ned for
religious purposes, with people whose habits have little similarity with
our own, either draws one into their relaxed mode of getting rid of the
day, or drives one to a retirement which having an unsociable
appearance, is liable to the reproach of austerity and gloom.

The case was quite different at Stanley Grove. The seriousness was
without severity, and the cheerfulness had no mixture of levity. The
family seemed more than usually animated, and there was a variety in the
religious pursuits of the young people, enlivened by intervals of
cheerful and improving conversation, which particularly struck Lady
Belfield. She observed to me, that the difficulty of getting through the
Sunday, without any mixture of worldly occupations or amusements on the
one hand, or of disgust and weariness on the other, was among the many
right things which she had never been able to accomplish in her own
family.

As we walked from church one Sunday, Miss Stanley told me that her
father does not approve the habit of criticising the sermon. He says
that the custom of pointing out the faults, can not be maintained
without the custom of watching for them; that it gives the attention a
wrong turn, and leads the hearer only to treasure up such passages as
may serve for animadversion, and a display, not of Christian temper, but
of critical skill. If the general tenor and principle be right, that is
the main point they are to look to, and not to hunt for philosophical
errors; that the hearer would do well to observe, whether it is not "he
that sleeps," as often, at least, as "Homer nods:" a remark exemplified
at church, as often as on the occasion which suggested it; that a
critical spirit is the worst that can be brought out of church, being a
symptom of an unhumbled mind, and an evidence that whatever the sermon
may have done for others, it has not benefited the caviler.

Here Mr. Stanley joined us. I found he did not encourage his family to
take down the sermon. "It is no disparagement," said he, "to the
discourse preached, to presume that there may be as good already
printed. Why, therefore, not read the printed sermon at home in the
evening, instead of that by which you ought to have been improving while
it was delivering? If it be true that _faith cometh by hearing_, an
inferior sermon, 'coming warm and instant from the heart,' assisted by
all the surrounding solemnities which make a sermon _heard_, so
different from one _read_, ma