King declined the call to Worcester, but harkened to one from the Hollis Street Church of Boston. He went over from Universalism to Unitarianism and still remained a Universalist—and this created quite a dust among the theologs. Little men love their denomination with a jealous love—truth is secondary—they see microscopic difference where big men behold only unity.
It was about this time that Starr King pronounced this classic: "The difference between Universalism and Unitarianism is that Universalists believe that God is too good to damn them; and the Unitarians believe that they are too good to be damned."
At the Hollis Street Church this stripling of twenty-four now found himself being compared with the foremost preachers of America. And the man grew with his work, rising to the level of events. It was at the grave of Oliver Wendell Holmes that Edward Everett Hale said, "The five men who have influenced the literary and intellectual thought of America most, believed in their own divinity no less than in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth."
The destiny of the liberal church is not to become strong and powerful, but to make all other denominations more liberal. When Chapin accused Beecher of preaching Universalist sermons, it was a home thrust, because Beecher would never have preached such sermons had not Murray, Ballou, Theodore Parker, Chapin and Starr King done so first—and Beecher supplied the goods called for.
Starr King's voice was deep, melodious and far-reaching, and it was not an acquired "bishop's voice"—it was his own. The biggest basso I ever heard was just five feet high and weighed one hundred twenty in his stockings; Brignoli, the tenor, weighed two hundred forty. Avoirdupois as a rule lessens the volume of the voice and heightens the register—you can't have both adipose and chest tone. Webster and Starr King had voices very much alike, and Webster, by the way, wasn't the big man physically that the school readers proclaim. It was his gigantic head and the royal way he carried himself that made the Liverpool stevedores say, "There goes the King of America."
There was no pomposity about Starr King. Doctor Bartol has said that when King lectured in a new town his homely, boyish face always caused a small spasm of disappointment or merriment to sweep over the audience. But when he spoke he was a transformed being, and his deep, mellow voice would hush the most inveterate whisperers.
For eleven years Starr King remained pastor of the Hollis Street Church. During the last years of his pastorate he was much in demand as a lecturer, and his voice was heard in all the principal cities as far west as Chicago.
His lecture, "Substance and Show," deserves to rank with Wendell Phillips' "The Lost Arts." In truth it is very much like Phillips' lecture. In "The Lost Arts" Phillips tells in easy conversational way of the wonderful things that once existed; and Starr King relates in the same manner the story of some of the wonderful things that are right here and all around us. It reveals the mind of the man, his manner and thought, as well as any of his productions. The great speech is an evolution, and this lecture, given many times in the Eastern States under various titles, did not touch really high-water mark until King reached California and had cut loose from manuscript and tradition. An extract seems in order:
Most persons, doubtless, if you place before them a paving-stone and a slip of paper with some writing on it, would not hesitate to say that there is as much more substance in the rock than in the paper as there is heaviness. Yet they might make a great mistake. Suppose that the slip of paper contains the sentence, "God is love"; or, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; or, "All men have moral rights by reason of heavenly parentage," then the paper represents more force and substance than the stone. Heaven and earth may pass away, but such words can never die out or become less real.