Upon us H depends whether we will eocour
, age and support as proachers, men of learning
and real ability, or not. If we cannot have
preachers who are really capable of instructing
us, and who can do nothing but rant and roar,
who set at naught the plainest principles of
logic, who violate all rules of grammar, and
who only know how to make a jingle of words
witbout meaning, and sentences without sense,
why we had better have no preachers at all.—
Such preachers bring religion into contempt
and drag down the standard of morals. “Do
men gather grapes from thorns! or figs from
thistles?" Put ar, idiot in the pulpit, end ho
will soon hare only fools for hie audience
Wu want preachers of learning and profound
study—famiHar with history and the sciences
We should no more encourage a quack in di
vinity than a quack in medicine There is a
false taste prevailing amongst us, created in
part by the empiricism of the pulpit—a false
judgment of what really constitutes good
preaching. There is a foolish prejudice a
gainst written sermons. Now ihe proper
place for profound 'hough’, for close analysis,
for arrangement of thought and for clothing
i.leas in ibe most vivid language, in the closet
The best orations of the most eminent orators
in all ages have been written. Sermons may
he committed to memory—that is well enough;
but al any rate they should first be written,
and that carefully. That person knows but
ijtt'e of the powers of the hitman mind or of
menial babiis, who expect* a preacher to arise
in the pulpit, elaborate profound thought, rea
son cogently, arrange logically, illustrate for
cibly, and select the best forms of expression ,
and attend to all the graces of gesture and elo
cution, extempore. It never was and never
will be done. Those who pretend to do it,
know better. A preacher may got a few *er
tnones rote which ho may so deliver as to
make iheni »eeu« extempore. They are, in
fact, no more rxiompore, than the performance
of a juggler who tosses five ivory balls at once,
because hu has practised t tatting them half his
life. Give him/one bullets to toss—change
the feat in ths slighest pa'licular, and he ut- '
tcrly fails.
