Dr. Adams was gifted with what is of more practical value than genius, and that was marvelous _tact_. That was with him an instinct and an inspiration. It led him to always speak the right word, and do the right thing at the right time. Personal politeness helped him also; for he was one of the most perfect gentlemen in America. That practical sagacity made him the leader of the "new school" branch of our church, during the delicate negotiations for reunion in 1867, and on to 1870. He knew human nature well, and never lost either his temper or his faith in the sure result. To-day when that old lamentable rupture of our beloved church is as much a matter of past history as the rupture of the Union during the civil war, let us gratefully remember George W. Musgrave, the pilot of the "old school" and William Adams, the pilot of the "new." The last sermon that I ever heard Dr. Adams deliver was in my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit a few years before his death. His text was the closing passage of the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians. The whole sermon was delivered with great majesty and tenderness. One illustration in it was sublime. He was comparing the "things which are seen and temporal" with the "things which are not seen and eternal." He described Mont Blanc enveloped in a morning cloud of mist. The vapor was the _seen_ thing which was soon to pass away;--behind it was the _unseen_ mountain, glorious as the "great white throne" which should stand unmoved when fifty centuries of mist had flown away into nothingness. This passage moved the audience prodigiously. Many sat gazing at the tall pale orator before them through their tears. The portrait of Dr. Adams hangs on my study wall--alongside of the portrait of Chalmers--and as I look at his majestic countenance now, I still seem to see him as on that Sabbath morning he stood before us, with the light of eternity beaming on his brow! In the summer of 1845 I was strolling with my friend Littell (the founder of the _Living Age_), through the leafy lanes of Brookline, and we came to a tasteful church. "That," said Mr. Littell, "is the Harvard Congregational meeting house. They have lately called a brilliant young Mr. Storrs, who was once a law student with Rufus Choate; he is a man of bright promise." Two years afterward I saw and heard that brilliant young minister in the pulpit of the newly organized Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn. He had already found his place, and his throne. He made that pulpit visible over the continent. That church will be "Dr. Storrs' church" for many a year to come.