ese latter the movement of
imagination is _centrifugal_, it sustains itself in the loftiest
altitudes, and in the most evanescent and fleecy shapes of thought it
finds the materials from which it wreathes its climbing, "cloud-capped"
citadels. The opposite order of genius is, as we have previously called
it, _centripetal_, gravitating earthward.

Both orders are to be found among those celebrated as pulpit
orators,--all, indeed, who have ranked as powers in this department of
human effort belonging eminently, nay, we may almost say _exclusively_, to
one or the other. If we take Spurgeon, Whitefield, Bunyan, and Luther as
representatives of one order, we shall have also representatives of the
other in such orators as Jeremy Taylor,--the Shakspeare of the
pulpit,--and, though in a very different sort, Henry Ward Beecher. That in
which these two classes of orators differ is mainly the plane of their
movements,--the one hardly lifted above the earth's surface or above the
level of sensibility, while the other rises into the sphere of the ideal
and impalpable. In the latter class there are vast differences, but
uniformly intellect is prominent above sensibility; human faith and love
are _exhalant_, aspirant, and rendered of a vapory subtilty by the
interpenetration with them of the Olympian sunlight of thought and
imagination. In Beecher this ideality is of a _philosophic_ sort. Thought
in him is forever dividing and illustrating truth; and that which is his
great peculiarity is that he is at the same time so strictly
philosophical, even to a metaphysical nicety, and so very popular. We have
heard him, in a single discourse, give utterance to so much philosophic
truth relating to theology, as, if it were spread out over a dozen sermons
by doctors in divinity whom we have also heard, would be capital
sufficient to secure a professor's chair in any theological seminary in
the country. Yet he is never abundant in analytic statements of truth:
these in any one of his sermons are "few"--as they should be--"and far
between": the greater portion of his time and the most mighty efforts of
his dramatic power being devoted to the irradiation and illustration of
these truths. This is the fertility of his genius, that, out of the roots
which philosophy furnishes, it can, through its mysterious broodings,
bring forth into the breathing warmth of life organisms so delicate and
perfect. Here is the secret of his popularity. Jeremy Taylor, w