ons
too strong for utterance. There was sometimes an appearance almost of
distress in this exercise, so utterly inadequate, as it seemed to him,
were any words of his to express what lay deepest in his mind, when
thus brought face to face with God. 'I do not shrink,' he said, 'from
speaking to man.' But, except in his rarest and best moments, he was
oppressed by a sense of the poverty of any language of thanksgiving or
supplication that he could use in his intercourse with God."

"His manner in preaching was marked by great depth and strength of
feeling, but always subdued. He spoke on great subjects. He entered
profoundly into them, and treated them with extraordinary intellectual
ability and clearness. They who were seeking for light found it in his
preaching. But more than any intellectual precision or clearness of
thought was to be gained from him in his treatment of the momentous
questions which present themselves, sooner or later, to every thoughtful
mind. Behind these questions, more important than any one or all of
them intellectually considered, was the realm of thought, emotion,
aspiration, out of which [148] religious ideas are formed, and in
which the highest faculties of our nature are to find their appropriate
nourishment and exercise. He spoke to us as one who belonged to this
higher world. The realm in which he lived, and which seemed never absent
from his mind, impressed itself as he spoke, and gave a deeper solemnity
and attractiveness to his words than could be given by any specific
and clearly-defined ideas. A sense of mystery and awe pervaded his
teachings, and infused into his utterances a sentiment of divine
sacredness and authority. He preached as I never, before or since, have
heard any one else, on human nature, on retribution, on the power of
kindness, on life and death, in their relations to man and to what is
divine. He stood before us compassed about by a religious atmosphere
which penetrated his inmost nature, and gave its tone and coloring to
all he said. For he spoke as one who saw rising visibly before him the
issues of life and of death."

"He was gifted with a rare dramatic talent. But it was a gift, not an
art, and showed itself in voice and gesture as by the natural impulse of
a great nature profoundly moved, and in its extremest manifestations so
subdued as to leave the impression of a vast underlying reserved force.
His action, so full of meaning and so effective, was no studied