plough, was to be seen. All had been swept away by the river which had risen during the night, while poor Griffith, in a dream, was selling luscious watermelons at three dollars apiece.
California has always offered peculiar attractions to clergymen. The opportunities for doing good were great during the flush times, and many availed themselves of them. As a rule the most talented preachers at the east were glad to come to California upon a good call with a fair salary. Their congregations here were so fresh, so full of the fire and enthusiasm of 3"oung manhood, so keenly appreciative, that it was a pleasure to labor among them.
Ministers were obliged to work harder here than in more settled communities, but few cared for that. Everybody worked harder. There was much to do, and the emissaries of Satan were no less active than were the servants of God. They had their old sermons to fall back upon, which was a great help, particularly to those somewhat advanced in years. Very old clergymen California did not care for.
It only shows with what thin pabulum those who sit in pews are satisfied when they expect a man of ordinary ability to write two sermons a week, to make frequent parochial visits, indulge in society gossip, attend marriages and nativities, and offer the consolations of religion to the dying.
This is right enough when one has the fathomless well of genius, like Beecher, to draw from, but it will not do for those who are obliged to elaborate their slow stale thoughts, as most men are, in the closet. One sermon fit to preach before a really intelligent audience requires the diligent thought and study of an ordinary intellect for at least a fortnight.
It were infinitely better for the average clergyman to read printed sermons than to preach the trash he does. How few discourses have any thing new or really instructive in them I The same ideas, hashed
