human
his burden _very_
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He was a popular preacher; middle-aged; sleek, serene, solemn in his person and demeanor. He had a very gentlemanlike appearance in the pulpit and reading-desk. There was a sort of soothing, winning elegance and tenderness in the tone and manner in which he
human
and
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his
human
their bland and graceful pastor,
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Fit leader was he of such a flock. He read the prayers remarkably well, in a quiet and subdued tone, very distinctly, and with marked emphasis and intonation--in fact, in a most gentlemanly manner--having sedulously studied under a crack theatrical teacher of elocution, who had given him several
human
--in fact, a new reading entirely of one of the clauses in the Lord's Prayer; and which, he had the gratification of perceiving, produced a striking, if not, indeed, a startling effect. On the little finger of the hand which he used most, was to be observed the sparkle of a diamond ring; and there was a sort of careless grace in the curl of his hair, which it had taken his hairdresser at least half an hour, before Mr. Velvet's leaving home for his chapel, to secure. In the pulpit he was calm and fluent. _That_, he rightly considered, ought not to be the scene for attempting intellectual display. He took care, therefore, that there should be nothing in his sermons to arrest the _understanding_, or unprofitably occupy it; addressing himself entirely to the feelings and fancy of his cultivated audience, in frequently interesting and even charming imaginative compositions. On the occasion I am speaking of, he took for his text a fearful passage of Scripture, 2 Cor. iv. 3,--
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If any words were calculated to startle such a congregation as was arrayed before Mr. Velvet, out of their guilty and fatal apathy, were not these? Ought not their minister to have looked round him and trembled? So one would have thought; but
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knew his mission and his flock better. He presented them with an elegant description of heaven, with its crystal battlements, its jasper walls, its buildings of pure gold, its foundations of precious stones; its balmy air, its sounds of mysterious melody, its overflowing fulness of everlasting happiness--amid which friends, parted upon earth by the cruel stroke of death, recognize and are reunited to each other, never more to pronounce the agonizing word