the most sensational?--subject in the world
to talk about.

And what is the cause of this dulness? Again we say it does not lie in
the nature of the subjects committed to the preacher. To this denial
we will add another to the effect that, in almost every instance, the
dulness of the sermon does not proceed from a quality of dulness in the
preacher. There are few men who, in conversation, are unable to
interest us in subjects of intrinsic attractiveness. Many a man, dull
to boredom in the pulpit, becomes a delightful personality in the
social circle. Why the startling difference?

To answer this question fully might involve the use of many words, but
it may, at least, be suggested that preaching is often dull because the
preacher has inherited a notion that reverence for the truth and for
the sanctuary demands it. There still remain traces of a feeling, said
to have been common in old time, that dulness is a virtue. This same
feeling was wont, in other days, to fill the homes of the godly with a
gravity and a solemnity which almost effected the banishment of
laughter and drove forth music as an outcast from the domestic hearth.
Dominated by this sense of things, men shut their eyes to the
joyfulness of life and the beauties of nature and literature and poetry
and art. The Sabbaths of such men were days to be feared; their
sanctuaries places without a gleam of sunshine. What wonder if the
pulpit came under the yoke of bondage, or that, having been once
enslaved, it should even now have hardly attained to perfect freedom?
Then there are preachers whose great concern is to maintain "the
dignity of the pulpit," and this concern is allowed to crush out their
naturalness and brightness and humour--every quality that is human and
pleasant and alluring. It is on record that even so great and wise a
preacher as Dr. Dale of Birmingham had to confess that his own mighty
ministry had suffered because of a certain stateliness of composition
and delivery which had militated against the attractiveness of his
sermons, especially so far as the younger and less educated of his
hearers were concerned. From this solicitude for the dignity of the
pulpit have come "the pulpit manner," "the pulpit tone," "the pulpit
vocabulary," all of which, as being departures from honest Nature's
homely plans, have helped to spoil the charm and prevent the triumph of
holy, lovely truth. Still another may be dull from intellectual pride.
Not u