ulated in a respectable way to send good people to sleep, or to
freeze up the hot blood and marrow of his youthful hearers. Once and but
once there was a sensation in that chapel. It was a cold evening in the
very depth of winter. There was ice in the pulpit, and ice in the pew.
The very lamps seemed as if it was impossible for them to burn, as the
preacher in his heaviest manner discoursed of themes on which seraphs
might love to dwell. All at once rushed in a boy, exclaiming "Fire,
fire!" The effect was electric--in a moment that sleepy audience was
startled into life, every head was raised and every ear intent. Happily
the alarm was a false one, but for once people were awake, and kept so
till the sermon was done. It is the aim of Mr. Applebee in the same way
to rouse up the Unitarians, and in a certain sense he has succeeded. He
has now been preaching some eighteen months in London, in the old chapel
on Stoke Newington Green, where, for many years, Mrs. Barbauld was a
regular attendant, and where long the pulpit was filled by no less a
distinguished personage than Burke and George the Third's Dr. Price; the
result is that the chapel is now well filled. It is true it is not a
very large one; nevertheless, till Mr. Applebee's advent, it was
considerably larger than the congregation. Before Mr. Applebee came to
town he had produced a similar effect at Devonport; when he settled there
he had to preach to a very small congregation, but he drew people around
him, and ere he left a larger chapel had to be built. I take it a great
deal of his popularity is due to his orthodox training. It is a fact not
merely that Unitarianism ever recruits itself from the ranks of
orthodoxy, but that it is indebted to the same source for its ablest, or
rather most effective ministers.

In the morning Mr. Applebee preaches at Stoke Newington; in the evening
he preaches at 245, Mile End. It seems as if in that teeming district no
amount of religious agency may be ignored or despised. In the morning of
the Sabbath as you walk there, you could scarce fancy you were in a
Christian land. It is true, church bells are ringing and the
public-houses are shut up, and well-clad hundreds may be seen on their
way to their respective places of worship, and possibly you may meet a
crowd of two or three hundred earnest men in humble life singing revival
hymns as they wend their way to the East London Theatre, where Mr. Booth
teaches of heaven