Broad contrasts, heaps of good and evil,
almost exaggerated praises, pungent satire, catalogues of sins that
seemed pages from some Recording Angel's book,--these were his mighty
methods; but for the subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the
mysteries of character, one must look elsewhere. It was still
scene-painting, not portraiture; and the same thing which overwhelmed
with wonder, when heard in the Music Hall, produced a slight sense of
insufficiency, when read in print. It was certainly very great in its
way, but not in quite the highest way; it was preliminary work, not
final; it was Parker's Webster, not Emerson's Swedenborg or Napoleon.
The same thing was often manifested in his criticisms on current
events. The broad truths were stated without fear or favor, the finer
points passed over, and the special trait of the particular phase
sometimes missed. His sermons on the last revivals, for instance, had
an enormous circulation, and told with great force upon those who had
not been swept into the movement, and even upon some who had been. The
difficulty was that they were just such discourses as he would have
preached in the time of Edwards and the "Great Awakening"; and the
point which many thought the one astonishing feature of the new
excitement, its almost entire omission of the "terrors of the Lord,"
the far gentler and more winning type of religion which it displayed,
and from which it confessedly drew much of its power, this was
entirely ignored in Mr.
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