Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful
salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching
the sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of
all God's creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate
inquiry for that, a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the
hand for all. He was a man to do good, for everybody saw that he
thought for others before himself, and sincerity and earnestness
constitute, with the necessary degree of talent, the grand secrets
for making successful teachers in every department.
Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross
was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his
text a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical
application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their
pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled
to preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much
wiser than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties
of farmstead and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and
self-constituted representatives of our eternal interests, who
deluge us with a vain, worthless declamation, proving that virtue
is a very good thing, religion a very commendable virtue, and a
liberal contribution to the church-box at the close of the sermon one
of the most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection.
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