POTTED SERMONS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 215, 10 September 1908, Page 2

POTTED SERMONS.

The "canned sermon" is the latest Chicago products A popular minister in that city offers phonograph records of his own discourses to any church of any denomination whose pastorwishes to take a vacation during the summer heat. He guarantees that they will be found interesting. Jn commenting .on this innovation, an American paper suggests that the up-to-date twentieth century church, equipped with "canned sermons ahd^ canned music, will only need to lay m some praying machines fitted with electric motors to' reach a state of automatic perfection. But it is pointed out that the minister who lightheartedly welcomes this assistance may discover that it has unexpected consequences. It is very well to get an automatic substitute during the hot months, but what if the congregation comes to prefer the eloquence of the machine to that of its own pastor? Will it continue to pay him a salary when it can procure better sermons at a cheaper rate? The time may come, it is humorously predicted, when the preaching for the whole country will be done by half-a-dozen silver-tongued speakers, constituting the canned sermon trust,- arid undertaking to supply any brand of doctrine that may be called for, with a "side line" in funeral and wedding services.