Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1335

Rh, he was thrown into frequent contact with the great military leaders. In i8& he was stationed at Gordonsville with Maj. George Johnston, serving as pay-clerk and rendering valuable service in the collection of grain and teams. As the agent of the Sunday-school and publication board at Richmond he traveled through Georgia and parts of Alabama, and met with great success in raising funds to supply the brave boys in the field with Bibles and religious literature. He also preached at different places to the soldiers. Being in Richmond a few days before the surrender he and his wife accepted the invitation of Major Speed, of Alabama, to accompany to Georgia a party which included Mrs. Howell, mother-in-law of the president, and Mrs. Waller and children. After a journey of three weeks they reached Washington, Ga., on the route which Mr. Davis and thousands of broken and disheartened soldiers soon followed. During the latter part of the war period he also rendered notable service as the agent of the domestic and Indian mission board of the Southern Baptist convention. Subsequently he served as pastor of the Eufaula, Ala., Baptist church, where he brought about the building of a handsome new house of worship; of the Walnut street church, Louisville, Ky., and the Greene street church, Augusta, Ga., at all these places leading in a remarkable improvement in membership and in the benevolences of the churches. These labors left him, in 1876, so sadly broken in health, that he retired to his farm in southwestern Georgia, and remained there in seclusion until prevailed upon to undertake the collection of the quota of Georgia for the Southern Baptist theological seminary. Meeting with entire success in this undertaking, he then became corresponding secretary of the seminary, with the duty of raising $20,000 annually for the current expenses of the institution. After a few years of this work at Augusta, he accepted from President Garfield the appointment as United States consul at Sonneberg-Coberg, Germany, and spent some years abroad. Returning with fresh enthusiasm for the work of the church, he held for two years, and with marked ability, the position of editor-in-chief of the Christian Index, published at Atlanta, Ga. Since then he has served as a pastor for six years at the First Baptist church of Montgomery, Ala., where he received six hundred members, and since 1891 at the Baptist church of Norfolk, Va., succeeding Rev. J. L. Burrows, D. D. Here his labors have been in no degree abated, nor permitted to be in any way less effective. Five hundred new members have been received into the church, and large sums of money have been raised for benevolences and the improvement of the magnificent place of worship. Early in his career his abilities were recognized by the conferring of the title of D. D. by the Washington and Lee university. As a preacher he is gifted with an extraordinary memory which never fails in its fund of illustration, a fine power of analysis and broad grasp of the essential relations of things, and an oratorical power that brings large congregations within the influence of his logic and human sympathy. He finds time for many channels of usefulness; as a trustee of Mercer university, of the Baptist orphans home, and of the Southern Baptist theological seminary; has delivered many public addresses, such as before the Southern Baptist convention, the Monteagle assembly, the