CRITICAL OPINIONS.
BRITISH.
“They are magnificent discourses. I have often taken occasion to say that Beecher is the greatest preacher that ever appeared in the world; this judgment is most soberly considered and most deliberately pronounced; his brilliant fancy, his deep knowledge of human nature, his affluent language, and the many-sidedness of his noble mind, conspire to place him at the head of all Christian speakers.”—Rev. Dr. Parker, in The Pulpit Analyst (Article “Ad Clerum”).
“These corrected Sermons of perhaps the greatest of living preachers,—a man whose heart is as warm and catholic as his abilities are great, and whose Sermons combine fidelity to Scriptural truth, great power, glorious imagination, fervid rhetoric, and vigorous reasoning, with intense human sympathy and robust common sense.”—British Quarterly Review.
“They are without equal among the published sermons of the day. Everywhere we find ourselves in the hands of a man of high and noble impulses, of thorough fearlessness, of broad and generous sympathies, who has consecrated all his wealth of intelligence and heart to the service of preaching the Gospel.”—Literary World, London.
AMERICAN.
“We certainly find in these sermons a great deal which we can conscientiously commend, and that amply justifies the exalted position which their author holds among American preachers. They are worthy of great praise for the freshness, vigor, and earnestness of their style; for the beauty and oftentimes surprising aptness of their illustrations; for the large amount of consolatory and stimulating thought embodied in them, and for the force and skill with which religious considerations are made to bear upon the most common transactions of life.”—Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, Mass.
“In point of ability and eloquence he has scarcely a rival, while in the magnetism that arises from earnestness and deep, broad, humanity, he is absolutely unrivalled. No preacher of the present age exercises so wide and potent an influence. And he reaches a class that ordinary preachers fail to touch.”—Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mr. Beecher “by his genius, and without any direct effort, has more influence upon the ministerial profession than all the theological seminaries combined. The discourses are rich in all that makes religious literature valuable.”—Chicago Evening Journal.