‘The mere professor reminds me of a sow that I saw an hour since luxuriating in her stye, when almost over head and ears in the mire. Now suppose any of you were to take Bess (the sow), and wash her; and suppose, after having dressed her in a silk gown and put a smart cap upon her head, you were to take her into any of your parlours, and were to set her down to tea in company: she might look very demure for a time, and might not give even a single grunt; but you would observe that she occasionally gave a sly look towards the door, which showed that she felt herself in an uncomfortable position; and the moment she perceived that the door was open, she would give you another proof of the fact by running out of the room as fast as she could. Follow the sow with her silk gown and her fancy cap, and in a few seconds you will find that she has returned to the stye, and is again wallowing in the mire. Just so it is with the unrenewed man. Sin is his element.’ Could anything be weaker or in worse taste than that? The pulpit has ceased to offend by any such exhibitions. The men in the pews have advanced, and the men in the pulpit have had to do the same. Men of science and of intellect and literature must have men of science and of intellect and literature to preach to them. It is power the ministry lacks. It fails because it is of the past—uses the language of the past—prays the prayers of the past. Instead of seeking a revival in the churches, it had better seek its own revival. We have some twelve hundred clergy (Church and Dissent) in this great Babylon, and yet the devoutest worshipper can scarce name a dozen as superior men. Yet preaching is not the difficult thing ministers affirm. Literary men, enterprising merchants, sharp attorneys, aspiring barristers, honourable M.P.s, work infinitely harder, though professing infinitely inferior aims. A popular actor certainly seeks no richer reward than a popular parson; but the former will throw into his performance a life of which the latter appears to have no idea. For the men who care not for the manner but the matter, the pulpit has still less to offer. Where, then, is the wonder that in London, where men are not driven to church or chapel—where they do not lose caste because they do not observe the required customs of respectable society—the mass are beyond the reach of the preacher’s voice, listening, it may be, to the sermons on our stones and in our streets—the sermons the world’s great ones and illustrious leaders preach, when they worship railway kings, or erect statues to royal debauchees? What wonder is it then that in life’s busy scene the still small voice of the pulpit grows weaker every hour? POPULAR PREACHERS. Church of England. THE REV. J. C. M. BELLEW, S.C.L.