Religion has been degraded by these teachers until it is difficult to gain the people’s ears to hear it. I have often watched congregations who, keenly interested so long as personal narratives are told, books discussed, or allegories pictured, relax their attention so soon as religion is reverted to, with an air which is told in every muscle of ‘knowing all that.’ The story once humorously told by the lamented Leonard Montefiore of his experience as a Sabbath-school teacher is a little straw showing withal the way of the stream. Feeling somewhat at a loss as to what to teach, the class being a strange one, he thought he would be safe in telling them a Bible story; so he began on Moses’ history, painting, as only he could paint for children’s minds, the conditions of the times, making Egypt, with its gorgeous palaces and age-defying temples, live again, showing the princess as a very fairy one, and letting them see through his well-cultivated mind the very age of Rameses. All went well, the children breathless with interest, until he came to the familiar incident of the little ark and the crying babe--‘Oh! ’tis only Moses again!’ cried one boy, and their interest vanished; they half felt they had been ‘taken in,’ and for the remainder of the lesson they gave him a bad time. The experience of many a popular preacher would, if he confessed honestly, be much the same as Mr. Montefiore’s. One body of evangelists, in order to attract the people, started a band which, playing loud, blatant marches or swinging hymn tunes, brought hundreds of people, who sat and listened with interest to the music. On its stopping and the preacher rising to speak, the people got up and poured out through the large open gate. The preacher paused, and on a sign the music recommenced and the audience sat down again. Three times was the effort made. No! though the preacher was advertised as the converted swindler or gipsy, or some such attractive title, it was of no avail. The people would not listen to the ‘old, old story’--‘Bless you, my children,’ said he, at last, sitting down in despair, ‘but I wish you’d mend yer manners.’ It was a larger rent than their manners which wanted mending. These people’s lives are already too full of excitement. There is no rest nor repose in them. Dignity has given way to hurry. To attract them to religion, further excitement is often resorted to, and sensationalism with all its vulgarity is brought to play upon the buried soul which we are told we should ‘possess in quietness.’