im, its silver stream rising
into sudden flood, and rolling irresistibly on its way.[29]

[29] Such an occasional paroxysm of eloquence is thus described
by Dr. Cairns:--"At certain irregular intervals, when the
loftier themes of the gospel ministry were to be handled,
his manner underwent a transformation which was startling,
and even electrical. He became rapt and excited as with new
inspiration; his utterance grew thick and rapid; his voice
trembled and faltered with emotion; his eye gleamed with a
wild unearthly lustre, in which his countenance shared; and
his whole frame heaved to and fro, as if each glowing
thought and vivid figure that followed in quick succession
were only a fragment of some greater revelation which he
panted to overtake. The writer of this notice has witnessed
nothing similar in any preacher, and numbers the effects of
a passage which he once heard upon the scenes and exercises
of the heavenly world among his most thrilling recollections
of sacred oratory."--_Memoir prefixed to posthumous volume
of Discourses._

We question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by
no means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in
Britain during his fifty years--every Sunday two new ones; the
composition faultless--such as Cicero or Addison would have made them,
had they been U. P. ministers; only there was always in them more soul
than body, more of the spirit than of the letter. What a contrast to the
much turbid, hot, hasty, perilous stuff of our day and preachers! The
original power and _size_ of Dr. Henderson's mind, his roominess for all
thoughts, and his still reserve, his lentitude, made, as we have said,
his expressions clear and quiet, to a degree that a coarse and careless
man, spoiled by the violence and noise of other pulpit men, might think
insipid. But let him go over the words slowly, and he would not say this
again; and let him see and feel the solemnizing, commanding power of
that large, square, leonine countenance, the broad massive frame, as of
a compressed Hercules, and the living, pure, melodious voice, powerful,
but not by reason of loudness, dropping out from his compressed lips the
words of truth, and he would not say this again. His voice had a
singular pathos in it; and those who remember his often-called-for
sermon o