WHY ARE MOST SERMONS DULL ?
[To TEE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTATOR."'
Ern,—" A Transatlantic ' Tommy' " complains that all the sermons which ho heard preached by Church of England chaplains were " tedious dissertations." Most of the sermons preached in churches and chapels are also very dull. There seem to me to be two chief reasons for this great evil: (1) That persons with fairly active minds and hearts cannot listen often with interest to addresses which do not seek to promote action that seems to them important ; and that very few sermons do seek to promote such action ; and (2) that, as the funda- mental commandments of Christ to love God with all one's powers, and to do for one's neighbours all things whatsoever one would they should do for us, clearly make it the duty of all the members of the Church to do a vast amount of work which is urgently needed by their poorer fellow-citizens, the failure of the majority of the clergy to call upon and help their congregations to take right action makes their sermons more " tedious " than the addresses of any other would-be teachers could be. It seems to me to be unbelievable that the Churches can have any good influence on the men who have gone through the war, unless the leaders of the Churches induce their followers to ascertain what are the conditions necessary for physical, mental, and moral health, and, when this has been ascertained, induce them to create the conditions for the large number of our fellow-citizens for whom they do not exist at present.—I am, Sir, &c., T. C. Hoasms.
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