HKB
Rev. STEPHEN R. SMITH. Of this eloquent and honored minister, his biographer, Dr. T. J. Sawyer, writes:--
"Few men have risen to a higher position in the denomination of Universalists, exerted a wider influence, or wrought out a brighter or more enviable fame. He was born and educated in the humblest circumstances. Being early led by the force of his own convictions to embrace an unpopular faith, he soon found himself impelled by a stern sense of duty to consecrate his life to its promulgation and defence. His health, never the firmest, was soon shattered by incessant application to study and the hardships endured in the early planting of Universalism in Central and Western New York, so that a large part of his life was spent and his work done under this great disadvantage. But the soul that burned within him was superior to bodily infirmity, and flashed and blazed forth from a frame so attenuated and slender that even those most familiar with him were astonished by the vigor and sweep of his transcendent intellect, the youthful play of his fancy, and the strokes of his wit. Nor was his moral character inferior to his intellectual endowments. Seldom does one meet with a warmer heart or a sterner integrity than distinguished him."[44]
His pastorates were in New Hartford, Clinton, Albany, and Buffalo, N. Y., and Philadelphia, Pa. He was born in Albany, in 1788, and died in Buffalo, in 1850, aged sixty-one. It was truly said of him at his death, "But one individual in the denomination can expect higher or more heartfelt tributes of love and reverence." His eloquence in the pulpit was often compared with that of Henry Clay in the halls of Congress. It was the delight of the writer to hear him three times at meetings of the United States Convention, the last in Boston in the School Street Church, from the text, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." The discourse was radiant with the truth, and electrifying with the spirit and power of the Gospel.
A sturdy theologian, as well as a conscientious Christian was that stalwart man from one of the villages of Maine, the Rev. SYLVANUS COBB. The title "D. D.," when conferred upon him, was significant. He was an able theologian. His words in discourse were weighty, his sentences often as ponderous as those of Dr. Johnson, and if called to controversial work, Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith" was an illustration of him:--
"You could hear him swing his heavy sledge With measured beat and slow."
If warmed up in exhortation or appeal, he was grandly fervent. He never evaded the toughest theological problem proposed to him for consideration, but seemed always in readiness to attempt a solution of it. His "Compend of Divinity" is an elaborate work, his "Commentary on the New Testament" an excellent helper in the family and Sunday-school, and his discussions with Dr. Nehemiah Adams and Rev. C. F. Hudson, involving the questions respecting endless punishment and the annihilation of the wicked, are highly creditable to him as a Christian theologian. As editor of the "Christian Freeman" for twenty-five years, and as a temperance and anti-slavery reformer, he waged a good warfare for the right. He was pastor in Waterville, Me., and in Malden, Waltham, and East Boston, Mass.