There is an amusing anecdote related of a country curate, who having
published a volume of sermons, in which he more particularly pointed out
the dangers of a lax morality, and the want of strict religious principles
among the higher classes of society, wrote a few weeks afterwards to a
friend in town, inquiring in his extreme simplicity, "whether he did not
observe any signs of reformation in the fashionable world?" the answer
that he obtained may easily be divined. The good man had entirely
forgotten that those who most needed his exhortations, were precisely
those who would not read them; or who, if they read, would be the last to
attend to them. If books could reform the world, it had been reformed long
ago; but no disparagement either to good books--something else is
necessary.
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