BOUGHT SEBMONS

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 432, 10 April 1875, Page 2

BOUGHT SEBMONS

We have been snpplied (says an English exchange) with a very remarkable and curious illustration of tne clanger of preaching bought sermons, as having occurred a Sunday or two ago, in a church not a hundred miles away from Manchester. It appears that tha vicar and the curate had, been absent for ft

sanfe day. The curate took the morning service, white the vicar was present for a friend in a neighboring church; but the vicar was prtsent in the evening to preach after the curate had read the prayers The sermon in the morning was so good that the c mgregation congratulated thems lyes upon the effects which the change of air had on the preacher's style and powers generally. The vicar ascended the pulpit, and gave out the same text which had formed the subject of the curate's discourse in the morning. Very soon, however those who were there in the forenoon foun^ that it was not only the same text, but the same Vrmon, and their facas assumed a variety of expression. There were not many placid countenances in the whole church, with the exception of the preacher's, who went on quite unonscioiw of the day's history and its consequences. There was one face that" bore *ipjrt it a painful expression, and that was the curate's. The more he tried to look severe and indifferent the more he looked abashed and intensely horrified. In short, the two worthy persons had, unknown to each other, purchased a copy of the same sermon, it is stated, in lithograph, and they had ill luck, without communication with each other, to select the same sermon to inaugurate their return.