Just how much
study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more
than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures or sermons
(discourses) on theology every year,--and this, twenty, thirty, fifty
years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The
clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach
themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse
into a state of _quasi_ heathenism, simply for want of religious
instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent
hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become
actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all
theological students, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity
than have received degrees at any of the universities.
It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often find
it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed upon a
sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought vigorously
about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of times.
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