man as I was, "apprehend" what he and Vitringa
between them had made out of the fifty-third chapter of his favorite
prophet, the princely Isaiah.[14] Even then, so far as I can recall, he
never took notes of what he read. He did not need this, his intellectual
force and clearness were so great; he was so _totus in illo_, whatever
it was, that he recorded by a secret of its own, his mind's results and
victories and _memoranda_, as he went on; he did not even mark his
books, at least very seldom; he marked his mind.

[14] His reading aloud of everything from John Gilpin to John
Howe was a fine and high art, or rather gift. Henderson
could not have given

"The dinner waits, and we are tired;"
Says Gilpin, "So am I,"

better; and to hear him sounding the depths and cadences of
the Living Temple, "bearing on its front this doleful
inscription, 'Here God once dwelt,'" was like listening to
the recitative of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece;
and I remember quite well his startling us all when reading
at family worship, "His name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, the mighty God," by a peremptory, explosive
sharpness, as of thunder overhead, at the words "the mighty
God," similar to the rendering now given to Handel's music,
and doubtless so meant by him; and then closing with "the
Prince of Peace," soft and low. No man who wishes to feel
Isaiah, as well as understand him, should be ignorant of
Handel's "Messiah." His prelude to "Comfort ye"--its simple
theme, cheerful and infinite as the ripple of the
unsearchable sea--gives a deeper meaning to the words. One
of my father's great delights in his dying months was
reading the lives of Handel and of Michael Angelo, then
newly out. He felt that the author of "He was despised," and
"He shall feed his flock," and those other wonderful airs,
was a man of profound religious feeling, of which they were
the utterance; and he rejoiced over the warlike airs and
choruses of "Judas Maccabaeus." You have recorded his
estimate of the religious nature of him of the _terribile
via_; he said it was a relief to his mind to know that such
a mighty genius walked humbly with his God.

He was thus every year preaching with more and more power, becaus