s of professors--amongst the

"Petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts."

Any liberal culture seems fatal to them. As soon as they manage to
pronounce their h's and to talk grammatically, they can worship with
other Christians, can rejoice in the magnificent inheritance which has
come down to the Church of our day from the sanctified intellect of
former times--can derive edification from an educated ministry--possibly
may sing the songs of a Keble, and may be able occasionally to join in a
form of prayer which was found adequate for the expression of the
spirituality of a Martyn or a Wilberforce.

THE PECULIAR PEOPLE.

In London, if we are to believe what we hear in some quarters, the real
seat of true and undefiled religion is to be found amongst the small body
who meet in an obscure street leading out of the Walworth Road. The
neighbourhood is not a very attractive one, and is inhabited chiefly by
retail tradesmen, who must find it in these hard times a struggle to make
both ends meet. You must look sharp to find the place of which you are
in search. In a row of shops opposite Lion Street you will see one in
the day-time with the shutters up. On the shutters you will see one or
two little bills headed Christian Meeting House, containing an
invitation, as follows:--"Dear friend, you are affectionately invited to
the following meetings." Then you have a list of the times of meeting,
an announcement that all seats are free, and the text, "For both He that
sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one, for which cause He
is not ashamed to call them brethren." If you enter, you see a few
benches in what is meant for a shop, and a few more in the room behind.
Where the window is there is a desk, at which the chairman or conductor
of the meeting sits. By the door is a little box into which the
offerings of the faithful are poured. As a rule the place, which cannot
hold more than forty or fifty adults comfortably, is well filled by very
poor people. It is the only place of meeting of the sect in London.
They are numerous, so they say, in Essex, Sussex, and Surrey, but in the
Walworth Road they are few and not popular with their neighbours, who
possibly know no better. Now and then up comes a street-boy and makes a
hideous noise through the keyhole; but the Peculiar People have got used
to that. I should fancy with the keen-witted artisans of London they
make but little