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.
We need not say that his power as a public teacher is due, in a great
degree, to his fertility in illustrative similes. Three or four
volumes, chiefly filled with these, as they have been caught from his
lips, are before the public, and are admired on both continents. Many
of them are most strikingly happy, and flood his subject with light.
The smiles that break out upon the sea of upturned faces, and the
laughter that whispers round the assembly, are often due as much to
the aptness as to the humor of the illustration: the mind receives an
agreeable shock of surprise at finding a resemblance where only the
widest dissimilarity had before been perceived.
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