ble otherwise to convey,--the mingled
sweetness, dignity, and beauty of his face. When it was winter, and the
church darkening, and the lights at the pulpit were lighted so as to
fall upon his face and throw the rest of the vast assemblage into deeper
shadow, the effect of his countenance was something never to forget.

He was more a man of power than of genius in the ordinary sense. His
imagination was not a primary power; it was not originative, though in a
quite uncommon degree receptive, having the capacity of realizing the
imaginations of others, and through them bodying forth the unseen. When
exalted and urged by the understanding, and heated by the affections, it
burst out with great force, but always as servant, not master. But if he
had no one faculty that might be, to use the loose words of common
speech, original, he was so as a whole,--such a man as stood alone. No
one ever mistook his look, or would, had they been blind, have mistaken
his voice or words, for those of any one else, or any one else's for
his.

His mental characteristics, if I may venture on such ground, were
clearness and vigor, intensity, fervor,[26] concentration, penetration,
and perseverance,--more of depth than width.[27] The moral conditions
under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of
truth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of
affection; fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often to speak
of the moral obligation laid upon every man to _think truly_, as well as
to speak and act truly, and said that much intellectual demoralization
and ruin resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely tolerant of
all difference of opinion, so that it was sincere; and this was all the
more remarkable from his being the opposite of an indifferentist, being
very strong in his own convictions, holding them keenly, even
passionately, while from the structure of his mind, he was somehow
deficient in comprehending, much less of sympathizing with the opinions
of men who greatly differed from him. This made his homage to entire
freedom of thought all the more genuine and rare. In the region of
theological thought he was scientific, systematic, and authoritative,
rather than philosophical and speculative. He held so strongly that the
Christian religion was mainly a religion of facts, that he perhaps
allowed too little to its also being a philosophy that was ready to
meet, out of its own essence an