sermon

One Sunday morning in the summer as he sat by his desk in the room with a large Bible opened be- fore him, and the sheets of his sermon scattered about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper room of the house next door, a woman lying in her bed and smoking a cigarette while she read a book.

"I can't forget it--and I can't forget what the bad place is like either, ever since Peter preached that sermon on it."

The bill of fare is as follows: First, under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven; and that "When they depart from earth they soar to heaven." Perhaps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in their Monday morning papers.

Slowly the minister took from his pocket the notes he had made for his next Sunday's sermon. Frowningly he looked at them.

Nevertheless -- to hold nothing back from the reader -- it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a New England Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career.

ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and pres- ently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their par- ents, so as to be under supervision.

It was truly refreshing to hear such a sermon, after being so long accustomed to the dry, prosy discourses of the former curate, and the still less edifying harangues of the rector.

Miles Mirabel preached his farewell sermon, in our temporary chapel upstairs.'

SEEING that his audiences were becoming smaller every Sunday, a Minister of the Gospel broke off in the midst of a sermon, descended the pulpit stairs, and walked on his hands down the central aisle of the church.

'What a charming sermon!' 'More eloquent than ever!' 'I used to dread the sermon at the other church--do you know, I quite look forward to it now.' That is the effect I produce on Sunday.

But I'm not known here: so I think I'll excuse myself sitting out a sermon. Country-preachers are always so dull!"

"Now I shall preach you a short sermon, and my text is, 'Little children, love one another.' I asked mamma to give me one, and she thought that would be good; so you all sit still and I'll preach it.