The weekly Ottumwa courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1857-1872, 1859-08-25
r OTrUMWA, IOWA. THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1859.

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Whitfield, whose first sermon at Gloucester,
in 1896, caused such an excitement, that
complaint was made to the bishop of his
having driven fifteen people mad; to which
the smiling prelate answered, ''That he hoped
the madness would not be forgotten before
the next Sunday" From the records left
us Of his laborious life, the great orator of
Methodism appears to have possessed an un-
limited command over the fountain of tears,
as well as over the feelings of terror, and the
latent fires of enthusiasm and devotion; and
hence, no walls of brick or marble in all the
British Isles could be found sufficiently ca
pacious to hold his auditors, because he
touched alike, with the hand of master of
the souls music, every chord in the wild bo-
som ofman and each responded to the chaunt
of the ange,s' hymns in heaven. But his ri
val of the same sect, at later era, could only
play upon asingle string-yet that was hung
in the sky, and its tones were thunder.
Indeed, Bascom could not be said to re-
sem.ble any other orator Of the church, either
ancient or modern. He was not like st.
Chrysostom, "the golden-mouthed," the
wealthy heir of universal learning and genius.
He could not WELD the immense fury and
force of Bourdalone, whose thunders at Ver-
sailles almost drowned the reverberations of
Turenne's victor ;ous cannon, and caused the
titled harlots at the courts of Louis the Four
teenth to turn pale and tremble, as if they
had been called to their final account by a
sudden peal of the last trumpet. He wanted,
also, the exhaustless variety, the richness,
the keen, logical craft, and persuasive rhet-
oric of Bosuet-that marvellous Proteus of
the catholic world-whose forked tongue
had the art of converting without even con-
vincing. Nor could he compare in breadth,
massiveness, and crushing weight with the
mighty Chalmers, whose style was the per-
fection of prose melody, and whose thoughts
seemed to fall directly out of heaven, like
arrows of light from invisible suns. Never
theless, he could justly claim as a speaker
one attribute of the highest power, and, per-
haps, in this no man ever cqualled or nearly
approached him. His characteristic was sub
Unity alone. He loved the soaring noun
tain SUBMITS, "whcre the birds dare not
build, nor insects wing fits over the naked
granite" He delighted to launch the electric
bolts, red-hot from the rolling clouds, and
see hill and valley quake, as at the day of
doom. He revellcd in the firery smoke of
blazing volcanoes, and smiled at the earth
quiverings that could strew whole cities and
even the domain of nations with wreck and
ruin. . aasr .r-a.r... .... -...G... s...s ... .-
The result may be inferred, without the
necessity Of detail. Crowds, everywhere,
rushed to his appointments, admired, prais-
ed, wondered, and went away no better than
they came, Spreading abroad the rumor of
his rcnown, as that of some great magician
who could weave the widest charms of Ian
guage. He gained, itmay be, all that he
desired; he gratified his eager thirst for pop
ular appreciation, and his fame still lives in
every Methodist household, that drinks water
from the million fountains of the Mississippi
| do not mean to assert that his services did
not prove beneficial to the denomination for
which he so earnestly labored. On the con-
trary, the numerical accessions to the soci-
ETY., procured by his exertions, might be
reckoned by thousands; but none of these
were the fruits of sudden contrition, or fam
ing revival The men, and more especially
the women, who focked to the christian fold,
attracted by his influence, were governed in
their choice by the most prudent and con-
sistent motives. They felt that they digni-
fled their own characters by joining a church
that could boast of possessing such fash
ionable preacher. Has the reader ever wit
messed any phenomenon at all similar, in
this Titanian capital of commerce, where
seats are sold for passage to the celestial
city, like tickets for an earthly railway, but
with far less assurance as to the safety of
travellers, or the certainty of arrival at the
destination Of the distant Journey?
The genius of Bascom had one quality in
common with that OF several other distin-
guished orators: his power was altogether
extempoianeous. Take him from the plat
form, and seat him in the solitude Of the
study, and the giant dwindled to puny
dwarf The words that rolled like the rever-
beratious Of thunder from the living tongue,
made no sound on the written page, and the
very ink seemed frozen as 1t fell from his in
effectual pen. A printed volume Of his scr
mons now lies on the table before me. i
have searched it through, in vain, for one
sublime sentence, one noble paragraph, heart
thrilling and soul.co,nuanding, such as I
have heard him launch to eiectfify thousands,
from the sudden inspiration of unpremed-
tated speech. | find, indeed, the same bold
figures, but, alas how different in their or.
der Of arrangement, in their fury and force.
These are the flowers that have lost their per-
fume-.the cloud without its lightnng-the
body without the spirit---mere dry bones, and
nothing more.