He visited San Francisco during my pastorate in 1858. On Sunday morning
he preached a sermon of such extraordinary beauty and power that at the
night-service the house was crowded by a curious congregation, drawn
thither by the report of the forenoon effort. His subject was the faith
of the mother of Moses, and he handled it in his own way. The powerful
effect of one passage I shall never forget. It was a description of the
mother's struggle, and the victory of her faith in the crisis of her
trial. No longer able to protect her child, she resolves to commit him
to her God. He drew a picture of her as she sat weaving together the
grasses of the little ark of bulrushes, her hot tears falling upon her
work, and pausing from time to time with her hand pressed upon her
throbbing heart. At length, the little vessel is finished, and she goes
by night to the bank of the Nile, to take the last chance to save her
boy from the knife of the murderers. Approaching the river's edge, with
the ark in her hands, she stoops a moment, but her mother's heart fails
her. How can she give up her child? In frenzy of grief she sinks upon
her knees, and lifting her gaze to the heavens, passionately prays to
the God of Israel. That prayer! It was the wail of a breaking heart, a
cry out of the depths of a mighty agony. But as she prays the
inspiration of God enters her soul, her eyes kindle, and her face beams
with the holy light of faith. She rises, lifts the little ark, looks
upon the sleeping face of the fair boy, prints a long, long kiss upon
his brow, and then with a firm step she bends down, and placing the tiny
vessel upon the waters, lets it go. "And away it went," he, said,
"rocking upon the waves as it swept beyond the gaze of the mother's
straining eyes. The monsters of the deep were there, the serpent of the
Nile was there, behemoth was there, but the child slept as sweetly and
as safely upon the rocking waters as if it were nestled upon its
mother's breast--for God was there!" The effect was electric. The