I went, as usual about this time, to hear F. D. Maurice preach at Lincoln's Inn. I suppose I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty or 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.
Aubrey de Vere was quite right when he said that listening to him was like eating pea-soup with a fork, and Jowett's answer was no less to the purpose, when I asked him what a sermon which Maurice had just preached before the University was about, and he replied —
`Well! all that I could make out was that today was yesterday, and this world the same as the next.'
From Grant Duff, Notes, i. 78.