“Mighty in the Scriptures” [1]
By
John A. Broadus
A remembrance of Rev. C. L. Corbitt when John Albert Broadus spoke his last time to one of his classes.
Young gentlemen, if this were the last time I should ever be permitted to address you, I would feel amply repaid for consuming the whole hour endeavoring to impress upon you these two things, true piety and like Apollos, to be men “Mighty in the Scriptures.” Then pausing, he stood for a moment with his piercing eye fixed upon us, and repeated over and over again in the slow but wonderfully impressive style peculiar to himself, “Mighty in the Scriptures,” “Mighty in the Scriptures,” until the whole class seemed to be lifted through him into sacred nearness to the Master. That picture of him as he stood there at that moment can never be obliterated from my mind.
[1] John Albert Broadus’s last lecture to his students as remembered by C. L. Corbitt and published in “Seminary Magazine,” April 1895; in A. T. Robertson, Life and Letters of John A. Broadus (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1901); reprint, Harrisonburg, Virginia: Gano Books-Sprinkle Publications, 2003), 430 (page numbers are to the reprint edition).