CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WAY TO KEEP FRESH.
How to get out of the old rut without twisting off the wheel, or snapping the shafts, or breaking the horse's leg, is a question not more appropriate to every teamster than to every Christian worker.

Having once got out of the old rut, the next thing is to keep out.

There is nothing more killing than ecclesiastical humdrum.

Some persons do not like the Episcopal Church because they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but have we not for the last ten years been hearing the same prayers over and over again, the product of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not the thousandth part of the excellency of those petitions that we hear in the Episcopal Church?
In many of our churches sinners hear the same exhortations that they have been hearing for the last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows, the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said; and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our children the multiplication table forward or backward.

We could not understand the doleful strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and has been using it ever since.
There are laymen who do not like to hear a sermon preached the second time who yet give their pastors the same prayer every week at the devotional meeting--that is, fifty-two times the year, with occasional slices of it between meals.