with all his might what his hands found to do.

One rarely finds a man with such capacity for hard work and varied
work. When he sustained the dual relation of pastor and professor in
Princeton, he never allowed the duties of one sphere of labor to be an
excuse for slighting the other sphere of labor. He was always up to
date in the literature of his department, notwithstanding the exacting
calls of his parish. Nor did he find an easy mode of preparation for
the pulpit by giving his theological lectures a homiletical form.
Indeed I sometimes thought it would have been well if he had brought
some of his New Testament studies into the pulpit. This was Dr. Hodge's
method, and his sermons were all studies in biblical theology; but Dr.
Purves, though always a preacher to whom theological students listened
with delight for hours, was not distinctively a preacher to theological
students. He was very comprehensive and varied in his range of topics
for the pulpit, and was equally acceptable to the undergraduates of the
university and to the men and women who constitute the congregations of
great cities.

We cannot understand Dr. Purves as a preacher or as teacher unless we
know him as a man. He had a warm heart; he had a keen eye, a good
memory for names and faces. He seemed to know more people in Princeton
than anyone else. He never loitered or dreamed; he was alert, active,
energetic, interested in all good work. The movements of his mind, like
those of his body, were quick. He was religious without being austere,
just as he was companionable without being worldly. He touched human
life at a great many points. As a New Testament specialist, it was his
business to be familiar with the literature and progress of the
Apostolic period. How much he had made himself master of that period
his "Apostolic Age"[1] will testify. But he had a wider range of
thought than that. I have heard him preach Thanksgiving sermons that
involved much thought, the result of much reading and clear thinking
upon political science. While he was far from being disposed to allow
sociology to supersede theology, yet he recognized that the Gospel had
great bearing on social questions, and he was deeply interested in all
sociological movements.

[1] Apostolic Age. Scribner's, 1900.

But when we judge him as a teacher, we must judge him rather by his
influence upon the minds of his pupils than by the products of his pen,
scholarly and creditable as