Pray for a short sermon
SIR: Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s lovely article (January issue) about the merits of short sermons put me in mind of my excellent vicar when I lived in Lancashire. I once said to him that he never preached a boring sermon and asked how he managed to achieve this.
His response was that he worked by the following drill: ‘I stand up, I tell ’em what I’m going to tell ’em, I tell ’em and then I sit down. Five minutes max.’
It is a formula I have often wished his fellow clergy would follow. Yours faithfully,
Jane Moth, Stone, Staffordshire
The fall of man
SIR: A conundrum for my fellow pedants. I see that, in the serious part of his amusing column in the January issue,
