"More than half a century ago, in March, 1832, I went to New Bedford, and, for nearly a year, was a constant attendant at Mr. Dewey's church. During that year he preached most of the sermons contained in the first volume that he published. As we read them, they are among the ablest and most impressive sermons in the language. But when read now they give only a slight idea of what they were as they came to us then, all [147] glowing and alive with the emotions of the preacher. When he walked through the church to the pulpit, his head swaying backward and forward as if too heavily freighted, his whole bearing was that of one weighed down by the thoughts in which he was absorbed and the solemn message which he had come to deliver. The old prophetic 'burden of the Lord' had evidently been laid upon him. Some hymn marked by its depth of religious feeling was read. This was followed by a prayer, which was not the spontaneous, easy outflowing of calmly reverential feelings, but the labored utterance of a soul overawed and overburdened by emotions too strong for utterance. There was sometimes an appearance almost of distress in this exercise, so utterly inadequate, as it seemed to him, were any words of his to express what lay deepest in his mind, when thus brought face to face with God. 'I do not shrink,' he said, 'from speaking to man.' But, except in his rarest and best moments, he was oppressed by a sense of the poverty of any language of thanksgiving or supplication that he could use in his intercourse with God."