Jane Austen on the "mega-church"

In Mansfield Park, chapter 9, Fanny and Edmund are discussing the importance of the clergyman with the disdainful Miss Crawford. Miss Crawford has just observed that don’t have much influence over their congregations, even if they preach “two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair’s to his own (my footnote says that many preachers of that day would read the well-known and eloquent Rev. Hugh Blair’s sermons rather than preach their own...nothing new under the sun, hmmm?)

Edmund supposes she is speaking of large congregations in London, while he is referring to the rest of the nation.

“We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the largest part only as preachers…”