And he was a man of wonderful
intelligence and good sense. And he was well read. His mind was full to
overflowing of the soundest religious knowledge. And his good sound
sense had no perceptible admixture of nonsense. Every sentence answered
to your best ideas of the right, the true, the holy, the divine. His
grammar, his logic, and his rhetoric were perfect, and all nature seemed
to stand by to supply him with apt, and striking, and touching
illustrations. And his soul was full of feeling. He seemed to sympathize
with every form of humanity, from the helpless babe to tottering age,
and to be one with them in all their joys and sorrows, and in all their
hopes and fears. And now he would cry with the crying child, and then he
would wail with the afflicted mother. All that is great, all that is
tender, all that is terrible,--all nature, with all that is human, and
much that was divine, seemed incarnated in him. He was the most
wonderful embodiment of all that goes to make a great, a mighty, a
complete man, and a good, an able, and an all-powerful preacher, it ever
was my privilege to see. As a matter of course, his prayers, his
sermons, and his public speeches were irresistible. Sinners trembled,
and fell on their knees praying and howling.
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