The Reverend Dr. Sprague’s valuable and well-known work, “Annals of the American Pulpit,” contains three letters from which we learn some of his leading characteristics.  Dr. Pierce of Brookline, the faithful chronicler of his time, speaks of his pulpit talents as extraordinary, but thinks there was not a perfect sympathy between him and the people of the quiet little town of Harvard, while he was highly acceptable in the pulpits of the metropolis.  In personal appearance he was attractive; his voice was melodious, his utterance distinct, his manner agreeable.  “He was a faithful and generous friend and knew how to forgive an enemy.—­In his theological views perhaps he went farther on the liberal side than most of his brethren with whom he was associated.—­He was, however, perfectly tolerant towards those who differed from him most widely.”

Dr. Charles Lowell, another brother minister, says of him, “Mr. Emerson was a handsome man, rather tall, with a fair complexion, his cheeks slightly tinted, his motions easy, graceful, and gentlemanlike, his manners bland and pleasant.  He was an honest man, and expressed himself decidedly and emphatically, but never bluntly or vulgarly.—­Mr. Emerson was a man of good sense.  His conversation was edifying and useful; never foolish or undignified.—­In his theological opinions he was, to say the least, far from having any sympathy with Calvinism.  I have not supposed that he was, like Dr. Freeman, a Humanitarian, though he may have been so.”

There was no honester chronicler than our clerical Pepys, good, hearty, sweet-souled, fact-loving Dr. John Pierce of Brookline, who knew the dates of birth and death of the graduates of Harvard, starred and unstarred, better, one is tempted to say (Hibernice), than they did themselves.  There was not a nobler gentleman in charge of any Boston parish than Dr. Charles Lowell.  But after the pulpit has said what it thinks of the pulpit, it is well to listen to what the pews have to say about it.

This is what the late Mr. George Ticknor said in an article in the “Christian Examiner” for September, 1849.

“Mr. Emerson, transplanted to the First Church in Boston six years before Mr. Buckminster’s settlement, possessed, on the contrary, a graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses, and the original resources that could command the few.”

As to his religious beliefs, Emerson writes to Dr. Sprague as follows:  “I did not find in any manuscript or printed sermons that I looked at, any very explicit statement of opinion on the question between Calvinists and Socinians.  He inclines obviously to what is ethical and universal in Christianity; very little to the personal and historical.—­I think I observe in his writings, as in the writings of Unitarians down to a recent date, a studied reserve on the subject of the nature and offices of Jesus.  They had not made up their own minds on it.  It was a mystery to them, and they let it remain so.”