Again the roar went through. He waited and repeated it, if
possible, more intensely, and he beat them down with that one sentence
until they were still, and let him go on.
POWER TO DISCERN THE RIGHT.
The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest and all
the seductions of ambition was singularly his. To choose the lowly for
their sake, to abandon all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition,
all greatness--that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit
of the nation and of the age. I had almost said he set himself against
nature, as if he had been a decree of God over-riding all these other
insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not
called to be a universal orator any more than he was a universal
thinker. In literature and in history widely read, in person
magnificent, in manners most accomplished, gentle as a babe, sweet as a
new-blown rose, in voice clear and silvery, yet he was not a man of
tempests, he was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments, he was not
an organ, mighty and complex. The nation slept, and God wanted a
trumpet, sharp, wide-sounding, narrow and intense; and that was Mr.
Phillips. The long-roll is not particularly agreeable in music, or in
times of war, but it is better than flutes or harps when men are in a
great battle, or are on the point of it. His eloquence was penetrating
and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty Gulf Stream; he did not dash
upon this continent as the ocean does; he was not a mighty rushing
river.
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