I have heard of
at least a half dozen "greatest" sermons by Bascom and Pierce, and other
noted pulpit orators. But I heard one sermon by Kavanaugh that was
probably indeed his master-effort. It had a history. When the Bishop
started to Oregon, in 1863, I placed in his hands Bascom's Lectures,
which, strange to say, he had never read. Of these Lectures the elder
Dr. Bond said "they would be the colossal pillars of Bascom's fame when
his printed sermons were forgotten." Those Lectures wonderfully
anticipated the changing phases of the materialistic infidelity
developed since his day, and applied to them the reductio ad absurdum
with relentless and resistless power. On his return from Oregon,
Kavanaugh met and presided over the Annual Conference at San Jose. One
of his old friends, who was troubled with skeptical thoughts of the
materialistic sort, requested him to preach a sermon for his special
benefit. This request, and the previous reading of the Lectures,
directed his mind to the topic suggested with intense earnestness. The
result was, as I shall always think, the sermon of a lifetime. The text
was, There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth them understanding.
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