Agnew.] ^dO [Feb. 6, 



Committee of the Philadelphia Society for alleviating the miseries of 

 Public Prisons. His interest was also solicited in behalf of the Institutions 

 for the Blind, the Deaf and the Dumb. He early became a member of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. 

 That his connection with these different organizations was not simply 

 nominal, will appear from the glowing eulogiums passed by several of 

 these bodies upon the character, scientific and literary attainments of the 

 man. And just here, let me say, in a parenthesis, that the disfavor ex- 

 pressed by many against ministers of the Gospel actively participating in 

 public affairs, appears to me to be based on very narrow and erroneous views 

 of the duties which belong to citizenship. The presence of an educated 

 ecclesiastic among governing bodies, tends to leaven a large mass of crude 

 humanity, and to transfuse it with a wholesome moral and restraining in- 

 fluence. 



But great and varied as were his gifts and graces in literary and scien- 

 tific knowledge, it was in the sphere of the ministry that Dr. Beadle shone 

 with a rare splendor. God had eminently fitted him for this work. The 

 ofiice of the ministry is a very comprehensive one, including, as it does, 

 preacliing, pastoral labor, and attendance on church courts, and I know of 

 no calling from which there is so much exacted. Between the demands of 

 education, culture, secularity and sentiment, the minister is expected to 

 embody all the learning of ancient and modern savants, all the refinement 

 and polish of court circles, all the eloquence of an Apollos, all the meek- 

 ness of a Moses, all the patience of a Job, and all the frugality and 

 economy of a Franklin. I do not say that Dr. Beadle met all these re- 

 quirements of the time, but he certainly approached the standards as near 

 as most men of his profession. I am not sufficiently familiar with theo- 

 logical phraseology to express in technical language the characteristics of 

 his preaching. The themes which constituted the subjects of his pulpit 

 discourses were always evangelical, and managed with a consummate art. 

 The textual dissection or analyses of doctrine was conducted with a keen 

 logical blade, and though embellished with great elegance of diction, and 

 with a rare wealth of illustration, the central idea or doctrine always illu- 

 minated the foreground. A student of nature and of art, familiar with 

 many departments of human learning, and master of language, he placed 

 all the great acquisitions of his mind, gleaned from so many sources, under 

 tribute in the discussion and enforcement of Gospel truth, which, while it 

 challenged the undivided admiration of the ripest intellect, was at the 

 same time leveled down to the capacity of a child. As Madam Roland in 

 her early readings of Telemachus and Tasso became so imbued with the 

 spirit of her subject, that for the time, it is said, she was Eucharis for Tele- 

 machus, and Ermina for Tancred ; and as Reynolds, that wonderfully 

 gifted delineator of the human face, when contemplating the transfigura- 

 tion of Raffaelle, became swallowed up in the resplendent glory of the 

 scene, so there were times, when temporarily released from the pressure of 

 physical weakness, that Dr. Beadle, interpenetrated and enwrapped with 



