is that terrible power which we have
under control in our homes, yet which shakes the heavens in thunder!
It comes and goes as silently as a spirit. In fact, it is nearer a
spirit than anything else known to us. We touch a button and here it
is, like an errand-boy who appears with his cap in his hand and meekly
asks, "What will you have?"

* * * * *

A few days ago I was writing of meteoric men. But are we not all like
meteors that cut across the sky and are quickly swallowed up by the
darkness--some of us leaving a trail that lasts a little longer than
others, but all gone in a breath?

Our great pulpit orator Beecher, how little he left that cold print
does not kill! As a young man I used nearly to run my legs off to get
to Plymouth Church before the doors were closed. Under his
trumpet-like voice I was like a reed bent by the wind, but now when in
a book made up of quotations I see passages from his sermons, they
seem thin and flimsy. Beecher's oratory was all for the ear and not
for the eye and mind. In truth, is the world indebted to the pulpit
for much good literature? Robertson's sermons can be read in the
library, and there are others of the great English divines. But
oratory is action and passion. "Great volumes of animal heat," Emerson
names as one of the qualities of the orator.

The speeches of Wendell Phillips will bear print because his oratory
was of the quiet, conversational kind. Webster's, of course, stand the
test of print, but do Clay's or Calhoun's? In our time oratory, as
such, has about gone out. Rarely now do we hear the eagle scream in
Congress or on the platform. Men aim to speak earnestly and
convincingly, but not oratorically. President Wilson is a very
convincing speaker, but he indulges in no oratory. The one who makes a
great effort to be eloquent always fails. Noise and fury and
over-emphasis are not eloquent. "True eloquence," says Pascal,
"scorns eloquence."

There is no moral law in nature, but there is that out of which the
moral law arose. There is no answer to prayer in the heavens above, or
in the earth beneath, except in so far as the attitude of sincere
prayer is a prophecy of the good it pleads for. Prayer for peace of
mind, for charity, for gratitude, for light, for courage, is answered
in the sincere asking. Prayer for material good is often prayer
against wind and tide, but wind and tide obey those who can rule them.

Our ethical standa