Show ELOQUENTTRIBUTE TO LINCOLN Bishop Fowlers Masterly Lecture on the Great President Charmed Large Audience for Two and allah Hours h Z C v3 ffW i I I I I 4 q S t f 1twJhNA I I Perhaps no more magnificent tribute was ever paid to the memory of Abraham Abra-ham Lincoln than that which last evening ing fell from the lips of Bishop Charles H Fowler The address was given In the First Methodist church before an audlcnc6 which packed It to the doors and for two and a half hours the listeners were held almost spellbound by the eloquence elo-quence of the speaker Pathos humor I and patriotism were so Inlcrmfnglel l that the audience was now In teals now In convulsions and now ready to rIse I en masse and applaud to the echo some sentiment which appealed to their love of country and their countrys heroes As a wordpainter it is doubtful if Bishop Fowler has many peers among the lecturers of America today So vividly did he paint his ideas that they passed before the minds vision like a grand panoramic picture and were Indelibly In-delibly impressed upon the memories of the hearers To give a review of the lecture would be Impossible There are no words to leave out no sentences to abridge As well abridge a rare vase or a cutglass service by breaking It The speaker gave a clear analysis of the man as he walked this earth from the squalid beginning up through his wonderful career to the time when his last breath was drawn and thenceforth he belonged to the ages He pictured him as the great lawyer the greatest of orators as one of the highest moral sense as one possessing the most perfect per-fect reasoning powers and the clearest common sense of his age He gave Illustrations to show when Lincoln could be all tenderness and again all steel described him as one never for a moment forgetting he was President pictured graphically how he bent the strong men arourfd him to his will as one whose Integrity was unassailable whose magnanimity was allembracing Bishop Fowler held too that by all the testa known to him Lincoln was the greatest and most sincere Christian ho had ever known In public life not a member of the visible church but of the church not built by human hands The picture the speaker drew of the difficulties that confronted Mr Lincoln when without army or navy or money ho began his work against millions of t1 Southerners all equipped and ready and with the friendship of all the great nations except Prussia and Russia of tho immense army that was summoned and the fearful battles fought until the Confederacy was but dust ground to pieces > under the awful friction of the war cannot be exceeded In short the lecture was an Intellectual Intel-lectual and oratorical treat and those in this region who did not hear It are to be commiserated Preceding the lecture Miss Mabel Clark rendered a pleasing solo after which the distinguished orator or the evening was presented l by Rev Joel A Smith 1 |