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
It seems strange that I shall never behold that homely, honest
countenance again; and since that time, London has hardly seemed to be
London without him. It is a cause for congratulation that his son, the
Reverend Thomas Spurgeon, is so successfully carrying forward the great
work of his sainted father. If my readers would like a sample taste of
the pure Spurgeonic it is to be found in this passage which he delivered
to his theological students: "Some modern divines whittle away the
Gospel to the small end of nothing; they make our Divine Lord to be a
sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salvation to mere possibility;
they make certainties into probabilities and treat verities as mere
opinions. When you see a preacher making the Gospel smaller by degrees,
and miserably less, till there is not enough of it left to make soup
for a sick grasshopper, _get you gone with him_! As for me, I believe in
an infinite God, an infinite atonement, infinite love and mercy, an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, and of which the
substance and reality is an Infinite Christ."
I once asked Dr. James McCosh, who was the greatest preacher he ever
heard. He replied, "Of course, it was my Edinboro Professor, Dr.
Chalmers, but the grandest display of eloquence I ever listened to was
Dr. Alexander Duff's famous Plea for Foreign Missions, delivered before
the Scottish General Assembly at a date previous to the disruption," I
can say _Amen_ to Dr. McCosh, for the most overpowering oratory that I
ever heard was Duff's great missionary speech in the Broadway Tabernacle
during his visit to America. In the immense crowd were two hundred
ministers and the foremost laymen of the city. When the great missionary
arose (he was then in the prime of his power), his first appearance was
not impressive, for his countenance had no beauty and his gestures were
grotesquely awkward. With one arm he huddled his coat up to his
shoulder, with the other he sawed the air incontinently, and when
intensely excited, he leapt several inches from the floor as if about to
precipitate himself over the desk. All these eccentricities were
forgotten when once the great heart began to open its treasures to us,
and the subject of his resistless oratory began to enchain our souls. In
his vivid description of "Magnificent India" its dusky crowds and its
ancient temples, with its northern mountains towering to the skies; its
dreary jungles haunted by the tiger; its crystalline salt fields
flashing in the sun; and its Malabar hills redolent with the richest
spices, were all spread out before us like a panorama.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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