Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

I might have done. I came into frequent contact with the Rev. Charles Simeon, and with many of his enthusiastic disciples. Every Sunday I had to write from memory an abstract of the sermon he preached in our village. Even at that period of my life I had a taste for generalization. Accordingly, having generalized some of Mr. Simeon’s sermons up to a kind of skeleton form, I tried, by way of experiment, to fill up such a form in a sermon of my own composing from the text of “Alexander the coppersmith hath done us much harm.” As well as I remember, there were in my sermon some queer deductions from this text; but then they fulfilled all the usual conditions of our sermons: so thought also two of my companions to whom I communicated in confidence this new man­u­fac­ture. {24} 〈COMPOSES SERMONS.〉 By some unexplained circumstance my sermon relating to copper being isomorphous with Simeon’s own productions, got by substitution into the hands of our master as the recollections of one of the other boys. Thereupon arose an awful explosion which I decline to paint. I did, however, learn something at this school, for I observed a striking illustration of the Economy of Man­u­fac­tures. Mr. Simeon had the cure of a very wicked parish in Cambridge, whilst my instructor held that of a tolerably decent country village. If each minister had stuck to the in­struc­tion of his own parish, it would have necessitated the man­u­fac­ture of four sermons per week, whilst, by this beneficial interchange of duties, only two were required. Each congregation enjoyed also another advantage from this arrangement—the advantage of variety, which, when moderately indulged in, excites the appetite.