Withal it was widely characterized not only by a lack of education in its ministry, but by a violent and brutal opposition to a learned clergy, which was particularly strange in a party the moiety of whose principles depends on a point in Greek lexicology.

It was to a party--we may not say a body--deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine call was to be presented and urged.

The messenger was well fitted for his work.

To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and a personal persuasiveness.

Of course his first address was to pastors and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; and here his task was easy and brief, for they were already of his mind.