it
has never been since people could read and write. More it can never be.

Yet even the stage has had its saints, as in old times the world gave up
its high-spirited and gay to the cause of God. If emperors have become
monks, it is not wonderful nor surpassing the bounds of probability that
men should give up writing plays and take to writing sermons instead. A
few years back Gerald Griffin exchanged the world for a monastery. In
our own day Sheridan Knowles is an example of a still greater change, for
he has left the stage for the pulpit, and has consecrated the evening of
his life to the advocacy of Christian truth. I fear in this latter
character he is not so successful as in his former. Well do I remember
him at the Haymarket. It was the first time I ever was inside a theatre.
The enjoyment of the evening, I need not add, was intense. A first visit
to a theatre is always enough to bewilder the brain. You never see men
of such unsullied honour--women of such gorgeous beauty--scenes of such
thrilling interest in real life--and when I learned that the drama itself
was the production of Knowles, my admiration of him knew no bounds. But
I confess in the pulpit he did not appear to me to so great an advantage.
It may be that I am older. It may be that time has robbed me, as he does
every one else, of the wonder and enthusiasm which, to the eye of youth,
makes everything it looks on beautiful and bright. It may be that I, as
every one else does, feel daily more deeply--

'The inhuman dearth
Of noble natures;'

but nevertheless the fact, I fear, is but clear, that Knowles does not
shine in the pulpit as he did on the stage, which he has now renounced
some years. Of course he has a crowd to hear him, for a player turned
parson is a nine days' wonder, and run after as such. The question is
not, can he read well? not, can he convey his thoughts in elegant
language? not, can he compose a lecture which, to his own satisfaction,
at least, can demolish insolent popes and self-conceited Unitarians,
against which classes he principally labours; but can he preach--preach
so that men are awe-struck--acknowledge a divine influence, and shudder
as they look back on the buried past? I fear this question must be
answered in the negative.

Let us imagine ourselves in one of the numerous Baptist chapels of the
metropolis--for to that denomination of Christians does Mr. Knowles
belong--while he is preaching