Then, again, there are my more immediate friends. Why do not they go to church or chapel? Not certainly because they want a day's outing, for they have plenty of that every day, and just lie about upon the Sunday, and in a respectable way "loaf." To be sure, they are not perhaps very much inclined to worship at all, but I know some who are religious and devout men, who spend the day, in fact, religiously, but who do not care to go to sing and pray, and hear preaching in public. And thus I am very much perplexed, and, as my habit is, cast myself upon my own consciousness, and try and find what comes from the interrogation of that. "Now, Mr. Vane," I say, "why don't you go to Salem ? There you are lying upon your back sunning yourself at the window, and watching the people going out of town, and I am afraid criticising them not in the most Christian-like way; why are you, sir, an absentee?"

"Oh," I say, "my dear conscience, don't you know that I am an invalid; that I am really very poorly; that I could not possibly get to Salem to-day? I could not bear the journey; if I were there I could not sit up for that long morning service."

"Indeed," replies my other self, "are you quite sure of that? are you as ill as you think yourself? Were you not quite as bad, or rather worse, in fact, last Wednesday, when the literary association met, and you managed to get out to that?”

"But, my dear conscience," I say soothingly, "come, now, that's too bad; you know quite well that I have taken some of Jackson's mixture that he sent me last week, and he said I must be careful not to excite myself after that, but keep quite quiet."

"Yes," replies conscience," but that came on Tuesday last. You know you might have taken it then."

I interrupt, and " But you forget there was the literary meeting, conscience, on Wednesday morning."

Conscience smiles, and looks towards Salem, and wonders whether there is not Salem and her worship to-day.

The fact is conscience is a cunning jade, and a very uncomfortable arguer. She has a way about her that is tantalizing. She will not see the force of reasoning at all. Indeed, I think she is a bit unfair in the advantages she takes, and so, somewhat testily I fear, I bid her be still; that she knows nothing about it; that I am very "queer" indeed, and altogether unfit for going out to-day.

And with that here comes Jackson.

"Hallo! have you not been out? not at chapel, Vane? how is that?"

"Well," I say, a little annoyed that he should seem to be taking the side of conscience, "did you not tell me that I was to keep quiet after that mixture of yours? and I thought I had better stay in to-day."

"To be sure," answers the doctor. "I sent you that last Tuesday."

"Yes; and I thought it best to wait until to-day-a quiet day, you know."

"Exactly; I'll be in in the afternoon," and away goes Jackson. Conscience laughs quite maliciously. That is not fair of C. Two against one is not just in these things. "But there it is," I begin to say. 'Why should I then choose Sunday for keeping quiet? I am a strong defender of public worship. Rebuke the publican, triumph over Tom Larkin, somewhat severely now and then fall upon Leach and Jackson; and here am I, when a slight excuse offers itself, not at all unwilling to absent myself from Salem." Conscience is once more busy at her arguments. "Well, there," I say. "Please! I think you are right. Just give me a little space, and I will think about it."

And, reader, do you know anything of the Sunday stay-at-homeness. Of course, you are an earnest Sunday-school teacher. You are at your post at nine o'clock, perhaps having had a prayermeeting at seven, as a sort of snack before the regular meals of the day begin. Eleven, chape!; half-past two, school again. Then, prayer-meeting of teachers. Half-past six, chapel (evening); after which a prayer-meeting with the class scholars winds up the day. Of course you are one of these blessed people who never stay at home, who feel no natural aversion to chapel-going on Sunday. But your brother there, who is bothering you to let him have the magazine, that he might see "what that fellow Vane is saying this month," he, a very decent and respectable Christian in his way, member of the church, and indeed Sunday-school teacher also, somewhat irregular though, he, I say, is perpetually guilty of some of these absences. He, I know, sympathises with me, and Larkin perhaps sometimes. What is it, then, I ask?

It is not enough to say that men are indisposed. Why should they be indisposed? Some, alas, too many! care not for worship, because they care not for Him who is worshipped. The question in their case resolves itself into the earlier one. Why are they not religious, believing, Christ loving and serving? This too often has to be answered. Men cannot worship Him in whom they do not believe. They will not desire to meet with Him whom they do not love. Too many of my friends who stream country-wards upon the Sunday are of this class. We must arouse in them first of all the sense of their Divine childhood before they will seek after their Father, or desire communion with others who are His children. How to do this is a serious problem for Salem and the rest to solve. Some other time I may refer to it; but now I can only mention it and pass on.

For I am afflicted with my own difficulties. Why should I, Timothy Vane, Christian man, member of Salem, why should I be not unwilling to stay away from chapel? Why should so many of my friends, also in their way religious I believe, never go at all?

There must be some natural aversion to chapel-going and churchgoing. Is it a part of our natural depravity, and do we inherit it from Adam himself? Did he make excuses very often, and send his wife to represent him in the paradise conventicle? To be sure, David says, he would gladly be a doorkeeper (that is the thyroegus,. whom we shall next discuss) in the house of the Lord. But then we must remember that he was at this time an exile, and anything in the way of civilised life and religious service would have been pleasant. Sometimes, I have no doubt, even the sweet singer made an excuse for staying at home, and took, as so many people do, Sunday physic. It is a part of the old man that must be crucified and slain.

(Conscience smiles now approvingly.)

Stop a bit though. I am not going to make myself quite such a miserable sinner as all that. Has not Salem something to answer for too? Just look at these windows. They are dim with the condensed vapour of the atmosphere inside. Glimpses through the clerestory indeed! Why, I cannot see anything but the most shadowy of forms. Is it nothing to endure that for an hour and a half? Iam delicate, conscience. To-day very poorly, though you don't believe it. If I went in there I should be ever so much worse to-morrow, perhaps altogether laid up, and then there would be an end to these useful and brilliant lucubrations of mine in the Christian World Magazine.

(Conscience begins to look penitent. I am feeling quite triumphant.)

And there, my inward monitor, just look at that. Naophylax has opened a window-ventilator they call it. The steam is clearing away from the glass; he can just see through now. That's my seat. There's a strange lady in it. The feathers-nay, the very ribbons of her bonnet are floating like streamers in the gale. That would have been upon my head if it had been there, and I could not put on my hat. Sneezing, influenza, neuralgia, sore throat, fever, unexpected end, general mourning of Salem, Market Brampton, and the religious world.

(Conscience, are you not ashamed of yourself?)

But there are graver causes than these to be found in Salem's shortcomings.

We have a very good minister. Considering the unimportance of the ministerial office as it seems to me in my side lights,* I should

*See Chapter II.

say altogether a better man than Salem could expect. He is in fact larger by at least fifty pounds than the Naophylax. His wife is quite as lady-like as the pew-opener. To be sure she is not as gay as the leading soprano, and perhaps does not present so perfectly a resigned appearance as the widow of the late minister. Still, with one or two of these drawbacks, Watson is a very decent fellow, and we are good friends. He is a scholar, or at least promises to become one. But he does not always conduct the service in such a way as makes me long to be present. There, for example, is the second deacon, whom they have lately made precentor, a very worthy old fellow, but his reading of the hymns sounds to me simply atrocious. I shudder when he comes to some verses. I took Jackson with me one day, and I thought he would have exploded. He never will accompany me again. Salem does not notice it much. She has grown accustomed to bad hymnreading. But strangers are sometimes pained and more often unimpressed. The hymns might be made emphatically part of the worship. Well read (Watson can do it himself) they would suggest thoughts devout and worshipful.

Then, again, the prayers are long, often too didactic; elegant information addressed to the Most High concerning His attributes and perfections. Who wants that? as I often say to Watson. We do not, and you may be sure He knows it all. True, lately there has been an improvement. Poor fellow, he has lost a child, and the change which has come over his prayers are remarkable. They are now communings with the Almighty. They at times take up our needs, and in the common lot of sorrow breathe the desires of the people. I would not wish Watson sorrow that he may learn these lessons, but I fancy if he knew his people better, their sorrows might then become by sympathy his own, and in the furnace of their affliction he would gain the spirit which would fill our worship and prayer at Salem with that which now it needs.

It is this that men who too often stay away from church lack when they go there. The people who go out for the Sunday cry aloud for fresh air and life. The very same in spirit and moral nature is the need in our places of worship. Men want reality, rest; they do not get it in the corpse-like forms which worship takes, in the cold, unsympathetic prayers, in the singing which pleaseth neither God nor man, in the mere teacher-like attitude of the occupant of the pulpit. A bloodless religion may conceal its death under artistic forms, but will never seize the people. It is not that a lower order of ministry will suffice; the fact is, a higher order both of mind and culture is required for the work. But the need is not here so pressing as in a wider form of heart. Even intelligent and learned men do not require from the pulpit a great

display of learning, nor yet much exercise of the mental powers. We have enough of that in our books and studies. But we want men of wide sympathies-men who have sinned, and sorrowed, and struggled, and lost, and been forgiven, and triumphed like ourselves. In all this we want profounder intellect, larger culture, but chiefly wider heart-men who know all ages, the thoughts, the feelings of other times, of those who spake strange languages, and thought in foreign ways, but yet men who recognise humanity in all, and see it nowhere so real, so living, so terribly needy as in the present day. With this spirit even that damp and musty St. Peter's will be filled; and a life will come into the high developments of the district church which, now making to the people its foolish ritual a very real thing, will in time be too strong and good for vestment, and incense, and candles, and genuflexion, and, breaking through all these childishnesses of its early years, destroy them and cast them away, and leave everywhere men speaking to men, to brothers, to sisters; rather a Christ speaking by them, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." So that once again it shall be true that "the common people heard Him gladly," and never before such a fulfilment of His own words, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."

HESTER GOLDERING'S SACRIFICE.

BY MAGGIE SYMINGTON.

CHAPTER III.-AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS.

How delightful it is to awaken and feast one's eyes upon the glories that surround us here! I would not be Violet for the whole world; there she lies, slumbering still, while the sun shines over the icepeaked mountains and glints across the bosom of the glassy lake. I arose early and threw up my window, and drew in in long breaths the invigorating mountain air. I think I must have imbibed some of the heroic spirit of Tell with it from the Swiss hills he loved dearly enough to brave the tyrant and his myrmidons for, my heart seems to expand with a full sense of freedom within my bosom.

Perhaps a memory of our emancipation has something to do with it, for Violet and I are only within the last month released from the tyranny of masters and mistresses. We spent last winter in Paris, and now we are taking a leisurely tour, through these summer months, before proceeding to England. I have been anticipating