Great, I believe it was.  Certain distinguished sermons had their popular names, as “The Judas Sermon,” or “The Peter Sermon,” and drew their admirers accordingly.  He was a man of marked emotional nature, which he often found it hard to control.  A skeptical critic might have wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice trembled, always just at the right moment, from pure spontaneity.  But those who knew the preacher personally never doubted the genuineness of the feeling that swept and carried orator and hearers down.  We do not hear such sermons now.

Professor Park has always been a man of social ease and wit.  The last time I saw him, at the age of eighty-five, in his house in Andover, I thought, one need not say, “has been;” and to recall his brilliant talk that day gives me hesitation over the past tense of this reminiscence.  On the whole, with the exception of Doctor Holmes, I think I should call Professor Park the best converser—­at least among eminent men—­whom I have ever met.

He has always been a man very sensitive to the intellectual values of life, and fully inclined perhaps to approach the spiritual through those.  It is easy to misunderstand a religious teacher of this temperament, and his admiring students may have sometimes done so.

One in particular I remember to have heard of who neglected the lecture-room to cultivate upon his own responsibility the misson work of what was known as Abbott Village.  To the Christian socialism of our day, the misery of factory life might seem as important for the future clergyman as the system of theology regnant in his particular seminary—­but that was not the fashion of the time; at all events, the man was a student under the Professor’s orders, and the orders were:  keep to the curriculum; and I can but think that the Professor was right when he caustically said: 

“That ——­ is wasting his seminary course in what he calls doing good!”

Sometimes, too, the students used to beg off to go on book-agencies, or to prosecute other forms of money-making; and of one such Professor Park was heard to say that he “sacrificed his education to get the means of paying for it.”

I am indebted to Professor Park for this:  “Professor Stuart and myself were reluctant to release them from their studies.  Professor Stuart remarked of one student that he got excused every Saturday for the purpose of going home for a week, and always stayed a fortnight.”

The last time that I saw Professor Park he told me a good story.  It concerned the days of his prime, when he had been preaching somewhere—­in Boston or New York, I think—­and after the audience was dismissed a man lingered and approached him.

“Sir,” said the stranger, “I am under great obligations to you.  Your discourse has moved me greatly.  I can truly say that I believe I shall owe the salvation of my soul to you.  I wish to offer, sir, to the seminary with which you are connected, a slight tribute of my admiration for and indebtedness to you.”  The gentleman drew out his purse.