the congregation was; but under the circumstances the duty of this
obvious sort of ministerial _considerateness_ was laid on my heart with
special weight. That duty bears in many directions. It is, I venture to
say, inconsiderate, on the one hand, when the Clergyman conducts the
services of the Church with a disturbing artificiality of performance.
It is inconsiderate, on the other hand, when he conducts them with any,
even the least, real slovenliness and inattention.

TEMPTATIONS TO FORGET IT.

But if all this is true of the desk and of the blessed Table, it is true
also, and in a high degree, of the pulpit. Singularly independent, up to
a certain point, is the position of the preacher. He chooses his own
text; he assigns himself (at least in theory) his own length of
discourse; he is entitled, under the aegis of the law of the land, to
speak on to the end without interruption; he is bound, within the limits
of a sanctified common-sense, to speak with the authority of his
commission. Here are powerful temptations to an inconsiderate man,
perhaps especially to an inconsiderate young man, to show much
inconsideration. And therefore, here is a pre-eminent occasion for the
true Pastor, who thinks, prays, loves, and is humble, to practise the
beautiful opposite. Shall you and I seek grace to do so?

RESPECT ELDER HEARERS.

Put yourself often, my dear Brother, while I do the same, into the
position--which we once occupied always, and often do still--of the
hearer. You, the Curate, or the young Incumbent, have recently come into
the parish, and you are full of a young man's energy and enterprize, and
a little infected perhaps with a common and natural belief of your time
of life, but a belief not quite true to facts, that the world is made
for young men. And among your hearers, week by week, as you preach from
that pulpit, sit men and women who were working, and thinking, and
perhaps believing, literally long before you were born. Put yourself in
their place. Into many of their experiences, and their sympathies born
of experience, you cannot possibly enter personally. You cannot _feel
personally_ how this or that innovation of language or manner, this or
that too crude statement of your message, this or that baldly new and
perhaps by no means true theory, aired as if it were all obvious and of
course, must look and sound to them. You cannot _feel_ it all; but you
can think about it. Perhaps these are educated and refined