ON SERMONS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1155, 3 March 1874, Page 2

ON SERMONS.

Snyder of the Auckland Herald thus, in merry mood, relates his experiences as a sermon writer : —lt was not so many years ago when I was struggling with existence that the publisher of a Church Magazine called at my humhle dwelling and told me the editor of that journal wished to get some one to write a good scriptural article for the next number—a sort of lay sermon. The publisher said there were two guineas hanging to it, but that the whole thing was to be in strict confidence. The editor was to be presumed to be the author. Then he repeated the words which he knew contained the charm of the proposal —that there were two guineas hanging to it. I looked round the room of my humble abode, and I saw my little lambs a huugered, for they had partaken of literally nothing, so to speak, since their breakfast, and what they were likely to got for their mid-day meal, I was utterly ignorant, although I discovered subsequently that an Irish stew and apple dumplings formed the staple of that repast. Then I looked at a suffering wife, and a mother, who was at that particular juncture, givingucurishment to a suckling babe at the fountains of life, with nothing to assist nature beyond a modest and unpretentious tumbler of Griiinnoss's stout. Viewing this thing, my bosom heaved a heave within me, and I said to the publisher, that not my will, but poverty and stern necessity only induced me 10 consent. And he departed in peace. It was soon afterwards I sat me down and contemplated the task I had undertaken. I sweetened my anxiety with the perfume of honey-dew, and I allayed my thirst with the balance of the bottle, which through the agency of a fond mammn ; had contributed to my babe's sustenance. There was nothing as a newspaper writer, I had not turned my hand to, excepting only one thing, and that was composing a sermon. My genius for elaborating shocking incidents was admitted on all sides. I was great at burglaries, my cautions to parents few other writers could equal and none could excel. I was something almost beyond belief at couflagorations, and my great ibrle was murders and watery graves. There was nothing my pen could not do in the descriptive heart-breaking line. A shipwreck in mid-ocean " by one of the survivor?, " while I was a hundred miles inland, was mere child's play to me. ] had witnessed with my own gaze the eruption of a volcano where no volcano existed. I had done storms and earthquakes, balloon ascents, and given my exneiieuces when three miles above the clouds with an aurora borealis raging beneath. I had done the largest gooseberries and lien's eggs ever known to the world. And when a contemporary once c.une out with a calf having two bodies and eight legs, I produced in the next number of the journal I was engaged on a puppy wi-th three heads aid a loud bark coming simultaneously out of each one of them while they all wagged their tails in harmony. I had done all these things, and very many more, but I had never attempted a sermon, and now I had got to make the effort. I thought of tho days of my early youth, and the good teachings I had been compelled to listen to. I thought of all the learned discourses my old schoolmaster used to deliver to us of a Sunday afternoon, with cane in hand if we were not giving due attention, and I thought of other things not in connection therewith. 1 thought of a neglected cci nor among my bookshelves, and there I got just what I wanted. It was an ancient book of sermons ly the venerable Fuller j of such sermons tho like of which perhaps were never willtcn before, and probably never will be

again. I seize! tlio treasure and felt menially and physically glorious. I said to myself people how-a days don't read tho (ino works of tlio old divines —they prefer Spurgoon. So I set mo dov ii and copied the wholo of one of the most beautiful allegorical discourses I over read, merely giving a head and a tail to it, and modernising the English to adopt it to the understanding of the churchwardens and tho people of the parishes in which it would bo read. It was an exquisite discourse, full of wonderful imagery. It described a poisonous tree which grew in Central Africa or somewhere else, which grew and grew and extended its branches, while blighting and killing all that it overshadowed. The writer comparod tho tree to the spread of sin, et cetera, and culminated in one of tho grandest " lastlys " I ever read or heard of iu my life, and I have read and heard considerable. Then, when it was all copied out, I took it to the publisher, and the publisher took it to the editor, and the editor, who never heard of such a writer as the venerable Fuller, read it; and he said it was a very poor composition altogether; " quite below par " were his words. He supposed now it was written it must go in, but insteadof paying me two guineas he told the publisher he should only give me oue, which was more than twice what it was worth —the villaiu ! With that guinea I invested one pound iu a coral and silver bolls for my suckling babo and two small tumblers of colonial wino for myself. I recollect the circumstance as if it were only yesterday. The wine did me no barm, but the coral and bells were so small for the money that the child of my early love, in its eagerneas to ease its gums, swallowed the coral, and bad absorbed five out of the six bells in its lender throat ere its mother had made the discovery. The tape securely attached to the whittle of the bells saved tho child's life, and he has now so far advanced in years as to be in active pursuit of a ' wife. My sermon took wonderfully, 1 and when tho editor found it out he 1 fathered it as his own. People lauded ' his style, praised his earnestness, pro- ' claimed his excellence, and said how ! readers would be mentally and morally r elevated thereby, but no one knew '• that old Fuller was the inspiration. I asked for the other guinea, and was 5 refused payment. How pleasant is re--3 venge, I wrote a letter to one of the c newspapers drawing attention to the fact that in the Magazine, such and ' such a number, was a sermou, nearly every word of which had been drawn ' from pp. 148 to 157 of Blackburn's ■ third edition of Fuller's sermons. Ther) 3 the editor shrunk up into very small ' dimensions indeed, and wished be had 7 given uie the other gu' lea —I know * that. Eut the moral of all this is. fc why should a man, wlieu bo can offci no particular teachings of his own, not " employ the teachings of others ?