was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his
text a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical
application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their
pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled
to preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much
wiser than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties
of farmstead and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and
self-constituted representatives of our eternal interests, who
deluge us with a vain, worthless declamation, proving that virtue
is a very good thing, religion a very commendable virtue, and a
liberal contribution to the church-box at the close of the sermon one
of the most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection.
Nay, it is somewhat doubtful, indeed, if he ever once alluded to the
state of his own scrip and the treasury of the church. His faith,
sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left him in very little doubt that
the Lord will provide, for is he not called "Jehovah-Jireh?"--and
his faith was strengthened and confirmed by the experience of his
whole life. But then John Cross had few wants--few, almost none!
In this respect he resembled the first apostles. The necessities
of life once cared for, never was mortal man more thoroughly
independent of the world. He was not one of those fine preachers
who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and solemn
maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious
shaking of the head--are yet always religiously careful to secure
the warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun
on table. He taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as
for consideration--that test at once of the religionist and the
gentleman--he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings
of others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence has
been well taught as the true beginning, equally of politeness and