His
sermon was exceedingly simple, and the delivery quite in an off-hand
conversational style. There was no reading.
In the evening we heard Dr. Bushnell preach, on behalf of the American
Home-Missionary Society, at the "Church of the Pilgrims" in Brooklyn.
This is a fine costly building, named in honour of the Pilgrim Fathers,
and having a fragment of the Plymouth Rock imbedded in the wall. The
sermon was a very ingenious one on Judges xvii. 13: "Then said Micah,
Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my
priest." The preacher observed that Micah lived in the time of the
Judges--what might be called the "emigrant age" of Israel,--that he was
introduced on the stage of history as a thief,--that he afterwards
became in his own way a saint, and must have a priest. First, he
consecrates his own son; but his son not being a Levite, it was
difficult for so pious a man to be satisfied. Fortunately a young
Levite--a strolling mendicant probably--comes that way; and he promptly
engages the youth to remain and act the _padre_ for him, saying, "Dwell
with me, and be a _father_ unto me.
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