ast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth. And after this, in one moment, angels carried a soul from its
body to heaven; and Paul heard the voice of a thousand angels
rejoicing over it, and saying, O most happy and blessed soul!
rejoice to-day, because thou hast done the will of God. And they set
it in the presence of God. ... And the angel said, Whoso keepeth
the Sunday shall have his part with the angels of God. And Paul
demanded of the angel, how many kinds of punishment there were in
hell. And the angel said, there are a hundred and forty-four
thousand, and if there were a hundred eloquent men, each having four
iron tongues, that spoke from the beginning of the world, they could
not reckon up the torments of hell. But let us, beloved brethren,
hearing of these so great torments, be converted to our Lord that we
may be able to reign with the angels.

HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813-1887)

A very great orator must be a thoroughly representative man,
sensitive enough to be moved to the depths of his nature by the
master-passions of his time. Henry Ward Beecher was a very great
orator,--one of the greatest the country has produced,--and in his
speeches and orations inspired by the feelings which evolved the
Civil War and were themselves exaggerated by it to tenfold strength,
we feel all the volcanic forces which buried the primitive political
conditions of the United States deep under the ashes and lava of
their eruption. Words are feeble in the presence of the facts of
such a war. But what more could words do to suggest its meaning than
they do in Mr. Beecher's oration on the raising of the flag at Fort
Sumter, April 14th, 1865:--

"The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads
slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages
have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to
wilderness. It came to pass as the prophet had said: 'The sun was
turned to darkness and the moon to blood.' The course of the law was
ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry
was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine
and anarchy; whole States were ravaged by avenging armies. The world
was amazed. The earth reeled."

In such passages, Mr. Beecher has something of the force which
immortalized the "Voluspa." The "bardic inspiration," which moved
the early Norse poets to sing the bloody results of the "Bers