Mr. Aubrey de Vere once said of the Reverend Frederick Denison Maurice, "Listening to him was like eating pea soup with a fork." When it came to sheer creative dullness, none could equal the Reverend Fred (1805-1872)!
We will probably never know what Reverend Fred's sermons were about... not because no copies exist, but because... well, let's hear from Sir Mounstuart Grant, one of the Reverend's most avid fans:
"I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty for forty times, and never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant."
Apparently, very little of what Rev. Fred said made any sense at all. Dr Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College at Oxford, was once asked to summarize one of Rev. Fred's addresses:
"Well, all that I could make out was that today was yesterday and this world is the same as the next."
Reverend Fred had some serious competition, though, albeit 2 centuries earlier. Dr Robert South was said to have put his entire congregation to sleep in 1689, including the King of England! At one point in his sermon, he interrupted himself to say:
"My Lord Lauderdale, rouse yourself. You snore so loud that you will wake the king."
