Even when you can hear my voice on the Sabbath and are wide awake, you have a way of putting your head down or shutting your eyes, and looking as if your soul had vacated the premises for six weeks.  You are one of those hearers who think it is pious to look dull; and you think that the Pew on the other side the aisle is an old sinner because he hunches the Pew behind him, and smiles when the truth hits the mark.  If you want me to speak out, it is your duty not only to be wide awake, but to look so.  Give us the benefit of your two eyes.  There is one of the elders whose eyes I have never caught while speaking, save once, and that was when I was preaching from Psalm cxiii. 12, ‘They compassed me about like bees,’ and by a strange coincidence a bumble-bee got into church, and I had my attention divided between my text and the annoying insect, which flew about like an illustration I could not catch.  A dull Pew is often responsible for a dull Pulpit.  Do not put your head down on the back of the seat in front, pretending you are very much affected with the sermon, for we all know you are napping.”

The Pew:  “If you want me to be alert, give me something fresh and startling.  Your sermons all sound alike.  It don’t make any difference where you throw the net, you never fish up anything but moss-bunkers.  You are always talking about stale things.  Why don’t you give us a touch, of learned discussion, such as the people hear every Sunday in the church of Reverend Doctor Heavyasbricks, when, with one eye on heaven and the other on the old man in the gallery, he speaks of the Tridentine theory of original sin, and Patristic Soteriology, Mediaeval Trinitarianism, and Antiochian Anthropology?  Why do you not give us some uncommon words, and instead of ‘looking back upon your subject,’ sometimes ‘recapitulate,’ and instead of talking about a man’s ‘peculiarities,’ mention his ‘idiot-sin-crasies,’ and describe the hair as the capillary adornment; and instead of speaking of a thing as tied together, say it was ‘inosculated.’”

The Pulpit:  “You keep me so poor I cannot buy the books necessary to keep me fresh.  After the babies are clothed, and the table is provided for, and the wardrobe supplied, my purse is empty, and you know the best carpenter cannot make good shingles without tools.  Better pay up your back salary instead of sitting there howling at me.  You eased your conscience by subscribing for the support of the gospel, but the Lord makes no record of what a man subscribes; he waits to see whether he pays.  The poor widow with the two mites is applauded in Scripture because she paid cash down.  I have always noticed that you Pews make a big noise about Pulpit deficiencies, just in proportion to the little you do.  The fifty cents you pay is only premium on your policy of five dollars’ worth of grumbling.  O critical Pew! you had better scour the brass number on your own door before you begin to polish the silver knob on mine.”