o'clock. The address having lasted until full that time, and it
being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in
a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that
those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now,
without giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung,
in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking.
A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in
seven or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a
light cloud of dust.

That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not
doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in
the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very
careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in
which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly,
not to set themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of
the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and to be amused.

There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my
remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New
Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history
conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer
and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday
preachers--else why are they there, consider? As to the history,
tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many
people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it
hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to
them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of
continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting
forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You