Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1872-06-13
How Beecher Talks.

The following extract is from Sunday
sermon of Henry Ward Beecher :-Peo-
pie who were never sick could never
believe that anybody else was sick ; but
let any man getan autumnal catarrh, and
before he gets through he will find that
nearly every other man he meets has got
an autumnal catarrh. How few there
were who remembered the young gentle
men at picnics paying their polite atten-
tons to the ill-favored and the homely
ladies of that party What an artistic
eye those young men seemed to have
How they seemed to have singled out the
girls with pencilled eyebrows, the deli
cate prOfiles. and the sparkling eyes, and
how few of them bestowed a word of
kindness and thoughtfulness to the
poor girl who was half crippled We
should therefore make habit of bearing
burdens in this way, and our piety would
be something mole than sentimental
pleasure. Then there were q number Of
self-possessed people, who were always
living in groove of comfort, and who
had never been out of it, If shiftless,
thriftless, ne'er-do-well people went to
them for assistance, it was so much
easier to say to man, "Go West, go
West " than it was to think and act on
his behalf. Why, if it would please
Divine Providence to make these self
possessed people shiftless and thriftless
for a month, it would do them sight of
good. They would find out then how
much good telling man to ego West "
would do him. (Laughter.) Poverty is
good thing and bad thing. We all
say, "Blessed are the poor, and if there
is one blessing more than another that
we do not wish for ourselves it is that
It seemed a marvel to some people
what boys were created for. If you
could get q boy shot from the bow at
birth clear up into manhood that would
be all very well, But boy, what a
plague be is What a blessing at one
time OF his life he is to his mother. Was
there ever a neighborhood that had a
bad boy in it that that boy was not the
worst boy in the world ? You see two
men coming along the street, and they
know him when they see him. One of
them puts out his foot towards the boy,
and says "Git along you little cuss "
But the other man talks to him as though
there might be some latent good in him,
and asks him whether he would not like
to be a better boy and do some good for
somebody. Which of these two is bear
ing the boys burden?
Then there was a way we had Of talk
ing about our friends, or the people we
know. 1t was bad thing to speak evil,
but it was a much worse thing to think
evil one of another. 1t was this super
cilious Pharisaism that was so difficult to
deal with. 1t was said that New Orleans
Was the worst city in the States and that
Boston was the best. Well, he (Mr.
Beecher) would rather undertake to cure
the bottom section Of New Orleans than
DC would the bottom section of Boston.
The good people coalesced, kept to them
selves, had no fellowship with the erring
were so far above the bad people, that in
Boston it would be difficult to raise the
bottom section of the population into
sympathy with the good. These latter
we're very apt to think that they had
done their duty, when they had sent
some poor, half-staryed missionary to
preach a little bit of the Gospel of Christ
to the bottom sections of the population
of their city.