Year: 1872




AS might readily be expected, the great fire
in Boston created the most intense interest all
over the city yesterday so that the pulpits
caught the contagion and the ministers very
properly appealed to their congregations for
the manifestation Of that brotherly sympathy
which we owe one to another. Last year it
was Chicago, now it is Boston, and we know
not but our own turn may come next. Are we
prepared for the devouring element, or will it
find us at its mercy as it has our sister cities
Mr.. Beecher devoted his evening hour to the
fire and it's lessons. He saw in it city with
out rival on this Continent for substantial
buildings, for cleanliness, for everything that
marks the progress of Christian civilization.
It's products of skill and enterprise and manu-
facture, its literature and its schools Of the
highest class, and yet made accessible to all
its citizens; its intense patriotism and love
for truth and justice and liberty and
right make its loss not merely
local but a national calamity. It's looms
and factories must now stand idle; its me-
chanics and artisans must suffer perhaps for
the necessaries of life because of this disaster,
which Mr. Beecher thinks has been sent by
Divine Providence to rebuke the prevailing
spirit of worldliness among men. But he per-
tinently asks, Shall one scholar be punished
for the offence Of the whole school? It is also
q rebuke to vain speculations and audacious
interpretations of Providence. But there are
lessons to be learned from this fire, not the
least Of which are that in large cities narrow
streets and crowded neighborhoods and Man.
sard roofs should be avoided, and in their
stead we should have wide avenues, open
squares and plenty of small parks The
country can't afford to be burned up this way
every year and to see its granite walls in ashes.
If Boston, therefore, shall heed these lessons,
in ten years from this time, Mr. Beecher
thinks, she will have cause to be thankful for
this calamity. But every valuable building
should have within it hydraulic arrangements
by which it.can be flooded in cases of fire. But
the most important lesson of all that Mr.
Beecher would draw from this great fire is that
contained in the Saviour's precept, clay not
up for yourselves treasures on EARTH" where
they can be so easily destroyed but rather lay
them up in heaven, where they shall be abid-
ing and sure. Mr.. Talmage, in closing q
sermon on the rout of the Midianites of old
literally, and the rout Of the modern Mid
ianites at the election last Tuesday, prayed
that God would control the raging Of the fire
in Boston and would silence the agony Of the
prostrate dying, burning city, and of its dis
tressed and homeless people; that He would
save their churches and storehouses, their
homes and their lives. Rev. DR.. Bellows, too,
in his opening prayer, very affectingly alluded
to the fire, and at the close Of his sermon on
the interdependence Of human lives and their
entire dependence upon God for everything
remarked that if he had been asked to point
to the most securely built and substantial city
on this Continent he would have pointed to
this very section of Boston which, in one
night sea Of fame has left in ashes, while
the owners, who had the day before felt secure
in the stability Of their possessions looked on
with pallid faces and quivering lips at the
work Of devastation.


The other topics of pulpit thought appear
tame in comparison with this now all-engross-
ing theme. And in our sympathy for the
sufferers we shall forget or ignore Mr.. Hep
worth's doctrine that the strongest power in
the human heart is selfshness, and that kings,
statesmen, business men do all that they do
from purely selfish motive. Rather shall
we believe with Dr. Chaplin that Christianity
is essentially the religion of unselfsh good
ness, and we shall go to and practise it
towards our neighbors now in misfortune.
Mr.. rockingham was wholly visionary yester-
day. lie had visions of pain and suffering be-
fore him, of remorse and guilt of idleness
and proAigacy, and these, with others, were
pictured before his audience to show. if he