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

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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

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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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much, but Grace had done most of all. He preached from a true and profound experience of the mercy and power of God. He knew the deadly evil of sin. He knew the saving grace of Christ. He knew the brooding sorrows of the human heart, He knew the comfort of communion with God. He knew that the Gospel was God's supreme answer to man's supreme need. And the crowning glory of this pulpit is that, from the first day of its occupancy to the last. it rang true to that evangel: Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. There was never a day in all these fifty-four years when men could not have pointed to him as the original of Cowper's immortal portrait: .4 There stands the messenger of truth: there stands The legate of the skies! His theme divine, His office sacred, his credentials clear. By him the violated law speaks out, Its thunders: and by him, in strains as sweet As angels used. the Gospel whispers peace. He stablishes the strong. restores the weak, Reelaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart, And, arm'd himself in panoply complete Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms Bright as his own. and trains, by every rule Of holy discipline, to glorious war, The sacramental host- of God's elect! 23