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The destiny of the liberal church is not to become strong and powerful, but to make all other denominations more liberal. When Chapin accused Beecher of preaching Universalist sermons, it was a home thrust, because Beecher would never have preached such sermons had not Murray, Ballou, Theodore Parker, Chapin and Starr King done so first–and Beecher supplied the goods called for.

Starr King’s voice was deep, melodious and far-reaching, and it was not an acquired “bishop’s voice”–it was his own. The biggest basso I ever heard was just five feet high and weighed one hundred twenty in his stockings; Brignoli, the tenor, weighed two hundred forty. Avoirdupois as a rule lessens the volume of the voice and heightens the register–you can’t have both adipose and chest tone. Webster and Starr King had voices very much alike, and Webster, by the way, wasn’t the big man physically that the school readers proclaim. It was his gigantic head and the royal way he carried himself that made the Liverpool stevedores say, “There goes the King of America.”

There was no pomposity about Starr King. Doctor Bartol has said that when King lectured in a new town his homely, boyish face always caused a small spasm of disappointment or merriment to sweep over the audience. But when he spoke he was a transformed being, and his deep, mellow voice would hush the most inveterate whisperers.

For eleven years Starr King remained pastor of the Hollis Street Church. During the last years of his pastorate he was much in demand as a lecturer, and his voice was heard in all the principal cities as far west as Chicago.

His lecture, “Substance and Show,” deserves to rank with Wendell Phillips’ “The Lost Arts.” In truth it is very much like Phillips’ lecture. In “The Lost Arts” Phillips tells in easy conversational way of the wonderful things that once existed; and Starr King relates in the same manner the story of some of the wonderful things that are right here and all around us. It reveals the mind of the man, his manner and thought, as well as any of his productions. The great speech is an evolution, and this lecture, given many times in the Eastern States under various titles, did not touch really high-water mark until King reached California and had cut loose from manuscript and tradition. An extract seems in order:

Most persons, doubtless, if you place before them a paving-stone and a slip of paper with some writing on it, would not hesitate to say that there is as much more substance in the rock than in the paper as there is heaviness. Yet they might make a great mistake. Suppose that the slip of paper contains the sentence, “God is love”; or, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; or, “All men have moral rights by reason of heavenly parentage,” then the paper represents more force and substance than the stone. Heaven and earth may pass away, but such words can never die out or become less real.

The word “substance” means that which stands under and supports anything else. Whatever then creates, upholds, classifies anything which our senses behold, though we can not handle, see, taste or smell it, is more substantial than the object itself. In this way the soul which vivifies, moves and supports the body is a more potent substance than the hard bones and heavy flesh which it vitalizes. A ten-pound weight falling on your head affects you unpleasantly as substance, much more so than a leaf of the New Testament, if dropped in the same direction; but there is a way in which a page of the New Testament may fall upon a nation and split it, or infuse itself into its bulk and give it strength and permanence. We should be careful, therefore, what test we adopt in order to decide the relative stability of things.