Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/261

 Readers of the New Testament will recall the same divergence between the practice and the profession of the Jews two thousand years ago. It has been neither unknown nor unobserved in any age, in any land, amid any people since.

There were a great many clergymen preaching in Hannah More's day, and there are a great many clergymen preaching now. Churches and temples and halls of every conceivable denomination, and of no conceivable denomination, are open to us. There is something fair and square in going to a place of which sermons are the natural product, and hearing one. There is also something fair and square in taking a volume of sermons down from the shelf, and reading one. I am not of those who believe that a sermon, like a speech, needs to be spoken. A great deal of quiet thinking goes with the printed page, and the reader has