, none can tell how far
its rays have travelled in the persons and labors of those whose
Christianity it first enkindled.

But what was the secret of Dr. Doddridge's great success? He had not the
rhetoric of Bates, the imagination of Bunyan, nor the massive theology
of Owen; and yet his preaching and his publications were as useful as
theirs. So far as we can find it out, let us briefly indicate where his
great strength lay.

As already hinted, we attach considerable importance to his clear and
orderly mind. He was an excellent teacher. At a glance he saw every
thing which could simplify his subject, and he had self-denial
sufficient to forego those good things which would only encumber it.
Hence, like his college lectures, his sermons were continuous and
straightforward, and his hearers had the comfort of accompanying him to
a goal which they and he constantly kept in view. It was his plan not
only to divide his discourses, but to enunciate the divisions again and
again, till they were fully imprinted on the memory; and although such a
method would impart a fatal stiffness to many compositions, in his
manipulation it only added clearness to his meaning, and precision to
his proofs. Dr. Doddridge's was not the simplicity of happy
illustration. In his writings you meet few of those apt allusions which
play over every line of Bunyan, like the slant beams of evening on the
winking lids of the ocean; nor can you gather out of his writings such
anecdotes as, like garnet in some Highland mountain, sparkle in every
page of Brooks and Flavel. Nor was it the simplicity of homely language.
It was not the terse and self-commending Saxon, of which Latimer in one
age, and Swift in another, and Cobbett in our own, have been the mighty
masters, and through it the masters of their English fellows. But it was
the simplicity of clear conception and orderly arrangement. A text or
topic may be compared to a goodly apartment still empty; and which will
be very differently garnished according as you move into it piece by
piece the furniture from a similar chamber, or pour in pell-mell the
contents of a lumber attic. Most minds can appreciate order, and to the
majority of hearers it is a greater treat than ministers always imagine,
to get some obscure matter made plain, or some confused subject cleared
up. With this treat Doddridge's readers and hearers were constantly
indulged. Whether they were things new or old, from the orderly
compartm