d, on both banks of the Thames.' Before
that the pulpit had been introduced, and it remained powerful when
England, at a monarch's nod, forcibly dissolved the spiritual union she
had so soon contracted and so long maintained with Rome. To the
Protestants the pulpit was more essential than to the Catholics. To the
Protestants who dissented from the Established Church it became more
important still. Without it they were nothing. Dissenting vitality
depends upon the pulpit. If that be weak and cold, unable to get at the
heart and to act upon the passions of the multitude, Dissent melts like
snow beneath the warm breath of the south. If it be otherwise, Dissent
flourishes and grows strong. The history of sects is the history of
individuals. Whitfield, Wesley are instances. In the Church of England
it is otherwise. That has a status independent of the pulpit. Without
any particular individual, it has a service elaborate and solemn and
complete, and more attractive than from its eternal monotony, in spite of
Puseyite natural attempts to the contrary, one would imagine would be the
case. Yet it is becoming confessed the Dissenting pulpit has ceased to
be what it was. I own I hardly understand why. Tom Moore tells in his
diary that no exercise of talent brings so immediate a result as oratory.
I believe every one who has ever got upon his legs will say the same
thing, and where can the orator have a wider field than in the pulpit?
At the best, the senate or the bar have nothing of equal interest. I
believe the difficulty may be partly explained in two ways. In the first
place, the pulpit is too much a repetition of creeds and theologies that
are becoming extinct; and in the second place, there is a dead weight in
the pews which masters the pulpit, and deadens its intellectual life. I
believe many a minister says things in private conversation that he has
not courage enough to utter in the pulpit, and that when he tries to do
so, owing to the vagueness of theological terms, what he says in one
sense is understood by his hearers in another. No wonder then that the
pulpit is so barren of power, and that many a man of gifts and parts in
our days of universal reading prefers the press to the pulpit, and
chooses rather to teach with his pen than with the living voice. Yet the
pulpit is not wholly deserted. It can still boast its consecrated
talent. It has still in it men who would have succeeded, had they tried
ot