Although he spoke without note, these masterpieces came from his mind ready for the press, and defied the criticism of the best scholars and writers. It is much to be regretted, that aside from what was left in the Quarterlies, no sermon survives. Had his best sermons been written out and published, they would to-day be masterpieces in sermonic literature, and all others would pale before their brightness, beauty and logical coherence. The writer has never heard any preacher surpass him in his power to flood his theme with the effulgent glory of divine truth. It is true that he was not uniformly eloquent.
Genius is never uniform.
It will not be subject to ordinary devices, or be thrust within the narrow confines of the ordinary nutshells of commonplace brains. Alexander Campbell, unable to meet all the demands made upon him by the attacks coming from the various sources, assigned to Moses E. Lard, at the age of thirty-nine, the work of reviewing J. B. Jeter, a distinguished Baptist preacher, who had in some measure misrepresented the plea that was being made for a complete return to the faith and practice of the apostolic churches. In this review the writer dissects, with merciless logic, every fallacy and leaves his opponent without the power of reply. If this work is too severe in its tone, too sarcastic in its retorts, too merciless in its exposure of error, it must be remembered that the age was superheated by religious prejudice, and that Moses E. Lard's intense nature was ablaze with indignation, because he felt that all error was hateful to God and should be exterminated. It has been urged by some that one of the chief defects in his style was his dealing with words as if they were made of iron, and each had a value as exact as a mathematical formula.