As a preacher Mr. Kellogg was great, both in the art of making and in the forceful presentation of the sermon. Rhetorical finish and enlivening humor were alike natural and easy to him. I never have heard a preacher who seemed more thoroughly to enjoy the effort of preaching, and few preachers excelled him in the ability to make his audience enjoy the sermon. How quickly could he change the amused interest of the congregation in the play of his humor into serious and solemn emotion by the power and pathos of his forceful appeals, applying the teaching of his sermon to the conscience and the heart.
He was a man of quick and responsive sympathies. His whole life was characterized by the spirit of Christian benevolence. He not only gave himself to his people to be ever and always their servant in things spiritual, but as truly in things temporal. He was their counsellor and helper in all their heavenly and earthly concerns. It was the habit of his life to keep a purse for the Lord, into which went one-tenth of all moneys received by him. Thus he furnished himself, systematically, with the means to extend aid to those whose sufferings appealed to his sympathies. It is said that he gave beyond his means, and often to his own embarrassment. His services as a preacher were in constant demand, from churches far and near, and he responded when he could. Not a few churches have been blessed by his labors, at different intervals, during his Harpswell pastorate. Here in Portland he was greatly beloved. For nearly one year he was the continual supply of the St. Lawrence Street church, and in the thought of its older members he is regarded as one of its pastors. Portland claimed him as her own. He preached at Cumberland Mills, at Wellesley, Rockport, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, and in other places he has served the church of God. The Congregational church in New Bedford extended to him a call, as did this Second Parish. But he refused all such calls, being unwilling to make any final severance from his beloved Harpswell people.
In 1889, after the close of his Topsham pastorate, he resumed full pastoral care of the Harpswell church, which had been served by others during his work elsewhere, and there he remained until God called him home. It was a wonder to us all how this venerable man, with the infirmities of extreme old age creeping upon him, could still keep on preaching in his eighty-eighth year, two sermons each Sunday, and ministering as a pastor to his flock.