Rev. A. R. Abbott, in a discourse before his society, has expressed in brief, and very truthfully, some of the characteristics of his style of preaching. He says:--"His discourses were always simple, powerful, clear, perfectly intelligible to all, yet made so, apparently, without the least effort. You find there no attempt to carry his points by any artifice of oratory. Everything is plain and direct. Even the most intricate and perplexing subjects, under his treatment, gradually became clear. His thoughts were like clear waters;--their perfect transparency disguised their depth. When speaking upon any intricate topic, perhaps no one ever listened to him attentively, under favorable circumstances, without being astonished at the apparent ease with which he removed the difficulties from his subject, and at the felicity with which all his illustrations were chosen. Often, when his hearers have been wrought up to an intense and painful interest by some apparently insuperable obstacle or unanswerable objection to a point he was laboring to establish, they have been both surprised and delighted, by the application of some well-known truth or familiar text of Scripture, to see the light break in upon the dark point like sunlight through a parting cloud. And when they saw how clear the subject then appeared, they were vexed with themselves to think that so obvious an explanation had never occurred to them. His treatment of a subject was like the prophet's healing the Syrian leper;--the method was so simple that its efficacy was doubted, till its success was manifest." Rev. A. A. Miner has kindly furnished us with the following authentic anecdote, which is very appropriate in this connection, illustrating as it does the magic-like power of Mr. Ballou's eloquence, and the delight with which he was listened to by the masses, when his mission carried him into the country.