ndependent": men look up to and bless the
useful light, and learn therefrom the signs of the times. He is one of
the bulwarks of freedom in Kansas,--a detached fort. He was a great
force in the last Presidential campaign, and several stump-speakers
were specially detailed to overtake and offset him. But the one man
surrounded the many. Scarcely is there a Northern minister so bitterly
hated at the South. The slave-traders, the border-ruffians, the
purchased officials know no Higher Law; "nor Hale nor Devil can make
them afraid"; yet they fear the terrible whip of Henry Ward Beecher.

The time has not come--may it long be far distant!--to analyze his
talents and count up his merits and defects. But there are certain
obvious excellences which account for his success and for the honor paid
him.

Mr. Beecher has great strength of instinct,--of spontaneous human
feeling. Many men lose this in "getting an education"; they have tanks
of rain-water, barrels of well-water; but on their premises is no
spring, and it never rains there. A mountain-spring supplies Mr. Beecher
with fresh, living water.

He has great love for Nature, and sees the symbolical value of material
beauty and its effect on man.

He has great fellow-feeling with the joys and sorrows of men. Hence he
is always on the side of the suffering, and especially of the oppressed;
all his sermons and lectures indicate this. It endears him to millions,
and also draws upon him the hatred and loathing of a few Pharisees, some
of them members of his own sect.

Listen to this:--

"Looked at without educated associations, there is no difference between
a man in bed and a man in a coffin. And yet such is the power of the
heart to redeem the animal life, that there is nothing more exquisitely
refined and pure and beautiful than the chamber of the house. The couch!
From the day that the bride sanctifies it, to the day when the aged
mother is borne from it, it stands clothed with loveliness and dignity.
Cursed be the tongue that dares speak evil of the household bed! By its
side oscillates the cradle. Not far from it is the crib. In this sacred
precinct, the mother's chamber, lies the heart of the family. Here the
child learns its prayer. Hither, night by night, angels troop. It is the
Holy of Holies."

How well he understands the ministry of grief!

"A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time to a pattern which
he does not see, but God does; and his heart is a