for every preacher has not the musical voice of Chrysostom, or the electricity of St. Bernard.  He can neither draw nor inspire if he cannot be heard; he speaks to stones, not to living men or women.  He loses his power, and is driven to chants and music to keep his audience from deserting him.  He must make his choir an orchestra; he must hide himself in priestly vestments; he must import opera singers to amuse and not instruct.  He cannot instruct when he cannot be heard, and heard easily.  Unless the people catch every tone of his voice his electricity will be wasted, and he will preach in vain, and be tired out by attempting to prevent echoes.  The voice of Saint Paul would be lost in some of our modern fashionable churches.  Think of the absurdity of Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians affecting to restore Gothic monuments, when the great end of sacred eloquence is lost in those devices which appeal to sense.  Think of the folly of erecting a church for eight hundred people as high as Westminster Abbey.  It is not the size of a church which prevents the speaker from being heard,—­it is the disproportion of height with breadth and length, and the echoes produced by arcades, Spurgeon is heard easily by seven thousand people, and Talmage by six thousand, and Dr. Hall by four thousand, because the buildings in which they preach are adapted to public speaking.  Those who erect theatres take care that a great crowd shall be able to catch even the whispers of actors.  What would you think of the good sense and judgment of an architect who should construct a reservoir that would leak, in order to make it ornamental; or a schoolhouse without ventilation; or a theatre where actors could only be seen; or a hotel without light and convenient rooms; or a railroad bridge which would not support a heavy weight?

A Protestant church is designed, no matter what the sect may be to which it belongs, not for poetical or aesthetic purposes, not for the admiration of architectural expenditures, not even for music, but for earnest people to hear from the preacher the words of life and death, that they may be aroused by his enthusiasm, or instructed by his wisdom; where the poor are not driven to a few back seats in the gallery; where the meeting is cheerful and refreshing, where all are stimulated to duties.  It must not be dark, damp, and gloomy, where it is necessary to light the gas on a foggy day, and where one must be within ten feet of the preacher to see the play of his features.  Take away facilities for hearing and even for seeing the preacher, and the vitality of a Protestant service is destroyed, and the end for which the people assemble is utterly defeated.  Moreover, you destroy the sacred purposes of a church if you make it so expensive that the poor cannot get sittings.  Nothing is so dull, depressing, funereal, as a church occupied only by prosperous pew-holders, who come together to show their faces and prove their respectability, rather