Ah! see my worthy friend approaching. He is a preacher, and I believe a good man, who loves his fellows, and means all mankind well. His head and heart, however, do not work well together--the one is as empty as the other is full. Well, if the devout Japanese can perform his devotions by machinery, having his _chu-kor_ constantly fixed in some running stream, where it never ceases praying for the prosperity of his house, why may not we go through ours with equal convenience? We are told that our ceremonies seldom trouble our hearts, and if so, surely there is little reason why they should trouble our tongues or limbs. Some such reflection, no doubt, has induced our people to invent many fashionable and easy modes of getting into heaven, for which they deserve lasting gratitude; but then the ways of the Lord are inscrutable, and he has raised up a brood of stupid, prosey, old-women preachers to pest and afflict them. They may make the sanctuary airy, or shut out the chill, together with their servants, and then snooze away on soft, easy cushions, just as though it was the most paltry trifle to inherit the kingdom; yet the Lord is generous, and will frequently remind them of their error by inflicting upon them the sermons of such stupid though good meaning servants as my friend here. When, therefore, reflected Peter, we rightly understand the uses of “bad preachers,” a very common and very equivocal complaint, they reveal a design the wisdom of which it is sinful to censure. The dumpy individual yonder, wearing the badge of authority, is a worthy constable. Like the great number of his class, he is an excellent man for his calling, wanting both heart and brain, and being consequently little troubled with conscience or integrity. Every poor wretch, whom misfortune has dragged beneath our compassion, adds a trifle to his purse, and immeasurably to his glory. Living on the world’s depravity, he seeks to deprave it the more, that he may increase the profits of his trade. Under the plea of justice he is constantly outraging its holy decrees, and instead of protecting society, he has become one of the worst of its pests. He will boast for hours of his shrewdness, and gloat with wonderful exultation over the ruin of a victim to his formidable oath. Justice would be fearfully crippled without his excellent eyes, whose vision neither doors nor masonry can shut out, and rendered almost entirely powerless without his ears, which happily possess the sharpness to detect the minutest particulars of a crime carried wonderful distances through the whispers of the wind. Though a score should surround him and witness an event, he would hear more than their forty ears, and surprise them all at the absolute worthlessness of their eyes, when he came to narrate his tale in that convenient arena for the exhibition of his talents, a criminal court. Like the pander in Terence, “to have the knack of perjury” he