Under the plea of charity for a sick brother he could have
preached to that Opera House multitude a sermon that would have done
incalculable damage to the Opera House experiment. And he need not have
been particular about the sermon he chose, either. He could have relied
on any he had in his barrel.

The Opera House meetings went on; other congregations were thin, and
grew thinner, but the Opera House assemblages were vast. Every Sunday
night, in spite of sense and reason, multitudes passed by the churches
where they might have been saved, and marched deliberately to the Opera
House to be damned. The community talked, talked, talked. Everybody
discussed the fact that the Ministerial Union disapproved of the Opera
House meetings; also the fact that they disapproved of the teachings put
forth there. And everybody wondered how the Ministerial Union could tell
whether to approve or disapprove of those teachings, seeing that those
clergymen had never attended an Opera House meeting, and therefore
didn't know what was taught there. Everybody wondered over that curious
question, and they had to take it out in wondering.

Mr. Beecher asked the Ministerial Union to state their objections to the
Opera House matter. They could not--at least they did not. He said to
them that if they would come squarely out and tell him that they desired
the discontinuance of those meetings he would discontinue them. They
declined to do that. Why should they have declined? They had no right to
decline, and no excuse to decline, if they honestly believed that those
meetings interfered in the slightest degree with the best interests of
religion. (That is a proposition which the profoundest head among them
cannot get around.)

But the Opera House meetings went on. That was the mischief of it. And
so, one Monday morning, when Mr. B. appeared at the usual Ministers'
meeting, his brother clergymen desired him to come there no more. He
asked why. They gave no reason. They simply declined to have his company
longer. Mr. B. said he could not accept of this execution without a
trial, and since he loved them and had nothing against them he must
insist upon meeting with them in the future just the same as ever.
And so, after that, they met in secret, and thus got rid of this man's
importunate affection.

The Ministerial Union had ruled out Beecher--a point gained. He would
get up an excitement about it in public. But that was a miscalculation.
He never me