The perennial beauty and freshness of this series of sketches is ageless yet designedly popular in matter and style. Bishop Wilberforce always wrote and spoke with great eloquence, but the union of beauty, strength and sweetness in these biographical discourses gives them a peculiar charm. He invests old and well-known scenes and characters with a new interest by the power of empathy with both their surroundings and their thoughts and feelings. The first sketch is that of Abraham, and the last deals with Elisha. It is ...
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The perennial beauty and freshness of this series of sketches is ageless yet designedly popular in matter and style. Bishop Wilberforce always wrote and spoke with great eloquence, but the union of beauty, strength and sweetness in these biographical discourses gives them a peculiar charm. He invests old and well-known scenes and characters with a new interest by the power of empathy with both their surroundings and their thoughts and feelings. The first sketch is that of Abraham, and the last deals with Elisha. It is specially instructive to notice how careful and extended knowledge of antiquities and acquaintance with the latest views concerning the subjects of his discourse are so intimately woven into the narrative, and the whole lighted up with a glow of genuine eloquence and spiritual fervor, that the reader is instructed while elevated and stimulated by the sustained vigor of the style. --excerpted from * Heroes of Hebrew History. By the late SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D. D. New Edition. London, 1879; Doldy, Isbister & Co.; New York: Scribner and Welford. 7x5. Pp. 368.
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