History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

was nevertheless an important means of impression to his sermons. Few men could indicate the
moral emotions more effectually by mere tones. It was especially expressive in pathetic passages.
His pulpit manner was marked, in the introduction of the sermon by dignity, but dignity without
ceremony or pretension. As he advanced into the exposition and argument of his discourse, (and
there were both in most of his sermons,) he became more emphatic, especially as brilliant, though
brief illustrations, ever and anon, gleamed upon his logic. By the time he had reached the peroration
his utterance became rapid, his thoughts were glowing, the music of his voice rung out in thrilling
tones, and sometimes quivered with trills of pathos. No imaginative excitement prevailed in the
audience as under Maffitt's eloquence, no tumultuous wonder as under Bascom's, none of Cookman's
impetuous passion, or Olin's overwhelming power, but a subduing, almost tranquil spell, of genial
feeling, expressed often by tears or half suppressed ejaculations; something of the deep but gentle
effect of Summerfield combined with a higher intellectual impression.
If genius cannot be claimed for him, nor the very highest order of intellect, yet he approached both
so nearly as to command the admiration of the best cultivated minds, and the almost idolatrous
interest of the people. Good vigor in all his faculties, and good balance of them all, were his chief
intellectual characteristics. His literary acquisitions were not great. The American collegiate course
in his day was stinted. After his graduation he was too busy to study much, and he was not a great
reader. His resources were chiefly in himself; in his good sense, his quick sagacity, his generous
sensibilities, and his healthy and fertile imagination. He possessed the latter power richly, though
it never ran riot in his discourses. It was an auxiliary to his logic, an exemplification of Dugald
Stewart's remark on the intimate relation between the imagination and the reasoning faculty in a
well-balanced mind. Its scintillations were the sparkles that flew about the anvil on which his logic
plied its strokes. His sermons, if examined in print, would pass for good, but "second-rate"
productions; that is to say, they would rank below those of Chalmers, Channing, Robert Hall, or
Olin, not to speak of the majestic productions of the great French preachers; but if heard from his
own lips in the pulpit, the hearer, even the educated and critical hearer, inspired by the preacher's
manner and sensibility, would be disposed to assign them to the "first" class. His style, not being
formed from books, was the natural expression of his vigorous and exact intellect; it was therefore
remarkable for its simplicity and terseness, its Saxon purity and energy. A meretricious [shallow,
superficial -- DVM] sentence cannot be found in all his published writings.
He was not a metaphysician, nor a dialectician, and yet by natural disposition he was a polemic.
This was a marked propensity of his mind; it was never abused into gladiatorship in the pulpit, but
inclined him almost incessantly to theological discussion out of it. A jealous regard for the truth
doubtless prompted it; but it had a deeper foundation; it was founded in his mental constitution. His
polemical writings were not only in good temper, but models of luminous and forcible
argumentation. His sermon on Calvinism may be referred to as an example. That discourse, with his
sermon and lectures on Universalism, his essays on the New Haven Divinity, his sermon on the Law
and the Gospel, his tract in reply to Pierrepont on the Atonement, etc., would form a volume which
the Church might preserve as no ignoble memorial of both his intellectual and moral character. His
Travels in Europe, though containing some examples of elaborate reflection and picturesque
description, was not a volume of superior claims; it had too much of the ordinary guidebook
character.