“_Rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven!_”
I should hardly name humility as a characteristic of prayer or sermon; yet, for one whose boldness of speech often approximates dogmatism, he is singularly free from self-assertion. His sermon was more like a lecture-room talk than a discourse prepared for, and delivered to a mixed multitude. His quotations from Holy Writ were abundant and apt, evincing a retentive memory and ready wit. One-third of the sermon was in the very words of Scripture. His habitual employment of Bible phrases has lent to his own composition a quaint savor. He makes lavish use of “thee” and “thou,” jumbling these inelegantly with “you” in the same sentence.
For example:—He described a man who had been useful and approved as a church-member: (always addressing his own people)—“The Master has allowed you to work for many days in His vineyard, and paid thee good wages, even given thee souls for thy hire.”
In what shape reverses came to the prosperous laborer we were not told, but that he did see others outstrip him in usefulness and honors:
“You are bidden by the Master to take a lower—maybe the lowest seat. Ah, then, my friend, _thou hast the dumps_!”
I heard him say in another sermon: “If my Lord were to offer a prize for a joyful Christian I am afraid there are not many of you who would dare try for it. And if you did, I fear me much you would not draw even a third prize.”
Occasionally he is coarse in trope and expression. I hesitate to record a sentence that shocked me to disgust as being not only in atrocious taste and an unfortunate figure of speech, but, to my apprehension, irreverent:
“If we are not filled, it is because we do not hang upon and suck at those blessed breasts of GOD’S promises as we might and should do.”
His illustrations are like his diction—homely. There was not a new grand thought, nor a beautiful passage, rhetorically considered, in any discourse we ever heard from him; not a trace of such fervid imagination as draws men, sometimes against their will, to hear Gospel truth in Talmage’s Tabernacle, or of Beecher’s magnificent genius. We have, in America, scores of men who are little known outside of their own town, or State, who preach the Word as simply and devoutly; who are, impartially considered, in speech more weighty, in learning incomparably superior to the renowned London Nonconformist. Yet we sat—between six and seven thousand of us—and listened to him for nearly an hour, without restlessness or straying attention. Yes! and went again and again, to discover, if possible, as the boys say of the juggler—“how he did it.”