Mr. Beecher has often remarked in later years that his first real preaching was at Indianapolis. Although at Lawrenceburg he was noted for his brilliancy of diction and wonderful oratorical power, and by his good-fellowship and the strong personal interest which he took in all his people made many and lasting friends, yet he did not feel that he was doing real, effective work. “I can preach so as to make the people come to hear me,” said he to good old Bishop Little, “but somehow I can’t preach them clear into the kingdom.” A year or two after his removal to Indianapolis he determined to find out what the difficulty was. “We had delivered hundreds before, but until then the sermon was the end and not the means. We had a vague idea that truth was to be preached, and then it was to be left to do its work under God’s blessing as best it might. The result was not satisfying. Why should not preaching do now what it did in the Apostles’ days? Why should it be a random and unrequited effort? These thoughts grew, and the want of fruits was so painful that we determined to make a careful examination of the Apostles’ teaching, to see what made it so _immediately_ efficient. We found that they laid a foundation first of historical truth common to them and their auditors; that this mass of familiar truth was then concentrated upon the hearers in the form of an intense personal application and appeal; that the language was not philosophical and scholastic, but the language of common life. We determined to try the same. We considered what moral truths were admitted by everybody and gathered many of them together. We considered how they could be so combined as to press men toward a religious state. We recalled to mind the character and condition of many, who, we knew, would be present, and then, after as earnest a prayer as we ever offered, and with trembling solicitude, we went to the academy and preached the new sermon. The Lord gave it power, and ten or twelve persons were aroused by it and led ultimately to a religious life.