multitude of sermons to be preached. We are all too fond of our own
voices, and a preacher is encouraged in the vanity of making his
heard by the privilege of a compelled audience. His sermon is the
pleasant morsel of his life, his delicious moment of self-exaltation.
"I have preached nine sermons this week," said a young friend to me
the other day, with hand languidly raised to his brow, the picture of
an overburdened martyr. "Nine this week, seven last week, four the
week before. I have preached twenty-three sermons this month. It is
really too much."

"Too much, indeed," said I, shuddering; "too much for the strength of
any one."

"Yes," he answered meekly, "indeed it is; I am beginning to feel it
painfully."

"Would," said I, "you could feel it--would that you could be made to
feel it." But he never guessed that my heart was wrung for the poor
listeners.

There was, at any rate, no tedium felt in listening to Mr. Slope on
the occasion in question. His subject came too home to his audience
to be dull, and, to tell the truth, Mr. Slope had the gift of using
words forcibly. He was heard through his thirty minutes of eloquence
with mute attention and open ears, but with angry eyes, which glared
round from one enraged parson to another, with wide-spread nostrils
from which already burst forth fumes of indignation, and with
many shufflings of the feet and uneasy motions of the body, which
betokened minds disturbed, and hearts not at peace with all the world.