The way in which the
greater number of evangelical divines express themselves is quite
different from that in which men generally express themselves. Their
whole cast of phraseology is peculiar. You cannot hear five sentences
without feeling that you are listening to a dead or foreign language. To
put it into good current English you have to translate it, and the task
of translation is as hard, and requires as much study and practice, as
that of translating Greek or Hebrew. The language of the pulpit and of
religious books is a dialect to itself, and cannot be used in common
life or common affairs. If you try to apply it to anything but religion,
it becomes ridiculous, and a common kind of wit consists in speaking of
common things in pulpit phraseology. A foreign heathen might master our
language in its common and classical forms, and be able to understand
both our ordinary talk and our ablest authors, yet find himself quite at
a loss to understand an evangelical preacher or writer.

Even if our heathen understood religion in its simpler and more natural
forms, he would still be unable to understand the common run of
religious talkers and writers. If he had religion to learn from such
teachers and writers, he would have a double task, first, to get the
ideas, and then to learn the uncouth and unnatural language. This
peculiar dialect is quite unnecessary. The style of a preacher or a
religious writer might be, and, allowing for a few terms, _ought_ to be,
the same as that of a man talking about ordinary affairs, and matters of
common interest and duty. The want of this is one great cause of the
little success, both of our preachers at home, and of our missionaries
abroad. They hide beneath an unseemly veil, a beauty that should strike
all eyes, and win all hearts. Their style is just the opposite of
everything that can instruct, attract, command. And it is vain to expect
much improvement in the present generation of religious teachers. They
could not get a good style without a long and careful study of good
authors, and for this many of them have neither the taste nor the
needful industry. They would have to begin life anew, to be converted
and become as little children, before they could master the task. They
cannot _think_ of religion but in common words. They cannot think there
can be divine truth but in the old phrases. To discontinue them,
therefore, and use others, would in their view, be to become heretics or
inf