The National Register.
London, England, 1814-06-26 00:00:00

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Formality in pray'r
And the dull service cf the hp, were there! COWPER.

.7. R. PITMAN, 8.. A.
MORNING PREACIII.It AT B::!KKELEY AND FITZROY CHAPELS.

•
When the late celebrated Mr. Windham was at Bois-le.
Due, in the year 179-4, a Dutch clergyman, mistaking our
use of the word minister, put various questions to him re-
specting the state of religion in England; and, being par-
ticularly anxious to ascertain how the English Preachers
,• manufactured their sermons," was much disappointed on
discovering that Mr. Windham could give him no specific
information on this point. Curiosity of this description was
mot illaudabie in this clergyman. hlad our own countryman
been in reality a minister of the church, however, and not
of the state, he would still have experienced some difficulty
in conveying to his clerical interrogator an adequate concep-
tion of the different ways in which bermons were manufac-
tured among the divines of his own age and country. There
is, perhaps, as great diversity of operation with regard to
preaching as to poetry, in which, agreeably to Cowller, the
gradation runs—

Film- him who rears a. poem lank awl long,

'Vu hin► who straini his all into a song.

In their construction, sermons, as well a; poems, admit of
la!itude and variety, and exhibit very disisimilar j as
they are either the productions. of grave and le:lilted clerks,'
i)r (Ise the compositions of those mote " cletics,
who. will 'a round of ladyships,' and exposed to
nther 66 incidental annoyances," are thus compelled !(-) con-
sume the hours that should be engrosed !iy their studies, if
Jiot devoted to their charge, in !.ur,nits more befitting
their elevated stations in the world of fashion. _

" It has long and justly been complained," observes
preacher, " that ierrins are less read than tales," 1-:espect-
ing the justice of this ectnolaint, men tt,av be left to decide
each as he think, fit but it really m.,uld appear, amongst
many other improvements, that tales are about to be pro-
posed, if not as the basis of them, at least as allowable
appendages to certain kinds of sermons. Ours are, indeed,
mew times. Every day, nay hour, has given birth to some-
thing out of the ordinary course; and years will in all proba-
bility elapse before we shall fairly .return to that sob, icy of
thinking, and that sedateness of acting, which formerly dis-
tinguished us above all nations. It may have been owing to
thi; late rage for novelty, perhaps, that we are at length
Livoured with new vehicles for theological instruction, en-
titlgd Samortets," pt ofessedlv calculated for and "addressed
to Those who Thee Nut 2/et acquired, or IVA° may Mee Lost,
theinelination to appt'y the power cf ,zittntion to Compositions
of a Higher Kind."

Addressed, in the first instance, to those who have not
yet acquired the capacity to profit by the perusal of sterling
divinity,—fottned, •secondly, for the purpose of alluring
those who pay have lost the inclination to apply the power
of attention to compositions worthy of the pulpit;—being de-
signed, in short, for " those who arc not in the habit of
ieading a grownup sernion,"—no religious man, with ,phis
avowal as jr the oljeet of the " Sermonets," by the Authors
of them, will he altogether surprised to fin& what otherwise
might wc!l have astonished him, that they arc uniformly en-
livened anecdotes,- which are appended to each sermonet.
Slice tales, it appears, are IllorC read than sermons, there is