e elm was covered with chocolate-colored blossoms, the soft
maple drew bees to its crimson tassels." Would that all preachers and
writers used no more offensive and superfluous flowers of speech than
such as these....

When he wants to illustrate the comfort of a powerful, unseen, though
protective love, he tells us how, as a boy, he woke up one midsummer
night and listened, with a sense of half-uneasy awe, to the wild cry
of the marsh birds, whilst the moonlight streamed full into his room;
and then, as he grew more and more disturbed, he suddenly heard his
father clear his throat "a-hem," in the next room, and instantly that
familiar sound restored his equanimity. The illustration is simple,
but it hits the mark and goes home. His affectionate tributes to his
father and mother are constantly breaking forth in spite of himself.
"I thank God," he says, "for two things. First, that I was born and
bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and
a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. Next
I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never
became acquainted with wickedness." How delightful it is to think of a
man who, without a taint of conscious insincerity, but simply out of
the fulness of his heart, can get up before four thousand people, and
say:

"I never was sullied in act, nor in thought when I was young. I grew
up as pure as a woman. And I cannot express to God the thanks which I
owe to my mother, and to my father, and to the great household of
sisters and brothers among whom I lived. And the secondary knowledge
of those wicked things which I have gained in later life in a
professional way, I gained under such guards that it was not harmful
to me." ...

He has a wonderful way of importing his leisure hours into the pulpit,
and making the great cooped-up multitude feel something of the joy and
freshness of his own exhilaration. One golden day above others seems
to have dwelt in his mind. He refers to it again and again.

"When I walked one day on the top of Mt. Washington--glorious day of
memory! Such another day I think I shall not experience till I stand
on the battlements of the New Jerusalem--how I was discharged of all
imperfections; the wide far-spreading country which lay beneath me in
beauteous light, how heavenly it looked, and I communed with God. I
had sweet tokens that he loved me. My very being rose right up into
his nature. I walked w