which cultivated preachers had been shy.  He preached so that he made you feel without doubt that it was the most real of worlds to him; he made you feel in time, in spite of yourself, that it was a real world with which you too had concern.  He made you feel that he knew what he was speaking about; that his reasonings and appeals, whether you agreed with them or not, were not the language of that heated enthusiasm with which the world is so familiar; that he was speaking words which were the result of intellectual scrutiny, balancings, and decisions, as well as of moral trials, of conflicts and suffering within; words of the utmost soberness belonging to deeply gauged and earnestly formed purposes.  The effect of his sermons, as compared with the common run at the time, was something like what happens when in a company you have a number of people giving their views and answers about some question before them.  You have opinions given of various worth and expressed with varying power, precision, and distinctness, some clever enough, some clumsy enough, but all more or less imperfect and unattractive in tone, and more or less falling short of their aim; and then, after it all, comes a voice, very grave, very sweet, very sure and clear, under whose words the discussion springs up at once to a higher level, and in which we recognise at once a mind, face to face with realities, and able to seize them and hold them fast.

The first notable feature in the external form of this preaching was its terse unceremonious directness.  Putting aside the verbiage and dulled circumlocution and stiff hazy phraseology of pulpit etiquette and dignity, it went straight to its point.  There was no waste of time about customary formalities.  The preacher had something to say, and with a kind of austere severity he proceeded to say it.  This, for instance, is the sort of way in which a sermon would begin:—­

Hypocrisy is a serious word.  We are accustomed to consider the hypocrite as a hateful, despicable character, and an uncommon one.  How is it, then, that our Blessed Lord, when surrounded by an innumerable multitude, began, first of all, to warn His disciples against hypocrisy, as though they were in especial danger of becoming like those base deceivers the Pharisees?  Thus an instructive subject is opened to our consideration, which I will now pursue.—­Vol.  I. Serm.  X.

The next thing was that, instead of rambling and straggling over a large subject, each sermon seized a single thought, or definite view, or real difficulty or objection, and kept closely and distinctly to it; and at the same time treated it with a largeness and grasp and ease which only a full command over much beyond it could give.  Every sermon had a purpose and an end which no one could misunderstand.  Singularly devoid of anything like excitement—­calm, even, self-controlled—­there was something in the preacher’s resolute concentrated way of