resurrection those who had
been untimely taken away. Connected thus with the profoundest and
holiest sentiments of humanity, the pulpit was for instruction a sole
and sufficient means. Nothing like it had existed in paganism. The
irregular, ill-timed, occasional eloquence of the Greek republican
orators cannot for an instant be set in comparison with such a steady
and enduring systematic institution.

In a temporal as well as in a spiritual sense, the public authorities
appreciated its power. Queen Elizabeth was not the only sovereign who
knew how to thunder through a thousand pulpits.

[Sidenote: The pulpit yields to the press.] For a length of time, as
might have been expected, considering its power and favouring
adventitious circumstances, the pulpit maintained itself successfully
against the press. Nevertheless, its eventual subordination was none the
less sure. If there are disadvantages in the method of acquiring
knowledge by reading, there are also signal advantages; for, though upon
the printed page the silent letters are mute and unsustained by any
scenic help, yet often--a wonderful contradiction--they pour forth
emphatic eloquence, that can make the heart leap with emotion, or kindle
on the cheek the blush of shame. The might of persuasiveness does not
always lie in articulate speech. The strong are often the silent. God
never speaks.

[Sidenote: Listening and reading.] There is another condition which
gives to reading a great advantage over listening. In the affairs of
life, how wide is the difference between having a thing done for us and
doing it ourselves! In the latter case, how great is the interest
awakened, how much more thorough the examination, how much more perfect
the acquaintance. To listen implies merely a passive frame of mind; to
read, an active. But the latter is more noble.

[Sidenote: Decline of pulpit influence.] From these and other such
considerations, it might have been foreseen that the printing-press
would at last deprive the pulpit of its supremacy, making it become
ineffective, or reducing it to an ancillary aid. It must have been clear
that the time would arrive when, though adorned by the eloquence of
great and good men, the sermon would lose its power for moving popular
masses or directing public thought.

[Sidenote: Newspapers; their origin.] Upon temporal as well as
ecclesiastical authority, the influence of this great change was also
felt. During the Turkish war of 1563