The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss | Page 6

devotion would beam from his eye, and you saw at once that not
only could he deliver a sermon from it, but that the ordinary time
allotted to a sermon would be exhausted before he could pour out the
fullness of meaning which a sentence from the word of God presented
to his mind." [5]
He was wonderfully gifted in prayer. Here all his intellectual,
imaginative, and spiritual powers were fused into one and poured
themselves forth in an unbroken stream of penitential and adoring

affection. When he said, "Let us pray," a divine influence seemed to
rest upon all present. His prayers were not mere pious mental exercises,
they were devout inspirations.
No one can form an adequate conception of what Dr. Payson was from
any of the productions of his pen. Admirable as his written sermons are,
his extempore prayers and the gushings of his heart in familiar talk
were altogether higher and more touching than anything he wrote. It
was my custom to close my eyes when he began to pray, and it was
always a letting down, a sort of rude fall, to open them again, when he
had concluded, and find myself still on the earth. His prayers always
took my spirit into the immediate presence of Christ, amid the glories
of the spiritual world; and to look round again on this familiar and
comparatively misty earth was almost painful. At every prayer I heard
him offer, during the seven years in which he was my spiritual guide, I
never ceased to feel new astonishment, at the wonderful variety and
depth and richness and even novelty of feeling and expression which
were poured forth. This was a feeling with which every hearer
sympathised, and it is a fact well-known, that Christians trained under
his influence were generally remarkable for their devotional habits. [6]
Dr. Payson possessed rare conversational powers and loved to wield
them in the service of his Master. When in a genial mood--and the mild
excitement of social intercourse generally put him in such a mood--his
familiar talk was equally delightful and instructive. He was, in truth, an
improvisatore. Quick perception, an almost intuitive insight into
character, an inexhaustible fund of fresh, original thought and incident,
the happiest illustrations, and a memory that never faltered in recalling
what he had once read or seen, easy self-control, and ardent sympathies,
all conspired to give him this preeminence. Without effort or any
appearance of incongruity he could in turn be grave and gay, playful
and serious. This came of the utter sincerity and genuineness of his
character. There was nothing artificial about him; nature and grace had
full play and, so to say, constantly ran into each other. A keen observer,
who knew him well, both in private and in public, testifies: "His
facetiousness indeed was ever a near neighbor to his piety, if it was not
a part of it; and his most cheerful conversations, so far from putting his
mind out of tune for acts of religious worship, seemed but a happy
preparation for the exercise of devotional feelings." [7] This

coexistence of serious with playful elements is often found in natures
of unusual depth and richness, just as tragic and comic powers
sometimes co-exist in a great poet.
The same qualities that rendered him such a master of conversation,
lent a potent charm to his familiar religious talks in the prayer-meeting,
at the fireside, or in the social circle. Always eager to speak for his
Master, he knew how to do it with a wise skill and a tenderness of
feeling that disarmed prejudice and sometimes won the most
determined foe. Even in administering reproof or rebuke there was the
happiest union of tact and gentleness. "What makes you blush so?" said
a reckless fellow in the stage, to a plain country girl, who was receiving
the mail-bag at a post office from the hand of the driver. "What makes
you blush so, my dear?" "Perhaps," said Dr. Payson, who sat near him
and was unobserved till now, "Perhaps it is because some one spoke
rudely to her when the stage was along here the last time."
Edward Payson was graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1803.
In the autumn of that year he took charge of an academy then recently
established in Portland. Resigning this position in 1806, he returned
home and devoted himself to the study of divinity under his father's
care. He was licensed to preach in May, 1807, and a few months later
received a unanimous call to Portland, where he was ordained in
December of the same year. On the 8th of May, 1811, he was married
to Ann Louisa Shipman, of New Haven, Conn. An extract from a
manly letter to Miss Shipman, written a few