Hence their immense success. The common mass of church and chapel goers are not given, by mental speculation, to trains of abstract and protracted thought. Generally, their education is of the most limited description, consisting of little more than is requisite for the ordinary business of ordinary life. The London _bourgeoise_ are not a very learned folk. Were a Coleridge set down amongst them they would say, ‘Much learning hath made this man mad.’ They would at any time prefer a Hall to a John Foster, or such a man as Robert Montgomery to Professor Maurice or Mr. Lynch. But they can be reached through the heart, and they love so to be reached. Nor on religious matters is this very difficult to do so. The chief requirements are simplicity and earnestness—that you should not reason, but command and appeal. The more simply and authoritatively this is done, of course, the better it is done. An audience does not love to be distracted, or to have its mental powers severely taxed; but it comes to be excited, to be quickened, to be delivered for a time from the things which are seen and temporal, and to realise those which are unseen and eternal. The men who aim straight at this end—if they have at all the requisite amount of voice and manner—are sure to have an audience fit, and not few. Thus Mr. Martin has won his way, and become a power in the pulpit. About fifteen years since, he came to London from a provincial college—a college which the self-satisfied young gentlemen of Highbury, with their acknowledged popular preaching talents, regarded in much the same way as Nazareth was regarded by the Jews. A new chapel had just been erected in Lambeth by the Congregationalists, and immediately Mr. Martin filled it. Where there had been a few wretched hovels there rose up a temple crowded with worshippers. Every part was full. The preacher was young; his style was exceedingly simple; but he had the calm self-possession of a man with a mission to men’s souls, and he had a clear voice, and a manner grave and, at times, pathetic or severe. It was seldom that men had seen, on such young shoulders, so old a head; and the Dissenting world rushed to hear the boyish preacher who seemed miraculously endued with the wisdom and gravity of age, and whose popularity even seemed to have left him simple and unaffected, in spite of it all. In time, a new chapel was erected in Westminster, not far from the residence of royalty; and of that chapel Mr. Martin became the minister. There he yet remains, and there his popularity is as great as ever. You are lucky if you get a seat, the chapel, which has recently been enlarged, being always full.