If I compare Mr. Mapleson with Mr. Uncannon, I should say unhesitatingly that the latter was the more brilliant preacher of the two.  No one ever comes out of church saying “What a powerful discourse!  What a brilliant figure!  What a pretty illustration!  How eloquent!” But I find that we very often spend our dinner hour in discussing not the sermon, but its subject.

There are however two or three peculiarities which I observe about Maurice Mapleson’s preaching.  Dr. Argure tells me that he never writes a sermon without a reference to its future use.  I once asked him whether he ever preached extemporaneously.  “No,” said he.  “I have meant to.  But I have so many fine sermons waiting to be preached that I could never bring myself to abandon them for a mere talk.”

I do not think Maurice has any fine sermons waiting to be preached.  Indeed I know he has not.  For one evening when he excused himself from accepting an invitation to tea, because he was behind-hand in his work and had his sermon to prepare, I replied, “You must have a good stock on hand.  Give us an old one.”

“I haven’t a sermon to my name,” he replied.

“What do you mean?” said I.

“I mean,” said he, “that a sermon is not an essay; that every sermon I ever preached was prepared to meet some special want in my parish, and that when it was preached, there was an end of it.  I could no more preach an old sermon than I could fire a charge of gun powder a second time.”

“But experiences repeat themselves,” said my wife.  “What your people at Koniwasset Corners knew of doubt, of trouble, of sorrow, of imperfect Christian experience, we know too.  As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.”

“That is true,” said Maurice thoughtfully.  “But there are no two faces exactly alike.  And my sermon is meaningless to me, if not to my people, unless I can see the want and bring out the truth to meet it.”

“But the truth is always the same,” said Jennie, “and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.”

“That is both true and false,” said he.  “The truth is always the same; but not always the same to me.  I fell into conversation with Mr. Gear last night on the subject of the atonement.  He thinks it represents God as revengeful and unforgiving.  Can I answer him with an old sermon?  God’s love is immutable.  But I hope I understand it better and feel it more than I did three years ago.  I cannot bring an old experience to meet a new want.  No! a sermon is like a flower, it is of worth only when it is fresh.”

His sermons at all events are always fresh.  They are his personal counsel to personal friends.  I dimly recognize this element of power in them.  But this is not all.  There is something more, something that I missed in Dr. Argure’s learned essays, and in Mr. Uncannon’s pulpit pyrotechnics.  But it is something very difficult to define.