of these letters that Lincoln wrote, "The
only sermons I have ever been able to read and enjoy are those of John
Murray"--a statement which some have attempted to smile away as showing
the Rail-Splitter's astute diplomacy.

Starr King gave his life to the Cause. He as much died for the Union as
though he had fallen stricken by flying lead upon the field. And he knew
what he was doing, but in answer to his warning friends he said, "I have
only one life to live and now is my time to spend it."

For three years, lacking two months, he spoke and preached several times
every week. All he made and all he was he freely gave.

For that frail frame this life of intensity had but one end.

The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, but Lee's surrender was
yet to be.

"May I live to see unity and peace for my country," was the constant
prayer of the devoted preacher.

Starr King died March Fourth, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four, aged forty
years. The closing words of his lecture on Socrates might well be
applied to himself: "Down the river of Life, by its Athenian banks, he
had floated upon his raft of reason serene, in cloudy as in smiling
weather. And now the night is rushing down, and he has reached the mouth
of the stream, and the great ocean is before him, dim-heaving in the
dusk. But he betrays no fear. There is land ahead, he thought; eternal
continents there are, that rise in constant light beyond the gloom. He
trusted still in the raft his soul had built, and with a brave farewell
to the true friends who stood by him on the shore, he put out into the
darkness, a moral Columbus, trusting in his haven on the faith of an
idea."

HENRY WARD BEECHER

You know how the heart is subject to freshets; you know how the
mother, always loving her child, yet seeing in it some new wile of
affection, will catch it up and cover it with kisses and break
forth in a rapture of loving. Such a kind of heart-glow fell from
the Savior upon that young man who said to him, "Good Master, what
good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" It is said,
"Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him."

--_Henry Ward Beecher_

[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER]

The influence of Henry Ward Beecher upon his time was marked. And now
the stream of his life is lost amid the ocean of our being. As a single
drop of aniline in a barrel of water will t