To answer this question fully might involve the use of many words, but it may, at least, be suggested that preaching is often dull because the preacher has inherited a notion that reverence for the truth and for the sanctuary demands it. There still remain traces of a feeling, said to have been common in old time, that dulness is a virtue. This same feeling was wont, in other days, to fill the homes of the godly with a gravity and a solemnity which almost effected the banishment of laughter and drove forth music as an outcast from the domestic hearth. Dominated by this sense of things, men shut their eyes to the joyfulness of life and the beauties of nature and literature and poetry and art. The Sabbaths of such men were days to be feared; their sanctuaries places without a gleam of sunshine. What wonder if the pulpit came under the yoke of bondage, or that, having been once enslaved, it should even now have hardly attained to perfect freedom? Then there are preachers whose great concern is to maintain "the dignity of the pulpit," and this concern is allowed to crush out their naturalness and brightness and humour--every quality that is human and pleasant and alluring. It is on record that even so great and wise a preacher as Dr. Dale of Birmingham had to confess that his own mighty ministry had suffered because of a certain stateliness of composition and delivery which had militated against the attractiveness of his sermons, especially so far as the younger and less educated of his hearers were concerned. From this solicitude for the dignity of the pulpit have come "the pulpit manner," "the pulpit tone," "the pulpit vocabulary," all of which, as being departures from honest Nature's homely plans, have helped to spoil the charm and prevent the triumph of holy, lovely truth. Still another may be dull from intellectual pride. Not unknown is the man who may often be heard explaining the success attained by other brethren but denied to himself, by references to what he calls "playing to the gallery" or "catering for popular applause." _He_, forsooth, will not so demean himself as to be guilty of practices so degrading. Thought is _his_ provision for those who come to hear. _He_ appeals to _thinkers_. Alas! for him, his "thinkers," if only he knew it, are human and have a mind to be pleased. "Very intellectual," may be the verdict with which they leave the church, but people cannot always be on the intellectual rack, and both the Sabbath and the Sanctuary were designed for rest for weary brains. We have known a very learned man to admit, as he came away from hearing an exceedingly thoughtful discourse, that, to him, the preacher's address to the children had been the most enjoyable part of the service. The sermon was very clever; but--well, he had had a hard and trying week of it, and came to church with a tired mind and a troubled heart.