Other men look on and approve
the improved process, or listen and imbibe the advanced belief.
Now, there appears to be a man upon Brooklyn Heights who has found out
a more excellent way of conducting a church than has been previously
known. He does not waste the best hours of every day in writing
sermons, but employs those hours in absorbing the knowledge and
experience which should be the matter of sermons. He does not fritter
away the time of a public instructor in "pastoral visits," and other
useless visitations. His mode of conducting a public ceremonial
reaches the finish of high art, which it resembles also in its
sincerity and simplicity. He has known how to banish from his church
everything that savors of cant and sanctimoniousness,--so loathsome to
honest minds. Without formally rejecting time-honored forms and
usages, he has infused into his teachings more and more of the modern
spirit, drawn more and more from science and life, less and less from
tradition, until he has acquired the power of preaching sermons which
Edwards and Voltaire, Whitefield and Tom Paine, would heartily and
equally enjoy.
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