This was the title given to President Davis in his own day. It was surely deserved, if it be true, as has been said, that he never preached a sermon which was not instrumental in, at least, one conversion, while some of his sermons were the means of bringing many to Christ. The secret of his success may be learned from his own words, in a letter to a friend: "It is an easy thing to make a noise in the world, to flourish and harangue, and dazzle the crowd; but deeply to imbibe the spirit of Christianity, to maintain a secret walk with God, this is the labor, this is the work. The difficulty of the ministerial work seems to grow on my hands. Perhaps once in three or four months I preach in some measure as I could wish; that is, as in the sight of God—as if I were to step from the pulpit to the supreme tribunal—I feel my subject. I melt into tears, or I shudder with horror, when I denounce64the terrors of the Lord. I glow—I soar in sacred ecstacies—when the love of Jesus is my theme, and, as Mr. Baxter says: ‘I preach as if I ne'er should preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men.’"