that seriously concerns the very religion that we preach. Everybody knows what the preaching tone is; it can be distinguished the moment it is heard, outside of any church, school-house, or barn where it is uplifted; but few consider, I believe, of what immense disservice it is to the great cause we have at heart. Preaching is the [78] principal ministration of religion, and if it be hard and unnatural, the very idea of religion is likely to be hard and unnatural, far away from the every-day life and affections of men. Stamp upon music a character as hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching has, and would men be won by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned is the sole cause of the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have, doubtless, even more to do with it. But still it is of such importance that I think no church interior should be built without especial nay, without sole reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to speak in. Let what can be done for the architecture of the exterior building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in. [79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant little church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it to others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837, it was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a present from the trustees.