a raw recruit fires his musket, shutting his eyes, and incontinently
take to flight, without waiting to see the effect of his shot. If he had
spent half the time and pains on his sermons that he did on his
small-talk (I believe he used to write out three or four foul copies of
each sentence previously at home), what a boon it would have been to his
unlucky audience on Sundays!

Why is it that the great proportion of our pastors seem to conspire
together with one consent to make the periodical duty of listening to
them as hard as possible? Can they imagine there is profit or pleasure
in a discourse wandering wearily round in a circle, or dragging a slow
length along of truisms and trivialities? In the best of congregations
there can be but few alchemists; and, without that science, who is to
extract the essence of Truth from the _moles incongesta_ of crass
moralities?

To persuade or dissuade you must interest the head or the heart. I
admire those who can do either successfully, but I do protest against
those clerical tyrants who shelter themselves behind their license to
fire at us their ruthless platitudes. If such could only struggle
against that strong temptation of our fallen nature--the delight of
hearing one's own sweet voice--so as to concentrate now and then! The
best orators, spiritual and mundane, have been brief sometimes.

I am no theologian, but I take leave to doubt if, in the elaborate
divinity of fourteen epistles, the apostle of the Gentiles ever went so
straight to his hearer's heart as in that farewell charge, when the
elders of Ephesus gathered round him on the sea-sand, "Sorrowing most of
all for the words that he spake, that they should see his face no more."