Mark Twain's sketches Author:Samuel Langhorne Clemens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A NEW BEECHER CHURCH. If the Rev. Mr. Smith, or the Rev. Mr. Jones, or the Rev. Mr. Brown, were about to build a new church edifice, it would be projected on ... more »the same old pattern, and be like pretty much all the other churches in the country, and so I would naturally mention it as a new Presbyterian church, or a new Methodist, or a new Baptist church, and never think of calling it by the pastor's name; but when a Beecher projects a church, that edifice is necessarily going to be something entirely fresh and original; it is not going to be like any other church in the world; it is going to be as variegated, eccentric, and marked with as peculiar and striking an individuality as a Beecher himself; it is going to have a deal more Beecher in it than any one narrow creed can fit into without rattling, or any one arbitrary order of architecture can symmetrically enclose and cover. Consequently to call it simply a Congregational church would not give half an idea of the thing. There is only one word broad enough, and wide enough, and deep enough to take in the whole affair, and express it cleanly, luminously, and concisely—and that is Beecher. The projected edifice I am about to speak of is, therefore, properly named in my caption as a new "Beecher Church." The projector is the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher— brother of the other one, of course—I never knew but one Beecher that wasn't, and he was a nephew. The new church is to be built in Elmira, N. Y., where Mr. B. has been preaching to one and the same congregation for the last sixteen years, and is thoroughly esteemed and be" loved by his people. I have had opportunity to hear all about the new church, for I have lately been visiting in Elmira. Now, when one has that disease which give its possessor the title of " humorist," he must ...« less