hrough light, rapid-fire
sentences to the terrific, thundering outburst of an electrifying
climax. In addition, he had the intuition of a born theatrical
manager. Night after night this man held me fascinated. He convinced
me that, after all, eloquence consists more in the manner of saying
than in what is said. It is largely a matter of tone pictures.

The most striking example of John Brown's magnetism and imagination
was his "heavenly march"; I shall never forget how it impressed
me when I heard it. He opened his sermon in the usual way; then,
proclaiming to his listeners that he was going to take them on the
heavenly march, he seized the Bible under his arm and began to pace up
and down the pulpit platform. The congregation immediately began with
their feet a tramp, tramp, tramp, in time with the preacher's march
in the pulpit, all the while singing in an undertone a hymn about
marching to Zion. Suddenly he cried: "Halt!" Every foot stopped with
the precision of a company of well-drilled soldiers, and the singing
ceased. The morning star had been reached. Here the preacher described
the beauties of that celestial body. Then the march, the tramp, tramp,
tramp, and the singing were again taken up. Another "Halt!" They
had reached the evening star. And so on, past the sun and moon--the
intensity of religious emotion all the time increasing--along the
milky way, on up to the gates of heaven. Here the halt was longer,
and the preacher described at length the gates and walls of the New
Jerusalem. Then he took his hearers through the pearly gates, along
the golden streets, pointing out the glories of the city, pausing
occasionally to greet some patriarchal members of the church,
well-known to most of his listeners in life, who had had "the tears
wiped from their eyes, were clad in robes of spotless white, with
crowns of gold upon their heads and harps within their hands," and
ended his march before the great white throne. To the reader this may
sound ridiculous, but listened to under the circumstances, it was
highly and effectively dramatic. I was a more or less sophisticated
and non-religious man of the world, but the torrent of the preacher's
words, moving with the rhythm and glowing with the eloquence of
primitive poetry, swept me along, and I, too, felt like joining in the
shouts of "Amen! Hallelujah!"

John Brown's powers in describing the delights of heaven were no
greater than those in depicting the horrors of hell