The words of our morning service, how beautiful, how apposite, how intelligible they were, when read with simple and distinct decorum! But how much of the meaning of the words was lost when they were produced with all the meretricious charms of melody! &c.

&c.
Here was a sermon to be preached before Mr.Archdeacon Grantly, Mr.Precentor Harding, and the rest of them! Before a whole dean and chapter assembled in their own cathedral! Before men who had grown old in the exercise of their peculiar services, with a full conviction of their excellence for all intended purposes! This too from such a man, a clerical _parvenu_, a man without a cure, a mere chaplain, an intruder among them; a fellow raked up, so said Dr.
Grantly, from the gutters of Marylebone! They had to sit through it! None of them, not even Dr.Grantly, could close his ears, nor leave the house of God during the hours of service.

They were under an obligation of listening, and that too without any immediate power of reply.
There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.

No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented.

No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips.