With the utmost vehemence he rung out the last line:
"Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round."
He could not check his headway, and repeated the line a second time, louder than before, and then with a tremendous voice that made the walls reverberate, he shouted once more:
"Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round!"
and sunk back breathless and exhausted into his chair. "Shut up now this Tabernacle," exclaimed Dr. James W. Alexander. "Let no man dare speak here after that."
CHAPTER XIV.
SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN PREACHERS.
The Alexanders.—Dr. Tyng.—Dr. Cox.—Dr. Adams.—Dr. Storrs.—Mr. Beecher.—Mr. Finney and Dr. B.M. Palmer.
The necessary limitations of this chapter forbid any reference to many distinguished American preachers whom I have seen or heard, but with whom I had not sufficient personal acquaintance to furnish any material for personal reminiscences. In common with multitudes of others on both sides of the ocean, I had a hearty admiration for the brilliant genius and masterful sermons of Phillips Brooks, but I only heard two of his rapid and resonant addresses on anniversary occasions, and my acquaintance with him was very slight. I heard only one discourse by that remarkable combination of preacher, poet, patriot and philosopher, Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford,—his discourse on "Barbarism the Chief Danger," delivered before the "Home Missionary Society." His sermon on "Unconscious Influence," was enough to confer immortality on any minister of Jesus Christ. I never was acquainted with him, but after his death, I suggested to the residents of New Preston, that they should name the mountain that rises immediately behind the home of his childhood and youth, Mount Bushnell. The villagers assented to my proposal, and the State Legislature ratified their act by ordering that name to be placed on the maps of Connecticut. In this chapter, as in the previous one, I shall give my recollections only of those who have ended their career of service, and entered into their reward.
During the six years that I spent in Princeton College and in the Seminary (between 1838 and 1846) I came into close acquaintance with, and I heard very often, the two great orators of the Alexander family. Dr. Archibald Alexander, the father of a famous group of sons, was a native of Virginia—had listened to Patrick Henry in his youth; had married the daughter of the eloquent "Blind Preacher," Rev. James Waddell, and even when as a young minister he had preached in Hanover, New Hampshire. Daniel Webster, then a student in Dartmouth College, predicted his future eminence. The students in the Seminary were wont to call him playfully, "The Pope," for we had unbounded confidence in his sanctified common-sense. I always went to him for counsel. His insight into the human heart was marvelous; and in the line of close experimental preaching, he has not had his equal since the days of President Edwards. He put the impress of his powerful personality on a thousand ministers who graduated from Princeton Seminary.