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John 15.5. Professor Campbell seems scarcely to recognize this practice in the Kirk. In discussing the several advantages and disadvantages of reading and repeating our discourses, he justly complained of the burden of the latter usage, as interfering with important pastoral engagements. (Campbell on Pulp. Eloquence” Lect. iv. On Past. Char. Lect. ix.) We might add—in the act of delivery, it is likely to deaden the affections by the anxious process of reciting, to divert the attention from the sentiment to the word, and to produce a hurried, monotonous, or inharmonious tone of address. Indeed, upon the whole, it is no more than a schoolboy’s exercise of ‘most unreasonable laboriousness,’ which Bishop Burnet conceives is possible for few to maintain, and with which the heart has as little necessary concern, as it is often supposed to have with the pages of the book. Compare Seeker’s Charges, p. 291. Fenelon’s Dialogues (ii.) Burnet’s Pastoral Care, ch. ix. Smith on the Pastoral Office. Lect. 20.