There is no office or calling in the communities of Protestant Christendom that has been held under so great a variety of conditions, personal and local, as that of the ministry. From the lordly splendors and the certified independence of a metropolitan position, we may trace its official representatives to individuals, who, even in the devouter of our own NewEngland towns, simply and virtually stood at the head of the list of parish paupers in the precincts where they labored. Dr. Sprague's admirably conceived and faithfully wrought series of volumes on the "American Pulpit," so instructive from many other points of view, is not the least so in showing what a variety of talents and persistent labors has been consecrated in the humblest villages by men living on the merest pittance, and receiving that rather in the form of a charity than as wages for service. If a minister, like the famous Mr. Howe of Hopkinton, prospered beyond the stan dard, by working a farm, or by a thrifty marriage, his people might grudge him his salary, or expect him to give them a weekly lunch in the parsonage, "at nooning," on Sundays. Yet, after all, there has been an immense amount of happiness in New-England parsonages; and the children reared in them have been the great and the good, not unfrequently the rich and the munificent, to whom our own community, and those which it has colonized, are indebted for high and be nevolent services, the impulse to which may be traced to the dust of some saintly man or woman, sleeping without even the memorial of a slab of slate-stone, 'beneath the sand and mullein stalks of a rough New-England burial-ground. The late revered and beloved Chief-justice Shaw was the son of a poor country minister. He was one of the most punctilious and conscientious officers of very many of our religious and benevolent societies. Those who have shared such trusts with him remember how he was overpowered by tenderness and tears at any reminder of the hardships of ministerial life, and of the straits of widowhood and orphanage.

Dr. Beecher filled the office of a pastor successively over four parishes, which represented four very distinct phases and sets of conditions of the ministerial life. They differed

in all other respects, and agreed only in giving him an insufficient support. He really lived more honestly and undisguisedly that "Life of Trust" in Providence to meet his wants, and to sustain his benevolent enterprises, than did George Müller, whose "Narrative"- simply a piece of of fensive cant, as it came from his own hands-is a pious fraud in the form in which it has been palmed on the credulity of our "religious community."

The raciest and most charming portion of the work before us is that which, beginning with the childhood and education of its subject, settles him in his first parish at East Hampton. A rude and straitened, but still one can see, an enjoyable and productive style of life, was experienced by him here. And that sweet and noble partner of all his cares we must say literally, the better half of him in mind, faculty, resource, and effectiveness would have made any home and any lot a pleasant one. Miss Mitford's "Village" gives us nothing more quaint or delectable than are some of the touches which we find here; as, for instance, the description of Mrs. Beecher's home-made and home-painted carpet. We may say much the same of the domestic and ministerial relations covering his second pastorate in Litchfield. The removal was, in some respects, like the exchange from a primitive to a cultivated state of life, but, we presume, more to the seeming than to the reality. Many of us have some knowledge of the more famous and populous towns in the interior of New England, where Orthodoxy holds sway; and we can allow for the fancy colorings which they sometimes have in the description. Rich country storekeepers, even judges at the head of provincial law-schools, learned maiden ladies at the head of renowned seminaries, and the pupils of both sexes which these institutions would gather, are the glory of very many other places besides Litchfield. Having been observers of real life in some scenes combining these elements with a population mainly given to farming and the mechanic arts, we are always interested in reading about them in our ecclesiastical and biographical revelations of their interiors.

That Christian modification of heathenism which is called VOL. LXXIX.-5TH 8. VOL. XVII. NO. II.

16

"Calvinism." has had the fairest possible trial in such places, and under all favorable conditions. Dr. Beecher's Life adds another to the already numerous volumes, a digest of which, some years hence, will furnish one of the most instructive chapters in a philosophy of religion. His flock at East

That at Litchfield

Hampton was comparatively a rude one. was, like the community in which it was gathered, in a transition state from its old traditionalisms to the various forms of modern liberalism. There were men and women in it who were readers, and more who were thinkers. The social relations of the people were of a nature to allow of that intimate acquaintance with each other's domestic and private affairs, and of that mutual oversight and criticism, which minister to an excellent friendliness, when not passing the bounds of consideration and courtesy. There were notables in Litchfield, representing some of the highest stations in military, civil, congressional, and judicial service.

The chief man of the town was Judge Reeve, one of those invaluable friends of a country minister, who, while holding the highest esteem of a community for personal qualities and attainments, are, at the same time, the whole-hearted, confidential, and judicious intimates and co-laborers of the pastor. Dr. Beecher used to rely much on the good judge, in the conduct of revivals, and in the direction of the awakened. Why should a slight misgiving rise in our minds as we read, touching the fulness and acumen of the judge's professional qualities? We must confess, that it springs from a general embarrassment, which we have often experienced, in wondering how a truly judicial mind can accept "the Governmental Theory of the Doctrine of the Atonement."

An Episcopal Church and Society divided with Dr. Beecher's congregation those who gathered for worship on Sundays. The old Puritan "standing order" was failing in social position and supremacy. There are many hints given in these pages, that the worldlings and the irreligious, as well as those who had made up their minds that they never could be, or never would be, "converted," availed themselves of this Episcopal place of refuge; while Episcopacy, in turn,

availed itself of them as voters and as agitators against the exclusive, but then threatened and resisted, prerogative of the old Orthodoxy. How significant and suggestive of much else is the incident, naïvely related, that the governor of the State, residing at Litchfield, and balancing for "the Church," the judge at the meeting-house, gave over his intention to make a party for Dr. Beecher, as his neighbors were doing, because he did not like to have the offices of worship introduced at the close of such a social merry-making!

The main interest of Dr. Beecher's life and labors in all his pastorates was the promotion and conduct of religious revivals, those periodical seasons of intense excitement, when, by continuous and concentrated effort on his own part, aided, if desirable, by some able brother, and by the help of the sympathetic sensibilities of the people, the minister seeks to increase the number of professed and actual Christians in his fold. As the irresistible changes of opinion and the modifica tion of religious methods are tending to render revival measures obsolete, at least in our more intelligent and cultivated communities, they will soon be known in their old type, chiefly as incidents in our ecclesiastical history. Dr. Beecher had no superior in zeal and power in the conduct of a revival. His whole-souled belief in the effectiveness of such agencies, and in the fitness of Christian truths and influences to promote them, made him ever an unwearied and hopeful laborer in them; and his own solid discretion and shrewd judgment secured him against the extravagancies of many of his brethren. The Nile does not more intensely feel and yield to the impulse to its periodical swell of waters pouring out in an inundation, than did Dr. Beecher quicken all his energies of mind and heart, soul and body, for a revival. He found a most inviting, and yet a hard field at East Hampton. His experience there, and in his other parishes, puts the crowning testimony to a largely illustrated truth of experience, that there is no form or dispensation of religion more effective in towns and villages for revival excitements, or more ineffective in the same for steady, sustained, and healthful influence, than the old Orthodoxy. The accounts which

Dr.

we read in these volumes are essentially the same story that has been told, over and over again, in every town of New England. A period, described as one of apathy, dulness, and stupidity, is recognized in the Church, and, for a time, quietly submitted to. The members of the Church, who had been quickened and rescued by preceding revivals, share fully with the unconverted in this deplorable stagnation of the power of vital piety. The technical description of the experience is, as a time when the Holy Spirit is withheld or withdrawn from the Church. God and man- by a consent and co-operation, the exact order and terms of which have never been satisfactorily set forth-engage themselves to the holy task of breaking this dull repose, and of stirring the stagnant waters, that the stream of life may flow again. The phenomena of a revival have many points of analogy with those of an epidemic, especially as requiring the two conditions, susceptibility in the human subject, and positive external influence carrying with it a disposing agency. Beecher's strong good sense, and spirit of independence and originality, prevented his being so rigidly mechanical, so confident in, and wedded to, the same routine methods of disease, treatment, and cure, as were his brethren generally. But still the traditions and the usages of the system under which he had been brought up, held him, for the most part, under their sway. In later life he admitted that he should not pursue the same method, or expect the same results, as he had relied upon and required of the subjects of his zeal. He was forced, indeed, to make a signal exception in the case of one of his own daughters, -a true child of her father,to regard her as truly converted, and to admit her to full communion, though she obstinately resisted, not only the efforts of her family, but even her own desire and consenting sense of obligation, to pass through the established stages of conviction and experience. The doctor suffered heavy despondency and anguish as his children were growing to maturity, that not one of them could be regarded by him as "a subject of renewing grace." One cannot but hope, and even believe, that the following agonizing passage in one of his