Those who saw and heard him the last ten or fifteen years of his
decadence can have no idea of his former power as a preacher of the
Gospel.

There he is, as I first saw him! Eye like a hawk's. Hair long and
straight as a Chippewa Indian's. He was not straight as an arrow, for
that suggests something too fragile and short, but more like a
column--not only straight, but tall and majestic, and capable of holding
any weight, and without fatigue or exertion. When he put his foot down,
either literally of figuratively, it was down. Vacillation, or fear, or
incertitude, or indecision, were strangers to whom he would never be
introduced. When he entered a room you were, to use a New Testament
phrase, "exceedingly filled with his company."

He was as affectionate as a woman to those whom he liked, and cold as
Greenland to those whose principles were an affront. He was not only a
mighty speaker, but a mighty listener. I do not know how any man could
speak upon any important theme, standing in his presence, without being
set on fire by his alert sympathy.

But he has vanished from mortal sight. What the resurrection will do for
him I cannot say. If those who have only ordinary stature and
unimpressive physique in this world are at the last to have bodies
resplendent and of supernal potency, what will the unusual corporiety of
William P. Corbit become? In his case the resurrection will have unusual
material to start with. If a sculptor can mould a handsome form out of
clay, what can he not put out of Parian marble? If the blast of the
trumpet which wakes the dead rouses life-long invalidism and emaciation
into athletic celestialism, what will be the transfiguration when the
sound of final reanimation touches the ear of those sleeping giants