Theodore Parker.—In his day, Theodore Parker (1810–1860) was considered the most daring of rationalists, and so “advanced,” as we now call it, in his beliefs or disbeliefs as to be outside the pale of Christianity. Present-day rationalists find him a congenial spirit. He was a man of undoubted genius, caustic, flashing, vehement, incessant in labour, dying early from sheer exhaustion. His collected works in fourteen volumes (edited by Cobbe) reveal the nature of his industry. He was unweariedly accurate in detail, being determined to leave no pebble unturned in his search for truth. His sermon on “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity” (1841) and “A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion” (1842) gave evidence of his departure from the accepted form of Unitarianism. In 1845 he openly broke away, regarding the Church as an unnecessary organisation. In general, his criticism was destructive, and his attention to detail not balanced by powers of synthesis. His own convictions like iron and brooking no denial, he disregarded the tenderest feelings of other men, and in a mistaken sense of duty would trample underfoot those things which his neighbour might hold most sacred. His intellect flourished at the expense of his imagination, and his want of perspective resolves itself into a defect of taste, all the more injurious through the violence of his affections. This man, most cordially hated and feared by those whom he opposed, most ardently loved by his friends, would shed tears like a child when he met with a trivial act of kindness.
The Beechers.—Lyman Beecher (1775–1863) represents the other extreme, of traditional orthodoxy, and the reaction against the trend of Unitarianism. He was a stern and virile personality, rigorous in habit, and in his expectation of righteousness in others, withal friendly and benign. His son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), according to the testimony of the daughter and sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, as a child was deficient in verbal memory—a thing which he never outgrew,—diffident, sensitive, thick and indistinct in his speech. In the midst of a talented family that was much given to theological argument, his powers were gradually developed. At Laurenceburg, Ohio, his first charge, he was sexton as well as preacher. He came before the public through his defence of the negro in The Cincinnati Journal. At Indianapolis his reputation grew, for his independent spirit and direct, informal style proved very attractive; and when he had been called to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the people crowded over from New York to hear him. Beecher studied every-day life in the streets and shops of the metropolis; his discourses on popular topics, good government and the like, unconventionally treated, gave his audiences what they liked. His sympathies were non-sectarian, he had his finger on the pulse of every gathering, his well of common sense was overflowing, and he was fearless to the point of audacity, carrying the art of the mimic into the very pulpit. His preaching, in fact, sometimes bordered upon dangerous self-assertion. He rose to eminence, as Bacon might say, by a combination of good with questionable arts. But the mixture was mainly good. In Beecher’s discussion of slavery, Calhoun, who was not easily deceived, saw that the preacher knew how to get to the bottom of his subject. His good-humour, and pluck, and immense patriotism before hostile crowds in England (1863) greatly helped to deter that nation from recognising the Southern Confederacy.
Theorists on Pulpit Eloquence.—Beecher’s “Yale Lectures on Preaching” disclose how large an element there was in his oratory of conscious adaptation of means to ends. They belong to an extensive and interesting branch of American literature, to which Phillips Brooks, J. A. Broadus, E. G. Robinson, R. S. Storrs, J. W. Alexander, and many others have made contributions. James Waddell Alexander (1804–1859), son of Archibald Alexander of Princeton Seminary, left his “Thoughts on Preaching” to be published in 1864. “The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons,” by John Albert Broadus (1827–1895), President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, represents the theory of a trainer of preachers, himself a winning orator with a consciously developed instinct: “Everybody who can speak effectively knows that the power of speaking depends very largely upon the way it is heard, upon the sympathy one succeeds in gaining from those he addresses.” To insure sympathy—his watchword,—Broadus preached without manuscript. In general, as here, his syntax is not finely moulded. With these might be mentioned another clergyman, Chauncey Allen Goodrich (1790–1860), for forty-three years professor at Yale, whose “Select British Eloquence” set a standard of illuminating scholarship.
Richard Salter Storrs.—Dr. Storrs (1821–1900), descended from a line of clergymen, was from 1846 on in high repute as a preacher in the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn. He was also in demand as a lecturer, and contributed freely to the Bibliotheca Sacra and other periodicals. His “Conditions of Success in Preaching without Notes” partly tells the secret of his own eminence; his rich voice, distinct utterance, and stately bearing further explain it. In youth a student of the law, he caught something of his eloquence from Rufus Choate. But the moral elevation of character in Storrs was the ultimate support of all his art.
T. De Witt Talmage.—In Brooklyn, where he preached from 1869 to 1894, Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) had a “Tabernacle,” as it was called, to which everyone was welcome, and which commonly was filled by an audience of four thousand. In 1894 he removed to New York. For twenty-nine years the sermons of Talmage were published every week, latterly in countless journals; they have had an immense circulation, not alone in his own country, being translated into many foreign, even Asiatic languages. It is possible that no other preacher in the world has during life enjoyed so extensive and regular a following. His physical activity was unbounded; his utterance clear, though his voice was not pleasing, and his message simple, violent, and undiscriminatingly conservative. In espousing what he took to be orthodox, he was hasty and inaccurate; he was utterly careless, too, what means he used to work upon his hearers. To the cultured his writings have little worth. His value to the state and the great world is not so easily decided.
Phillips Brooks.—Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), after Henry Ward Beecher the greatest pulpit orator in America since the Civil War, was a native of Boston, nurtured in the best traditions of New England. A brilliant and popular undergraduate at Harvard, he strangely enough failed in his subsequent brief experience in teaching. He then studied for the ministry, at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. As a young rector in Philadelphia, he showed his power and fearlessness in his patriotic sermons during the Rebellion. “In their relation to the politics of the land,” he contended, “the great vice of our people ... is cowardice.” He himself dared openly to lay the crime of Lincoln’s martyrdom, not alone upon the assassin, but upon the supporters of slavery in the South. From Philadelphia, he went to Trinity Church, Boston, in 1869. Two years prior to his death he was made Bishop of Massachusetts. “The Yale Lectures on Preaching,” delivered in 1877, “constitute,” says Allen, his best interpreter, “the autobiography of Phillips Brooks.... It is a book which owes nothing to predecessors in the same field.... He confines himself to preaching as he had experienced its workings, or studied its method, or observed its power.... The book captivates the reader, simply for this reason alone,—the transparency of the soul of its writer, between whom and the reader there intervenes no barrier.” This was the quality also of his sermons.
He stands in the pulpit [reported an observer] smooth-faced, full-voiced, as self-reliant a man as ever occupied such a station. He indulges in few gestures; he has no mannerisms. If, under any circumstances, he might realise the popular conception of an orator, he does not betray the possibilities here. He provokes no attention to predominant spirituality by inferior vitality. There is a splendid harmony of strength, bodily and mental, which prevents the measurement of either. It is only when he is out of his desk and level with his audience that you realise his stature. In the lecture-room or crowded street, he stands like Saul among the people. The well-balanced head and strong shoulders draw your eyes at once. He dresses well, lives well, and holds his own decidedly in social circles.... His power is not limited to his church ministrations, nor is he making himself known by some brilliant special development. It is the whole man—mentally, morally, and spiritually, leader, helper, friend—which is attaining such pre-eminence. But when he preaches, you are carried away to the need of men and of your own shortcomings, and have no present consciousness of the personality of the speaker. A transparent medium is the purest. You do not think of Phillips Brooks till Phillips Brooks gets through with his subject.
Brooks was a wide reader and a careful and original student of church history and theological discussion; he was not the profound and searching scholar that Renan vainly sought in America. He had a roomy mind, a teeming imagination, and a heart full of generosity, energy, and optimism. He lived by admiration, hope, and love. His ideas, which were large and luminous, although they did not have the final tempering that comes from passage through the slow fire of a rigorous critical method, became vital from sharing in his warmth and purity of sentiment.
In regard to his intellectual habits and methods [remarks Allen] one thing is clear, that Phillips Brooks worked through the poetic imagination rather than by the process of dialectics, although he could show great dialectic subtlety when occasion demanded. When we conjoin this power of the poetic imagination and his other gifts, the “unparalleled combination of intensity of feeling with comprehensiveness of view and balance of judgment,” we can understand how he could quickly penetrate to the heart of intellectual systems, how a hint to his mind was like a volume to others, and he preferred to work out the hint in his own way.