Some luminous discourses.
Those who have listened to
Dr. Hoge during the past thirty years often refer to certain of his luminous discourses when he seemed full of divine afflatus, and certain of his pathetic appeals, when saddest music sounded in the tones of his voice; a discourse, for example, such as he delivered with startling power, many years ago, from the text, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you;’ or a discourse of a different kind, delivered on a dreary, soulless day, from the text, ‘We have piped unto you and ye have not danced, we have mourned unto you and ye have not lamented,’ the former strikingly brilliant and animated, the latter a classic—a prose poem attuned to a minor key. The solemn warnings to the unconverted, the prophetic words of wisdom to the church, and the gracious words of sympathy and consolation that have fallen from his lips, can never, never be forgot.
Notable, too, have been those mournful addresses, like sobbing threnodies, delivered with almost measured cadence, on the occasion of state funerals.
The last address of this character was made over the bier of
United States Senator Vance, in the
Senate chamber.
President Cleveland and his Cabinet attended the obsequies, and
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some time afterwards the
President spoke of
Dr. Hoge's perfect taste and profoundly impressive style as a funeral orator.
Among his more lofty and elaborate orations, the one which will probably live longest on the printed page and in the memory of those who heard it, was that on ‘
Stonewall’
Jackson, delivered to a throng at the unveiling of the bronze monument in Capitol Square in 1875.
It was a sublime effort.
The earliest literary production in print is probably a lecture delivered by him at the University of Virginia, Session of 1850-1, on the Evidences of Christianity, and published, with others, with portraits of the lecturers, in a Royal 8vo.
volume, New York, 1853.
Dr. Hoge was an Ll. D., as well as a D. D., but he never attached the Ll. D. to name, He was the only man in this part of the world, perhaps, on whom the degree of D. D. had been twice conferred.
He received the degree of D. D. from Hampden-Sidney College many years ago, and from Princeton University in 1895.
