I cannot say that it is to be desired that
he should. But if a man is shrewd and even humorous first, he can lift
his audience into purer and higher regions afterwards; and he will then
be listened to, because his hearers will feel that the qualities they
most admire--strength, keenness, good humour--need not be left behind
at the threshold of the Christian life, but may be used and practised
in the higher regions.

Then, too, I think that there is a sad want of variety. How rarely does
one hear a biographical sermon; and yet biography is one of the things
to which almost all boys will listen spellbound. I wish that a preacher
would sometimes just tell the story of some gallant Christian life,
showing the boys that they too may live such lives if they have the
will. Preachers dwell far too much on the side of self-sacrifice and
self-abnegation. Those, it seems to me, are much more mature ideals. I
wish that they would dwell more upon the enjoyment, the interest, the
amusement of being good in a vigorous way.

What has roused these thoughts in me are two sermons I have lately
heard here. On Sunday week a great preacher came here, and spoke with
extraordinary force and sense upon the benefits to be derived from
making the most of chapel services. I never heard the thing better
done. He gave the simplest motives for doing it. He said that we all
believed in goodness in our hearts, and that a service, if we came to
it in the right way, was a means of hammering goodness in. That it was
a good thing that chapel services were compulsory, because if they were
optional, a great many boys would stay away out of pure laziness, and
lose much good thereby. And as they were compulsory, we had better make
the most we could of them. He went on to speak of attention, of
posture, and so forth. There are a certain number of big boys here, who
have an offensive habit of putting their heads down upon their arms on
the book-board during a sermon, and courting sleep. The preacher made a
pause at this point, and said that it was, of course, true that an
attitude of extreme devotion did not always mean a corresponding
seriousness of mind. There was a faint ripple of mirth at this, and
then, one by one, the boys who were engaged in attempting to sleep
raised themselves slowly up in a sheepish manner, trying to look as if
they were only altering their position naturally. It was intensely
ludicrous; but so good for the offenders! And then the pre