MR. COLERIDGE'S LAY-SERMON
TO THE EDITOR OF THE EXAMINER.
Jan. 12, 1817.
SIR,
Your last Sunday's "Literary Notice" has given me some uneasiness on two points.
It was in January, 1798, just 19 years ago, that I got up one morning before day-light to walk 10 miles in the mud, and went to hear a poet and a philosopher preach. It was the author of the "Lay-Sermon." Never, Sir, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one in the winter of the year 1798. Mr. Examiner, Il y a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne pent renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma mémoire. When I got there, Sir, the organ was playing the 100th psalm, and when it was done, Mr. C. rose and gave out his text, "And he went up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone." As he gave out this text, his voice "rose like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes," and when he came to the last two words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me. Sir, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, "of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey." The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. That sermon, like this Sermon, was upon peace and war; upon church and state—not their alli-
