Their
whole cast of phraseology is peculiar. You cannot hear five sentences
without feeling that you are listening to a dead or foreign language. To
put it into good current English you have to translate it, and the task
of translation is as hard, and requires as much study and practice, as
that of translating Greek or Hebrew. The language of the pulpit and of
religious books is a dialect to itself, and cannot be used in common
life or common affairs. If you try to apply it to anything but religion,
it becomes ridiculous, and a common kind of wit consists in speaking of
common things in pulpit phraseology. A foreign heathen might master our
language in its common and classical forms, and be able to understand
both our ordinary talk and our ablest authors, yet find himself quite at
a loss to understand an evangelical preacher or writer.
Even if our heathen understood religion in its simpler and more natural
forms, he would still be unable to understand the common run of
religious talkers and writers. If he had religion to learn from such
teachers and writers, he would have a double task, first, to get the
ideas, and then to learn the uncouth and unnatural language. This
peculiar dialect is quite unnecessary. The style of a preacher or a
religious writer might be, and, allowing for a few terms, _ought_ to be,
the same as that of a man talking about ordinary affairs, and matters of
common interest and duty.
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