There is nothing of the ecclesiastical drawing-room in the arrangements of this edifice. It is a very plain brick building, in a narrow street of small, pleasant houses, and the interior is only striking from its extent and convenience. The simple, old-fashioned design of the builder was to provide seats for as many people as the space would hold; and in executing this design, he constructed one of the finest interiors in the country, since the most pleasing and inspiriting spectacle that human eyes ever behold in this world is such an assembly as fills this church. The audience is grandly displayed in those wide, rounded galleries, surging up high against the white walls, and scooped out deep in the slanting floor, leaving the carpeted platform the vortex of an arrested whirlpool. Often it happens that two or three little children get lodged upon the edge of the platform, and sit there on the carpet among the flowers during the service, giving to the picture a singularly pleasing relief, as though they and the bouquets had been arranged by the same skilful hand, and for the same purpose. And it seems quite natural and proper that children should form part of so bright and joyous an occasion. Behind the platform rises to the ceiling the huge organ, of dark wood and silvered pipes, with fans of trumpets pointing heavenward from the top. This enormous toy occupies much space that could be better filled, and is only less superfluous than the bell; but we must pardon and indulge a foible. We could never see that Mr. Forrest walked any better for having such thick legs; yet they have their admirers. Blind old Handel played on an instrument very different from this, but the sexton had to eat a cold Sunday dinner; for not a Christian would stir as long as the old man touched the keys after service. But not old Handel nor older Gabriel could make such music as swells and roars from three thousand human voices,—-the regular choir of Plymouth Church. It is a decisive proof of the excellence and heartiness of this choir, that the great organ has not lessened its effectiveness.
It is not clear to the distant spectator by what aperture Mr. Beecher enters the church. He is suddenly discovered to be present, seated in his place on the platform,—an under-sized gentleman in a black stock. His hair combed behind his ears, and worn a little longer than usual, imparts to his appearance something of the Puritan, and calls to mind his father, the champion of orthodoxy in heretical Boston. In conducting the opening exercises, and, indeed, on all occasions of ceremony, Mr. Beecher shows himself an artist,—both his language and his demeanor being marked by the most refined decorum. An elegant, finished simplicity characterizes all he does and says: not a word too much, nor a word misused, nor a word waited for, nor an unharmonious movement, mars the satisfaction of the auditor. The habit of living for thirty years in the view of a multitude, together with a natural sense of the becoming, and a quick sympathy with men and circumstances, has wrought up his public demeanor to a point near perfection. A candidate for public honors could not study a better model. This is the more remarkable, because it is a purely spiritual triumph. Mr. Beecher's person is not imposing, nor his natural manner graceful. It is his complete extirpation of the desire of producing an illegitimate effect; it is his sincerity and genuineness as a human being; it is the dignity of his character, and his command of his powers,—which give him this easy mastery over every situation in which he finds himself.
Extempore prayers are not, perhaps, a proper subject for comment. The grand feature of the preliminary services of this church is the singing, which is not executed by the first talent that money can command. When the prelude upon the organ is finished, the whole congregation, almost every individual in it, as if by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse, stands up and sings. We are not aware that anything has ever been done or said to bring about this result; nor does the minister of the church set the example, for he usually remains sitting and silent It seems as if every one in the congregation was so full of something that he felt impelled to get up and sing 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,' 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.
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.
Of late years, Mr. Beecher never sends an audience away half satisfied; for he has constantly grown with the growth of his splendid opportunity. How attentive the great assembly, and how quickly responsive to the points he makes! That occasional ripple of laughter,—it is not from any want of seriousness in the speaker, in the subject, or in the congregation, nor is it a Rowland Hill eccentricity. It is simply that it has pleased Heaven to endow this genial soul with a quick perception of the likeness there is between things unlike; and, in the heat and torrent of his speech, the suddenly discovered similarity amuses while it instructs. Philosophers and purists may cavil at parts of these sermons, and, of course, they are not perfect; but who can deny that their general effect is civilizing, humanizing, elevating, and regenerating, and that this master of preaching is the true brother of all those high and bright spirits, on both sides of the ocean, who are striving to make the soul of this age fit to inhabit and nobly impel its new body?
The sermon over, a livelier song brings the service to a happy conclusion; and slowly, to the thunder of the new organ, the great assembly dissolves and oozes away.