Our young divines may study Beecher and Collyer, if they will learn
the types of preaching which the people most enjoy and flock to hear.
Collyer, without pretension to eloquence, is most eloquent in his
plain, homely, human way. He meets his audience as the iron he once
smote, and his words have the ring of true steel. He speaks from crown
to toe, and with a delightful humor that gives his rhetoric almost a
classic charm, his Yorkshire accent adding to the humane quality of
his thought. There is as little of scholarly pretence as of priestly
assumption in his address, and he makes his way by his placid strength,
clear intelligence, breadth of sympathy, putting the rhetoric of the
schools to the blush.