and its moral and spiritual lessons.  How inconsistent the sermon seemed with everything around!  The outward circumstances reduced it to an absurdity.  The congregation was diminished to a sixth of its usual number; the atmosphere was charged with a muggy vapour from sloppy garments and dripping umbrellas:  and as the preacher spoke, describing vividly (though with the chastened taste of the scholar) blue skies, green leaves, and gentle breezes, ever and anon the storm outside drove the rain in heavy plashes upon the windows, and, looking through them, you could see the black sky and the fast-drifting clouds.  I thought to myself, as the preacher went on under the cross influence of these surroundings, Now, I am sure you are in small things an unlucky man.  No doubt the like happens to you frequently.  You are the kind of man to whom the Times fails to come on the morning you specially wish to see it.  Your horse falls lame on the morning when you have a long drive before you.  Your manservant catches a sore throat, and is unable to go out, just when the visitor comes to whom you wish to show the neighboring country.  I felt for the preacher.  I was younger then, but I had seen enough to make me think how Mr. Snarling of the next parish (a very dull preacher, with no power of description) would chuckle over the tale of the summer sermon on the stormy day.  That youthful preacher (not Mr. Snarling) had been but a few months in the church, and he probably had not another sermon to give in the unexpected circumstances:  he must preach what he had prepared.  He had fallen into error.  I formed a resolution never to do the like.  I was looking forward then with great enthusiasm to the work of my sacred, profession:  with enthusiasm which has only grown deeper and warmer through the experience of more than nine years.  I resolved that if ever I thought of preaching a summer sermon, I would take care to have an alternative one ready for that day in case of unfavourable weather.  I resolved that I would give my summer discourse only if external nature, in her soft luxuriant beauty, looked summer-like:  a sweet pervading accompaniment to my poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own.  What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance, so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows?  You do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you are looking at it:  nature is better than our remembrance of her.  What description of a leafy tree equals that noble, soft, massive, luxuriant object which I looked at for half-an-hour yesterday through the window of a little country church, while listening to the sermon of a friend?  Do not think that I was inattentive.  I heard the sermon with the greater pleasure and profit for the sight.  It is characteristic of the preaching of a really able man, preaching what he himself has felt, that all he says appears (as a general rule) in harmony with all the universe; while the preaching