ve no conception of the man and orator Starr King
became in those last great years of his brief life.

Speedily the little church in which he preached proved too small for the
throng of eager listeners who gathered to hear him, and on the 3d day of
December, 1862, the corner stone of a larger and more beautiful edifice
was laid.

We shall find it no easy matter to analyze the sources of his power
and popularity. Often-times success and failure are equal mysteries.
Doubtless no small part of his triumph arose from the peculiar character
of the new society to which he brought talents that commanded instant
attention. The eager temper of the time fitted his sincere and earnest
spirit. It was a perfect adjustment of the man and the hour, the workman
and his task.

No small part of his popularity arose from the fact that he insisted
upon his right and duty as a minister to discuss great questions of
state in the pulpit. The vicious gulf churchmen discover between the
sacred and the secular was hidden from his eyes. All that affected the
humblest of his fellow men appealed to him as part and parcel of the
'gospel of righteousness he was commissioned to preach. In the old
Boston days he had discussed freely in the pulpit such themes as the
"Free Soil Movement," "The Fugitive Slave Law," and "The Dred Scott
Decision." Burning questions these, and they were handled with no fear
of man to daunt the severity of his condemnation when he declared
that in the Dred Scott Decision the majority of the Supreme Court had
betrayed justice for a political purpose. It was not likely that such a
man would remain silent in the pulpit upon the so-called "war issues" of
1861. Early in that memorable year he boldly informed his people as to
the course he intended to pursue so long as the war lasted. He would
not equivocate and he would not be silent. Henceforth stirring patriotic
sermons, as the demand for them arose, were the order of the day in the
congregation to which he ministered. The character of these discourses
may be partly determined from such titles as, "The Choice between
Barabbas and Jesus," "The Treason of Judas Iscariot," "Secession in
Palestine," and "Rebellion Pictures from Paradise Lost." "After the
lapse of more than sixty years," so the Hon. Horace Davis assured
the writer, "I can distinctly remember the fire and passion of those
terrible indictments of treason and rebellion."

"Terrible indictments" truly, and in the sto