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Mr. Bacon s parsonage was as humble a dwelling in all
respects as the cottage in which his friend Daniel was born.
A best kitchen was its best room, and in its furniture an
Observantine Friar would have seen nothing that he could
have condemned as superfluous. His college and later
school books, with a few volumes which had been presented
to him by the more grateful of his pupils, composed his
scanty library: they were either books of needful reference,
or such as upon every fresh perusal might afford new
delight. But he had obtained the use of the Church Library
at Doncaster by a payment of twenty shillings, according
to the terms of the foundation. Folios from that
collection might be kept three months, smaller volumes,
one or two, according to their size; and as there were
many works in it of solid contents as well as sterling value,
he was in no such want of intellectual food, as too many of
his brethren are, even at this time. How much good might
have been done, and how much evil might probably have
been prevented, if Dr. Bray's design for the foundation
of parochial libraries had been everywhere carried into
effect!

The parish contained between five and six hundred souls.
There was no one of higher rank among them than entitled
him, according to the custom of those days, to be styled

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gentleman upon his tombstone. They were plain people,
who had neither manufactories to corrupt, alehouses to
brutalize, nor newspapers to mislead them. At first coming
among them he had won their good-will by his affability
and benign conduct, and he had afterwards gained their
respect and affection in an equal degree.

There were two services at his church, but only one sermon,
which never fell short of fifteen minutes in length, and
seldom extended to half an hour. It was generally abridged
from some good old divine. His own compositions were
few, and only upon points on which he wished carefully
to examine and digest his own thoughts, or which were
peculiarly suited to some or other of his hearers. His whole
stock might be deemed scanty in these days; but there was
not one in it which would not well bear repetition, and the
more observant of his congregation liked that they should be
repeated.

Young ministers are earnestly advised long to refrain
from preaching their own productions, in an excellent little
book addressed by a Father to his Son, preparatory to his
receiving holy orders. Its title is a “Monitor for Young
Ministers,” and every parent who has a son so circumstanced
would do well to put it into his hands. “It is not
possible,” says this judicious writer, “that a young minister
can at first be competent to preach his sermons with effect,
even if his abilities should qualify him to write well. His
very youth and youthful manner, both in his style of writing
and in his delivery, will preclude him from being effective.
Unquestionably it is very rare indeed for a man of his age
to have his mental abilities sufficiently chastened, or his
method sufficiently settled, to be equal to the composition
of a sermon fit for public use, even if it should receive the
advantage of chaste and good delivery. On every account,
therefore, it is wise and prudent to be slow and backward in
venturing to produce his own efforts, or in thinking that

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they are fit for the public ear. There is an abundant field
of the works of others open to him from the wisest and the
best of men, the weight of whose little fingers, in argument
or instruction, will be greater than his own loins even at his
highest maturity. There is clearly no want of new compositions,
excepting on some new or occasional emergencies:
for there is not an open subject in the Christian religion,
which has not been discussed by men of the greatest learning
and piety, who have left behind them numerous works
for our assistance and edification. Many of these are so
neglected that they are become almost new ground for our
generation. To these he may freely resort, — till experience
and a rational and chastened confidence shall warrant
him in believing himself qualified to work upon his own
resources.”

“He that learns of young men,” says Rabbi Jose Bar
Jehudah, “is like a man that eats unripe grapes, or that
drinks wine out of the wine-press; but he that learneth of
the ancient, is like a man that eateth ripe grapes, and drinketh
wine that is old.”*

It was not in pursuance of any judicious advice like this
that Mr. Bacon followed the course here pointed out, but
from his own good sense and natural humility. His only
ambition was to be useful; if a desire may be called ambitious
which orginated in the sincere sense of duty. To
think of distinguishing himself in any other way, would for
him, he well knew, have been worse than an idle dream.
The time expended in composing a sermon as a perfunctory
official business, would have been worse than wasted for
himself, and the time employed in delivering it, no better
than wasted upon his congregation. He was especially
careful never to weary them, and, therefore, never to preach
anything which was not likely to engage their attention,
and make at least some present impression. His own

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sermons effected this, because they were always composed with
some immediate view, or under the influence of some deep
and strong feeling: and in his adopted ones, the different
manner of the different authors produced an awakening
effect. Good sense is as often to be found among the illiterate,
as among those who have enjoyed the opportunities
of education. Many of his hearers who knew but one
meaning of the word style, and had never heard it used in
any other, perceived a difference in the manner of Bishops
Hall and Sanderson and Jeremy Taylor, of Barrow and
South and Scott, without troubling themselves about the
cause, or being in the slightest degree aware of it.

Mr. Bacon neither undervalued his parishioners, nor over-valued
the good which could be wrought among them by
direct instruction of this kind. While he used perspicuous
language, he knew that they who listened to it would be
able to follow the argument; and as he drew always from
the wells of English undefiled, he was safe on that point.
But that all even of the adults would listen, and that all
even of those who did, would do anything more than hear,
he was too well acquainted with human nature to expect.

A woman in humble life was asked one day on the way
back from church, whether she had understood the sermon;
a stranger had preached, and his discourse resembled one of
Mr. Bacon's neither in length nor depth. “Wud I hae the
persumption?” was her simple and contented answer. The
quality of the discourse signified nothing to her; she had
done her duty, as well as she could, in hearing it; and she
went to her house justified rather than some of those who
had attended to it critically; or who had turned to the text
in their Bibles when it was given out.

“Well, Master Jackson,” said his minister, walking homeward
after service with an industrious laborer, who was a
constant attendant; “well, Master Jackson, Sunday must be
a blessed day of rest for you, who work so hard all the

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week! And you make a good use of the day, for you are
always to be seen at church!”—“Ay, sir,” replied Jackson,
“it is indeed a blessed day; I works hard enough all
the week, and then I comes to church o' Sundays, and sets
me down, and lays my legs up, and thinks o' nothing.”

“Let my candle go out in a stink, when I refuse to confess
from whom I have lighted it.”* The author to whose
little book† I am beholden for this true anecdote, after saying,
“Such was the religion of this worthy man,” justly
adds, “and such must be the religion of most men of his station.
Doubtless, it is a wise dispensation that it is so.
For so it has been from the beginning of the world, and
there is no visible reason to suppose that it can ever be
otherwise.”

“In spite,” says this judicious writer, “of all the zealous
wishes and efforts of the most pious and laborious teachers,
the religion of the bulk of the people must and will ever be
little more than mere habit, and confidence in others. This
must of necessity be the case with all men, who, from defect
of nature or education, or from other worldy causes, have
not the power or the disposition to think; and it cannot be
disputed that the far greater number of mankind are of this
class. These facts give peculiar force to those lessons
which teach the importance and efficacy of good example
from those who are blessed with higher qualifications; and
they strongly demonstrate the necessity, that the zeal of
those who wish to impress the people with the deep and
awful mysteries of religion should be tempered by wisdom
and discretion, no less than by patience, forbearance, and
a great latitude of indulgence for uncontrollable circumstances.
They also call upon us most powerfully to do all
we can to provide such teachers, and imbue them with such
principles as shall not endanger the good cause by over

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earnest efforts to effect more than, in the nature of things,
can be done; or disturb the existing good by attempting
more than will be borne, or by producing hypocritical pretences
of more than can be really felt.”