ess, and she is more
fit for an ash barrel than a pulpit. Since we heard that story of feline
nativity, whenever we see a minister of religion, on some question of
Christian reform, skulking behind a barrier, and crawling away into some
half-and-half position on the subject of temperance or oppression, and
daring not to speak out, instead of making his pulpit a height from which
to hurl the truth against the enemies of God, turning it into a cowardly
hiding place, we say, "Another cat in the pulpit."

Whenever we see a professed minister of religion lacking in frankness of
soul, deceitful in his friendship, shaking hands heartily when you meet
him, but in private taking every possible opportunity of giving you a long,
deep scratch, or in public newspapers giving you a sly dig with the claw of
his pen, we say: "Another cat in the pulpit!"

Once a year let all our churches be cleaned with soap, and sand, and mop,
and scrubbing brush, and the sexton not forget to give one turn of his
broom under the pastor's chair. Would that with one bold and emphatic
"scat!" we could drive the last specimen of deceitfulness and skulking from
the American pulpit!

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WAY TO KEEP FRESH.

How to get out of the old rut without twisting off the wheel, or snapping
the shafts, or breaking the horse's leg, is a question not more appropriate
to every teamster than to every Christian worker. Having once got out of
the old rut, the next thing is to keep out. There is nothing more killing
than ecclesiastical humdrum. Some persons do not like the Episcopal Church
because they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but have we not for the
last ten years been hearing the same prayers over and over again, the
product of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not the thousandth part of
the excellency of those petitions that we hear in the Episcopal Church?

In many of our churches sinners hear the same exhortations that they have
been hearing for the last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows,
the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said;
and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our
children the multiplication table forward or backward. We could not
understand the doleful strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found
out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and
has been using it ever since.

There are laymen who do not like to h