avoided the concourse of the wicked and worshipped in "Welcome Bethel." The town of which I am thinking contained about two thousand people, nine-tenths of whom belonged to the parish church, and of the remaining number only about five and twenty to that society in which alone were the faithful, as they called themselves, gathered. Thus only twenty-five, just a choice fragment, would be rescued; all others would inevitably and happily perish. That God should thus have a favor towards the one moiety of the population, and a special hatred for all other sorts and conditions of men, was highly satisfactory to those who belonged to the aforesaid five and twenty. Had the number been even smaller, those left would have been better pleased. A man naturally loves to think himself the one selected out of a multitude for some work or for some blessing.

Indeed, is there in this world a joy half so great as that of being in a minority? There one has sympathy, unity, hope; and what is more, the assurance of being absolutely and infallibly in the right. I have known Churchmen who have longed for this joy as ardently as did ever Dissenter -that is to say, if one might judge from their lack of effort to win outsiders to them. Even a majority learns to pity a minority, and, pity being akin to love, the keenness of the opposition is taken off, and peace might ensue if the minority so desired-which thing the minority never does desire, ever loving a little persecution. Nor is this unnatural, for persecution always hurts the persecutor rather than the persecuted, and shows more glaringly the cruelty and wickedness of the former, and more comfortingly the resignation and virtue of the latter. Both Foxe and Neal, and even Walker, would lose half their charm-if by a stretch of imagination you can suppose them to have any-were the stories of the sufferings taken out of them. You read them, not so much to know how men of your own side endured, but to ascertain how wicked were the people on the other side. Besides, there is a satisfaction in being whipped, imprisoned and tormented, and everybody knows that the Early Church had to restrain the people from rushing to martyrdom. In England no Dissenter would like the memory of certain acts of parliament to pass away. They prove better than anything else the iniquity of the Church and the virtue of nonconformity.

This curious perversity of human nature is further apparent whenever a small band of trusty ones swells into a considerable multitude. The sweetness of the minority, the deliciousness of persecution and the charm of breaking the law are gone. The little meeting-house grows into a big

temple. Once ten happy souls railed against the world and congratulated themselves on being out of it; now a thousand people, free from trial, sit in splendor and solitude, and wonder what it is that has destroyed the sociability. In the one house the ten sat on deal benches, wore faded and ill-fitting clothes, used snuff and peppermint, saw white-washed walls and heard a brother preach from behind a table lighted by two or three candles stuck in pewter sticks, and without a cloth upon it; now, the thousand sit in cushioned pews, amid surroundings which make a cathedral appear poverty-stricken, and listen to orators and musicians whose work is artistically perfect, but who, somehow or other, fail to touch the soul. And this verger-how comes the name into a place where the Gospel is preached and the pews are arranged like the seats of a theatre?-this verger, with smooth hair and undertaker's costume, who goes stealthily about the building to turn up the gas and to shut pew doors, is not half so pleasing as was old Brother Elton, the stout, red-faced butcher, when in the little chapel ever and anon he went up to the deal table aforementioned and said, "Brother Higgins, stop a minute while I snuff the candles "-which act he performed with his fingers, perhaps remarking as he did so, "Yes, that be truth! that be truth!" No one ever gets up in this sanctuary of splendor and tells, as once in the old place Joe, the carpenter, did, of the vicar's meanness. The parson had beat Joe down twopence in a bill of a shilling for mending the back of a currying brush. "I tell you," said Joe, on that memorable occasion, "the parson be a hard man. He do defraud the labourer of his hire. He be particularly down on we chapel folks. Poor Sister Mary there could not get a red gown from him because she didn't go to church, and when she offered to go he wouldn't change his mind. And yet he keeps a horse and calls himself a minister. A manmade minister, says I, just about fit for folks as plays cricket and wants sermons read to them." Such experiences are now left untold-not because parsons have grown better, for being heirs of perdition their destiny is otherwise, but because in these new associations the charm of minority has vanished. Nobody says or does anything to hurt the feelings of the faithful. The congregation is rich, and rather than be in that wild wilderness of freedom and power, many of its members long for the fleshpots and onions of the house of bondage. By-and-by a few of these dissatisfied ones will secede, and again form a happy minority in some courtyard. Then will they accuse the brethren they have left as vigorously as once they lifted up with them their hearts and voices against the Church, and they will enjoy at the hands of these same brethren a little of that persecution which makes life worth living.

Now there was John Alcock, a hedge-cutter and ditcher, who with his wife and seven or eight other individuals, met every Lord's Day in his downstairs' front room to worship God according to John's own conscience. John was a good man, and while one would not compare him with the vicar-whose virtues were in the opinion of his own people of an extraordinary type, and whose wickedness every dissenter in that part of the country had known for years,-yet he was quite as upright an individual as the parish clerk. His prevailing infirmity was his dislike of the "Establishment," though he did not know whether he hated more the scarlet lady of Rome than he did a scarlet-coated hunting parson; in which uncertainty he continued all his life, for he never saw either, and honestly supposed that when querulous folk talked of Popish germs in the Church of England they mostly referred to the garb of the foxhunter or to the hood of the Doctor. He never knew what Romanism was, and never got beyond the conclusion that Anglicanism equalled it in badness. If there was any wickedness in this world it was to be found in the Church-every murderer who was hanged and every thief who was transported were attended by clergymen. No Baptists, for instance, ever went to prison. As to the Prayer Book it was full of error from lid to lid. "Common,' do they call it?" he would say; "yes, common as are sin and ignorance." The only thing the parson did that had any efficacy in it was marrying folks. That was certainly binding. But as to his bought sermons and his cut-anddried prayers, they were naught, and he would have none of them. They grated on his conscience. So a few friends and neighbors, who agreed to follow John's conscience rather than the parson's conscience, met in John's cottage every Sunday for worship.

The worship was simple. First came a hymn from Denham's collection-a book containing over eleven hundred spiritual melodies and highly valued by the poor and persecuted people, for whom they were composed, scattered over the midland counties. This was sung mostly by brother John himself, and considering that he had passed his fiftieth year without developing any remarkable taste or talent for song, he deserved much credit. Others would join in as the notes or words came within their compass. When the hymn had an unusual number of verses-seven was the average-John would sing about two-thirds of the way through, and then, stopping, desire sister Rebeccah to take up the strain. Sister Rebeccah's voice was sorrowful and tremulous, for she had suffered much from a husband who clipped the Vicar's trees, and provided the Vicar's owl with sparrows and mice. Altogether the hymn lasted some fifteen

minutes: it was read once through, sometimes commented upon, then one verse at a time was read and sung; a suitable tune had to be found and tried, and in the singing favorite notes were appropriately dwelt upon. A chapter of Scripture followed-John either skipped the hard words or simply spelled their letters. Twenty minutes were then devoted to prayer, though sinful it is to call such an exercise by so sacred a name. If it were, as the good folks called it, an outpouring of John's soul, John had a soul of deplorable texture. At times it was as though John were addressing the Almighty as a colonel addresses his regiment before the men enter the battle or begin the review: he would have Him arise, scatter His enemies, vindicate His cause, cast down the rich and the proud, confound ail who wear surplices, and generally clear both the plague-impregnated atmosphere and the sin-filled town. At other times the tones were such as a lover would utter to his lass, tender, sweet, enticing-such as some said were enough to fetch tears from the hardest heart; though, it is probable, that when that observation was made man rather than God was thought of. But John meant well enough and expressed his industry and sympathy in another hymn.

Afterwards Brother George Zebulon Smith read a sermon preached and printed by that remarkable man, Philpott, once a priest of the Church of England, but since plucked as a brand from the burning and secured in the fold of those who do not believe that children belong to the kingdom of God, or that baptism means other than submersion. Rumor held that this Philpott had found much difficulty in leaving the Establishment: his bishop threatened to have him locked up, and did distress him of all his household goods. He wrote a quarto tract, in which he set forth with commendable brevity his reason for leaving the Church. This tract was held to be most precious by those people among whom he afterwards cast his lot, and copies of it are now scarce. The good man once wrote to John, who had addressed him anent the iniquity of the Crimean war, and the letter was pasted in John's Bible on the page which contains some words to the Most High and Mighty Prince James-which words by most rightthinking folks are considered indecorous and unscriptural, and by all John's friends were thought in style and grace to be far inferior to the Philpottian epistle. Sometimes the sermon was one of John Gadsby's, a decent Londoner and the proprietor of the "Gospel Standard," or the "Earthen Vessel "-two magazines held in high esteem by all who knew the truth. But from whatever source the discourse came, it ever contained some bits of solid predestinarian divinity, and some attacks upon the Church of

England. Without these qualities it would have been graceless and lifeless.

And herein was something marvellous. The Church of England did no more to these people than ignore them. She said nothing concerning them. They went their own way, and if the vicar had invited them to church and there had held a service such as their soul loved, they would have abused him with freshened vigor. Not one of them paid tithe or rate-not even the Easter penny; not one of them need touch the Book of Common Prayer or see a surplice. Yet first of the essentials of their sermons and prayers was railing accusation against the Church. Possibly in this they were helpless to this very thing were they predestinated. It never seems, however, to have occurred to them that predestination might not have been confined to them.

Brother George Zebulon, who always read the discourse, was not himself as good as the rest of the flock thought he should be. He kept a small grocer's shop, and was suspected of tampering with the quality of his goods and with the accounts of his customers, but he frequented the society of the righteous and had a good voice for reading. So he was tolerated and prayed for. Nor was it forgotten that he had been confirmed and brought up in the Church, till about nineteen years of age.

The sermon over, another hymn was sung and the company went home to dinner-just fifteen minutes before the Wesleyan Chapel let out, and twenty minutes before morning service was ended at the Church.

What will be the end of this sort of thing? No one knows. The Salvation Army people are still holding forth outside of the front door of the inn; and the feeling in England between Churchman and nonconformist is not less than it was thirty years since. You may crack your nuts after dinner, but this is a nut no man can crack. I am not inclined to "spread eagleism," but I utter the words of wisdom and soberness when I say that the spirit which I lament to find so rife in England is almost unknown in America. Here Ephraim does not vex Judah, nor does Judah trouble himself about Ephraim. The lamb and the lion lie down together, and so far as I know no sect is anxious to find out whether it be the lion or the lamb. We deplore our divisions and our differences, but we do not snarl or bite at one another; on the contrary, we honestly hope that some day God will enable us to see eye to eye and to become one, at least in heart and mind. There is little of this feeling in England, and notwithstanding anything I may have said which would seem to suggest that my sympathies were in one direction only, I fear that the fault lies as