Preaching Played Out.

Preachers are preachers, - that is, they must preach once every Sunday, at least. And what shall it be about? What are they hired for? What is their main and staple topic? Why, we all know full well that their sermons must be about "sin." Sin, in some form or other, they must bewail, or be false to their mission. We once heard a preacher declare, with all the earnestness imaginable, "What, my brethren, is the one subject of our lives? It is the exceeding sinfulness of sin." On ordinary occasions, it is the individual sinner whom they hold over the coals. On extraordinary ones, the nation is brought into their discourse, and receives its due allotment of "sins." Take away this sin-business, and the preacher's occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. Once it was esteemed an occupation worthy of all ambition. Mothers prayed that all their sons might be preachers. Not to go to hear the preacher was the deadliest of sins. It was an offense to God. For was not the minister the anointed of God? Did he not, in an especial and well-nigh infallible manner, know the will of God? Was it not his business to read God's word, and then "expound" it? If the original text was obscure, he could make it clear, like the noon-day. And the burden of all was, "Sin, sin, sin." Sin and the "wrath of God," from which sinners must flee.

The present time is unlike the past in this respect. It listens to the preacher, - when there is not a greater attraction elsewhere, -but little heeds hims, unless he really has somewhat to say; and that somewhat is taken for what it is worth, and not because the preacher says it. Now and then the man rises above the preacher, and, when this occurs, the problem of life may get treated with some breadth, and his words revive some earthly vital interest. But, for the most part, the preacher is allowed to make the burden of his discourse still of sin against deity, and go his way, so long as he keeps up the church establishment, and makes the requisite respectable showing. But, as a "man of God," he is no more known. An ornament now, a figure-head, like Victoria; not a necessity, whose demise is unthinkable.

Our space is limited, so that we can only in a free way, voice the real sentiment of the sensible world. But this appears to be the noble fact: The world is weary of being preached at. It desires instruction, knowledge as to this present life. What is beyond it will wait for. Its sins it will slough off as it goes along, only let it have the higher aims of living clearly set fourth. What is true and beautiful and just it desires to hear about. But the eternal ding-dong of "sin, sin sin," and that by a fellow-sinner chanted, "wearies it," as Goethe wrote, "out and out."

All of which is submitted  with the utmost personal good-will for the preachers, for whom we have no prayer for the world's ears but this, - that they, one and all, may be speedily delivered into the unsanctimonious good sense which is the salvation of all human souls, that they may have a wholesome wrath for wrong-doing, and rise above the fear of the rich and the might who sit in the pews.