repeating it, to be sung by all his congregation.

Whoever has listened, in such a place, amidst a great multitude, to the
singing of that beautiful hymn commencing, "Come, thou fount of every
blessing," by a thousand voices, all in accord, and not felt the spirit
of devotion burning in his heart, could scarcely be moved should an
angel host rend the blue above him, and, floating through the ether,
praise God in song. In that early day of Methodism, very few of those
licensed to preach were educated men. They read the Bible, and
expounded its great moral truths as they understood them. Few of these
even knew that it had been in part originally written in the Hebrew
tongue, and the other portion in that of the Greeks; but he knew it
contained the promise of salvation, and felt that it was his mission to
preach and teach this way to his people, relying solely for his power
to impress these wonderful truths upon the heart by the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit. For this reason the sermons of the sect were never
studied or written, and their excellence was their fervor and
impassioned appeals to the heart and the wild imaginations of the
enthusiastic and unlearned of the land. Genius, undisciplined and
untutored by education, is fetterless, and its spontaneous suggestions
are naturally and powerfully effective, when burning from lips
proclaiming the heart's enthusiasm. Thus extemporizing orations almost
daily, stimulated the mind to active thought, and very many of these
illiterate young Methodist preachers became in time splendid orators.

It was the celebrated Charles James Fox who said to a young man just
entering Parliament, if he desired to become a great orator, and had
the genius and feeling from nature, all he had to do was to speak often
and learn to think on his feet. It is to this practice the lawyer and
the preacher owe the oratory which distinguish these above every other
class of men. And yet, how few of them ever attain to the eminence of
finished orators. Eloquence and oratory are by no means identical: one
is the attribute of the heart, the other of the head; and eloquence,
however unadorned, is always effective, because it is born of the
feelings; and there is ever a sympathy between the hearts of men, and
the words, however rude and original, which bubble up from the heart
freighted with its feelings, rush with electrical force and velocity to
the heart, and stir to the extent of its capacities. Oratory, h