They seemed to say, "Some of our poor men cannot do so
much as think clearly yet; we will try to translate their dumb craving."
Charles Dickens, that good man, that very great man, should have heard
the two evangelists; he would have altered some of the savage opinions
that lacerated his gallant heart. To me, the talk and the prayers of
such men are entrancing as a merely literary experience; the balanced
simplicity, and the quivering earnestness are so exactly adapted to the
one end desired.
Blair's sermon was brief and straightforward; he talked no secondhand
formalities from the textbooks; he met his hearers as men, and they took
every word in with complete understanding. When I hear a man talking to
the fishers about the symbolism of an ephod, I always want to run away.
What is needed is the human voice, coming right from the human heart:
cut and dried theological terms only daze the fisherman; he is too
polite to look bored, but he suffers all the same. I fancy Blair's
little oration might be summed up thus: Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--and I do not know that
you can go much further. The wild Kurd in the desert will say to you, "I
cannot do that. It is a shame"; he has no power of reasoning, but he
_knows_; and I take it that the fishers are much like him when their
minds are cleared alike of formalism and brutality. Many of the men were
strongly moved as Blair went on, and Lewis saw that our smiling preacher
had learned to cast away subtleties.
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