their ideas upon any subject into shape and order by writing them down, or (at least) expressing them in words to some one besides themselves.  You have a walk of an hour, before you:  you resolve that you will see your way through some perplexed matter as you walk along; your mind is really running upon it all the way:  but when you have got within a hundred yards of your journey’s end, you find with a start that you have made no progress at all:  you are as far as ever from seeing what to think or do.  With most people, to meditate means to approach to doing nothing at all as closely as in the nature of humanity it is possible to do so.  And in this sense of it, summer days, after your work is over, are the time for meditation.  So, indeed, are quiet days of autumn:  so the evening generally, when it is not cold.  ’Isaac went out to meditate in the field, at the eventide.’  Perhaps he thought of the progress of his crops, his flocks, his affairs:  perhaps he thought of his expected wife:  most, probably he thought of nothing in particular; for four thousand years have left human nature in its essence the selfsame thing.  It would be miserable work to moon through life, never thinking except in this listless, purposeless way:  but after hard work, when you feel the rest has been fairly earned, it is very delightful on such a day and in such a scene as this, to sit down and muse.  The analogy which suggests itself to me is that of a carriage-horse, long constrained to keep to the even track along hard dusty roads, drawing a heavy burden; now turned free into a cool green field to wander, and feed, and roll about untrammelled.  Even so does the mind, weary of consecutive thinking—­of thinking in the track and thinking with a purpose—­expatiate in the license of aimless meditation.

There are various questions which may fitly be thought of in the listlessness of this summer day.  They are questions the consideration of which does not much excite; questions to which you do not very much mind whether you get an answer or no.  I have been thinking for a little while, since I finished the last paragraph, of this point:  Whether that clergyman, undertaking the charge of some important church, is best equipped for his duty, who has a great many sermons carefully written and laid up in a box, ready to come out when needed:  or that other clergyman, who has very few sermons fully written out, but who has spent great pains in disciplining his mind into that state in which it shall always be able to produce good material.  Which of these has made best progress towards the end of being a good and efficient preacher?  Give me, I should say, on the whole, the solid material stock, rather than the trained inind.  I look with a curious feeling upon certain very popular preachers, who preach entirely extempore:  who make a few notes of their skeleton of thought; but trust for the words and even for the illustrations to the inspiration of the moment.  They go on boldly:  but their