Chapter XIII · (continued 2)

"At length his patience gave out. Its power of endurance was completely exhausted, and, taking up the manuscript and rolling it between his hands, he deliberately put it in his pocket. 'Brethren,' said he, 'I shall weary your patience with these notes.' This was the end of all hesitancy. He proceeded in the discussion of his subject with his accustomed fluency, and everything flowed onward with the smoothness of oil. It was a season of deep and thrilling interest.

"The venerable father, though not a Universalist, and with no disposition to become one, listened to the arguments and illustrations of this youngest of his sons with the profoundest attention. I carefully watched the muscles of his face, and plainly saw that mighty emotions were stirring within him. Every now and then a large tear would start out from the eye, and course down the furrows in his time-worn and manly cheek. It is not strange that such should have been the case, for the discourse was one of peculiar tenderness, and of uncommon pathos and power. Probably it was rarely, if ever surpassed, even by the speaker himself, in the palmiest days of his ministry.

"Indeed, Father Ballou's pulpit powers were of an exceedingly high order. Taken as a whole, my impression is that I have never known his equal. Never have I seen a man who could hold his hearers so perfectly under his own control. They were entirely at his command. He clothed them in smiles, or melted them to tears, and these things he seemed to do at pleasure. This power embodies the chief component in true eloquence. We often refer, and with profound admiration, to the pulpit talents of Griffin and Beecher, of Channing, and Dewey, and Chapin. And to these men the meed of rare eloquence unquestionably belongs; but still, taken all in all, they fall far below the standard of Father Ballou. Theirs is an eloquence of another and a humbler type. They deal chiefly with the intellect,—with the demands of a literary and refined taste; he dealt more especially with the latent chords of the heart,—moved and controlled the deeper sympathies and more refined affections of the human soul. Relying but little upon books, he went principally upon the profundity and strength of his own resources. The structure of his mind approached very near to an actual intuition. He grasped the whole of a subject at a glance. His powers of analysis were prodigious, and singularly accurate. He stopped not to inquire what others had thought or done. He examined every subject for himself. Like the diver for pearls, he plunged to the depths of divine truth; and, when he had found a precious gem, he rose with it to the surface, held it up before the eyes of the people, and said to them, This belongs to you, and there are more of the same sort where I found it,—enough for you all, and for the millions of the race to which you belong.

"But it was not in the office of a Christian minister, merely, that Father Ballou excelled. He was admirable in every sphere of life. As a husband and a father, the head of a numerous family, he was truly a model man. He knew how to rule his own household. His word was law, and obedience to it was prompt and cheerful by all around him. There were no family jars in that well-ordered and happy home. The idea, perhaps, is an extravagant one, but I have often thought that his house was the nearest fac-simile of the great mansion of the Infinite Father on High of which I could form a conception.

"And then as a brother and a friend he had no superior. With the exception, perhaps, of some members of his own family, there is no one living who enjoyed so long and so intimate an acquaintance with him as myself; and it is one of the happiest reflections of my life, that, in all our intercourse, not a single unkind word or emotion ever passed between us.

"Indeed, I never knew his kindly regards mastered but once, and that was after the endurance of many gross and most cruel provocations. But on one occasion his philosophy and his religion failed him, and then his brow was mantled with the very majesty of wrath, the frowning aspect of a deep and withering indignation. The roll of a moment or two, however, and it was all over. The old saint was himself again, and never, from that time to the day of his death, did I ever hear him utter an unfriendly word in relation to the individual by whom he had been so grossly and wickedly abused. But I must not enlarge. I have no wish to deal in flattery; but, injustice to my own feelings, and to the memory of our departed father, I must say that he was one of the very best men with whom it has been my happiness to associate. Indeed, I doubt whether he had a solitary failing,—so far, I mean, as the convictions and purposes of his own mind were concerned.

"S. S."