tten when he was
near seventy he says, "I do believe there never was a man into whose
manhood and later life so much of his foolish boyhood flowed as into
mine. I am as anxious to go home, I shall be all the way to-morrow as
eager and restless, and all the while thinking of the end of my journey,
as if I were a boy going from school, or a young lover six weeks after
his wedding-day. Shall I ever learn to be an old man?"

But it was this very simplicity and tenderness that gave such a charm to
his personal intercourse. His emotions, like his thoughts, had a
plain directness about them which assured you of their honesty. With a
profound love of justice, he had an eminently judicial mind, and could
not be content without viewing a subject from every side, and casting
light upon all its points. The light was simple sunshine, untinged by
artificial mixtures; the views were direct and straightforward, with no
subtle slants of odd or recondite position; and in his feelings,
also, there was the same large and natural simplicity. You felt
the ground-swell of humanity in them, and it was this breadth and
genuineness which laid the foundation of his power as a preacher, making
him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and
universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and
acquired,--a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so
attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say
that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to
a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service from any other
lips,--a fine dramatic power, enough to have given him distinction as an
actor, had that been the profession of his choice,--a striking dignity
of presence, and an easy and appropriate gesticulation. But these, as
well as his strong common sense, that balance-wheel of character, were
brought into the service of his earnest convictions. What he had to say,
he put into the simplest form; and if his love of art and beauty, and
his imaginative faculty, gave wealth and ornament to his style, he never
sacrificed a particle of direct force for any rhetorical advantage. His
function in life--he felt it to his inmost soul--was to present to human
hearts and minds the essential verities of their existence in such a
manner that they could not choose but believe in them. His strength was
in his reverent perception of the majesty of Right as accordant with the
D