with paralysis, of which he lingered, often in great suf- fering, until death brought him a happy release in 1859. He had previously been declared emei-itus at his own request by the classis to which he belonged — a provi- sion by which a minister is honorably discharged from active duties. None of the churches which he served offered him so prominent a position as his pulpit power seemed to others to demand. But this was the result en- tirely of his own peculiar views, his feeble health, and of his very sensitive nature, which led him to decline more commanding places and enabled him to occupy a con- genial retirement. With these feelings he also declined the professorship of logic and rhetoric in Rutgers Col- lege, and seldom published any of his pulpit discourses. He was a frequent contributor to the religious press, writing upon almost all to|)ics of current interest with equal ease and ability. His only published sermons were, one on The Crisis and its Claims upon the Church of God, preached, June, 1842, before the General Synod of the Reformed Church, of which he was the retiring president; another, entitled A Plea for the Evangelical Press, preached at the public deliberative meeting of the American Tract Society, October, 1843; and the very last effort of his pen, before he was paralyzed, en- titled Enmity to the Cross of Christ, These are all char- acteristic sermons. The last was published in Dr. H. C. Fish's- Pulpit Eloquence of the Nineteenth Century, and also in pamphlet form by the author as "A part- ing memorial to the people of his former charges." He was the author of a famous Report on the State of the Church, made to the General Synod in 1848; and also published a remarkable address before the Greene Coun- ty Agricultural Society, during his residence there. In his will he forbade any posthumous publication of his discourses. His correspondence would make one of the raciest volumes of epistolary writing in our language. Probably the best idea of his pulpit oratory and sermons may be formed from the statements which we quote. Dr. James W. Alexander, writing to a friend in Septem- ber, 1844, from Staten Island, says: "Here I heard James Romeyn ; and a more extraordinary man I never heard. Fulness of matter, every step sudtlen and unexpected, genius, strength, tire, terror, amazing and preposterous rapidity, contempt of rule and taste. It was an awful discourse: 1 Thess. v, 3. It was one which I shall not soon forget." Another contemporary says of him : " I think I see him now — his tall form, which, in face at least, I fancy to have been Laurence Sterne's, strung up to the highest nervous tension, and his tongue pouring forth a lava-tide of burning elo()uence, the most pow- erful to which I have ever listened. Powerful,''' he adds, "is just the word. I have heard men more re- markable for literary polish, more original in fancy, more erudite in learning, more winning in pathos; but for the grander sublimities of eloquence I never heard his equal. His denunciations were awful; he abound- ed in this style. I have heard of his preaching his first sermon on the text, ' Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed,' of which the effect was startling. He abounded and excelled in illustration. He laid all lit- erature and knowledge under contribution for this pur- pose." Yet with all these characteristics of a Boaner- ges, he was tender and soul-moving. He could as eas- ily bring tears to the eyes as terrors to the conscience. His zeal was tlaming. His love to Christ and to souls and to the kingdom of Christ burned in every sermon and inflamed every prayer. His prayers were as re- markable as his sermons for fulness, variety, point, and overwhelming effects. The hymnology of the Church afforded him more illustration, and was quoted with more power than by any other minister whom we ever heard. His grasp of a great subject, his analytic skill, his surprising fertility of figurative language, and his- torical, scientific, literary, and especially scriptural, illus- trations, his condensed, intense modes of expression, the beauty of his language, and the uplifting power of his eloquence made him, as a preacher, perfectly unique
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and illimitable. He thought in figures, and his figures I were powers. His voice was strong and commanding; his utterance was more rapid than that of any other public speaker, not excepting the celebrated statesman Kufus Clioate; his action was as energetic as his thought, and perfectly exhausting to his weak and overtaxed body. He never went into his pulpit, not even to lecture in a country school-house, without the most careful preparation. His manuscript sermons and lectures are cpiite as marvellous for their neat and mi- nute chirography as for their literary and theological contents. It is wonderful how he could read them in or out of the pulpit. But his physical and mental pe- culiarities seem to have been more acutely sensitive than those of onlinary mortals. He could see further, hear quicker, speak and think more rapidly than almost all others. But these very (pialities brought with them a more excitable and naturally irritable temperament, more impatience with things and people that were not right in his sight, and other infirmities that needed the constant control of divine grace to enable him to live for Christ. Yet he was, in private life, a most enter- taining and interesting companion, mirthful, exuberant, simple as a child, and a fast friend. In the ecclesiasti- cal affairs of his denomination he was a conspicuous and zealous worker, and although, as in his Report on the State of the Church, he seemed to be far in advance of the times, yet, one by one, nearly all of his proposed changes have been adopted and incorporated with the policy and life of the Church. He dealt in principles and facts rather than in theories and fancies. His af- flictions enriched his experience, while they caused "many a confiict, many a doubt." His last days were beclouded by the saddening shadows of disease that fell upon the wreck of his body and mind. But the spirit of his piet\' and ministerial life still shot up its heavenly radiance through the gloom until he entered into rest. On his tombstone are graven these words expressive of his highest aims : " Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, 0 Lord! I have passed my days as a minister of Jesus Christ. That is enough ! That is enough ! I am satisfied. God has led me by a right way. Bless the Lord, O my soul !"