Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/72

58 With this small stock of educational preparation he entered upon the work before him. The first were the testing years of his life and character. Like hundreds of young men who have ascended to the pulpit and platform, he was exposed to the imminent peril of that fluency of speech and richness of voice which have carried away nine in ten of them upon a noisy current of shallow thought into the dead sea of oblivion. For several years he seems to have yielded to these seductive and effeminating facilities of delivery. Few men could have been more tempted to obey their impulse and guidance. His voice was susceptible of all the music of poetic and pathetic modulation. He could play his florid metaphors and easily-worded sentences upon it as upon an instrument of ten strings. Then, breathing into the strain all the fervour of deep and sincere feeling, what more could he need to become an effective preacher, and build up a great fellowship and congregation in Carr's Lane Chapel? In the course of a few years, however, he found, to a hopeful and salutary grief, that one thing was lacking to his ministry—deeply-studied thought. He forthwith set himself bravely to its elaboration. He seized hold of all the helps in his reach. He read with earnest and persevering reflection; and the more he read and reflected the more he distrusted those qualities on which he had hitherto greatly relied. His sermons and