a show sermon on dress parade, but it is the very one in which to press home the word on hearts and consciences, to arouse the impenitent, to give tonic truth to the weak and the weary, to afford the word of comfort to the sorrowing and soul-food to the many who hunger for the heavenly manna.  I have already narrated some of my pleasant experiences in preaching at Saratoga, and I could add to them several other interesting incidents.

For about thirty summers, and occasionally in the winter, I found a happy home at Dr. Strong’s “Remedial Institute” on Circular Street.  This is a family hotel during the summer, and a sanitarium during the remainder of the year.  Every morning the guests assemble for worship, and the intolerable trio of fashion, frivolity and fiddles, has never invaded the refined and congenial atmosphere of the house.  My host, Dr. Strong, is an active member of the Methodist Church in that town, and naturally a large number of ministers of that denomination are his summer guests.  This was very pleasant for me, for, although I am loyally attached to my own “clan,” yet I have a peculiarly warm side for the ecclesiastical followers of the Wesleys, and am some times introduced in their conferences as a “Methodistical Presbyterian.”  At Dr. Strong’s I met many of the leading Methodist ministers, and was exceedingly “filled with their company.”  I met, among others, the sweet-spirited Bishop Jaynes, who always seemed to be a legitimate successor of the beloved disciple John.  If Bishop Jaynes recalled the apostle John, let me say that the venerated father of my kind host and the founder of the Sanitarium, the late Dr. Sylvester S. Strong, was such an impersonation of charming courtesy and fervid spirituality that he might be a counterpart of “Luke the beloved physician.”  He was an admirable preacher before he entered the medical profession.  Bishop Peck was a very entertaining companion and most fraternal in his warmheartedness.  He was a man of colossal proportions, and it was quite proper that he was appointed to the charge of the churches in the wide regions of California and Oregon.  When he came thence to the General Conference, he presented his protuberant figure to the assembly, and began with the humorous announcement, “The Pacific slope salutes you!” On that same “slope” I discovered last year that Methodism has outgrown even the formidable proportions of my old friend Dr. Peck.

At Saratoga I first met the eloquent Apollos of American Methodism, Bishop Matthew Simpson.  Those who ever heard Henry Clay in our Senate chamber, or Dr. Thomas Guthrie in Scotland, have a very distinct idea of what Simpson was at his flood-tide of irresistible oratory.  He resembled both of those great orators in stature and melodious voice, in graceful gesture, and in the magnificent enthusiasm that swept everything before him.  Like all that type of fascinating speakers—­to which even Gladstone belonged—­he was rather to be heard than to be read.  It is enough that a Gospel preacher should produce great immediate impressions on his auditors; it is not necessary that he should produce a finished and permanent piece of literature.  Bishop Simpson was the bosom friend of Abraham Lincoln, and on more than one occasion he knelt beside our much harassed President and prayed for the strength equal to the day of trial.