although he had,
besides learning, a lively wit, and never lost the pluck that taught
him how to man a gun against a pirate. He was "low of stature,
lean, and of a pale complexion," so untidy that on one occasion his
appearance in the pulpit is said to have caused half the
congregation to go out of church. He gave his whole mind and his
whole soul to his work for God. Mythical tales are told of the
length of some of his sermons, at a time when an hour's sermon was
not considered long. Of one charity-sermon the story is that it
lasted three hours and a half, and that Barrow was requested to
print it--"with the other half which he had not had time to
deliver." But we may take this tale as one of the quips at which
Barrow himself would have laughed very good-humouredly.
H. M.

SERMONS ON EVIL-SPEAKING.

AGAINST FOOLISH TALKING AND JESTING.

"Nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient."--
Ephes. v.4.

Moral and political aphorisms are seldom couched in such terms that
they should be taken as they sound precisely, or according to the
widest extent of signification; but do commonly need exposition, and
admit exception: otherwise frequently they would not only clash
with reason and experience, but interfere, thwart, and supplant one
another. The best masters of such wisdom are wont to interdict
things, apt by unseasonable or excessive use to be perverted, in
general forms of speech, leaving the restrictions, which the case
may require or bear, to be made by the hearer's or interpreter's
discretion; whence many seemingly formal prohibitions are to be
received only as sober cautions. This observation may be
particularly supposed applicable to this precept of St. Paul, which
seemeth universally to forbid a practice commended (in some cases
and degrees) by philosophers as virtuous, not disallowed by reason,
commonly affected by men, often used by wise and good persons; from
which consequently, if our religion did wholly debar us, it would
seem chargeable with somewhat too uncouth austerity and sourness:
from imputations of which kind as in its temper and frame it is
really most free (it never quenching natural light or cancelling the
dictates of sound reason, but confirming and improving them); so it
carefully declineth them, enjoining us that "if there be any things"
[Greek] ("lovely," or grateful to men),