The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-06 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORMITHIL
Mini DAY.)

TOY 011.111YANOI OF SWORII.

Tho Times reduces the various complaints
which reach it respecting sermons to the general state-
ment that those compositions are now so intolerably
dull. 'ibis fact the clergy must take as it stands,
and must be •cured that no improvement in mere
memories will mend matters. There is nothing more
wonderful than the attraction of public speaking,
even when it is far distant from oratory. A street
preacher, an itinerant lecturer, the rudest Dissenting
=infidel., can be sum at any time of an attentive audience
by virtue of the simple fact that he proposes to speak.
Be has something to my, and people will at least listen
to hear what it is. But when an educated man
man rises to speak to an educated audience in an
Anglican pulpit, this sense of interest seems to disap-
pear, and he is listened to in mere submission. The
fatal def. et, in the opinion of the Tulin, is that the ser-
mons i■ the church are read from a manuscript, • habit
which no other clam of public speakers would venture to
adopt. There im no necessity for a spoken sermon to be
extempore. Orcat orators have generally prepared their
addre a a with the most scrupulous and laborious care. If
busy men can find time to prepare thus accurately •
speech of two or three hours, could not • clergyman find
time, in the six days that intervene between Sunday and
Sunday, to prepare • half-hour's sermon with equal com-
pleteness P If half an hour be too much for the memory
and thought of • beginner, by all means let him be con-
tent to commence with • quarter of an hour.
♦llowing that the pulpit is nut all that it might be, the
Daily News remarks that the complaints do not come
tinselly from great popular congregations nor from quiet
pariah churches, but from fashionable places of worship,
/limes in which the sermon can hardly be earnest, for
'ea:wetness is vulgar. If Paterfamilias does not worship
the proprieties, why does he go to their shrine? If he
longs for intellectual discourse, why does he go to see a
'pageant? If he cannot endure a bad sermon, why does
be not go where he ran hear • good one ? Probably poor
sermons are the rule everywhere, and good sermons the
exception. No doubt the divided condition of modern
society on religious questions is a great drawback to
preaching. In no other sphere does natural genius lie
under such restrictions, for it is driven from the
pulpit by our religious divisions; but no insti-
tution is likely to be abolished in order that • few
men may be saved the unpleasant necessity of refusing to
conform to it. Sermons are no more likely to be abolished
than public worship itself. They may be dull, but ser-
vices without them would soon come to be duller. The
best friends of the Church of England are certiinly not
those who are crying out against sermons. Wales was
lost to her for lack of preaching ; the English multitudes
have been won from her allegiance by the preachers of
methodian and independency ; and if she is to retain her
national position, it will only be by preaching.

THRIZ -001IXENSD 00]

The Telegraph argues that the three-cornered plan is
especially unfavourable to the individual independence of
the electors. The result of the election in the triple con-
stituencies will entirely depend on elaborate calculations,
first-rate management, splendid discipline, and exact
obedience to the word of command. There will be no
free play for individual choice, as want of discipline may
lose the whole battle. Thus everything will tend to fall
into the hands of caucuses and committees. If through
any blundering, any bad luck, or tory trick at Birming-
ham Mr. Bright should lose his seat—and everything is
possille whin each elector must himself solve the conun-
drum or vote blind—we shall have the reductio ad absurdum
of the minority clause. The three-cornered cocked
hat constituencies would then certainly be "smashed
fiat."