t. Other communion would be a
happiness,--to break together the bread of mutual thought, to
drink the wine of loving life,--but it is not necessary.

'Yet I cannot but feel that the crowd of men whose pursuits
are not intellectual, who are not brought by their daily walk
into converse with sages and poets, who win their bread from
an earth whose mysteries are not open to them, whose worldly
intercourse is more likely to stifle than to encourage the
sparks of love and faith in their breasts, need on that
day quickening more than repose. The church is now rather a
lecture-room than a place of worship; it should be a school
for mutual instruction. I must rejoice when any one, who lays
spiritual things to heart, feels the call rather to mingle
with men, than to retire and seek by himself.

'You speak of men going up to worship by "households," &c.
Were the actual family the intellectual family, this might be;
but as social life now is, how can it? Do we not constantly
see the child, born in the flesh to one father, choose in the
spirit another? No doubt this is wrong, since the sign does
not stand for the thing signified, but it is one feature of
the time. How will it end? Can families worship together till
it does end?

* * * * *

'I have let myself be cheated out of my Sunday, by going to
hear Mr. ----. As he began by reading the first chapter
of Isaiah, and the fourth of John's Epistle, I made mental
comments with pure delight. "Bring no more vain oblations."
"Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "We
know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because he hath
given us of the Spirit." Then pealed the organ, full of
solemn assurance. But straightway uprose the preacher to deny
mysteries, to deny the second birth, to deny influx, and to
renounce the sovereign gift of insight, for the sake of what
he deemed a "_rational_" exercise of will. As he spoke I could
not choose but deny him all through, and could scarce refrain
from rising to expound, in the light of my own faith, the
words of those wiser Jews which had been read. Was it not a
sin to exchange friendly greeting as we parted, and yet tell
him no word of what was in my mind?

'Still I saw why he looked at things as he did. The old
religionists did talk about "gr