All of Dr. Adams’ finest efforts were thoroughly prepared and committed to memory.  He never risked a failure by attempting to shake a sermon or a speech “out of his sleeve.”  His memory was one of his greatest gifts.  Sometimes when his soul was on fire, and his voice trembled with emotion, he rose into the region of lofty impassioned eloquence.  His master effort on the platform was his address of welcome to the members of the “Evangelical Alliance” in 1873.  How the foreign delegates—­Doctors Stoughton, Christlieb, Dorner and the rest of them—­did open their eyes that evening to the fact that a Yankee-born parson was, in elegant culture and polished oratory, a match for them all.  Dr. Adams’ speech “struck twelve” for the Alliance at the start; nothing during the whole subsequent sessions surpassed that opening address, although Beecher and Dr. Joseph Parker were both among the speakers.  He closed the meeting of the Alliance in the Academy of Music with a prayer of wonderful fervor, pathos and beauty.

One of his grandest speeches was delivered before the Free Church General Assembly in Edinburgh—­in May, 1871.  Dr. Guthrie told me that he swept the assembly away by his stately bearing, sonorous voice and classic oratory.  The men whom he moved so mightily were such men as Arnot and Guthrie and Rainy and Bonar,—­the men who had listened to the grandest efforts of Duff and of Chalmers.  I well remember that when I had to address the same assembly (as the American delegate) the next year I was more disturbed by the apparition of my predecessor, Dr. Adams, than by all the brilliant audience before me.

Dr. Adams was gifted with what is of more practical value than genius, and that was marvelous tact.  That was with him an instinct and an inspiration.  It led him to always speak the right word, and do the right thing at the right time.  Personal politeness helped him also; for he was one of the most perfect gentlemen in America.  That practical sagacity made him the leader of the “new school” branch of our church, during the delicate negotiations for reunion in 1867, and on to 1870.  He knew human nature well, and never lost either his temper or his faith in the sure result.  To-day when that old lamentable rupture of our beloved church is as much a matter of past history as the rupture of the Union during the civil war, let us gratefully remember George W. Musgrave, the pilot of the “old school” and William Adams, the pilot of the “new.”

The last sermon that I ever heard Dr. Adams deliver was in my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit a few years before his death.  His text was the closing passage of the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians.  The whole sermon was delivered with great majesty and tenderness.  One illustration in it was sublime.  He was comparing the “things which are seen and temporal” with the “things which are not seen and eternal.”  He described Mont Blanc enveloped in a morning cloud of mist.  The vapor