story.

- It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a
professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some
three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how
much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not
more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures
or sermons (discourses) on theology every year,--and this, twenty,
thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious
books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except
what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived,
therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for
want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive
and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers,
might become actually better educated in theology than any one of
them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as
doctors of divinity than have received degrees at any of the
universities.

It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often
find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed
upon a sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought
vigorously about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of
times. I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull
discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in
developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what
accompaniments and variations and fioriture I have sometimes
followed the droning of a heavy speaker,--not willingly,--for my
habit is reverential,--but as a necessary result of a slight
continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both