Royal Truths
Royal Truths. By . Boston : Ticknor and Fields.
WE imagine that most readers, in turning over the pages of this volume, will not be greatly struck by the novelty of the truths urged. Indeed, they are very old truths, and they contain the precepts which we all know and neglect. Except that the present preacher was qualified to illustrate them with original force and clearness, he might well have left them untouched. As it is, however, we think that every one who reads a page in the book will learn to honor the faculty that presents them. It is not because Mr. Beecher reproves hatred, falsewitness, lust, envy, and covetousness, that he is so successful in his office. We all do this, and dislike sin in our neighbors; but it is his power of directly reproving these evils in each one of us that gives his words so great weight. He of course does this by varying means and with varying effect. Here we have detached passages from many different discourses, — not invariably selected with perfect judgment, but affording for this reason a better idea of his range and capacity. That given is not always of his best ; but, for all this, it may have been the best for some of those who heard it. In the changing topics and style of the innumerable extracts in this volume, we find passages of pure sublimity, of solemn and pathetic eloquence, of flower-like grace and sweetness, followed by exhortations apparently modelled upon those of Mr. Chadband, but doubtless comforting and edifying to Mrs. Snagsby in the congregation, and not, we suppose, without use to Mrs. Snagsby in the parlor where she sits down to peruse the volume on Sunday afternoon. For according to the story which Mr. Beecher tells his publishers in a very pleasant prefatory letter, this compilation was made in England, where it attained great popularity among those who never heard the preacher, and who found satisfaction in the first-rate or the secondrate, without being moved by the arts of oratory. Indeed, the book is one that must everywhere be welcome, both for its manner and for its matter. The application of the “Truths” is generally enforced by a felicitous apologue or figure ; in some cases the lesson is conveyed in a beautiful metaphor standing alone. The extracts are brief, and the point, never wanting, is moral, not doctrinal.