ers.
On three sides it had a wide gallery, the west end of which contained
the organ, with the Royal Arms as large as life in front. On either side
below the galleries were double rows of high pews, and down the centre
passage a row of open benches for the poor. Between these benches and
the altar, completely hiding the altar from the congregation, stood a
huge "three-decker." The pulpit, on a level with the galleries, was
reached by a staircase at the back; below that was "the reading desk,"
from which the curate said the prayers; and below that again, a smaller
desk, where, Sunday after Sunday, for thirty years, T. Bilby, parish
clerk and schoolmaster, gave out the hymns, read the notices, and
published the banns of marriage. He was short and stout; his hair was
white; he wore a black gown with deep velvet collar, ornamented with
many tassels and fringes; and he carried a staff of office.

It was a great missionary parish. The vicar, Daniel Wilson, was a son of
that well-known Daniel Wilson, sometime vicar of Islington, and
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. The Church Missionary College, where many
young missionaries sent out by the Church Missionary Society are
trained, stood in our midst; and it was within St. Mary's Church the
writer saw the venerable Bishop Crowther, of the Niger, ordain his own
son deacon. Mr. Bilby had at one time been a catechist and schoolmaster
in Sierra Leone, and was full of interesting stories of the mission work
amongst the freed slaves in that settlement. He had a magic lantern,
with many views of Africa, and of the churches and schools in the
mission fields, and often gave missionary lectures to the school
children. It was on one of these occasions, when he had been telling us
about his work abroad, and how he soon got to know when a black boy had
a dirty face, that he said: "While I was in Africa, I composed a hymn,
and taught the black children to sing it; and now there is not a
Christian school in any part of the world where my hymn is not known and
sung. I will begin it now, and you will all sing it with me." Then the
old man began:

"Here we suffer grief and pain."

Immediately every child in the room took it up, and sang with might and
main:

"Here we meet to part again;
In heaven we part no more."

We had always thought the familiar words were as old as the Bible
itself, and could scarcely believe they had been written by our own
old friend.

Soon after that