Born: Kentucky.
Died: Tennessee, 1863.
This man was a striking personality. He was six feet and two inches in height and of fine form, weighing two hundred pounds. His head was large, his face strong and clean-shaven, and his dark hair he wore long for a male and decidedly pompadour. He came to Springfield in 1841 and for a time was pastor of the church there. He was elected as the first president of Eureka College, but his service was only nominal.
His chief work was that of an evangelist. In this sphere he was probably the most noted among the Disciples during his period of service in Illinois. He was regarded as a powerful preacher. His sermons united argument with impassioned appeal. In dealing with what he considered denominational doctrinal errors he was often as inexorable as logic could be, even to rasping. On one such occasion, a woman auditor, not in sympathy with all his teaching, personally expressed the wish that she "might have his scalp for a scrub-brush."
At one of the earlier State Meetings held in Springfield, the mountain-top was reached on the Lord's Day. It was the custom then, at the close of the communion, to shake hands throughout the assembly. Some of the elder brethren would embrace each other and weep tears of joy. On this occasion, Mr. Brown and the gentle Barton W. Stone were quite carried from the usual self-poise by the ecstacy [sic - ecstasy] of joy. Then Mr. Stone cried out, "Brother Brown, you speak too harshly of people's errors. Dear brother, when you find a stone across the path of truth, just carefully roll it away, but don't try to spat the man who laid it there."
It is said that a sermon that he delivered at Mt. Pulaski, following the Kane-Bunn debate on Universalism, was such a terrific indictment of other Protestant preachers and so filled with ginger and salt, that several days passed before those in the great audience regained sufficient composure to talk about the discourse.
To his aggressiveness he added a brilliant imagination. His pictures of heavenly things were sublime. Great crowds attended his meetings and many were turned to the Lord. After all, a sweet tenderness was in his soul. Conducting a meeting in Bloomington in a cold winter, he was entertained in the inviting home of Dr. R. O. Warriner. After the evening meetings, going home the doctor led his little daughter Belle by the hand. The child, tired and very sleepy, as all normal children should be in such circumstances, cried. Then Mr. Brown would sing to her:
"Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes.
She keeps boohooing wherever she goes."
The churches at Springfield, Bloomington, Pittsfield, and at many other places in the State, are yet much indebted to this great preacher. He became chaplain in the Thirty-eighth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and, contracting a cold at the battle of Chickamauga, died ten days later.