h
comfort since he began to listen to my conversation. The truth is,
preachers will never know what great, good things there are to be talked
about, till they get rid of their foolish fancies. Nor will they know
the true pleasure of talking till they come to feel that their
utterances are the words of eternal truth. And so far will they be from
not having enough to talk about, that if they give themselves in a
Christian spirit, to study the truth as it is in Jesus, they will never
have time to utter a tenth of the blessed things that will present
themselves to their minds.

A hundred years would not afford me time enough to say all that I get
glimpses of on religious subjects as presented in nature and in the
Scriptures. Every subject I take in hand requires ten times more time to
do it justice than is generally allowed for a sermon. And the subjects
are numberless. We live in an infinite universe of truth.

"I rejoice," says one, "that I have been led, in the course of God's
providence, to do so much as I have done, towards purging revelation
from those doctrines and practices which were discordant with its
teachings, and prevented its reception with many."

Shall I ever be able to do anything in this way? God help me. If I could
make the Church and the ministry more Christ-like, and more powerful for
good, what a blessing it would be. What a world of work wants doing,
both in the church and in the world. Save me from an impatient,
pugnacious, disagreeable spirit. Perhaps I see the needs of others more
than I feel my own. Perhaps I am in danger of being more eager for
reform in others, than for a thoroughly Christian spirit and behavior in
myself.

How many words and phrases one hears in sermons and in prayers, and what
heaps of expressions one meets with in religious works, that are not
warranted by Scripture or common sense!

--Some of the words and phrases that are more frequently used by
Christians than any other, are unscriptural ones. Some of them express
unscriptural ideas. Some of them are names of things that have no
existence. Both the words and the ideas for which they stand are
anti-christian. Many of the things said from the pulpit are
unintelligible. The people strain their minds to get at a meaning, but
to no purpose. It is Latin or Greek to them. They listen, but do not
learn. They hear sounds, but catch no sense. They reverence, they
worship, but they do not understand. They believe, they feel, t