As on the Monday morning I spoke of I was passing down the street, I heard high words in a church.  What could it be?  Was it the minister, and the sexton, and the trustees fighting?  I went in to see, when, lo!  I found that the Pew and the Pulpit were bantering each other at a great rate, and seemed determined to tell each one the other’s faults.  I stood still as a mouse that I might hear all that was said, and my presence not be noticed.

The Pew was speaking as I went in, and said to the Pulpit, in anything but a reverential tone:  “Why don’t you speak out on other days as well as you do to-day?  The fact is, I never knew a Pulpit that could not be heard when it was thoroughly mad.  But when you give out the hymn on Sabbaths, I cannot tell whether it is the seventieth or the hundredth.  When you read the chapter, you are half through with it before I know whether it is Exodus or Deuteronomy.  Why do you begin your sermon in so low a key?  If the introduction is not worth hearing, it is not worth delivering.  Are you explaining the text?  If so, the Lord’s meaning is as important as anything you will have in your sermon.  Throw back your shoulders, open your mouth!  Make your voice strike against the opposite wall!  Pray not only for a clean heart, but for stout lungs.  I have nearly worn out my ears trying to catch your utterances.  When a captain on a battlefield gives an order, the company all hear; and if you want to be an officer in the Lord’s army, do not mumble your words.  The elocution of Christ’s sermon is described when we are told he opened his mouth and taught them—­that is, spoke distinctly, as those cannot who keep their lips half closed.  Do you think it a sign of modesty to speak so low?  I think the most presuming thing on earth for a Pulpit to do is to demand that an audience sit quiet when they cannot hear, simply looking.  The handsomest minister I ever saw is not worth looking at for an hour and a half at a stretch.  The truth is that I have often been so provoked with your inarticulate speech, that I would have got up and left the church, had it not been for the fact that I am nailed fast, and my appearance on the outside on a Sabbath-day, walking up and down, would have brought around me a crowd of unsanctified boys to gaze at me, a poor church pew on its travels.”

The Pulpit responded in anything but a pious tone:  “The reason you do not hear is that your mind on Sundays is full of everything but the gospel.  You work so hard during the week that you rob the Lord of his twenty-four hours.  The man who works on Sunday as well as the rest of the week is no worse than you who abstain on that day, because your excessive devotion to business during the week kills your Sunday; and a dead Sunday is no Sunday at all.  You throw yourself into church as much as to say, ’Here, Lord, I am too tired to work any more for myself; you can have the use of me while I am resting!’ Besides that, O Pew! you have a miserable habit.