on the surface of life, and having
very little to do with deep spiritual doctrine. Mrs. Patten understood
that if she turned out ill-crushed cheeses, a just retribution awaited
her; though, I fear, she made no particular application of the sermon on
backbiting. Mrs. Hackit expressed herself greatly edified by the sermon
on honesty, the allusion to the unjust weight and deceitful balance
having a peculiar lucidity for her, owing to a recent dispute with her
grocer; but I am not aware that she ever appeared to be much struck by
the sermon on anger.

As to any suspicion that Mr. Gilfil did not dispense the pure Gospel, or
any strictures on his doctrine and mode of delivery, such thoughts never
visited the minds of the Shepperton parishioners--of those very
parishioners who, ten or fifteen years later, showed themselves extremely
critical of Mr. Barton's discourses and demeanour. But in the interim
they had tasted that dangerous fruit of the tree of knowledge--innovation
which is well known to open the eyes, even in an uncomfortable manner. At
present, to find fault with the sermon was regarded as almost equivalent
to finding fault with religion itself. One Sunday, Mr. Hackit's nephew,
Master Tom Stokes, a flippant town youth, greatly scandalized his
excellent relatives by declaring that he could write as good a sermon as
Mr. Gilfil's; whereupon Mr. Hackit sought to reduce the presumptuous
youth to utter confusion, by offering him a sovereign if he would fulfil
his vaunt. The sermon was written, however; and though it was not
admitted to be anywhere within reach of Mr. Gilfil's. It was yet so
astonishingly like a sermon, having a text, three divisions, and a
concluding exhortation beginning 'And now, my brethren', that the
sovereign, though denied formally, was bestowed informally, and the
sermon was pronounced, when Master Stokes's back was turned, to be 'an
uncommon cliver thing'.

The Rev. Mr. Pickard, indeed, of the Independent Meeting, had stated, in
a sermon preached at Rotheby, for the reduction of a debt on New Zion,
built, with an exuberance of faith and a deficiency of funds, by seceders
from the original Zion, that he lived in a parish where the Vicar was
very 'dark', and in the prayers he addressed to his own congregation, he
was in the habit of comprehensively alluding to the parishioners outside
the chapel walls, as those who, 'Gallio-like, cared for none of these
things'. But I need hardly say that no churc