xtbooks; he met his hearers as men, and they took
every word in with complete understanding. When I hear a man talking to
the fishers about the symbolism of an ephod, I always want to run away.
What is needed is the human voice, coming right from the human heart:
cut and dried theological terms only daze the fisherman; he is too
polite to look bored, but he suffers all the same. I fancy Blair's
little oration might be summed up thus: Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--and I do not know that
you can go much further. The wild Kurd in the desert will say to you, "I
cannot do that. It is a shame"; he has no power of reasoning, but he
_knows_; and I take it that the fishers are much like him when their
minds are cleared alike of formalism and brutality. Many of the men were
strongly moved as Blair went on, and Lewis saw that our smiling preacher
had learned to cast away subtleties. Fullerton's preaching was like
Newman's prose style; it caught at the nerves of his hearers, and left
them in a state of not unhealthy tension. It seemed impossible for them
to evade the forcible practical application by the second speaker of
points in the discourse to which they had already listened; nor could
they soon--if ever--forget the earnest words with which he
closed--"Bear in mind, my friends, that Christianity does not consist in
singing hymns or saying prayers, but in a personal knowledge of Jesus
Christ as your Saviour; and when you have learned to know Him thus, your
one object in life will be to glorify Him. It is right and well both to
sing and to pray, but let us take care that these exercises are the
expression in words of the heart's devotion to its Divine Lord and
Master."

They were ripe for the "experience" meeting, and this quaintest of all
religious exercises gave Ferrier data for much confused meditation.
Apparently a man _must_ unbosom himself, or else his whole nature
becomes charged with perilous stuff, so these smacksmen had, in some
instances, substituted the experience meeting for the confessional. In
Italy you may see the sailors creeping into the box while the priest
crouches inside and listens to whispers; on the North Sea a sailor
places a very different interpretation upon the Divine command, "Confess
your faults one to another, and pray one for another that ye may be
healed." He goes first to his Saviour, and afterwards stands up before
all his mates and makes his confession