In preaching, he never addressed the passions, but in subservience to reason and truth. In explaining and defending the doctrines and precepts of Christianity he was calm, perspicuous, and often very ingenious. He was a firm but not dogmatizing advocate for the sentiments usually styled Calvinistical. In the practical and applicatory parts of his discourse he was peculiarly striking. His numerous hearers will doubtless long remember with what solemnity of voice and manner, with what pointed energy of expression, he warned the young, the thoughtless, and the dissipated; with how much skill and tenderness he administered the consolations of the Gospel to those who laboured under spiritual discouragements. On these occasions, not only his voice and gesture, but his countenance, and not unfrequently his tears, expressed the interest he felt in their eternal welfare. He greatly excelled in prayer. Often was his large congregation visibly affected by the seriousness and importunity of his addresses at a throne of grace. In private life he was truly exemplary. As a husband and a father, his prudence, gentleness, and love, the evenness of his temper and regularity of his conduct, commanded the veneration and promoted the happiness of his family. Under the pressure of great, not to say unparalleled afflictions, he was resigned; when troubles came in upon him as a mighty flood, his heart was still fixed, trusting in the Lord. Those who have witnessed his deportment on the most trying occasions have confessed their astonishment, and felt themselves constrained to say, "Verily this is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes." One part of his character we must not omit. He was an eminently peaceable man. To obtain and preserve peace he would sacrifice everything, a good conscience only excepted. The happy fruits of this disposition, and the beneficial effects of such an example, will, we trust, continue to be enjoyed many years by those who have had opportunity of observing his great anxiety and unwearied exertions for the sake of peace. In his last illness, though his disorder was of a very painful and distressing nature, yet neither the extremity of his sufferings on the one hand, nor their long continuance on the other, did ever extort from his lips a single expression of impatience or distrust. His understanding was unimpaired and his faith unshaken to the last moment; and he expired in the act of repeating that triumphant song, "O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?"