The knowledge-fanciers are dealt with at more respectful length, and with the most admirable critical acumen :— "The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, Is not this the very picture of five-sixths of the laborious affectations which are called historical biographies, or (since poor Sir Walter died) historical novels and romances. Who can wonder that the perpetrators of such things soon fall into public neglect or contempt, and have to sustain the bitterness of disappointment? Now for a touch at geologists and astrono mers: "Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Some more acute, and more industrious still, To the sharp peak of her sublimest height, And tell us whence the stars; why some are fix'd, And planetary some; what gave them first Rotation, from what fountain flow'd their light. And the end of this-unlike the trifling of " the million" before described, from which a sort of moth-like happiness is derived-the end of this laborious trifling we generally find to be arrogance and discontent. These labourers commonly acquire a great many facts, and very little philosophy. But hear the comment, where wisdom is expressed in sweetest numbers :— "Ah! what is life thus spent? and what are they A senseless bargain. When I see such games So hollow and so false-I feel my heart The exercise of plain common sense (which folks that affect "science" are so apt to despise) would in thousands of instances defend mankind from the preposterous delusions into which they are led by ill-understood knowledge and spurious theories. ERRONEOUS PREACHING. THERE is a great evil under the sun, which I wish to talk about, in the hope of making some sort of commencement towards its mitigation. Perhaps even this feeble remonstrance may be the beginning of such efforts for reformation as will hereafter prove of great benefit. The matter I allude to is a certain sort of preaching which I sincerely believe to be mischievous, and therefore, with all humility, will venture to speak my mind concerning it. Most of my listeners probably know that in the numerous parochial and district-parochial churches of this great metropolis, the sermon in the morning is preached by the rector or minister; in short, the principal ecclesiastic belonging to the church; while in the afternoon the sermon is generally preached by an assistant, either permanent or occasional. Whether this be just as it should be, it is not intended now to discuss; but it is necessary to mention the fact. Now, it frequently happens that there is a marked distinction in the character and tone of the preaching between the morning and evening, and it almost universally happens that the character and quality of the congregation are very different. In the morning the congregation consists of the gentry of the neighbourhood in the pews, while a few servants and a great many old and poor people occupy the open sittings. This will not be in all cases a true description, but generally it is so. In the afternoon there are comparatively very few of the gentry, but in their place a very great number of servants, who, somehow or another, get out much more abundantly after their early dinner than before it. So much for the difference as to the congregations; now for the sermons preached to them. In the morning they are generally well-prepared discourses, of which the doctrine harmonises tolerably well with the doctrine of the thirty-nine articles taken as a whole, and, for the most part, they combine doctrinal exposition with practical exhortation. In the afternoon, when, from the changed character of the congregation, it would seem but reasonable that the conduct of life and the practice of religious and moral duty should be at least as much dwelt upon as in the morning, one finds but too often that it is not so. Whether it be that the assistants are younger men, and more full of controversial heat; or that they are no more than assistants, because they have been found wanting in sober moderation and practical good sense; or that they are more anxious to impress the few serious families of the gentry that attend in the afternoon, than the great body of the congregation, consisting of servants and unlettered people, certain it is, that too often, the sermon is throughout in a high-flown doctrinal strain, as though, of all the thirty-nine articles of religion, none were worthy of being enforced but the XIth and the XVIIth. And even these, are not expounded and maintained in a sober strain, and with reasonable precision, but in a ranting, ejaculatory manner, with heaps of quotation from the most mystical parts of scripture. This is the sort of sermons, also, which, at any time of the day, one is apt to hear in four out of five of the "proprietary" episcopal chapels which abound in London, and which bring the "voluntary system," so far as Sunday teaching goes, in aid of the parochial establishments. Whether the Dissenting chapels chiefly promulgate rhetoric of the same peculiar doctrinal stamp, I have no experience to inform me; but I suspect it is so, because such preaching is the easiest and the most popular. But what I desire very deferentially to advert to, is the probably mischievous effect of these discourses upon the crowd of domestic servants and other unlettered people to whom they are so often addressed. They are told commonly in such sermons that the great body of " professing Christians" must be divided into two |