r preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly
relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the
self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown
away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily
believe that the Gospel of Saint John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to
be read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first
meeting with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the
earnestness of the preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest
intellects and most alien ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many
to his opinions, who yet understood not the language in which he
discoursed. The chief thing is that the messenger believe that he has an
authentic message to deliver. For counterfeit messengers that mode of
treatment which Father John de Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed
among the Tartars would seem effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough.
For my own part, I may lay claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom
as would have led me to go into banishment with those clergymen whom
Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal drave out of his kingdom for refusing to
shorten their pulpit eloquence. It is possible, that, I having been
invited into my brother Biglow's desk, I may have been too little
scrupulous in using it for the venting of my own peculiar doctrines to a
congregation drawn together in the expectation and with the desire of
hearing him.

I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization
which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run
backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may
compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high,
who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some
larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has _caught bottom_,
hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various _algae_, among
which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the
disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavored to
adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more
and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the
catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to
two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pygmies.
For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in
print, the endless