"King was the best story teller of his time," thought Dr. Bellows. "Gifted with an exquisite, a delicious sense of the ludicrous, and given to bursts of uncontrollable merriment, happy as childhood and as innocent," this is the verdict of one of his earliest biographers,—E. P. Whipple. That sunny mirth and infectious laughter was no mean element of his power over the people, we can readily believe.
Another explanation of his far reaching influence both in the pulpit and on the platform, is found in the rare skill with which he made the discoveries of science, and the beauties of nature, serve his need as a teacher of morals and religion. And here, again, he was helped by the spirit of his age. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859, a kind of crown and culmination of a half century of brilliant progress in science. Starr King but shared the temper of his time as he turned with delight to the writings of the masters and reveled in the new universe there revealed. Modern science, which troubled the faith of many, only deepened and strengthened his own, as he idealized and spiritualized each new wonder of earth and heaven. The comet of July, 1861, gave noble opportunity to enforce in his pulpit the religious lessons of that mother of all the sciences, Astronomy. "I am glad," he began, "at every new temptation to consider in the pulpit and the Church the wonders and laws of modern astronomy."
"Does it ever occur to you, brethren, how we waste truth? Have you ever felt what a sad thing it is that so little of the vast accumulation of inspiring knowledge should reach our deepest, our religious sentiments, to kindle and feed them? The most certain knowledge which men now hold is that which is gathered from the sky. Astronomy, dealing with objects thousands of millions of miles away, and with forces that rule through limitless space, is the most symmetrical and firm of all the structures of science which have been reared by the human mind. Immeasurably more than David could have known, the heavens, as Herschel reads them, declare the glory of God. Yet how seldom do we think of the splendors and harmonies which a modern book of astronomy unveils as part of God's appeal to our wonder; how seldom does the solemn light from the uppermost regions of immensity, the light of nebulae which science has broken up into heaps of suns, converge upon a human soul with power enough to stimulate devout awe and make the heart bend before the Creator of the universe."
A few days at Lake Tahoe, when not a hundred white men had visited its shores, inspired a sermon long remembered by those who heard it, and today, after numerous nature-sermons by the world's most gifted preachers, this discourse remains an almost perfect example of what such a sermon should be. The following single excerpt must suffice to suggest its beauty:
"I must speak of another lesson, connected with religion, that was suggested to me on the borders of Lake Tahoe. It is bordered by groves of noble pines. Two of the days which I was permitted to enjoy there were Sundays. On one of them I passed several hours of the afternoon in listening, alone, to the murmur of the pines, while the waves were gently beating the shore with their restlessness. If the beauty and purity of the lake were in harmony with the deepest religion of the Bible, certainly the voice of the pines was also in chord with it.
"The oracles of Greece are connected with the oak. And the lightness, the gaiety, the wit, the suppleness, of the Greek mind find in the voice of the oak their fit representatives; for the oak, though so stubborn and sinewy in its substances, is cheery and gay in its tone when the wind strikes it. But the evergreen trees, though so much softer in their stock, are far deeper and more serious in their music; and the evergreen is the Hebrew tree. The Cedar of Lebanon is the tree most prominent when we think of Palestine and the clothing of its hills. As I lay and listened to the deep, serious, yet soft and welcome sound of those pines by the lake shore, I thought of the inspiration of old which had wakened such lasting and wonderful music from the great souls of Israel. When we want knowledge or the quickening of intellect, we enter the groves of Greece; when we would find quickening, when we would feel the deeps of the soul appealed to, we enter the deeper and more sombre woods of Palestine. The voice of the pine helps us to interpret the Hebrew genius. Its range of expression is not so great as that of the oak or the elm or the willow or the beech, but how much richer it is and more welcome in its monotony! How much more profoundly our souls echo it! How much more deeply does it seem to be in harmony with the spirit of the air! What grandeur, what tenderness, what pathos, what heart-searchingness in the swells and cadences of its 'Andante Maestoso,' when the wind wrestles with it and brings out all its soul."
To the graces and gifts we have mentioned it is but necessary to add that King's gospel of religion was in itself a veritable glad tidings to the people. Not a mere deliverance of doubt, or morality veneered with icy culture, but faith clear, strong and radiantly beautiful. His thought of God, of Man, of Immortality, was full of comfort and inspiration. "God is the infinite Christ," he was wont to say. "Jesus revealed under human limitations the mercy and love of the Father."
King rivalled Theodore Parker in the strength and tenderness of his faith that "man is the child of God." Saint and sinner, master and slave, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, all are children of the Infinite God,—born of His love ere the world was, certain of His love when the world shall have passed away. He felt that if this is not true, there is not enough left of religion to so much as interest an earnest soul. Religion is everything,—the sun in the heavens,—or it is a star too distant, faint and cold, to cast upon our path a single ray of light.
And the unseen world! How very real it was to this man of faith and prayer. The immortal life is the life. These earthly years but lead us thither. Such was his faith. In excess of world-wisdom we say, "Eternity is here and now." Well and good. But if we lose for a kind of technicality the dear old trust in a higher and nobler life beyond the swift-coming night of death, what have we gained? Said our beloved preacher, our "Saint of the Pacific Coast," as he lay dying, "I see a great future before me." Without that vision he would not have been Starr King.