Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/72

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS have I myself gone to him unawares and found him dissolved in tears and prayers for the Church of Christ. He devoted a certain portion of almost every day to the solemn reading of some of the Psalms of David, with which he mingled his own supplications amid sighs and tears; and he has frequently declared how indignant he felt against those who hastened over devotional exercises through sloth or the pretense of other occupations. On this account, said he, divine wisdom has prescribed some formularies of prayer, that our minds may be inflamed with devotion by reading them, to which, in his opinion, reading aloud very much conduced.

When a variety of great and important deliberations respecting public dangers have been pending, we have witnessed his prodigious vigor of mind, his fearless and unshaken courage. Faith was his sheet-anchor, and by the help of God he was resolved never to be driven from it. Such was his penetration that he perceived at once what was to be done in the most perplexing conjunctures; nor was he, as some supposed, negligent of the public good or disregardful of the wishes of others, but he was well acquainted with the interests of the State, and preeminently sagacious in discovering the capacity and dispositions of all about him. And altho he possessed such extraordinary acuteness of intellect, he read both ancient and modern ecclesiastical writings with the utmost avidity, and