SERMONS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 150, 3 May 1879, Page 2

SERMONS.

Writing on the subject of sermons and sermon makers, the Sydney" Echo" says:—" The charge against no small section of the puipit of the day is, that it has lost its influence, and that it has lost it because it has ceased to be healthy and strong. The insipidity of sermons has passed into a proverb, and for years past all sorts of suggestions have been advanced with a view to the finding of the cause of this, and to the supplying of the cure. 'What the pulpit wants, says one of the foromostof English ecclesiastical critics, 'is more freshness and less convention, more character and less formula, more freedom and less fear.' At a meeting of an Edinburgh Presbytery a few weeks ago, a speaker, referring to the necessity of insisting on the study of elocution as a preparation for clerical duty, maintained that there could be no doubt as to the necessity for somo such teaching. ' Some sermons,' he said,' as they were now delivered, acted like doses of chloroform, and reminded them of the saying that if some of their preachers were condemned to listen to their own sermons for six months they would soon bo crying out that their punishment was greater than they could bear.' Exaggerated as criticisms of this kind may be, they convey the sentiment of large classes of church goers respecting the tendency of much that they are condemned to listen to,"