A discourse commemorative of the late Dr. Charles Hodge. Delivered in the chapel of the College of New Jersey by request of the president, October 13th, and repeated in the First Presbyterian Church, Princeton, at the request of its session, October 20th, 1878

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COMMEMORATIVE OF THE LATE

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DELIVEUED IN THE

(‘HAPEL OF THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY
BY REQUEST OF THE PRESIDENT,
OCTOBER 13th,
and REPEATED IN THE
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
PRINCETON,

AT THE REQUEST OF ITS SESSION,
OCTOBER 20th. 1878,

BY

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LYMAN H. ATWATER.

PRINCETON :

CHARLES S. ROBINSON, PRINTER.

1878.

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[■{.Ev. Dr. Atwater.

Princeton, N. J., October 26, 1878.

Dear Sir : — At a meeting of the congregation of the First Church held
immediately after the delivery of your discourse commemorative of Dr. Hodge,
we were appointed a committee to request from you a copy for publication.
We earnestly hope that you will comply with this request.

W. Henry Green,

H. C. Cameron,

J. H. WiKOFF,

Edward Howe.

Princeton, Oct. 28. 1878.

Rev. Dr. Green and others. Committee.

Gentlemen : — It gives me pleasure to comply with the request of the
congregation of the First Church, tendered through you, and to furnish a
copy of the Discourse referred to for publication.

Yours, with high regard.

LYMAN H. ATWATER.

DISCOURSE.

Psalm xxxvii : 37. — Mark the perfect man, and behold the
upright ; for the end of that man is peace.

The festivities of our last Annual Commencement,
in many of their features unusually gratifying to the
friends of the College, and of high Christian education,
were deeply shadowed at their close by the death of
Charles Hodge. His funeral obsequies formed the
last public exercises of that otherwise festive week,
and were attended during the waning hours of
its last day, by a large concourse from this and other
places eager to honor his memory. “ Devout men
carried him to his burial and made pfreat lamentation
over him “ sorrowing most of all that they should
see his face no more,” and that “ a prince and a great
man in Israel had fallen.”

As was meet, his body was reverently and tenderly
laid by sons and nephews in its last resting place amid
the sepulchres of the men who have made Princeton
famous, and added renown to our country in letters,
statesmanship, and above all, in the vindication and
propagation of the Christian faith. There may he
sleep in peace with Edwards, Davies, Witherspoon,
Dod, Miller, the Alexanders, and others scarcely less
illustrious, whom we cannot stop to name, till awaked
by the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God,
to the resurrection of glory.

6

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that of the
great and good men whose lives have adorned and
whose deaths have shrouded this town, none in all its
annals have, as related to Princeton, on the whole, filled
so large a space in their lives or made so large a void
by their death. This is not saying that none others
connected with one or the other of the institutions
here have been endowed with equal might of intellect,
depth of piety, zeal for God and truth, which have
made them sig^nal blessino-s to the church and the
world, and enabled them also to produce works of
world-wide and immortal fame which are still their
monuments. I myself have heard Dr. Hodge say of
a junior colleague, a very prodigy of sanctified genius
cut down in his prime, when he had already acquired
celebrity on both sides of the ocean, what many others
would heartily concur in : “I regard Dr. Joseph Addi¬
son Alexander as incomparably the greatest man I
ever knew, incomparably the greatest man our church
has ever produced.” But none of them were so
favored both with that felicitous combination of gifts,
aptitudes, and more than all. opportunities which not
only made him great among the foremost of his gene¬
ration, but also so remarkably identified that greatness
with Princeton.

Although born in Philadelphia, the whole of his long
life after his early childhood was spent here, save a
year or two of absence in Europe to prepare for his
professorship in our Theological Seminary. Here he
received a considerable part at least of his preparation
for our College which he entered in 1812, in his 15th
year, having been born Dec. 28,, 1797. Thus at his
death he had lived out half his eighty-first year, very
nearly three score and ten of which, or the ordinary full
age of man, had been passed in this place, and nearly

7

the whole of it in close connection with the Institutions
on which he shed lustre, and which give to Prince¬
ton its renown. He graduated at the College with the
highest honor in 1815 — a distinction easily won, not by
indolence, not by irregular and fitful efforts, now inter¬
mitted and now overstrained, but by that steady, nor¬
mal application which was in a sense spontaneous and
almost effortless to his mighty intellect. Then, as
afterwards, he worked not so much for the worldly
honor which follows duty as the shadow follows the
substance, but simply that he might do what ought to
be done in order to that knowledge and culture which
conscience enjoins as the true end of study. Here he
lived and died. Here he trained thousands to be able
to teach others also in the sacred ministry. Here he
prepared those publications which, whether in a periodi¬
cal or more permanent form, exerted at the time a
prodigious influence upon the church and the world, in
this land, throughout Christendom, and in those ends
of the earth penetrated by missionaries, many of which
still live and will continue to live, some of them through
the centuries. At his death he had come to be nearly
the oldest, and quite the most illustrious of the gradu¬
ates of the College ; the oldest, most distinguished,
and while his vigor was yet unabated, the most influen¬
tial of her trustees. By the great length of his bril¬
liant career, and that career wholly in this town, in¬
cluding more than a half century of unceasing authorship
of productions honored over the entire globe and of
cumulative fame and influence, he had opportunities
which others, whose lives were cut short in their merid¬
ian, or if not so, were spent only in part here, however
otherwise his equals, had not, to make Princeton
known in this and other lands as a centre of thought
and power in the literary and religious world.

8

Early in his senior college year he, with a class¬
mate, made a profession of religion in the First, then
the only Presbyterian Church in Princeton, where he
continued to commune for 63 years, accompanied or
followed in due time by his children and children’s
children. This is noteworthy here, because at that
time there were few professors of religion in the Col¬
lege. Many students were even found to be destitute
of Bibles. These had to be su pplied to them by the N as-
sau Bible Society, so fashionable were scepticism and
scoffing among the young men of that day. This step
illustrated the courage and decision of character which
were characteristic of his after life, and formed one
great source of his influence. It was the outcome under
God of the Christian training and nurture given him
by his admirable mother, who, left a widow while he
and his brother Hugh were yet infants, had so brought
them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,
that to pray became as natural to the young Charles
as to breathe, and that therein he, as he has said,
seemed to himself in boyhood to be talking with God
as a father and friend. He always, like all truly noble
men, especially if fatherless, ascribed all in himself
that was of any worth either in the sight of God or
man, instrumentally to the influence of this excellent
Christian mother. And if she was a blessinor so in-

o

estimable to her sons, might it not have been the pride
of the most royal mother on earth to have borne and
reared two such sons as Charles and Hugh L. Hodge,
the latter the beloved Christian physician, and great
medical professor and author? When was the aspira¬
tion more beautifully realized, so happily expressed by
Wordsworth in the lines,

‘‘ The child is father of the man,

And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

9

Still another reason why his profession of religion
at this time deserves notice here is, that it was followed
by the great religious revival of 1815 in the College,
which broke the spell of indifferentism, irreligion and
infidelity, that had so long struck its leprous taint
through the institution. It changed the whole tone
here for the better in these respects. Its subjects in¬
cluded some of the chief luminaries of the American
Church in various communions. Bishops Johns and
McIlvaine of the Episcopal Church were among
them. They were also life-long friends of Dr.
Hodge, whose catholic sympathies and friendship
warmly embraced all true Christians, whether within or
beyond the pale of his own church. It deserves atten¬
tion that this revival was consequent upon his making
this profession, because there is no way in which those
who possess religion in college or elsewhere can do
greater good, than by professing it and adorning their
profession. It has often been among the first fruits,
foretokenings, or predisposing causes of genuine re¬
vivals, that those who at heart love Christ let their
light shine in visible profession and holy example more
conspicuously than ever before. God alone knows how
much that great revival of 1815 in this College may
have been instrumentally due to the open and formal
profession of religion by Charles Hodge, at a time
when iniquity abounded, the love of many waxed cold,
and the very atmosphere was murky with spiritual
death.

While yet a college lad, his extraordinary promise
was observed by that great light of our church, and
sagacious discerner of men. Dr. Archibald Alexander,
who even then fixed upon him for the chair of Biblical
Instruction and Exegesis about to be established in the
Seminary. Dr. Alexander discerned in him not only

the average proniise which results from a foremost
rank in a college class, but those special endowments
which foretokened his ripening into eminent fitness
for a theological professorship. In one of the only two
interviews which I ever had with that wonderful man,
he said to me that Dr. Hodge’s mind resembled Cal¬
vin’s in everything but its sternness. The result was,
that, after spending three years as a student m the
Theological Seminary from i8i6 to 1819, with a single
year intervening, he became in 1820 Assistant Teacher
of the Original Languages of Scripture. Two years
later, at the age of 25. and 56 years ago, the General
Assembly appointed him full professor of Oriental and
Biblical Literature. In 1840 he was transferred from
this to the Chair of Didactic Theology, a department
for which he had shown extraordinary fitness m his
exegetical instructions, and in various publications that
evinced his power and established his tame on both
sides of the ocean. In this he continued active to the
day of his death, with a duration and eminence ot
service having no parallel in this age, and none except
in cases the rarest among the great theologians of his¬
tory. — the Augustines, the Anselms, Calvins, Turrettins
and Edwardses, those great expositors, formulators, and
defenders of the Christian faith. He realized pre¬
eminently his own ideal of a teacher, which he once
set forth to me in one of those sentences so character¬
istic of him, having the power of aphorisms that m an
instant let in a flood of light upon a subject, and con¬
tain the seeds of thought; “The requisites of a good
teacher are Knowledge, Ability, Fidelity and Tact,
adding, that “many who have the first three, fail for
want of the last.” Few have even written and pub¬
lished so voluminously. Fewer still have published so
much which not only exerted immense influence at the

time of publication, but continues to have a recog¬
nized value and authority for a generation or more
afterwards, including what is likely to live through
the ages. He made himself felt with prodigious power
in standard volumes historical, exegetical, philosophical,
allcLilminatingin his greatworkonSystematicTheology.
This, in the range and completeness of its topics, its
mastery of the literature, the living and past issues,
the collateral philosophies and scientific questions per¬
taining to them, the thorough analysis, the clear and
adequate presentation and discussion of subjects in¬
volved, is for this age what Francis Turrettin’s great
work was for his. It has a value which will render it
long indispensable for all who make theology a study,
even it they be upholders of variant or contrary sys¬
tems.

Not only did he make himself a great power m the
standard treatises and volumes he gave to the world, but
also in that periodical literature, which, during this cen¬
tury, has become the great power of the press. Ap¬
preciating its vast influence, he founded in 1825 the
Biblical Repertory, to which he afterwards added the
title of Princeton Review. This he edited until 1869.
During this period of 44 years, in which Quarterly
Reviews reached the zenith of their influence, he
made this journal a great power in the church and
the world. It is doubtful whether any other American
Quarterly was so powerful in impressing the opinions of
its conductors on those whose province it is to teach
others also, and through these, upon the church and the
world, not only on theological, but on philosophical,
ethical, social and miscellaneous topics. Aided by a
small galaxy of contributors, each powerful and bril¬
liant in his way, he was its constant head. If great in
other ways, he was conspicuously great as a Reviewer.

Some of his salient articles would not suffer by com¬
parison with Macaulay’s in power and influence. The
church and world will not willingly let them die.

Among the topics upon which he cast a powerful
licrht in this Review were the relation of the Church
to Slavery, on which he took ground equi-distant from
Pro-slaveryism on the one hand, and those who main¬
tained that slaveholders as such should be excluded from
the church on the other; on Temperance, favoring Total
Abstinence as a matter of expediency, but insisting that
it could not be made a test of Christian character or a
term of communion ; in regard to voluntary societies,
opposing alike those who would commit to them the
evangelistic work of the church, in preference to
church boards, and those who would discountenance
all voluntary associations for any purpose whatsoever;
in regard to the Scriptural idea of the church, show¬
ing that to the church invisible, consisting of all the
redeemed, the scriptural definitions, promises and
prerogatives pertain, while they pertain to the church
visible, or to any organized church, just and only so far
as it includes and manifests, makes the profession
and has visibly the marks of the “ sanctified in
Christ Jesus, called to be saints, I. Cor. 1:2;
in regard to Scriptural exegesis, accepting all true
corrections of the received version and its inter¬
pretation which Germany could afford, but repu¬
diating the extravagances and destructive rationalism
which so many were eagerly importing from that coun¬
try. In regard to theology, he repelled Pelagian,
Sabellian, Socinian, and other rationalistic assaults
upon the standards of his church, while guarding against
the hyper-Calvinism that sometimes provoked or pal¬
liated them. The field of politics he entered only at
its points of contact with ethical and scriptural doctrine,

13

as Sabbath observance, marriage, divorce, and espe¬
cially the attempt to sever the country in twain by force
of arms. Whenever on these or similar subjects a
nodus dignus occurred, he did not hesitate to make all
parties know his mind, and uttered no uncertain sound.

These varied and pre-eminent services to the
church and the world had a remarkable recoenition in
this place six years ago, on the occasion of Dr.
Hodge’s reaching the semi-centenary of his Professor¬
ship in the Seminary. This event was celebrated by a
vast assemblage of his pupils, and other clergymen and
laymen, including distinguished Professors and repre¬
sentatives of other institutions, and friends of relig-ion
and learning in this and other lands. These, with mul¬
titudes unable to come, were eager to do him honor,
and make thankful and reverent acknowledament of
his great services to themselves personally, as well as
to the church and cause ot God, in defending' the faith
once delivered to the saints. This sacred ovation has
had no recent if any parallel, except in the case of a
similar tribute paid to the veteran theologian Tholuck
in Germany. It was entirely spontaneous, and heart¬
felt. While gratefully appreciated by the illustrious
subject of it, it drew forth from him marked mani¬
festations, not of self-complacency, but of unaffected
humility.

Let us now consider that in the make-up of this
great man in view of which it is peculiarly proper that
we should mark him as the “ perfect,” and behold him
as the “upright,” In his life and death, for his “ end was
peace.” Sinless perfection is not here meant. Infalli¬
bility is not meant. There is not a just man on earth
that sinneth not. No man would more sternly resent
the ascription of such traits to himself But a relative

perfection is meant, consisting in the completeness and
symmetrical adjustment of all the elements that belong
to the highest manhood, intellectual, moral and
religious, and this withal as respects their relations to
the surroundings of a man’s life, or, to use a cur¬
rent word, his environment. He obeyed his conscience
wherever it led him, m all fealty to his God, and faith¬
fulness to men. The attribute of being perfect, applied
to him peculiarly in this respect, that he was almost
unexampled in his freedom from those infirmities
which disfigure and belittle so many otherwise great
men, when unveiled by intimate association with them.
His unusually long life and opportunities enhanced this
relative perfection. Raised to high and responsible
stations at a very early age, which he honorably filled,
he continued in distinguished and effective service to
the end of a life thus lengthened out. He lived too
when the questions agitating the church and society,
and the work needing to be done to which he was
called, furnished the grandest opportunity for the full
tasking and development of his peculiar gifts, so that
if he moulded the age, the age moulded him. His life
and work were fully finished and rounded, replete with
opportunity well improved, without untimely ruptures
or premature ending.

We proceed then, as briefly as may be, to contemplate
the intellectual, moral, and religious constituents of the
man, along with any auxiliary accidental circumstances
which drew forth this manhood to that fulness and
pre-eminence by which it was distinguished.

H is intellect was imperial, even in its single facul¬
ties, but much more so in their harmonious blending,
their mutual co-working and inter-working, their power
or habit of sustained application which sufficed to
develop without consuming them. At the very thresh-

15

old this appears in the amount, excellence and influ¬
ence of his productions ; in the clearness, fulness and
vividness of his unfoldings of the profoundest and
abstrusest topics. To delineate his faculties separately,
while requisite to a full appreciation of them, never¬
theless has the awkward anatomical effect of severing
them from that living connection with the whole which
is so essential to their beauty and power. It is like
applying the prism to the sunbeam. While it shows
the colors of the rainbow, each beautiful in itself, it dis¬
solves the pure white light, not to say heat, of the sun.

It is hardly necessary to say that his mind was
intensely logical, not in the sense of mere expertness
in the forms of the syllogism, — though here he was not
inexpert, — but as by nature and training it conformed
to the laws of rational thought, especially in their appli¬
cation to concrete discussion ; in analysis and synthesis
as involved in the processes of generalization, classifi¬
cation, division, definition ; of discovering and setting
forth in crystal clearness the true question, eliminating
irrelevant issues, clearing away all perplexing obscurity,
indistinctness and inadequacy of statement in which
less competent thinkers had involved it ; so arraying in
consummate order proofs of the position taken and
disproofs of the contrary as to give his argument a
cumulative and resistless momentum, which sufficed to
impart fresh inspiration to friends, and either to con¬
vert or weaken adversaries. This result was greatly
furthered by the mingled earnestness, candor and
charity with which he inculcated his views, and which
were sterling traits in his character.

It should be said, however, that he was no man of
mere logic, engrossed with bare forms or arts of think¬
ing, without matter to think about, or staples from which
to hang his chains of argument. No man ever more

maenified those intuitions, or intuitive truths and con-
victions,, which constitute the essence of reason, and
only basis of reasoning. I have known men of even
superlative acumen most expert as logical fencers, but
extremely slow in recognizing those intuitive principles
without which no sound reasoning is possible ; whose
arguments shielded or pierced only the ghosts of truth
or error. Dr. Hodge was especially quick to discern
moral and relieious axioms — those first truths which
are the light of all our seeing, so shining in their own
light that no outside proof can make them plainer,
while they themselves underlie all moral or religious
truth reached by any kind of demonstration, testimony
or revelation. That there is a radical distinction be¬
tween right and wrong ; that love, reverence, and obe¬
dience towards God, justice, kindness, truth and hon¬
esty towards men are binding ; that sin deserves pun¬
ishment, and virtue approbation and reward ; — these
propositions are their own evidence, or there is no evi¬
dence for them or any other moral or religious princi¬
ples. Revelation even presupposes such intuitive
knowledge, and would be as impossible to those desti¬
tute of it, as is the seeing of sun-light by the blind.
“ If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is
that darkness ?” How can moral and religious truth
be disclosed to those without conscience, the first ele¬
ments of moral reason and religious insight?

Here too it deserves emphatic mention that his
intellect was remarkably free from that narrow, one¬
sided iiltraism in pushing single truths to extreme
consequences, which arises from blindness to related
and qualifying truths, and so often makes the mere
partisan, radical, sceptic, or bigot. His understanding
was broad, judicial, undergirded with a strong com¬
mon-sense which regulated its judgments. It was

17

conspicuously free from idiosyncrasies, hobbies, crotch¬
ets, extravagances. He had no sympathy with those
who followed their logic, as they boasted, “ down
Niagara,” even if it hurled them athwart their moral
intuitions, and other indubitable truths. He deemed
it quite time when some sharpness or smartness of
apparent reasoning brought one to this pass, to pause,
and seek the flaw in the premises or the links of deduc¬
tion from them ; for fallacy there is, and fallacy there
must be, in every process of supposed reasoning, which
subverts the first principles of all reason and morals.

The vast learning of Dr. Hodge shows a prodigious
memory in due adjustment to his other faculties. Some
disparage memory ; others exaggerate it as the crown¬
ing faculty. Both err. It needs to be in due propor¬
tion to the other faculties. If greatly in excess, it
makes the mere pedant, capable only of an awkward
parade of his stores of undigested knowledge. If in
defect, the mind withers for lack of nutriment, for it
cannot get growth and vigor from mere shadowy forms
of thought, or shrivelled spectres without the matter
and substance of knowledoe.

Many think of Dr. Hodge as a dry reasoner or
polemic without imagination. But in truth he had a
very powerful imagination. Without some fair measure
of this constructive faculty, which “ mediates truth to
the mind through beauty,” no man, however mighty as
a reasoner. can put his reasonings in such a costume
as to sway the minds of his fellow-men. In the power
of apt comparison and telling illustration Dr. Hodge
was sometimes almost peerless. By a single metaphor
he would often flash a light through a confused contro¬
versy which settled it. Many single passages of this
kind could be culled from his writings, which not only
threw a glow and a charm over them beyond the dry

i8

light of bare argumentation, but, at a single thrust,
slew pages of sophisms and paralogisms.

But it is not a view of his intellect, taken piece¬
meal, or in insulated fragments, that best exhibits its
might. It is the whole moving, ‘‘ according to the
effectual measure of the working of every part,” in the
actual treatment of great and varied subjects, that best
displays its imperial force. He so tasked it in con¬
tinuous application, as to develop the fulness of its
strength, without that suicidal overstraining of it, which
has prematurely wrecked many a noble mind.

Beyond all doubt what invigorated and ennobled
his intellect, scarcely less than his emotional and moral
being, was his implicit faith in and obedience to the
Word of God. This reveals the Infinite and Perfect
One beyond all other manifestations of Himself ; — even
Him in whom all ideals converge, from whom they
emerge ; whose mind planned and controls the universe,
and impresses itself on nature, providence and grace ;
God in the person of the Incarnate Son showing the
brightness of his glory and the express image of his
person, the very fulness of His Godhead ; in whom
slain, risen, reigning. Head of the church militant and
triumphant. Head over all things to the church, all
things in heaven and earth, through all time, in all
space, in all worlds, shall be gathered, headed up, into
one. Even thrones, principalities and powers, angels
and archangels, all shall centre in Him as the first and
the last, by whom and lor whom are all things, “ that
in all things he might have the pre-eminence.” Now, to
receive this word is to receive the true principle of the
universe ; its source, method, and end ; the Way, the
Truth, and the Life ; the Adorable Trinity in Unity, “ of
whom, through whom, to whom, are all things, to whom
be glory forever.”

19

It is needless to argue that the intellect supremely
guided by this chart and compass, is moving in the
o-rand lines and orbits in which the universe moves, and
which are in the direction of all truth, the pathways
which all truth-finders tread. It stretches the mind to
the contemplation of the Infinite and Eternal, the
grandest ideals, character, and destiny. It is indeed to
the intellect just what the compass is to the navigator,
that, wanting which, the wisdom of this world is foolish-
ness with God, and those who profess themselves to be
wise, become fools. It is only by celestial observations,
Colerido-e well observes, that terrestrial charts can be

o

scientifically constructed.

It was not merely that he accepted or reverenced
the Word in general, but believing that “ all Scripture
is given by inspiration of God,” he accepted it in all its
ful ness, and yielded undoubting submission to its teach¬
ings, no matter how insolvable to human reason. This
gave it its expansive, tonic, and gymnastic power over
his intellect. Its infinite truths, became truth-powers
in his soul, energizing, vitalizing it, subliming it to an
ethereal mould, and glassing it for celestial surveys
immeasurably beyond any sweep of the unaided eye.
Herein he did not abjure, but vastly exalted his reason,
by opening it to the illumination of truths the most ex¬
alted. As a rational being, he could not and would not
accept contradictions. But within this limit he would,
as he was wont to say, “ go blindly,” in receiving those
revealed truths, “ not seen ” or discernible bv mere
sense, reason, or any unaided natural faculty, of which
faith was the only “ evidence.” In his own words:
“ The first and most indispensable condition of piety
is submission, — blind, absolute, entire submission of the
intellect, the conscience, the life, to God. This is blind,
but not irrational. It is the submission of a sightless

20

child to an all seeing Father ; of a feeble, beclouded
intelligence to the Infinite intelligence.”'*' He put this
yoke upon himself, so that he might “ learn of Christ
and find rest to his soul.” So Abraham went out at
the command of God, “not knowing whither he went.”
So if any man “ seemeth to be wise in this world, let
him become a fool, that he may be wise.” Thus
alone does the soul open itself to the fulness of God,
the wealth of divine truth, and the scope of divine illu¬
mination. In God’s light we see light. In one of
those great review articles which, once read, is not
easily forgotten, he thus rebuked a brilliant genius as¬
suming the role of reconstructing systems of theology
which he little understood. “ Machiavelli was accus¬
tomed to say there are three classes of men ; one who
see things in their own light; another who see them
when they are shown ; and a third who cannot see

them even then. We invite Dr. B - to resume his

place with us in the second class. By a just judgment
of God, those who uncalled, aspire to the first, lapse
into the third.”*)*

Passino’ now to the emotional element in Dr.

o

Hodge’s character, we need dwell hardly for a moment
on its blended strength, warmth, gentleness, delicacy
and geniality. Gigantic in his manhood, tender as a
woman, unaffected and artless as a child, never deaf
to the cry of an infant or a beggar, he was firm as the
mountains when any great principle was at stake.
More than once he lifted his voice and his pen un¬
flinchingly against overwhelming majorities, not only
in the world, but in the church of his love, and of
which he was the pride, breasting a cataract of in¬
flamed antagonism, which reminded one of “Athan-

* Princeton Review, Vol. XXVI. p. 138.

\ Princeton Review, 1849, p. 262.

asius against the world.” His temperament, ordinarily
calm, easily became impassioned, and kindled up to
fervors proportioned to the magnitude ot the occasion
exciting" it. He was at once charitable and catholic, at

O

an equal remove from indifferentism and bigotry.

We may not wholly pass by those faculties which
are at once intelligent and emotional, — conscience and
taste. In regard to the latter, while he was quick to
perceive genuine beauty and loathe the spurious pre¬
tense of it in every sphere, there is time to refer to it
only as it evinced itself in his own productions. These
in their kind were models. Whether in philosophy, exe¬
gesis, theology, or those ethico-political and miscella¬
neous topics to which his wondrous versatility of mind
sometimes led him, he showed in a remarkable degree
the power to meet that first essential of beauty, — say¬
ing the right thing in the right place, and the best
things in the best manner. If in most cases the
strength of his writings was their conspicuous feature,
it was when their strength was beauty, even as strength
and beauty are in the sanctuary. He was severely
simple and chaste in his standards. Pomp, swell, tin¬
sel glitter of style were his abomination. Like Car¬
lyle he held that affectation is the bane of manners
and literature, as hypocrisy is of religion. In the
region however of sentiment, and ot the more strictly
aesthetic in literature, passages of exquisite beauty as
well as sublimity, very gems, are often found in his
writings. Among these I may refer to that epitaph in
yonder cemetery which marks the resting place of one,
whose death made an aching void in his heart and his
home.

If I may say a word in regard to his oratorical
powers, which frequently appeared at some disadvan¬
tage, owing in part to an ordinary weakness of voice

22

arising from a physical malady which was aggra¬
vated by vehement utterance ; in part to a habit
of insensibly taking the forms of thought and speech
of the lecture room to the pulpit and before popular
audiences ; in part to his constitutional repugnance to
any affectation of fire in the tongue which did not glow
in the soul ; — many were the occasions when the true
fire in the soul did melt away obstacles of this kind,
and burst forth in “thoughts that breathe and words
that burn” into the very heart of the audience. This
occurred frequently, when unfettered by manuscripts,
his soul flowed out so as to electrify his hearers, who
in turn rekindled the speaker, — often in those cele¬
brated Sabbath afternoon deliverances in the Oratory,
on experimental religion, in which his tearful and
pathetic utterances melted every listener. This often
occurred tooinhisfamiliaraddresses at our prayer meet¬
ings. But I well remember one instance in which he
delivered a written discourse, at the funeral of General
Bayard, brought here for burial from the battle-field,
to a crowded audience, when he was roused to a style
of delivery not inferior to that of the great masters of
eloquence.

I will not dwell upon the conscience, always the
regal faculty in man by right, if not in fact, or repeat
the evidence already given, that it was at the highest in
him as to its guiding and impulsive power. He was
formed to this standard alike by natural constitution,
habitual training and practice, and by the Word and
Spirit of God. The conscience was in him the needle
that pointed to the true pole. Not that he was never
perplexed or mistaken. But if it is given to any of us
to know the right and to do it, may I not say, to him
more. He discarded all theories which make pleasure,
utility, or expediency the foundation of ethics. While

23

no man could be more prudent, in the proper sphere
of prudence, no man could be truer to himself, his con¬
science, and his God,

All culminated in his Christian character, the fea¬
tures of which have been so largely referred to, that
little additional delineation of it is needed. His piety
was his theology translated into life, and all his theol¬
ogy, theoretical and practical, centred in Christ, who
was to him the supreme object of faith, love and devo¬
tion, all and in all. In some ages of the church Chris¬
tian affection has been more centred in the Person of
Christ. In others it has been more consciously directed
to his saving" offices. In Dr. Hodge, it was directed to
Christ alike and pre-eminently in both aspects. His
glorious Person, and His glorious offices. For him to
live was Christ, to die was gain, because, as he said in
his last known religious utterance, “it was to depart and
be with Christ ; to be with him was to see Him ; to see
Him was to be like Him.” His consummate aspiration
was to be in the presence of Him who is at once the
image of the Invisible God, and the first-born among
many brethren. He was devout without fanaticism, con¬
scientious without blind scrupulosity, faithful in that
which was least because faithful from principle ; not
neglecting the weightier matters of the law in a morbid
devotion to petty punctilios, having his conversation in
heaven while quick with wholesome affection and con¬
cern for every genuine earthly interest, firm in adhe¬
rence to principle, but kindly and loving in all human
relationships. Indeed there was nothing pertaining to
humanity, from the prattle of the babe to the shock
of contending armies, the revolutions of empires, and
the fortunes of the church, which did not command his
interest and attention. He felt himself a man, and that
nothing human was alien from him. The benignity of

24

his temper and life was the true reflex of his theology
on its practical side. Whatever imaginations to the
contrary as to the tone of that theology any may have
entertained, its keynote and central factor was love,
love, LOVE.

Beginning his Christian life in youth, growing in
grace and knowledge of God till ripened through a
length of years vouchsafed only to the fewest, gathered
to the heavenly garner as “ a shock of corn ready in
its season,” he died in the assured hope of the resur¬
rection of the body and the life everlasting, through
Him who is the resurrection and the life. He was as
good as he was great, and no small part of his greatness
was his goodness. Indeed he held that there was no
mystic art in doing good ; that the best way to do good
was to be good. Even so the teaching of his great
life is that the way to a great manhood is to do great
and man-worthy things, and this because they are such.

If we cannot equal the mighty dead who yet speak
to us from their “sceptred urns,” we may at least be
inspired by their great examples, and try to imitate
their excellence, so far as imitable, while we cherish and
do honor to their memory. There is no more ignoble
trait, or sure sign of degeneracy, than to forget or lose
reverence for the great and good who have departed
from us. “ Mark the perfect man, behold the up¬
right, FOR TFIE END OF THAT MAN IS PEACE,”

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