CLERICAL OUTCOMES.
To the Editor of "The St-nd-rd."
Sir,—Allow me to mention, under all reserve, that I frequently preach a sermon of Jeremy Taylor's, or the Judicious Hooker's, to my congregation, with excellent effect, and hitherto without any discovery on their part of the origin of the discourse. I, of course, alter the old-fashioned phrases, and bring the sermons up to date, so to speak. This plan saves the inconvenience of having to pay for sermons, which I could not do in cash in these days of clerical destitution, only in sermon paper, which I fear would not be accepted. If I am accused of "cribbing sermons," I deny the charge with indignation. I don't crib Jeremy, I adapt him. Does every dramatist, who adapts from the French, acknowledge the fact? Not at all! Neither does—
Yours unblushingly,
Borrowed Plume-age.
Sir,—My congregation is a rustic one. I have tried them with my own sermons, but my pewrents suffered so severely in consequence, that I have been obliged to give them up. Last Sunday (following the advice of a lay friend of mine in Town, in whom I have much confidence) I preached one of Prebendary Sheepshanks' "Crampton Lectures" to them, and the farmers and labourers seemed much impressed. There was, in fact, hardly an open eye in Church during the hour and a half that the delivery lasted. The Charity-School children, too, who sat through the whole of it, only had to be physically admonished by their teacher about once in every half-minute. When an old village dame afterwards assured me that "she didn't know I was that larned," I felt—momentarily—rather like a wolf in Sheepshanks' clothes. But I intend going through the course.
Yours, &c.,
Pastor Ignotus.