INTONETG A DEVOUT EXPRESSION. 155 



and I was surprised to hear it among the higher class of En- 

 glish clergy, and for a time perplexed to account for it. But 

 I at length remembered that nearly all men in reading Scrip 

 ture, or in oral prayer, or in almost any public religious ex 

 ercises, use a very different tone and mode of utterance from 

 that which is usual or natural with them, either in conversa 

 tion or in ordinary reading. And this is more noticeable in 

 persons of uncultivated minds; so it is probably an impulse 

 to distinguish and disassociate religious exercises from the 

 common duties of life, that induces it. The effect is, that the 

 reading of the Bible, for instance, instead of being a study of 

 truth, or an excitement to devotion and duty, as the indi 

 vidual may intend, becomes an act of praise or prayer the 

 real, unconscious purpose of the reader, finding expression in 

 his tone and manner. So- we may often hear the most arrant 

 nonsense in oral prayers; a stringing together of scriptural 

 phrases and devout words in confusing and contradicting sen 

 tences, while the tone and gesture and the whole manner of 

 the devotee show that he is most sincerely, feelingly, enthu 

 siastically in earnest supplication. What for ? Not for that 

 which his words express, for they may express nonsense or 

 utter blasphemy. It is simply an expression or manifesta 

 tion by the act of uttering words in a supplicating tone, of the 

 sense of dependence on a superior Being of love, of grati 

 tude, and of reverence. David did the same thing by dancing 

 and playing upon the harp. It is done now, as it seems to 

 us, more solemnly, by the playing upon church organs. It is 

 done by monuments, as in the decorations of churches. It is 

 done by the Catholics, in listening and responding to prayers 

 in a language which they don t pretend to understand, and in 

 mechanically repeating others, the number of them counted 

 by beads, measuring the importance or intensity. of their pur 

 pose. It is done by abstaining from meat on Friday, and by 



