GREAT MEN'S BODIES
and so outspoken in times of heated debate, could not but make many and bitter enemies. Throughout half a century of public life Mr. Beecher was a target of innumerable attacks from men who either from self-interest feared, or from conservative considerations dreaded, the effect of his teaching." Only one of these attacks ever cast any shadow on his name—and in the greatest scandal ever known in America, where a gifted rival did all he could do to ruin him, he so bore himself that "the largest Congregational council ever convened, which included representative men from all sections of the country, and all schools of thought; after a week spent in thorough scrutinizing inquiry, in the course of which Mr. Beecher was himself submitted to a searching cross-fire of questions from the members of the council in an open session, extended to him, without a dissenting voice, the Christian fellowship and sympathy of the churches, and expressed the confidence of the entire council in his integrity."
One writer well says: "Mr. Beecher's genius was distinctively that of an orator. He showed no power in executive or administrative functions. As an editor he shaped and inspired the journals with which he was connected, but never administered them; as a preacher and pastor, he filled his audience with his never-failing enthusiasm, but did not attempt to allot to them individual work; as a public reformer, he touched the hearts and consciences of the nation, but took no part in the administration of either political, moral, or missionary organizations. But as a preacher, whether measured by the power of his utterances, or by the variety of his pulpit themes, he was certainly without a peer in the American pulpit, and probably without a superior in the history of the Christian church."
Few who ever heard him will question this; or will forget as long as memory lasts the mighty power of this man in the pulpit; holding his audience in the hollow of his hand; doing with it, and with every member, whatever he wished to do; and doing it with an ease denied to most men from the beginning of the world till now.
And lavish as Nature had been with this man—with his wonderful imagination, unequalled power of illustration, and creative mind, never yet approached in Ameri-
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