by us which the weakest Christian could be pained by, I beseech you to let me see every MS. or proof before being printed off. I, as a minister, am more conversant than you can be with religious topics and the pulse of the religious world. Besides, as you also know, my chief delight in Good Words is its power of doing good. God knows this is more precious to me than all the gold and silver on earth could be." Although this magazine may have declined somewhat in popularity and influence since his death, it has accomplished much in bringing the thoughts of many cultured minds down to the masses, and sowing broadcast the seeds of a good and wholesome literature. The fun and drollery, as well as the deep earnestness of his table-talk, could not of course be preserved. But his letters and occasional poems, which have been preserved, are a sufficient evidence of it. His brother Donald thus writes of his method of training his children: thoroughly happy, and in both these respects his efforts were rewarded with abundant success. It was quite characteristic of him that he made it a principle always to keep his word with his children, even in trifles, and to avoid the irritation of fault-finding in little things. Only on two points was he uncompromising even to sternness. The slightest appearance of selfishness or of want of truth was at once severely dealt with; but when the rebuke was given, there was an end of it, and he took pains to make the culprit feel that confidence was completely restored, for he believed that the preservation of self-respect was as important a point as any in the education of a child. These summers, spent with his family in the Highlands, were full of a glory which every year seemed only to deepen. Whether at his favourite Cuilchenna, on the Linnhe Loch with its majestic views of Glencoe, or Glengoar, or at Java Lodge in Mull, commanding one of the finest panoramas in Europe,' or at Aird's Bay, fronting the Buachaill Etive and Ben Cruachan, or at Geddes, with its hallowed associations, he entered into the joy of nature with a rapture even greater than in youth." "This participation in the amusements of his children passed naturally, as they grew older, into the higher companionship of sharing all their pursuits and studies. His method of conveying to them religious instruction was as effective as it was simple. He trained them to speak to him on religious subjects, and tell him their difficulties, and so educated them in the truest sense. Especially in later years, when his Sunday evenings were not so fully occupied with public duty, he spent hours that were as happy to them as to himself, in hearing what they had to say, while some parts of Scripture was read in common. However trivial the idea or the diffi "He was so much in sympathy with them that he seemed to grow with their growth from their earliest years. When he was worn out with study his resort was the nursery, where he would invent all sorts of games, turn chairs upside down to represent ships, rig up newspapers as mimic sails, and give the baby an imaginary voyage round the room. Or he would in the evenings lie on the sofa or floor, with all the little ones nestled about him, listening to music, or telling them the wonderful adventures of 'Little Mrs Brown' and 'Abel Feragus.' These stories went on like the 'Arabian Nights,' with new incidents invented for each fresh occasion. They were all told dramatically, and often the fun was so great that he would himself laugh as heartily as the children. But he had a higher object in view than mere amusement when composing his nursery tales; they were never with-culty of the child might seem to others, he alout an under-current of moral teaching, and never failed to impress lessons of kindness, generosity, bravery, and truth. He never left home for any length of time without bringing some little memento to each child, and to each servant as well. Carrying out this principle of companionship with his children, he would watch for their return when they had been at any holiday entertainment, and have them tell from the beginning' all they had seen and heard. When in the Highlands during summer, he entered like one of themselves into all their amusements. They remember with special delight one moonlight night, when, sciatica notwithstanding, he insisted on playing hide-andseek with them, and became so excited with the game, that although both shoes had fallen off, he continued rushing over the grass and through the bushes till they were all exhausted, his wife in vain entreating him to take care. His desire was, in short, to possess their frank confidence, and to make their memory of home ways dealt carefully with it, and tried by means of it to impress some principle which was worth remembering. When I asked him about anything I did not understand,' writes one of his daughters, my dear father would say, "That's right. On your way through life you'll come across many a stumbling-block that you will think quite impassable, but always come to your father, for he's an old traveller who can show you a path through many a difficulty." I treasure what he said to me when I spoke to him about some fault of natural temperament: "Don't be discouraged. It involves in many ways a benefit. The cure is to think more about God. Look at yourself as much as you can as you think He would look at you, and look on others in the same way." Oh that I were like him! Such trust, such love, such utter forgetfulness of self, such sympathy and charity and energy! Surely these things are born with people, and not acquirements. Yet he once said to me, "You have no right to blame your natural dis position. By so doing you blame God who gave it to you. No quality is bad unless perverted." ment of that small country to endure the fearful drain, which has been brought upon it, since its establishment at the Revolution, by repeated catastrophes within its borders." In company with Mr Strahan the publisher, and his brother Donald, he visited Palestine early in 1864. The outline of this journey was given to the world in Good Words under the title of "Eastward." He enjoyed the trip thoroughly. In this same year he was appointed to the convenership of the India Mission by the General Assembly. This office he accepted, mission work having all along taken strong possession of his spirit. "Thank God," he wrote in his journal, "for calling me in my advanced years to so glorious and blessed a work. I wish £10,000 a year at least, Of his preaching, Dean Stanley thus wrote in the Times: "Other preachers we have heard, both in England and France, more learned, more eloquent, more penetrating to particular audiences, but no preacher has arisen, within our experience, with an equal power of riveting the general attention of the varied congregations of modern times. . . . None who so combined the self-control of the prepared discourse with the directness of extemporaneous effort; none with whom the sermon approached so nearly to its original and proper idea-of a conversation a serious conversation, in which the fleeting thought, the unconscious objection of the listeners, seemed to be readily caught up by a passing parenthesis-a qualifying word of the speaker; so that, in short, the speaker seemed to throw himself with the whole force of his soul on the minds of his hearers, led captive against their will by something more than eloquence." Mr Gladstone in writing of him has remarked that, "He stands out as having supplied, after Dr Chalmers, one of the most distinguished names in the history of Presbyterianism. In some respects, much after Dr Chalmers; in others probably before him. He had not, so far as we see, the philosophic faculty of Chalmers, nor his intensity, nor his gorgeous gift of eloquence, nor his commanding passion, nor his absolute simplicity, nor his profound, and, to others, sometimes embarrassing humility. Chalmers, whose memory, at a period more than forty years back, is still fresh in the mind of the writer of these pages, was, indeed, a man greatly lifted out of the region of mere flesh and blood. He may be compared with those figures who, in Church history or legend, are represented as risen into the air under the influence of religious emotion. Macleod, on the other hand, had more shrewdness, more knowledge of the world, and far greater elasticity and variety of mind. Chalmers was rather a man of one idea, at least one idea at a time; Macleod receptive on all hands and in all ways. Chalmers had a certain clumsiness, as of physical, so of mental gait; Macleod was brisk, ready, mobile. Both were men devoted to God; eminently able, earnest, energetic; with great gifts of oratory and large organising power. A Church that had them not may well envy them to a Church that had them. Nor do they stand alone. The Presby-ness, avowedly to help those who were still in terianism of Scotland, which has done but little the gloom. Affectation seems as foreign to the for literature or for theology, has, notwithstand- character as it is to the thought of this John ing, been adorned, during the last fifty years, by Bright of the pulpit. The lesson taught to the names of many remarkable persons, men of preachers by the crowds of high and low who high and pure character: with great gifts of flocked to hear him was, as it seems to us, that government and construction, like Candlish; of truth and honesty, guided by faith and unconwinning and moving oratory like Guthrie; and sciousness of self, and expressed in manly speech only a notable fertility in the production of such face to face, will restore to the pulpit a far men could have enabled the National Establish-higher function than the press has taken from it." and ten men at least, to preach Christ to India. If I had not faith in Christ I should despair." A speech made in 1866 led to a severe controversy on the authority on which the observance of the Sabbath rested. He felt that he had lost much influence in Scotland through it, but he believed that the next generation would reap freedom from it. In 1867 he was appointed, along with Dr Watson of Dundee, to visit the mission field, and represent the Church of Scotland in India. He left for India at the end of the year. "They were welcomed," writes his brother, "as friends by the representatives and agents of every Church and mission, from the bishops of the Church of England in India down to the poorest native catechist, and received from them all every possible aid and information. They enjoyed the frankest intercourse with educated natives of all varieties, of creed and of no creed, and with the conductors of the press, religi ous and secular, Christian and Hindoo." "The presence of Dr Macleod," wrote the Friend of India, "has cheered many a worker and helped to enlighten many a doubter. More remarkable than his receptive power, amounting to genius, which enables him to appreciate the merits of abstruse political questions; more striking than his marvellous conversational gifts; more impressive than his public speeches, have been his sermons. That is the perfection of art without art. Of his three sermons in Calcutta two were addressed to doubters, being devoted to a semiphilosophical exposition of our Lord's divinity and atonement. He spoke as a man to men, not as a priest to beings of a lower order; he reasoned, as one who had himself felt the dark He He was prostrated by illness at Calcutta, and obliged suddenly to leave the country. At the next meeting of the General Assembly, after his return, he gave an address, embracing the result of his visit to India, which was afterwards published. His "Peeps at the Far East," contributed to Good Words, gave, as we have said, his impressions of India. In 1869 he was elected Moderator of the Scotch General Assembly. "The moderatorship was a time of great peace of heart," he afterwards wrote. After the Assembly he attended an anti-patronage committee in London. His wish regarding the Church was to re-build it on a foundation sufficiently wide to include the Presbyterianism of Scotland. From what he had seen of the workings of Voluntaryism in America and in this country, he became convinced that, when existing alone, it became insufficient for the proper support of the Church in poor districts. resumed his work of addressing presbyteries and public meetings in various parts of the country on behoof of his India Mission. He expressed himself thus as to the life led on many country farms: "I have the poorest possible opinion of the morality, the common decency that is too frequently observed on the farms of Scotland. As Dr Chalmers said of - so I may say of a mass of our agriculturists-they are a set of 'galvanised divots' (sods)." And so they may long continue until the introduction of steam and other machinery shall lighten the labours of the field, and shorten the hours of labour, and leave sufficient vitality in the animal frame of the labourer to make intellectual labour something of a pleasure. While denying the canon of criticism which would do away with the religious moral-pointing to the fact that it would even exclude Christ's teaching by parables, and would stop himself or any minister from writing stories, he had this to say regarding the ordinary work of the novelist: "I so hate those eternal love-stories, this everlasting craving after a sweetheart! I wish they would marry in the first chapter and be done with it. Is there nothing to interest human beings but marriage? What a fuss to make about those two when in love!" The busy life which he led at this time may be seen from the following letter to his publisher: "Whatever may be my fault, it does not consist in my chariot-wheels tarrying, as the following statement will prove: "Friday, 30th September.-Left Glasgow for Aberdeen at nine P.M., arrived at Aberdeen at three A.M. "Saturday, 1st October.-Left for Balmoral. Dined with Her Majesty. "October 2.-Preached a sermon on War and God's Judgments,' which the Queen asks me to publish, and to dedicate to herself, as soon as possible-not a line having been written. "October 3.-Joined my wife in Perthshire, dead beat. "October 4.-Rested my chariot-wheels and greased them. "October 5. -Returned to Glasgow, and answered twenty letters; wrote long minutes for Sealkote and Calcutta; had prayer-meeting in the evening. "October 6.-Commanded by the Prince of Wales, and left at seven A.M. for Dunrobin, 220 miles off. Dined at half-past nine, left the drawing-room at half-past one A.M., and smoking-room at half-past three. Left per train at six A. M., and never halted five minutes, being past time, until I reached Glasgow, at half-past six P.M. "October 7.-A weary Saturday, to prepare two new sermons for Sunday amidst manifold interruptions. "October 8.-Preached twice. "October 9.-Again dead beat, and went to see my old mother the first time for six weeks. "October 10.-Returned, and received a letter from a patient friend, asking, 'Why tarry thy chariot-wheels?' !!!! "Bother the chariot-wheels! "I am as nervous as an old cat." Again he wrote: "As a public man I am worked from six A.M. till ten P.M., and if a man must be occupied twenty-four hours in killing rats or planting carrots it is practically the same to him, as far as time is concerned, as if he were attacking Paris." His health was so precarious in the beginning of 1871 that he sought quiet and rest at Ems for a time. The hymn, "Trust in God and do the Right," he published in Good Words in 1872. He now keenly felt the pressure of his severe labours, but devoted himself with even more conscientiousness than ever to pulpit preparation. His call for men and money for his beloved India Mission had not met with a ready response from his own Church. The closing words of an address he gave at St Andrews were: "If by the time next General Assembly arrives neither of those are forthcoming, there is one who wishes he may find a grave!" The death of his spiritual friend, John Macleod Campbell, also affected him deeply. In the Assembly of 1873 he delivered with great clearness and power a telling speech on Indian Missions, giving the conclusions he had arrived at regarding the way in which mission work should be conducted there. It was his last great effort; he preached but once in his own church afterwards. He was stricken down shortly afterwards, and on his death-bed he had a dream. "I thought," he said, "the whole Punjaub was suddenly Christianised, and such noble fellows, with their native churches and clergy." He passed away in the stillness of the Sabbath forenoon, 16th June 1872. The news of his death created a profound impression wherever it was known. The Queen sent an affectionate note of inquiry and condolence. Other letters of condolence flowed in from all quarters. Dean Stanley wrote a sketch of his life for the Times, while appreciative papers appeared in the magazines. A tablet to his memory has been erected in Loudoun Parish Church. Two stained windows have been in serted in Crathie Church to his memory, by command of the Queen. His ashes rest at Campsie, and as the great funeral procession moved with them to their last resting-place, a brawny working-man was heard to say, "There goes Norman Macleod; if he had done no more than what he did for my soul, he would shine as the stars for ever." HENRY WARD BEECHER. [1813- IN New York, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Beecher, and hearing him preach and lecture on several occasions. He is a man so singular as not easily to be classed or compared with others. It was, indeed, an old Boston saying, than mankind was divisible into three classes-the good, the bad, and the Beechers! * He is led by his impulsive nature to say and do the strangest things at times, and yet in most cases one can feel a noble Christian heart throbbing underneath. Take a single case: Beecher was walking down the Bowery one day, when he noticed a poor little withered boy sitting on the kerb-stone selling matches. He stopped, spoke to the little fellow, and found that he was a poor castaway child, likely to perish for want of proper care. Beecher thought for a moment, and then asked the boy if he could sing. Yes; he sometimes tried. "Let me hear you," said Beecher. The boy began to sing; Beecher stood with folded arms, listening. A crowd began to collect. -] In America, Beecher is an independent power. Wherever he lectures or preaches people crowd to hear him; his sermons are printed in the newspapers as far west as California; democrats abhor him; grog-sellers dread him; Princeton theologians shake their heads over his theology; but everywhere, liked or disliked, the name of Henry Ward Beecher is known, and his power recognised. The Southern people only know him as an uncompromising antagonist of slavery, and a preacher of the "isms" which they regard as the damnation of America. There was a time when his life would not have been worth a day's purchase south of Mason and Dixon's line. It is said that a literary lady from the South, visiting Brooklyn before the war, went to hear Beecher as she would have gone to see a ghoul. She was surprised to hear an earnest Gospel sermon. She went back and heard another even more unexceptionable than the first. She went and heard him at meetings too, till her preconceived opinion of him was entirely changed. She sought an introduction, and "Very good," said Beecher, when the boy said, after some conversation, "Mr Beecher, the finished; "let me hear another." By the time the second song was finished, a large crowd had gathered. Beecher bent down, took the little boy, slung him upon his shoulder, and faced the crowd. South misunderstands you, and you misunderstand the South. I want you to come and see Dixie for yourself, and let the Southern people hear you." "Madam," said Beecher, "my neck is short, "Now, my little fellow," he said, "there are and not handsome; but it is the only one God listeners for you; give them a song." has given me, and I had rather retain it in its natural state than have it elongated by external appliances." The child, perched on the great preacher's shoulder, sang again. As soon as he had finished, Beecher asked the little fellow for his cap, and went round the crowd, holding it out for contributions. In a few minutes, something like two hundred dollars was collected. Beecher took the boy to a friend's office, got him clothed and provided for, and the balance of money banked for his use. I cannot vouch for all the details, but there undoubtedly you have the man. *From "The Americans at Home." By David Macrae. This was at a time when Southern feeling was exasperated beyond the point of endurance by Northern movements against slavery. Even now, the feelings engendered by that angry controversy rankle in the Southern breast. It struck me sometimes that the firm Southern belief in the existence of hell was moored to the felt necessity for some place of torment for Wendell Phillips, Lloyd Garrison, and the whole family of Beechers. I scarcely ever met a Southerner who had any hope of the salvation of Mrs Stowe. The feeling is that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of itself was enough to drag the whole of New England to endless perdition, even supposing that world of "isms" to have ever had any opposite tendency. There appeared in some minds to be a certain glimmering of hope for Henry Ward. I met with good Southerners who seemed, since Beecher's address on behalf of General Lee's College, to cherish a desperate hope that, after a few thousand years of purgatorial fire, he might find a way of approach on his knees to the heaven of redeemed planters. The Southern people will think more of Beecher when they know him better. Even Parson Brownlow, visiting Brooklyn in his proslavery days, and attending service at Plymouth Church, wrote back to his friends in Tennessee : "If any of you ever find your way to heaven, don't be surprised if you meet Beecher!" Beecher is, in New York, what Spurgeon is in London, and what Dr Guthrie used to be in Edinburgh. Every one visiting the empire city is expected to hear him. His church is in Brooklyn, itself a city of immense size, lying across the river from New York, as Birkenhead lies from Liverpool. Plymouth Church is away in one of the side streets, but you have no difficulty in finding it if you are on your way to Beecher's. At ten in the morning or six in the evening, cross at the Fulton Ferry and follow the crowd; or, if you are in Brooklyn, come down in the Fulton Avenue cars, and when the one in which you are travelling stops at a certain crossing and disgorges almost the whole of its human freight, get out and follow the stream down Plymouth Street, and it will pilot you to the place. The first time I heard Beecher in his own church was at a forenoon service. If the reader will in imagination accompany me, I will try to give him a glimpse of the man and the place. Crowds of people are waiting at the doors of the great brick building to get their chance of a place when the regular congregation is seated; but you and I are strangers from a distant land, we tell our errand to one of the officiating deacons, and are at once conducted away up the aisle to a good seat, not many yards from the pulpit. What a vast church we are in! Gallery above gallery piled up to the roof. I wonder if those people in the topmost gallery yonder, with their heads almost touching the ceiling, will hear anything! The seats are painted white, with a brown beading, which gives the whole place a bright and elegant appearance. The church is crowding fast, and yet it is still half an hour from the time. I spoke of the pulpit-but I should have said the desk. Beecher dislikes those "sacred mahogany tubs"-hates, as he says himself, to be shut off from the people, and plastered up against the wall like a barn swallow in its nest. He quotes the saying of Daniel Webster, that the survival of Christianity in spite of high pulpits, is one of the evidences of its divinity. Beecher likes an open platform, where he can walk to and fro, and face every man whom he wishes to address. It is an interesting platform that on which we are now looking. Some of the most extraordinary sermons that the Americans of this generation have listened to have been preached from it. It was standing on that platform that Beecher poured forth those philippics against slavery that ran like wildfire through the North, and helped to kindle the conflagration of '61. Let me describe one scene that was enacted here. After the sermon one day, Beecher said: "Here is a letter I got the other day from a friend in Washington, saying that a young woman, a slave, is to be sold this week unless she can buy herself off, and this will cost twelve hundred dollars. The trader has allowed her to make subscriptions, and has himself headed the list with a hundred dollars. She has not been able, however, with all her begging round Washington, to raise more than five hundred more, and if the other six are not raised she will be sold the day after to-morrow. When I got this letter about it," said Beecher, "I wrote back, saying, 'It is of no use unless the young woman comes herself.' The trader has such confidence in her that he has let her come. She is here now." Amidst breathless excitement he turned to that door leading in from the vestry, and said, "Come up, Nancy." The young woman appeared, and took up her place timidly beside Beecher on the platform. "Now," said Beecher, "if we don't raise six hundred dollars, this woman will be sold the day after to-morrow to the highest bidder." The deacons were on their feet in an instant, and the plates went round. The excitement was intense. One Southern planter put in fifty dollars. Ladies who had no money put in their rings or brooches. The plates were piling up. In the meantime, two gentlemen (Arthur Tappan, I think, was one of them), went up and announced, through Beecher, that whatever the collection was, they would guarantee the six hundred. There was a burst of applause--the woman was free! There was no repressing the enthusiasm. It was the church; but people clapped their hands and cheered as (Beecher said) "in holy joy." The collection turned out to be sufficient, not only to buy off the woman but her little boy. This is one of the stories of Plymouth Church. Three minutes from the time now! Beecher will be in soon. The church seems crammed, and still the people keep crowding in. Suddenly a stir in the church, and a turning of all eyes to the platform. See, there he is! Beecher himself, with that old smile of goodhumoured defiance on his face. He has come in as quietly and unconcernedly as if he were to be a mere listener. He has his overcoat on-his |