William Lamson

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROFESSIONAL POWER. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, NEWTON, MASS., JUNE 26, I866.1 Early on the morning of the I3th of July, 1859, there passed away from among the living a man who had for more than thirty years pursued, in this Commonwealth, a professional career of...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROFESSIONAL POWER. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, NEWTON, MASS., JUNE 26, I866.1 Early on the morning of the I3th of July, 1859, there passed away from among the living a man who had for more than thirty years pursued, in this Commonwealth, a professional career of almost unexampled brilliancy and success. He was on his way to Europe to recover his worn-out energies, when, too feeble to proceed, he lingered for a day or two at Halifax, till the summons reached him which all must obey, and which took him that way whence he will not return. His death produced a profound sorrow, not alone in the city of his residence, but throughout the State, and not in this State only, but throughout the country, and in other lands. His fame had gone abroad, and the charm of his eloquence had been recognized beyond the land that gave him birth. Of his character as a whole I shall not speak; of its moral, religious, or even intellectual traits I have nothing to say. My purpose is, brethren of the ministry, for a few minutes, to present Rufus Choate to you as a striking, perhaps the most striking, example known to us of professional success, and to inquire into some of the elements of that power by which this success was achieved; to ask and answer the question, What are the lessons profitable to a minister of the gospel to be gleaned by the study of such a professional life ? I know that our profession is peculiar. Divine in its call, divine in its aims, divine in the sources of its efficiency, it stands apart from all others. But it is not unworthy of the divinely called servant of Christ to avail himself of any and every just means of augmenting his power. His work, the greatest and most glorious in which man ever engages, solicits, demands a...