00.2 Introduction
INTRODUCTION By Charles R. Brown, D. D., Dean of the Yale Divinity School FROM the days when Henry Ward Beecher gave the first series of lectures on the "Lyman Beecher Foundation" in Yale University, on through those years when this service has been performed by such eminent men as Phillips Brooks and R. W. Dale, Henry van Dyke and John Watson, Lyman Abbott and George A. Gordon, Washington Gladden and Francis G. Peabody, the task of inspiring young ministers to nobler effort in their high calling has been well performed. But among them all, few lecturers have ever so gripped the divinity students, the larger audience of pastors in active service and the thoughtful people of New Haven as did Silvester Horne when he spoke to us on "The Romance of Preaching."
He was himself a shining example of those high and chivalrous qualities which he would covet for the true prophet, and the younger Knights of the Cross responded to his spiritual appeal as to the bugle-call of a genuine leader. The intellectual distinction which marked his utterances, the fine literary form in which they were phrased, the moral passion which gave to their delivery that energy which belongs to words which are "spirit and life," together with the rare spiritual insight displayed, all combined to make notable the service rendered by Mr. Horne to Yale University.
It seemed tragic that just three days after he had finished this course of lectures, he should suddenly be caught away like the prophet of old, from the deck of a steamer as he neared the city of Toronto where he was to preach next day at the University. Here, indeed, are his last words, spoken in an upper room to his brother ministers, younger and older, upon whom he had breathed his own spirit of intense devotion to the high task of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ! The sense of loss to England and to America, and to the whole Christian world, made all hearts heavy. But "he being dead yet speaketh," in these inspiring words and in that genius for friendship which has left its benediction upon so many thousands of hearts, and in that distinguished service which it was his privilege to render to Church and to State on that side the water and on this.
Yale University.