Ebook Memoir of Alfred Bennett

This volume, prepared in the midst of feeble health and the pressure of pastoral duties, is now with diffidence submitted to the Christian public. The subject of it held no classic pen. He belonged to a generation of men whose chief power was in oral, not written communication. In speech he was richly gifted; but the vivacity, force, and ardor which characterized his discourse, he was never able to transfer to the written page. As his biography must necessarily be made up, to no inconsiderable extent, from his correspondence, the reader will, it is feared, be painfully conscious that the portraiture here given lacks the glow and richness of the living original.

The materials were not abundant. Most of his letters have been lost. The account of his conversion and exercises respecting the ministry was given by him only at the urgent request of the church in Homer.