s address of welcome to the
members of the "Evangelical Alliance" in 1873. How the foreign
delegates--Doctors Stoughton, Christlieb, Dorner and the rest of
them--did open their eyes that evening to the fact that a Yankee-born
parson was, in elegant culture and polished oratory, a match for them
all. Dr. Adams' speech "struck twelve" for the Alliance at the start;
nothing during the whole subsequent sessions surpassed that opening
address, although Beecher and Dr. Joseph Parker were both among the
speakers. He closed the meeting of the Alliance in the Academy of Music
with a prayer of wonderful fervor, pathos and beauty.

One of his grandest speeches was delivered before the Free Church
General Assembly in Edinburgh--in May, 1871. Dr. Guthrie told me that he
swept the assembly away by his stately bearing, sonorous voice and
classic oratory. The men whom he moved so mightily were such men as
Arnot and Guthrie and Rainy and Bonar,--the men who had listened to the
grandest efforts of Duff and of Chalmers. I well remember that when I
had to address the same assembly (as the American delegate) the next
year I was more disturbed by the apparition of my predecessor, Dr.
Adams, than by all the brilliant audience before me.

Dr. Adams was gifted with what is of more practical value than genius,
and that was marvelous _tact_. That was with him an instinct and an
inspiration. It led him to always speak the right word, and do the right
thing at the right time. Personal politeness helped him also; for he was
one of the most perfect gentlemen in America. That practical sagacity
made him the leader of the "new school" branch of our church, during the
delicate negotiations for reunion in 1867, and on to 1870. He knew human
nature well, and never lost either his temper or his faith in the sure
result. To-day when that old lamentable rupture of our beloved church is
as much a matter of past history as the rupture of the Union during the
civil war, let us gratefully remember George W. Musgrave, the pilot of
the "old school" and William Adams, the pilot of the "new."

The last sermon that I ever heard Dr. Adams deliver was in my Lafayette
Avenue Church pulpit a few years before his death. His text was the
closing passage of the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians. The whole
sermon was delivered with great majesty and tenderness. One illustration
in it was sublime. He was comparing the "things which are seen and
temporal" with the "things