since the days of
President Edwards. He put the impress of his powerful personality on a
thousand ministers who graduated from Princeton Seminary.

In his lecture-desk and in the pulpit he was simplicity itself. His
sermons were like the waters of Lake George, so pellucid that you could
see every bright pebble far down in the depths; a child could comprehend
him, yet a sage be instructed by him. His best discourses were
extemporaneous, and he had very little gesture, except with his
forefinger, which he used to place under his chin, and sometimes against
his nose in a very peculiar manner. With a clear piping voice and
colloquial style he held his audience in rapt attention, disdaining all
the tricks of sensational oratory. Twice I heard him deliver his
somewhat celebrated discourse on "The Day of Judgment;" it was a
masterpiece of solemn eloquence, in which sublimity and simplicity were
combined in a way that I have never seen equaled He used to say that the
right course for an old man to keep his mind from senility was to
produce some piece of composition every day; and he continued to write
his practical articles for the religious press until he was almost
four-score. What an impressive funeral was his on that bright October
afternoon, in 1851, when two hundred ministers gathered in that
Westminster Abbey of Presbyterianism, the Princeton Cemetery! His ashes
slumber beside those of Witherspoon, Davies, Hodge, McCosh and Jonathan
Edwards.

Among the six sons who stood that day beside that grave, the most
brilliant by far was the third son, Joseph Addison Alexander. Dr.
Charles Hodge said of him: "Taking him all in all, he was the most
gifted man with whom I have ever been personally acquainted," In
childhood, such was his precocity that he knew the Hebrew alphabet at
six years of age (I am afraid that some ministers do not know it at
sixty); and he could read Latin fluently when he was only eight! Of his
wonderful feats of memory I could give many illustrations; one was that
on the day that I was matriculated in the Seminary with fifty other
students, Professor Alexander went over to Dr. Hodge's study, and
repeated to him every one of our names! When using manuscript in the
pulpit, he frequently turned the leaves backward instead of forward, for
he knew all the sermon by heart! His commentaries--quite too few--remain
as monuments of his profound scholarship, and some of his articles in
the _Princeton Review_ sparkle