23–29 June 1845

It was a pleasure, yesterday, to hear Father Taylor preach all day in our country church. Men are always interested in a man, and the whole various extremes of our little village so- ciety were for once brought together. Black and white, poet and grocer, contractor and lumber- man, Methodist and preachers, joined with the regular congregation in rare union. The speaker instantly shows the reason in the breadth of his truly social nature. He is mighty Nature's child ; another Robert Burns trusting heartily to her power, as he has never been deceived by it, and arriving unexpectedly every moment at new and happiest deliverances. How joyfully and manly he speaks himself abroad. It is a perfect Punch and Judy affair, his preaching. The preaching quite accidental and ludicrously copied and cari- catured from the old style, as he found it in some Connecticut tubs. As well as he can he mimics and exaggerates the parade of method and logic, of text and argument, but after much threatening to exterminate all gainsayers by his syllogisms, he seldom remembers any of the di- visions of his plan after the first, and the slips and gulfs of his logic would involve him in irre- parable ridicule if it were not for the inexhausti- ble wit by which he dazzles and conciliates and carries away captive the dullest and the keenest hunter. He is perfectly sure in his generous humanity. He rolls the world into a ball and tosses it from hand to hand. He says touching things, plain things, grand things, cogent things, which all men must perforce hear. He says them with hand and head and body and voice ; the accompaniment is total and ever varied. " I am half a hundred years old, and I have never seen an unfortunate day. There are none." . . . "I have been in all the four quarters of the world, and I never saw any men I could not love." " We have sweet conferences and prayer z meetings ; we meet every day. There are not days enough in the year for us."