A PULPIT WONDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A PULPIT WONDER.

ONLY ELEVEN YEARS OLD, BUT A PHENOMENAL PREACHER. A WttLiAMSTOWN (Kentucky) paper has the following :—Great and unflagging interest has beenmanifestednightly for the pastweek in the eloquent and wonderful preaching of the boy preacher, Rev. Pascal Porter, who lives near Madison, Ind., and is only eleven years old. Ministers in the prime of their ministry, ministers grown grey in the service of their Master, hung with rapture upon the words that fell with burning eloquence from his youthful lips. Never in the history of this place have such crowds assembled to hear the preaching of one person. People of every creed and denomination and without a creed, and men who had not entered a church for fifteen years, attended nightly and were thrilled with interest and filled with wonder. He is a handsome boy with a bright brown eye and a well-shaped head. Out of the pulpit there is nothing in his manner or speech to indicate his wonderful gift, but in the pulpit he is a veritable giant. He possesses a most wonderful memory and great gift of language, and his sermons were logical, doctrinal, and deep, and on each night he spoke on an entirely different subject. While all here proclaim that his preaching is wonderful and interesting, the community are about equally divided as to whether his sermons are original or whether he has committed to memory the sermons of another ; but all admit, whether they are original or not, that the boy preacher is a wonder and a prodigy. He is never at a loss for the right word in the right place, and so thoroughly does he seem to understand and appreciate his subject that if he were not a boy the originality of his discourses would never be questioned. The interest in them is not by any means confined to the fact that they are delivered by a boy. If they were delivered by a minister of mature years and with the same degree of eloquence all would be no less deeply interested.

Hβ was born near Madison, Ind., Nov. 6, 1876, and is the youngest of a family of seven children—three boys and four girls. As soon as ho was old enough to talk he manifested a desire to preach the gospel and make the world better, but was not permitted to enter the ministry until he was nine years of age. Hie education is limited, only having advanced as far as the fourth grade in the public schools.