could be expected for a man of his years and service, the singular gratification of reading what the Thunderer had long been intending to say of him after he was dead!

The thing was well enough, no doubt, and might have kept any reasonable number of years, and answered to admiration for a post-mortem tribute so speedily ensuing; but the great future has a verdict for every man of renown, which it surrenders at no prophet's bidding. And time is terribly true in this business. When Oliver Cromwell was dead, the Stuart pub

lished his obituary by setting up his head above Westminster Hall, and thought he had written it "with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever," "Traitor and regicide, infamous and execrated to everlasting ages!" But two centuries pass away, and Oliver Cromwell looms up a prince among kings and emperors. Two centuries is the measure of six generations; yet the time should not be considered long for the man who carried in his bosom a revolution which disfranchised king and cavalier, and went thundering through the darkness of ages like the chariot of God. It took a long day for the primeval sun to penetrate the dense mists which his own fires had raised. But the business is much more speedily adjusted for ordinary mortals. Twenty-five years ago Daniel O'Connell stood in the front rank of popular British orators. His eloquence was rare, and its finest strains were poured forth on behalf of the poor and the oppressed, while he thundered, like Jupiter, against selfishness, and injustice, and avarice, and falsehood: weeping, as he had been an angel of pity, on the platform of Exeter Hall, when he spoke of the miseries of the West Indian slaves, and making every ragged mother in Ireland believe that he loved her starving child as if he had been its father. But the grave closed over O'Connell; and forthwith, as if waking from a dream, the very community he had entranced proclaimed him jesuit, demagogue, comedian; cold, grasping agitator, whose patriotism and philanthropy were the most miserable of shams.

We are not going to prophesy, neither shall we attempt any analysis of Henry Ward Beecher's peculiar genius as an orator. Our task, more simple, will be, to weigh his claim to the confidence he is so widely challenging, as a theological light to the Churches.

A highly respectable secular journal, whose Saturday circulation is greatly increased by the publication of Mr. Beecher's sermons, asserts that he is a great political leader rather than a theologian. We have it on his own authority, that he chooses to be put in no such category, and to be judged by no such standard. We publish from his own lips, that he belongs to the selfsame class with John, and Peter, and Timothy, and Paul; that his commission and instructions are received from the same Master, and that he proposes to himself the same un

earthly aims; men whose spirit is meekness, and their outer garment humility; the weapons of whose warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God; whose shield is faith, their helmet salvation, and their sword the Word of God; a very different class of men, as all the world knows, from those who have rejoiced in the turbulent atmosphere of politics, and assayed to regulate the affairs of Herod and Cæsar. We remember to have listened to Mr. Beecher, in one of his most brilliant and effective orations, when he asserted, with emphasis, that his calling was that of a preacher of Christ's Gospel, and was at pains to separate that calling from every other, and to claim for it a high preeminence above them all. In a burst of flaming eloquence, he declared that he could not be persuaded to come down from that transcendent exaltation to the poor level of a king, nor yet to the throne, so far higher, of a Michel Angelo. Mr. Beecher, moreover, has chosen his position as an orthodox preacher of the Gospel. It is no narrow procrustean fellowship whose badge he has thus deliberately assumed. There is ample room for the evolutions of the largest genius where Howe, and Owen, and Baxter, and Jonathan Edwards walked at liberty. Is it unreasonable to expect that, for substance of doctrine, in belief and in preaching, Mr. Beecher should be orthodox, if not precisely in the same mode in which any other man has ever been orthodox, at least in some appreciable and honest sense, which shall preclude mistake on the part of the faithful, and be an effectual bar to any plea of sympathy and fellowship on the part of those by whom all acknowledged standards of orthodoxy have always been rejected?

This is the point which we are chiefly concerned to settle in the present inquiry. The means are at hand in profuse abundance. We shall not need to seek for Mr. Beecher's theological creed in his Fraternity-lectures, nor yet in those multifarious orations, wherein philanthropy and ethics struggle feebly with politics for the mastery. We will go to Plymouth Church, and listen to his Sabbath ministrations, where, if ever, we shall find him, with an earnest, loving heart, preaching Christ's Gospel for the salvation of his people's souls; thus magnifying that calling which he has affirmed to be more glorious than the throne of a king, or the preeminence of a Michel Angelo. We have

been there often, at intervals not very brief, in time past; and we say, deliberately, that in no single instance have we heard. that on which a favorable judgment of Mr. Beecher's orthodoxy could be fairly predicated. We have listened to a very elaborate and brilliant discourse from a text full and glowing with Gospel truth, and, from beginning to end, there was no word which seemed adapted or intended to disturb a sinner on account of his sins, or to show to a sinner who was disturbed, the way of salvation by Jesus Christ. We remember on one occasion, a Sabbath evening, a vast concourse, including a multitude of the young, being present, to have had awakened by the reading of the text, in spite of previous disappointments, the expectation of the unfolding of the great doctrine of Christ as the Redeemer of sinful and perishing men. Everything seemed to demand it, the day, the place, the audience, many of them evidently not especially serious or reverent, and above all the text. How can Mr. Beecher help preaching the Gospel now, we said, and that with a directness and power, which will make this great congregation of sinners against God tremble. Yet the most discriminating thing in all the sermon was the remark, bald and brief, that in some way, all must admit, we are dependent on Christ for salvation. Still we were not convinced, did not wish to be. We held our judgment in suspense. Friends inexpressibly dear to us are among Mr. Beecher's constant hearers and warm admirers; and we had accompanied them to Plymouth Church, not as "heresy-hunters," but with an earnest desire to hear the truth of the Gospel from his lips, that we might pray and hope for their conversion through his instrumentality. We were most willing to believe that the sermons we heard were accidental and exceptional, suggested by some passing incident of slavery, or Hungarian struggle for liberty, or management at the New York Tract House. We gave a hard tug at the law of chances, and stretched it to the conclusion; drew tightly about the trembling loins of our doubt the girdle of charity, and said, resolutely, "Mr. Beecher does. assuredly preach the true and saving Gospel to this immense concourse of living men." Now and then, however, and not infrequently, as a discourse from Plymouth Pulpit has fallen under our notice, in the columns of the daily or weekly newspaper,