he said, in a loud voice that silenced every chattering
tongue, "we have met here to enjoy ourselves. There is but one of your
Sunday lessons which I will remind you of to-day. It is this,--`Whether
ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.'
Before beginning, then, let us ask God's blessing."

Thereupon he asked a blessing, which was also so brief, that, but for
the all-prevailing name of Jesus, with which he closed it, some of those
who heard him would scarce have deemed it a prayer at all. Yet this
elderly clergyman was not always brief.

He was not brief, for instance, in his private prayers for himself, his
friends, and his flock. Brevity did not mark his proceedings when
engaged in preparing for the Sabbath services. He was not brief when,
in his study, he pleaded with some awakened but unbelieving soul to cast
itself unreservedly on the finished work of our Saviour. He was a man
who carried his tact and common-sense into his religious duties; who
hated formalism, regarding it as one of the great stumbling-blocks in
the progress of Christianity, and who endeavoured at all times to suit
his words and actions to the circumstances of the occasion.

The children regarded him with a degree of affection that was all but
irrepressible, and which induced them, at his earnest request, to sit
still for a considerable time while his young brother gave them "a
_short_ address." He was almost emphatic on the word _short_, but the
young curate did not appear to take the hint, or to understand the
meaning of that word either in regard to discourses or surtouts. He
asserted himself in his surtouts and vests, without of course having a
shadow of reason for so doing, save that some other young curates
asserted themselves in the same way; and he asserted himself then and
there in a tone of voice called "sermonising," to which foolish young
men are sometimes addicted, and which, by the way, being a false, and
therefore irreligious tone, is another great stumbling-block in the way
of Christianity. And, curiously enough, this young curate was really an
earnest, though mistaken and intensely bigoted young man. We call him
bigoted, not because he held his own opinions, but because he held by
his little formalities with as much apparent fervour as he held by the
grand doctrines of his religion, although for the latter he had the
authority of the Word, while for the former he had merely the authority
of m