I can't kill you, and
I can't cure you, so I must endure you. What said old Goethe, in all
the German I ever cared to recollect:--
"'Der Wallfisch hat doch seine Laus;
Muss auch die meine haben.'
"Now, then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty
schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty
thousand pounds--why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I
wouldn't marry she,--as my native Berkshire grammar would render it."
CHAPTER VII.
LA CORDIFIAMMA.
This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling
bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are
wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with
them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal
Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the
gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of
doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man
who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong
language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their
periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable,
reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and
Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the
pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify
the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all
things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together?
And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left
but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably,
the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the
excellence of his method.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181