ate the rules of rhetoric;
Whittier was making his plea for the runaway slave; and throughout New
England the Lecture Lyceum was feeling its way.

A lecture course was then no vaudeville--five concerts and two lectures
to take off the curse--not that! The speakers supplied strong meat for
men. The stars in the lyceum sky were Emerson, Chapin, Beecher, Holmes,
Bartol, Phillips, Ballou, Everett and Lowell. These men made the New
England Lyceum a vast pulpit of free speech and advanced thought. And to
a degree the Lyceum made these men what they were. They influenced the
times and were influenced by the times. They were in competition with
each other. A pace had been set, a record made, and the audiences that
gathered expected much. An audience gets just what it deserves and no
more. If you have listened to a poor speech, blame yourself.

In the life of George Francis Train, he tells that in Eighteen Hundred
Forty Emerson spoke in Waltham for five dollars and four quarts of oats
for his horse--now he received twenty-five dollars. Chapin got the same,
and when the Committee could not afford this, he referred them to Starr
King, who would lecture for five dollars and supply his own horse-feed.

Two years went by and calls came for Starr King to come up higher.
Worcester would double his salary if he would take a year's course at
the Harvard Divinity School. Starr showed the letter to Chapin, and both
laughed. Worcester was satisfied with Starr King as he was, but what
would Springfield say if they called a man who had no theological
training? And then it was that Chapin said, "Divinity is not taught in
the Harvard Divinity School," which sounds like a paraphrase of Ernest
Renan's, "You will find God anywhere but in a theological seminary."

King declined the call to Worcester, but harkened to one from the Hollis
Street Church of Boston. He went over from Universalism to Unitarianism
and still remained a Universalist--and this created quite a dust among
the theologs. Little men love their denomination with a jealous
love--truth is secondary--they see microscopic difference where big men
behold only unity.

It was about this time that Starr King pronounced this classic: "The
difference between Universalism and Unitarianism is that Universalists
believe that God is too good to damn them; and the Unitarians believe
that they are too good to be damned."

At the Hollis Street Church this stripling of twenty-four now found
hi