of man—­and I do not know that you can go much further.  The wild Kurd in the desert will say to you, “I cannot do that.  It is a shame”; he has no power of reasoning, but he knows; and I take it that the fishers are much like him when their minds are cleared alike of formalism and brutality.  Many of the men were strongly moved as Blair went on, and Lewis saw that our smiling preacher had learned to cast away subtleties.  Fullerton’s preaching was like Newman’s prose style; it caught at the nerves of his hearers, and left them in a state of not unhealthy tension.  It seemed impossible for them to evade the forcible practical application by the second speaker of points in the discourse to which they had already listened; nor could they soon—­if ever—­forget the earnest words with which he closed—­“Bear in mind, my friends, that Christianity does not consist in singing hymns or saying prayers, but in a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as your Saviour; and when you have learned to know Him thus, your one object in life will be to glorify Him.  It is right and well both to sing and to pray, but let us take care that these exercises are the expression in words of the heart’s devotion to its Divine Lord and Master.”

They were ripe for the “experience” meeting, and this quaintest of all religious exercises gave Ferrier data for much confused meditation.  Apparently a man must unbosom himself, or else his whole nature becomes charged with perilous stuff, so these smacksmen had, in some instances, substituted the experience meeting for the confessional.  In Italy you may see the sailors creeping into the box while the priest crouches inside and listens to whispers; on the North Sea a sailor places a very different interpretation upon the Divine command, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another that ye may be healed.”  He goes first to his Saviour, and afterwards stands up before all his mates and makes his confession boldly:  every new confidence nails him to his vows; he knows that the very worst of his past will never be brought up against him, and he is supported by the sympathy of the rough fellows who punctuate his utterances with sighs and kindly handshaking.

When the penitent sits down his mind is eased; the mysterious sympathy of numbers cheers him, the sense of Divine forgiveness has given him power, and he is ready to face life again with new heart.  Ferrier caught the note of formality again and again, but he could see that the phrases had not putrefied into cant.

Just as the soul can only be made manifest through the body, so a thought can only be made manifest by means of words.  An importunate, living thought is framed in a perfect phrase which reflects the life of the thought.  Then you have genuine religious utterance.  The conditions change and the thought is outworn:  if the phrase that clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter, then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become.  To the fishers—­childlike men—­many of the old Methodist turns of speech are vital; to a cultured man the husk of words may be dry and dead, but if he is clever and indulgent he will see the difference between his own mental state and that of the poor fisher to whom he listens.