But for preachers to carry `the
vision and faculty divine' of the poet into the pulpit, and with the
authority of messengers of God, demand of men in their business and
domestic service, their mechanical labors, their necessary tasks, to
see God's spirit and feel God's laws everywhere touching, inspiring, and
elevating their ordinary life and lot, was something new and glorious.
Thus Dewey revitalized the doctrine of Retribution by bringing it from
the realms a futurity down to the immediate bosoms of men; and nothing
more solemn, affecting, and true is to be found in all literature
than his famous two sermons on Retribution, in the first volume of his
published works. Spirituality, in the same manner, he called away from
its ghostly churchyard haunts, and made it a cheerful angel of God's
presence in the house and the shop, where the sense and feeling of God's
holiness [362] and love make every duty an act of worship, and every
commonest experience an opportunity of divine service. Under the
thoughtful, tender yet searching, rational but profoundly spiritual
preaching of Dr. Dewey,--where men's souls found an holiest and powerful
interpreter, and nature, business, pleasure, domestic ties, received
a fresh consecration,-who can wonder that thousands of men and women,
hitherto dissatisfied, hungry, but with no appetite for the bread'
called of life,' furnished at the ordinary churches, were, for the first
time, made to realize the beauty of holiness and the power of the gospel
of salvation?

"The persuasiveness of Dewey was another of his greatest
characteristics. His yearning to convince, his longing to impart his own
convictions, gave a candor and patient and sweet reasonableness to his
preaching, which has, I think, never been equalled in any preacher of
his measure of intellect, height of imagination, and reverence of soul.
For he could never lower his ideals to please or propitiate. He was
working for no immediate and transitory effects. He could use no arts
that entangled, dazzled, or frightened; nothing but truth, and truth
cautiously discriminated. His sermons were born of the most painful
labors of his spirit; they were careful and finished works, written
and rewritten, revised, corrected, improved, almost as if they had been
poems addressed to the deliberate judgment of posterity. They possess
that claim upon coming generations, and will, one day, rediscovered by
a deeper and better spiritual taste, take their