ed halls from which _hundreds go away unable to
obtain admission_.

But the present design is a plea for justice, not a fresh charge.
The pulpit is to teach religion in application to life. But when we
reflect what life is, how deep in the soul, how wide in the world,
how complicated and delicate in its affairs and ties,--and when, we
consider what religion is, the whole truth of heaven respecting
all the operations of earth,--a kindly judgment is required for
unavoidable short-comings and ministerial mistakes. With different
ages, sexes, experiences, states of mind, degrees of intelligence and
impressibleness in a congregation, it is a rare felicity for a sermon
to reach all its members with equal impressiveness or acceptance. Who
ever heard a uniform estimate of any discourse? There seems almost a
curse upon the preacher's office from its very greatness, so that it
is never finished, and no portion of it can be done perfectly well and
secure against all objection. If he try to unfold the deep things
of the Spirit, and bring his best thoughts, which he would not throw
away, before his audience, though in language clearer than many a
chapter of Paul's Epistles, _some_ will call the topic obscure, and
complain that their children cannot understand it, quoting, perhaps,
the old sentence, that all truth necessary to salvation is so plain
that he who runs may read, and the wayfaring man, though a fool,
cannot err therein, and commending superficial homilies on other
tongues to censure whatever is profound from his. But should the
poor occupant of the desk venture to emulate this eulogized sonorous
exhortation, exerting himself to come down to the ignorant and the
young, there will be _some_ to stigmatize that, too, as a sort of
trifling and disrespect to mature minds. He has by a senior now and
then been blamed for excessive attention to the lambs of his flock,
and annoyed with the menace to stay away, if they were especially
to be noticed. If a visitation of special grace or an exaltation of
physical strength make the mortal incumbent happy in his exposition,
so that he is listened to with edification and delight, it is, by
some, not passed over to his credit at the ebb-tide of his power. Half
the time the house is not half full, as though the institution which
all order to be conducted nobody but he is bound to shoulder. If the
preacher labor to express the mysterious relationship between God and
Christ, the divine and h