"My preaching is barren and dull, my voice is hard and harsh; but then
the Lord is a Sovereign, and may work through me. He fed Elijah once
through a raven, and he may feed some poor wandering soul through me."
The only mistake made by the good man was that of supposing that the
elaboration of theology was preaching the gospel. The gospel he was
preaching constantly, by his pure, unworldly living, by his visitations
to homes of poverty and sorrow, by his searching out of the lowly
African slaves, his teaching of those whom no one else in those days had
thought of teaching, and by the grand humanity, outrunning his age, in
which he protested against the then admitted system of slavery and the
slave-trade. But when, rising in the pulpit, he followed trains of
thought suited only to the desk of the theological lecture-room, he did
it blindly, following that law of self-development by which minds of a
certain amount of fervor _must_ utter what is in them, whether men will
hear or whether they will forbear.
But the place where our Doctor was happiest was his study. There he
explored, and wandered, and read, and thought, and lived a life as
wholly ideal and intellectual as heart could conceive.
And could _Love_ enter a reverend doctor's study, and find his way into
a heart empty and swept of all those shreds of poetry and romance in
which he usually finds the material of his incantations?
Even so;--but he came so thoughtfully, so reverently, with so wise
and cautious a footfall, that the good Doctor never even raised his
spectacles to see who was there.
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