New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-06-07
RICHARD SALTER STORRS.

Full of years and of honors DR.. Storrs has
gone serenely and painlessly to his rest. The
community which has known him intimately for
more than half a century, and for a large part
of that time has looked to him leader with
more than ordinary reverence; the great Church
whose success and fame during all these years
were bound up with his, and every one thorough
out the whole country who values character and
intellect and eloquence will pay homage TO his
memory. He so long played a large part in
varied civic, social and Church activities was
so much a tradition of greatness TO a generation
born after he had reached the height Of his
reputation that the instructive thought on look
ing about for his peers is that they must have
belonged to another time and that there were
giants in the earth in those days" Nor is that
thought far from the truth
DR.. Storrs was by no means isolated even in
the latest days of his life He a man
among men, actively interested in all that made
for their welfare He took hand in public
affairs a Park Commissioner and Civil
Service Commissioner of Brooklyn. He was
ready 10 fight the right side OF practical
moral questions, was firm in his opposition to
slavery and boldly against obedience to the
Fugitive Slave law. and in later years earnest
in advocacy of National honesty and sound
money. He was an ecclesiastical statesman
whose voice in the Congregational denomination
was pre-eminently influential In guiding it
through modern crises. But for all that DR..
Storrs was man not of the modern type. He
was of the last of the race of the Puritan
preachers, and illustrated, as nearly as it could
be illustrated in our day by a man alive to the
conditions Of present society, the position cf
the eminent eighteenth century New-England
clergyman in a community which deferred to his
| leadership. He had the unquestioned precedence
which few men even of those who began the
ministry with him were able to command out
side of small towns. and he did his work with
much of the old fashioned dignity and conserv-
atism both of thought and conduct which must
have characterized the long line of his clerical
ancestors.
The new theology, the higher criticism, the
institutional church did lot attract him, and
he pursued his thinking and his preaching with
a calm Indifference TO many generally accepted
conclusions of scholars which no man less in
trenched in the divinity that hedges about ac-
cepted eminence could have maintained. At
the same time DR.. Storrs not fanatic; he
was brilliant conservative. He considered 1t
no part Of his duty to break lances against ten
denotes of thought with which he himself did
not sympathize as is shown in his management
of the American Board at the time of the pro
baton after death controversy, when he &C.
commodated himself and the Church to new
views without allowing any formal departure
| from traditional standards.
AS an orator. too, DR.. Storrs the repre-
sentative of vanishing type. AS master Of
rhetoric he ranked with the scholarly speakers
Of the so-called classic days of the American
platform. Less artificial than Everett, he had
something of the same GOODNESS. In preaching
he neither sought the adventurous aid of occa-
sions to give interest or point TO his discourse
nor made deliberate appeals to the emotions. but
rather addressed himself with splendid power
of words and Of logic to the conscience and
reason of his hearers.
He leaves and could leave successor TO
his place in the public regard. That place was
personal. He was not a leader of the prevail
ing thought Of his time, nor by noisily combat
ing it did he secure his fame. 1t cannot be said
that he has made any impression likely TO be
lasting on theology scholarship. But by
the force of his dignified character his forensic
abilities, his learning and his intellectual power
he has been for many years the most distin-
gushed and most august representative OF ira
dtional American Professionalism. His own uni
versally honored manhood exhibited and com
mended what best In that tradition. Its
shortcomings under the administration OF lesser