"Common sense is in every one's province," she persisted. "I am a practical woman, and some of my hints would be valuable. Sermons are failures, Nan. They go over people's heads like a flight of badly-shot arrows. Does not Goulburn say that? Now and then one touches the mark. When they are all let fly hither and thither and anyhow, the preacher shuts up his book, and his hearers cease to yawn." "Oh, Phillis, how absurd you are! Suppose Mr. Drummond were to hear you?" "I should have no objection. But, Nan, seriously, do you not notice how formal and cut-and-dried most sermons are? They come round regularly, like Sunday. People have to bear being preached at, and so the unfortunate parson must hammer it out of his head somehow. He picks out his text, writes out his composition, drags in his learning by the ear, and delivers it in his best fashion; and people listen to it politely, and the best behaved do not yawn." "Phillis, you are positively irreverent! I am shocked at you!" "On the contrary, I am very reverent. Well, in my 'Hints to the Clergy' I would say, first, 'Never preach what you do not feel yourself, or the current of electricity or sympathy, or whatever it is that communicates between preacher and people, will be checked or impeded. Do not preach out of the book: we can read that for ourselves. Preach out of your own head and your own experience, just as much as you can.' Bless you," continued Phillis, in a wise, half-sad tone, "half the pulpits would be empty: we should get sometimes no sermons at all!" This was too much for Nan's simplicity. "But people would be so disappointed," she observed, plaintively. "All the middle-aged people like sermons." "It would not hurt them to be disappointed sometimes. They would appreciate the real thing all the more when it came. It is as well to go without food altogether as to be fed on husks. After all, people forget that they come to church to say their prayers all together, and sing glorias." "That is very nicely said, dear," was Nan's admiring comment on this. But Phillis waved aside the praise. She was quite in earnest. "But if I were speaking to one of these real and not make-believe preachers, I would say to him, 'Never be discouraged. Say what you have got to say: if you really feel it and mean it, some one will feel it too. You can't see into people's hearts: and a good thing, too, my friend. But "the arrow at the venture" may tell; some one may be "hit between the joints of the armor."' There, come along; you shall have more of my hints another time. I have said my say for the present." And Phillis rose from the boulder, with her eyes bright and kindled by some moving thought, and went down to the edge of the water, and watched a sea-gull dipping towards the shore in the midst of the windy lights; while Nan, marvelling at her sister's unusual earnestness, followed more slowly.