Sydney Smith, with his usual sagacity, says that the last vice of the
pulpit is to be uninteresting. Now, the Interpreter's House had this
prime virtue in it, that it was all interesting. Do not our children beg
of us on Sabbath nights to let them see the Interpreter's show once more;
it is so inexhaustibly and unfailingly interesting? It is only stupid
men and women who ever weary of it. But, 'profitable' was the one and
universal word with which all the pilgrims left the Interpreter's House.
'Rare and pleasant,' they said, and sometimes 'dreadful;' but it was
always 'profitable.' Now, how seldom do we hear our people at the church
door step down into the street saying, 'profitable'? If they said that
oftener their ministers would study profit more than they do. The people
say 'able,' or 'not at all able'; 'eloquent,' or 'stammering and
stumbling'; 'excellent' in style and manner and accent, or the opposite
of all that; and their ministers, to please the people and to earn their
approval, labour after these approved things. But if the people only
said that the prayers and the preaching were profitable and helpful, even
when they too seldom are, then our preachers would set the profit of the
people far more before them both in selecting and treating and delivering
their Sabbath-day subjects. A lady on one occasion said to her minister,
'Sir, your preaching does my soul good.' And her minister never forgot
the grave and loving look with which that was said. Not only did he
never forget it, but often when selecting his subject, and treating it,
and delivering it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience,
Will that do my friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable,' said the
pilgrim as he left the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter back
with new spirit and new invention to fill his house of still more
significant, rare, and profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate on
these things,' said Paul to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thy
profiting may appear unto all.' 'Thou art a minister of the word,' wrote
the learned William Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thy
business.'