akers was "dealt with" by his church
for his evil-doing. We make no doubt he went through life without loss
of prestige or diminution of sanctity, and was bewailed at his death by
the sons of the prophets in tenderest phrase, "My father! my father! the
chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof."

We do not attribute these shameful proceedings to Orthodoxy, still less
to Christianity. "Perhaps it is a fact of our fallen nature, as Dr.
Beecher asserted, that "Adam and grace will do twice as much as grace
alone." But surely all these things happened unto them for ensamples,
and they are written for our admonition. Seeing how unlovely is the
spectacle of bickering and bitterness, let Christians of every name look
well to their steps, saying often one to another, and especially
repeating in concert, at the opening of every council, conference,
synod, and assembly,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 't is their nature, too.

"But bretheren, we will never let
Our angry passions rise:
Our little hands were never made
To tear each other's eyes."

This biography, as the title-page asserts, is edited rather than
written. By familiar talk and private letters, the subject is made, as
far as possible, to tell his own story. What remains is supplied by the
pens of different members of the family and of old friends. The result
is a composite, the connections of whose parts we do not always readily
discern. But what the book lacks in coherence is more than made up in
accuracy and vividness. We obtain, by glimpses of the man, a far more
exact knowledge of his character and work than we should by ever so
steady a contemplation of some other man's symmetrical rendering of his
life. We feel the beating of his great, fiery heart. We delight in his
large, loving nature. We partake in his honest indignation. We smile,
sometimes not without tears, at his childlike simplicity. We sit around
the household hearth, join in the theological disputation, and share the
naive satisfaction of the whole Beecher family with themselves and each
other. We see how it was that the father set them all a-spinning each in
his own groove, but all bearing the unmistakable Beecher stamp. We feel
his irresistible energy, his burning zeal, his magnetic force yet
thrilling through the land and arousing every sluggish power to come to
the help of the