rrayed in his
black gown. The congregation composed themselves to attention, as did
also my companions, who fixed their eyes upon the clergyman with a
certain strange immovable stare, which I believe to be peculiar to their
race. The clergyman gave out his text, and began to preach. He was a
tall, gentlemanly man, seemingly between fifty and sixty, with greyish
hair; his features were very handsome, but with a somewhat melancholy
cast: the tones of his voice were rich and noble, but also with somewhat
of melancholy in them. The text which he gave out was the following one,
'In what would a man be profited, provided he gained the whole world, and
lost his own soul?'

And on this text the clergyman preached long and well: he did not read
his sermon, but spoke it extempore; his doing so rather surprised and
offended me at first; I was not used to such a style of preaching in a
church devoted to the religion of my country. I compared it within my
mind with the style of preaching used by the high-church rector in the
old church of pretty D---, and I thought to myself it was very different,
and being very different I did not like it, and I thought to myself how
scandalized the people of D--- would have been had they heard it, and I
figured to myself how indignant the high-church clerk would have been had
any clergyman got up in the church of D--- and preached in such a manner.
Did it not savour strongly of dissent, methodism, and similar low stuff?
Surely it did; why the Methodist I had heard preach on the heath above
the old city, preached in the same manner--at least he preached
extempore; ay, and something like the present clergyman, for the
Methodist spoke very zealously and with great feeling, and so did the
present clergyman; so I, of course, felt rather offended with the
clergyman for speaking with zeal and feeling. However, long before the
sermon was over I forgot the offence which I had taken, and listened to
the sermon with much admiration, for the eloquence and powerful reasoning
with which it abounded.

Oh how eloquent he was when he talked of the inestimable value of a man's
soul, which he said endured for ever, whilst his body, as everyone knew,
lasted at most for a very contemptible period of time; and how forcibly
he reasoned on the folly of a man, who, for the sake of gaining the whole
world--a thing, he said, which provided he gained he could only possess
for a part of the time, during which his peris