Mr. Bright has written a letter to a theological student
on the difficulty of any effective speaking, or indeed writing, on subjects such as ministers of religion are usually expected to treat once a week at least, which ought to produce a certain amount of effect on the very unreasonable condition of our public customs on that head. Mr. Bright had been consulted on the comparative merits of writing and extempore speaking, and he replies :- ' Given a man with knowledge of his subject, and a gift for public speaking, then I think reading a mischief ; but given a man who knows little, and who has no gift of speaking, then reading seems to be inevitable, because speaking, as I deem it, is impossible. But it must be a terrible thing to have to read or speak a sermon every week, on the same topic to the same people ; terrible to the speaker, and hardly less so to the hearers. Only men of great mind, great knowledge, and great power, can do this with success. I wonder that any man can do it I I often doubt if any man has ever done it" It is hardly exact, perhaps, to speak of the whole range of ethics and religion,—ethics and religion, too, as freely illustrated by the biography and history of one great literature, a range which sermons certainly cover,—as a single topic, for these include thousands of very distinct topics ; but still these topics are alike in the sort of ability and force they require to make them vivid, and they are all, as Mr. Bright implies, vague topics, on which our knowledge is not exhaustive, and on which therefore it is difficult to speak out of a full mind. Preaching should be much less frequent and much more the duty of a special class than it is, and that class should be more or leas itinerary, so as to make less drain on the preacher's resources. Mr. Bright as a great orator, and a great orator of the moral and imaginative kind, has a chance of being listened to where ordinary writers and counsel- lors have systematically failed. Why should sermons be turned from opportunities of help into instruments of mild torture ?
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