ll come up once a
year to count the sheaves of harvest, and in some great building thronged
from the platform to the vestibule an aroused Christian audience will
applaud the news, just received by telegraph, of a nation born in a day,
and sing with more power than when Thomas Hastings used to act as
precentor:

"The year of jubilee has come;
Return, ye ransom'd sinners, home."

Quizzle.--You speak, governor, of the ruinous effect of prolixity in
religious service. How long ought a public service continue?

Wiseman.--There is much discussion in the papers as to how long or short
sermons and prayers ought to be. Some say a discourse ought to last thirty
minutes, and others forty, and others an hour, and prayers should be three
minutes long, or five, or fifteen. You might as well discuss how long a
frock-coat ought to be, or how many ounces of food a man ought to eat. In
the one case, everything depends upon the man's size; in the other,
everything on the capacity of his stomach. A sermon or a prayer ought to go
on as long as it is of any profit. If it is doing no good, the sermon is
half an hour too long, though it take only thirty minutes. If the audience
cough, or fidget, or shuffle their feet, you had better stop praying. There
is no excuse, for a man's talking or praying too long if he have good
eyesight and hearing.

But suppose a man have his sermon written and before him. You say he must
go through with it? Oh no. Let him skip a few leaves. Better sacrifice
three or four sheets of sermon-paper than sacrifice the interest of your
hearers. But it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or pulpit to
stop merely because a certain number of minutes have expired while the
interest is deepening--absurd as a hunter on the track of a roebuck, and
within two minutes of bringing down its antlers, stopping because his wife
said that at six o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. Keep on
hunting till your ammunition gives out.

Still, we must all admit that the danger is on the side of prolixity. The
most interesting prayers we ever hear are by new converts, who say
everything they have to say and break down in one minute. There are men
who, from the way they begin their supplications, indicate a long siege.
They first pray you into a good frame, and then pray you out. They take
literally what Paul meant to be figurative: "Pray without ceasing."

Quizzle.--I see there was no lack of interest when the brewe