Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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the twenty-third psalm it was heard distinctly by the English clergymen on thc other side of the valley, three-quarters of a mile away. XYhen the body of an eminent statesman and ruling elder in his Cl1lll'Cl1 was borne into this building and laid before the pulpit, and the preacher rose and said. Mark the perfect man and behold the upright. for the e11d of that man is peace. the sympathetic intonations fell like healing balm on wounded hearts. XYhen he stood in the United States Senate Chamber at XYashington beside the mortal remains of the great Carolinian and said to the assembled representatives of the greatness of this nation and of the world, There is nothing great but God. the voice and the words alike impressed the insignificance of all human concern as compared with religion. lYhen he stood in the chancel of St. Paul's and stretched his hand over the casket containing the pallid form of the daughter of the Con- federacy and said. Blessed are the pure in heart. for they shall see God. it had the authority and tenderness of a prophet's benediction. Of the intellectual qualities of his preaching the First that impressed the hearer was the exquisite phrasing. He was a marvelous magician with words. He was the prince of pulpit rhetoricians. He had made himself a master of the art of verbal expression. because. to use his own words, he knew that style was the crystallization of thought, and he believed that royal thoughts ought to wear royal robes. The splendid powers with which he was endowed by nature had been at once enriched and chastened by the strenuous study of the world's best books. Every cultivated person recognized the flavor of ripe scholarship in his diction, and even those devoid of culture felt its charm without being able to denne it. The mellow splendor of his rhetoric captivated all classes of hearers. This rare beauty of his language, this exquisite drapery of his thoughts, some- times tempted superficial hearers to regard him as merely a skillful phrase-maker. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He was a superb rhetorician because he was a true scholar and a profound theologian. His rhetoric drew deep. The ocean greyhound which seems to skim the billows does in fact plough deep beneath their surface. and hence the safety of her cargo of precious wares and human lives. This masterful preacher was easy and swift-he distanced all his brethren-but he was also safe, and his ministry had the momentum which only tuciglzt can give. All his life long he was a student-a student of books, a student of men. a student of the deep things of God. XVhen men beheld the external splendor of the Temple at Jerusalem. with its walls and roofs of white marble. surmounted with plates and spikes of glittering gold, they sometimes forgot the immense substructions built deep into the ground and resting upon the everlasting rock. But without that cyclopean masonry hidden from view. those snowy walls of marble and those sky-piercing pinnacles of gold could not have been. Dr. Hoge's surpassing beauty of statement was bottomed on eternal truth. He was therefore not only an orator but a teacher. His sermons were not only brilliant in form but rich in truth. So that not only in point of finish but 21

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stood in this place as Gods ambassador, laying the multitude under the enchant- ment of his eloquence, diffusing through this sanctuary the aroma of his piety, and lifting sad and weary hearts to heaven on the wings of his wonderful prayers. As some one has said of the death of another illustrious preacher, we feel like children who had long sheltered under a mighty oak, and now the old oak has gone down. and we are out in the open sun. We hardly knew, till he fell, how much we had sheltered under him: his presence was a protectiong his voice was a power, his long-established leadership was a rallying center for the disheartened soldiers of the cross. XYe do not murmur at the dispensation which has taken him from us, But oh for the touch of a yanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still. There were certain physical features of his preaching which are perfectly familiar to all who have heard him even once, and which will be remembered by them forever, but which can not be made known by description to those who have not. VVhen he rose in the pulpit, tall straight, slender, sinewy, commanding, with something vital and electric in his very movements, yet singularly deliberate, and, lifting his chin from his collar with a peculiar movement, surveyed the people before him and on either side, with his grave, intellectual face and almost melancholy eyes, no one needed to be told that there stood a master of assem- blies. The attention was riveted by his appearance and manner before he uttered a word. As soon as he began to speak, the clear, rich, and resonant tones, reaching without effort the limits of the largest assembly, revealed to every hearer another element of his power to move and mold the hearts of men. To few of the world's masters of discourse has it been given to demonstrate as he did the music and spell of the human voice. It was a voice in a million, Flexible, magnetic, thrilling. clear as a clarion, by turns tranquil and soothing or strenuous and stirring, at the speaker's will, now mellow as a cathedral bell heard in the twilight, now ringing like a trumpet or rolling like melodious thunder through the building, with an occasional impassioned crash like artillery, accompanied by a resounding stamp of his foot on the floor, but never unpleasant, or uncontrolled or overstrainedg no one ever heard him scream or tear his thro-at. Some of his cadences in the utterance of particular words or sentiments lingered on the ear and haunted the memory for years like a strain of exquisite music. As you listened to his voice in prayer there ran through its pathetic fall a vibration as though the minister's heart were singing like an aeolian harp as the breath of the Spirit of God blew through its stringsf, It was a voice that adapted itself with equal felicity to all occasions. When he preached to the whole of General D. H. Hill's division in the open air, it rang like a bugle to the outermost verge of his vast con- gregation. VVhen he stood on the slope of Mt. Ebal in Palestine and recited 20

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also in point of force he ranks with the masters of the modern pulpit. It is true that many of his later discourses were somewhat discursive in treatment, neces- sarily so because of the innumerable demands upon his time, but he never failed to bring beaten oil to the sanctuary when it was possible, and he never for a moment relinquished or lowered his conception of the teaching function of the ministry. His people were not only interested and entertained, they were also instructed and nourished with truth. The lecture which he delivered at the University of Yirginia forty-nine years ago on The Success of Christianity, An Evidence of its Divine Origin. and known to some of you from its publication in the portly volume entitled Evidences of Christianity, is a striking specimen of the kind of work he was capable of when he was at his best. I venture the asser- tion, though it seems a sweeping one. that in the whole realm of apologetic literature, there is not a more polished or more powerful vindication of the truth of the Christian religion. I have often wished that it might be published sepa- rately and thus given a wider circulation. His substantial attainments, then. were no less remarkable than his graces of speech. But here we have sighted a subject too large for the limits of this address. A small island, to use Dr. Breeds figure, can be explored in a few hours, but not a wide continent. The one may be characterized in a word, but not the other. This island is a bank of sand, that one a smiling pasture, a third a mass of cliffs, a fourth a mountain peak. Hut the continent is a vast com- bination of all of these features indefinitely multiplied. So the gifts of some men are insular and may be summed up in a few words, but the gifts of the man in whose memory we are assembled to-day were continental. Every one that has heard him even once saw that there were here peaceful valleys where the grass grew green and the sweet liowers bloomed and streams ran rippling. But those who sailed farther alongshore found that there were also mighty cliffs where his conviction defied the waves of passing opinion. And when they pushed their explorations into the interior, they came upon great uplands of philosophy, where the granite of a strong theology protruded and where the snows of doctrine lay deep. But the thoughtful explorer knew well that the granite was essential to the solidity of those towering heights and that without those snows upon the peaks there would have been no streams in the valleys, no broad reaches of meadow, no blooming tiowers. He was indeed a superb rhetorician, with a marvelous wealth of diction, a phenomenal power of description, and a rare felicity of illustrationg but rhetoric in the pulpit has no abiding charm apart from truth. Strong men and thoughtful women do not sit for fifty-four years in ever increasing numbers under a ministry which has not in it the strength of divine truth, deeply studied, sincerely believed, and earnestly proclaimed. We have now seen something of what he was in his preaching as a man, and something of what he was as a scholar, but after all the hiding of his power lay in what he was as a saint. Nature had done much for him, cultivation had done 22