His simple rule of homiletics was, have something to say, and then say it.

He stood up in his pulpit and delivered his calm, clear, strong, spiritual utterances with scarcely a trace of emotion, and the hushed assembly listened as if they were listening to one of the oracles of God.

His best sermons were like a great red anthracite coal bed, with no flash, but kindled through and through with the fire of the Holy Spirit Bashful, too, as he was, he denounced popular sins with an intrepidity displayed by but few ministers in our land.

In the temperance reform he was an early pioneer.
For Albert Barnes I felt an intense personal attachment; he was my ideal of a fearless, godly-minded herald of evangelical truth; and he had begun his public ministry in Morristown, N.J., the home of my maternal ancestry, and in the church in which my beloved mother had made her confession of faith.

When our Lafayette Avenue Church was dedicated--just forty years ago--I urged him to deliver the discourse; but he hesitated to preach extemporaneously, and his sight was so impaired that he could not use a manuscript.