He has been called the Moore of the pulpit. An admiring critic says of him: ‘Like the poet of “Lalla Rookh,” he possesses vivid imagination, brilliant fancy, and sparkling phraseology. His sentences are strings of pearls, and whatever subject he touches he invariably adorns. His affluence of imagery is surprising. To illustrate some particular portion of Scripture, he will lay science, art, and natural history under contribution, and astonish us by the vastness of his acquirements, and his tact in availing himself of the stores of knowledge which, from all sources, he has garnered up in his mind. But plenteous as are the flowers of eloquence with which he presents us, their perfume, their sweetness, do not cloy. We listen in absolute wonderment as he pours forth a stream of eloquence, whose surface exhibits the iridescent hues of loveliness—one tint as it fades away being succeeded by another and a brighter. And a pure spirit of earnest piety pervades the whole of the sermon, the only drawback of which, to southern ears, being the broad Scotch accent in which it is delivered.’ Perhaps this character is a little coloured. Something must be set down in it for effect. Still the characteristic of the Doctor’s oratory, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, is poetry. He is a prose poet, and his genius makes everything it touches rich and rare. As becomes a divine, he sees everything through an Eastern medium. He is at home in the Holy Land. Jerusalem is as dear to him as London. All the scenes of sacred story, in the dead and buried past, live before him, and are realized by him as much, if not more, than the most exciting scenes of the living present. He follows the Christ as he treads the path of sorrow—sees him in the manger—in the temple disputing with the doctors—in the crowded streets followed by an awe-struck Hebrew mob—alone in the wilderness—or dying, amidst fanatic scorn and hate, a triumphant death: and the Doctor tells you these things as if he were there—as if they had but happened yesterday—as if he had come fresh from them all. Hence there is a pictorial charm in his preaching, such as is possessed but by few, and excelled by none.