"All the ordinary temptations to self-seeking fell off powerless from the supreme unselfishness of his nature. When the fame of his eloquence spread over many States; when he was acknowledged as the greatest orator of his church, and, perhaps, of his country; when the richest churches of the greatest cities offered him vast salaries to leave the struggling people and the impoverished college that he loved, he clung fast to poverty, and put aside, without a struggle, the temptations of ease and wealth. Even when temptation assailed him in craftier forms; when men told him of the mighty congregations that New York or St. Louis or San Francisco would pour forth to catch from him the words of life, he said that 'he loved his own people best, and must stay to help Virginia along.' Like his Master, he chose poverty rather than riches; like his Master, he chose to work in a little village, among a small band of disciples, rather than among the splendors and plaudits of cities; like his Master, he made of life one long series of sweetly-borne self-sacrifices. Before the spectacle of such sublime self-depression all words of common praise are unseemly. But to them that lived with him, who saw the great soul take up so bravely and bear so lovingly the burthen of poverty, trouble, and suffering, the life he led was a miracle of beauty and holiness, making the world brighter and nobler by even the remembrance of him. "In his preaching, as in his life, the same blending of love with wisdom, of childlike simplicity with manly power, was revealed. There was no fierceness, no affectation, no struggling after oratorical effects; but, as the powers of his mind got into motion, as the thoughts rolled on, clear and massive, the words and sentences grew rich and lofty, the sweet voice swelled out into organ tones, the small and graceful figure swayed to the pulsations of his thought, and the beautiful face glowed with all the illumination of love. There was no theology in his sermons, no polemical divinity in his conception of divine truth. To love God, and to love men was for him, as Christ taught him, the sum of all righteousness. This power of love was the agency through which he did his work in the world. As the warmth of the sun controls all the processes of nature and commands all the movements of the universe, so warmth of love, as the central fact of God's moral government, was for him the source of all power, the means of subduing all wrong, and of bringing the world back into harmony with God's laws.