Recollections of a Long Life: An AutobiographyCuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Religion
Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography
Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard), 1822-1909
Strong as he was in the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform
orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular
audience--fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of
his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was
very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences
like javelins. A more fluent speaker I never heard; not Spurgeon or
Henry Ward Beecher could surpass him in readiness of utterance. On one
occasion the Broadway Tabernacle was crowded with a great audience that
gathered to hear some celebrity; and the expected hero did not arrive.
The impatient crowd called for "Tyng, Tyng;" and the rector of St.
George's came forward, and on the spur of the moment delivered such a
charming speech that the audience would not let him stop. For many years
I spoke with him at meetings for city missions, total abstinence, Sunday
schools and other benevolent enterprises. He used playfully to call me
"one of his boys." At a complimentary reception given to J.B. Gough in
Niblo's Hall, Mr. Beecher and myself delivered our talks, and then
retired to the opposite end of the hall. Dr. Tyng took the rostrum with
one of his swift magnetic speeches. I leaned over to Beecher and
whispered, "That is splendid platforming, isn't it?" Beecher replied:
"Yes, indeed it is. He is the one man that I am afraid of. When he
speaks first I do not care to follow him, and if I speak first, then
when he gets up I wish I had not spoken at all." Some of Dr. Tyng's
most powerful addresses were in behalf of the temperance reform; he was
a most uncompromising foe of both of the dram shop and of the drinking
usages in polite society. He also denounced the theatre and the
ball-room with the most Puritanic vehemence.
Dr. Stephen H. Tyng's chief power, like many other great preachers, was
when he was on his feet. He should be heard and not read. Some of the
discourses and addresses which enchained and thrilled his auditors
seemed tame enough when reported for the press. In that respect he
resembled Whitfield and Gough and many of our most effective stump
speakers. The result was that Dr. Tyng's fame, to a great degree,
perished with him. He published several books, of a most excellent and
evangelical character, but they lacked the thunder and the lightning
which make his uttered words so powerful, and probably none of his many
books are much read to-day. The influence of his splendid and heroic
personality was very great during a ministry of over fifty years, and
the glorious work which he wrought for his Master will endure to all
eternity.
To have heard Dr. William Adams of New York at his best was better than
any lecture on "Homiletics"; to have met him at the fireside or in the
sick room of one of his parishioners was a prelection in pastoral
theology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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