was prefaced, as often in our own day, by a Collect and
the Lord's Prayer.

At the opening of the eighteenth century the pulpit was no longer the
power it had been in past days. It had been the strongest support of the
Reformation; and monarchs and statesmen had known well how immense was
its influence in informing and guiding the popular mind on all questions
which bore upon religion or Church politics. In proportion, however, as
the agency of the press had been developed, the preachers had lost more
and more of their old monopoly. Numberless essays and pamphlets
appeared, reflecting all shades of educated opinion, with much to say on
questions of social morality and the duties of Churchmen and citizens.
They did not by any means interfere with the primary office of the
sermon. They were calculated rather to do preaching a good service. When
other means of instruction are wanting, the preacher may feel himself
bound to include a wide range of subjects. When the press comes to his
aid, and relieves him for the most part of the more secular of his
topics, he is the more at liberty to confine himself to matters which
have a primary and direct bearing upon the spiritual life. In any case,
however, whether the change be, on the whole, beneficial or not to the
general character of preaching, it must evidently deprive it of some
part of its former influence.

Yet in the reigns of William and Queen Anne good preaching was still
highly appreciated and very popular. Jablouski said of his Protestant
fellow-countrymen in Prussia, that the sermon had come to be considered
so entirely the important part of the service that people commonly said,
'Will you go to sermon?' instead of 'to church.'[1202] It was not quite
so in England; yet undoubtedly there was very generally something of the
same feeling. 'Many,' said Sherlock, 'who have little other religion,
are forward enough to hear sermons, and many will miss the prayers and
come in only in time to hear the preaching.'[1203] If some of the
incentives to good preaching, and some of the attributes which had
distinguished it, were no longer conspicuous, other causes had come in
to maintain the honour of the pulpit. That stir and movement of the
intellectual faculty which was everywhere beginning to test the power of
reason on all questions of theology and faith had both brought into
existence a new style of preaching, and had secured for it a number of
attentive hearers. The anxious