35. Extract from Paysons Funeral Sermon, preached by Rev, Charles Jenkins.

Extract from Paysons Funeral Sermon, preached by Rev, Charles Jenkins

" I might speak of his gifted intellect; I might dwell on his wonderful powers of combination; on that excursive faculty which, forever glancing from earth to heaven, could gather the universe around him in aid of his illustrations. But to speak on these points becomes not this solemn occasion. He would frown on the attempt. He counted ’all things loss for Christ/ If I may speak of his character, it shall be that character which had so conspicuously the Christian stamp. In this respect, grace made him great. It wrought a deep work in his soul. The predominant features of his whole mind, for many years, were high spiritual views and deep spiritual feelings. These tinged, or rather were the element, of his thoughts and efforts. His natural ardor of temperament doubtless affected not a little his religious exercises. It gave them violence and energy. His seasons of spiritual elevation were heaven brought down to earth ; his seasons of religious depression resembled the storms of autumn—sudden, dark, threatening—leaving a serener and purer sky, but betokening that winter is approaching.

He was pre-eminently a man of prayer. There was in his prayers a copiousness, a fervor, a familiarity, a reaching forth of the soul into eternity, that was almost peculiar to himself, and that told every hearer that heaven was his element, and prayer his breath, and life, and joy. As a preacher it is easier to say what he was not than what he was. He was eloquent, and yet no one could describe his eloquence to the apprehension of a stranger; it consisted in an assemblage of qualities that could be seen and felt, but not described. He did not preach himself; his subject always stood between himself and audience. Ah! I will not, I cannot, enlarge. Let the thousand voices of them who have been brought to the knowledge of Christ by his ministrations tell what he was as a preacher’