Year: 1870

How Last Evenings Prayer Meeting


spent mt Plymouth 'Ohurch.


The New York sun of this morning says


Last night was u e weekly prayer meeting Of Ply
mouth Church. There was a large audience. Mrs.
stowe was among the auditors. Mr.. Beecher in
vited any one TO speak or ask any question A
member alluded to the death of Mr. dickens the
news OF which had just been received. Mr..
Beecher took occasion to make some remarks on
the life and character OF Mr.. Dickens. He said
The death of Charles Dickens has been referred
to, and suppose will produce more nearly the feel
ing of personal loss than that of any one that has
died since Walter Scott. He is a household
man. He was a man Of the most genial sympathies,
the most humane feelings, of any man that is
writer in our day. He took hold OF what may be
called the great middle class of feelings in the
human mind. Whether he personally and ex-
perimentay Christian man God knows, l don't.
l know, indeed, very little about his personal pri-
vate life. There is one class of men whom we be-
neve to be Christians They are producers Of spiritual
influences. We have no doubt about them There
is another class that we as positive have pro-
duced malign influence. And there is great class
between these, and it is always difficult to say
whether they little nearer one side the other.
Mr.. Dickens did not always work in the highest spi
ritual element. That was not the work given
him. But he was not on the other hand, q producer
of morbid feeling. He did not generate seltshness
or pride, and certainly no tendencies towards licen
tiousness or dissipation. All his writings brace up
manhood in truth and honor, and purity and virtue
Throughout they are noble. There may be eXagge-
rations in caricature but the generic influence of
his writing is to make manhood purer and finer, and
to make the intercourse Of men with their fellow
men more genial and more human; to make the
household purer and finer and sweeter. There can





his writings do not believe that there is to be
line found which either by design in fact will pro
duce licentiouBness or aXity.


There can be no question that he has been q bene-
factor to his race, although he has not worked in
the highest sphere in the spiritual element And
when the amelOrations in the procedure of society
are traced back to their sources, it will be found
th1G God raised him up, and employed him in no
mean degree to produce reformation and elevation
in the middle elements of human welfare We can
not but be grateful for the fact that he raised up
in lower sphere to do great deal OF needed work
He did it well and passed of the stage He has gone
at the full of life. One moment in the full enjoy
ment of his faculties, the next moment gone Years
must have let down the tone of his mind and his
work. He has died at the right time for himself and
for the world.


Mr.. Beecher said he didnt believe in the petition
of the Episcopal Prayer Book, "Deliver US from
sudden DEATH" He still Chung to that heresy. He
should never pray that Gcd would deliver him from
sudden death. He did not want to be like an old
harness tied up with tow-string and always break
ing and always up for REPAIRS and always good for
nothing. He died at the right time For one he
thanked God for the life and work of Charles Dick
ems, although he did not regard him as of the
highest. But 1t is not necessary that man should
work at the highest in order to be reckoned among
the noblest and best OF men. An appropriate and
impressive hymn was then sung, and the congrega
ton dismissed.