ot much of a swivel. Thus it was that
he rather dropped into the minds of others his authoritative assertions,
and left them to breed conviction. If they gave them entrance and
cherished them, they would soon find how full of primary truth they
were, and how well they would serve them, as they had served him. With
all this heavy artillery, somewhat slow and cumbrous, on great
questions, he had no want, when he was speaking off-hand, of quick,
_snell_ remark, often witty and full of spirit, and often too
unexpected, like lightning--flashing, smiting, and gone. In Church
Courts this was very marked. On small ordinary matters, a word from him
would settle a long discussion. He would, after lively, easy talk with
his next neighbor, set _him_ up to make a speech which was conclusive.
But on great questions he must move forward his great gun with much
solemnity and effort, partly from his desire to say as much of the truth
at once as he could, partly from the natural concentration and rapidity
of his mind in action, as distinguished from his slowness when
_incubating_, or in the process of thought,--and partly from a sort of
self-consciousness--I might almost call it a compound of pride and
nervous diffidence--which seldom left him. He desired to say it so that
it might never need to be said again or otherwise by himself, or any one
else.

This strong personality, along with a prevailing love to be alone, and
dwell with thoughts rather than with thinkers, pervaded his entire
character. His religion was deeply personal,[22] not only as affecting
himself, but as due to a personal God, and presented through the
sacrifice and intercession of the God-man; and it was perhaps owing to
his "conversation" being so habitually in heaven--his social and
affectionate desires filling themselves continually from "all the
fulness of God," through living faith and love--that he the less felt
the need of giving and receiving human affection. I never knew any man
who lived more truly under the power, and sometimes under the shadow of
the world to come. This world had to him little reality except as
leading to the next; little interest, except as the time of probation
and sentence. A child brought to him to be baptized was in his mind, and
in his words, "a young immortal to be educated for eternity;" a birth
was the beginning of what was never to end; sin--his own and that of the
race--was to him, as it must be to all men who can think, the grea