the Son of God; that he may feel assured of the truth, and have the living demonstration of the truth in his own heart. His views of the character of God are also attractive, regarding Him primarily in the light of a Father. Yet it must be said that generally in England he is considered to have introduced an ideal and modified system, that views Christianity in the aspect of a fact accomplished, and which every man has but to open his eyes upon and enjoy, rather than of a truth that must be personally received by every man, and enter into every soul's individual experience for its renewal and eternal life. In conversation at his own pleasant home, if one be not converted to all of Mr. Maurice's opinions, he will be converted to Mr. Maurice himself, as a noble man and Christian gentlemen.

The Rev. Newman Hall occupies the pulpit of Surrey Chapel in Southwark, where Rowland Hill preached for nearly fifty years. It is a dingy, octagonal brick edifice, plain within and without. Mr. Hall is a whole-souled man, speaking that which he knows and believes, and reminding one of an earnest American preacher. There is spiritual life in his ministrations, but he has, it appeared to me, a somewhat strained and hammering style. His audience looked like an intelligent New England congregation.

In polish of manner and outward grace, Dr. Cumming, of Craven Court Chapel, near Covent Garden, is superior to all these. Nor, when I

heard him, was there aught visionary or apocalyptie in his discourse. Before the sermon he gave an exposition of the 23d chapter of Matthew, which might have been continued through Mark, Luke, and John. A peerless capacity for "continuousness," has Dr. Cumming. But there was much that was fresh in it. He did not shrink from saying that such and such a passage was not translated rightly, as for instance "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," should be "straining out a gnat," &c., in allusion to the practice of straining wine through a fine sieve. His sermon on the text, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," &c., had a magnificent ending, in which he described the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, and embracing all the goodness that God had inspired and recreated in human nature. He has little sweep or largeness of manner, but great ease and flow. It is a conversational style. His voice is rich and mellow without being powerful. He is a tall man, with high white forehead and dark hair. graceful and yet not effeminate preacher, Dr. Cumming has surely excellent claims to his celebrity.

As a

I will not speak further of the preachers of the Established Church whom I heard. Some of them compared well with those already named; but in regard to the Church of England, in its ministry, polity, and general features, notwithstanding its noble history, its benevolent spirit, and its essential purity, from my own limited observation, and certainly from no uncharitable or prejudiced state of

mind, I am disposed to coincide with a remark in the "London Review," "that great practical changes must be made in the arrangements and working of the Church of England if she is to be the spiritual home of the whole people of the land, as she ought to be." The English Church has not, in the spirit of true Christian philanthropy, gauged human misery to the bottom has not truly preached the Gospel to the poor. Methodism ran before and did this work for it. But how much remains still to be done in a city like London! Yet, it should be said, while these high instrumentalities of the great London parish churches fail to do their appointed task, humbler ministries, raised up and going forth it may be from their bosom, are effecting a silent but mighty work in the moral wastes of London, and like invisible angels are continually active in soothing the sorrows and spreading the tables of the poor.

There is one thing to be admired in the worship of the English Church- the apparent unity and fervor of devotional interest and feeling in the congregation. The moment the text is announced there is a general opening of Bibles, all following the preacher's explanation of the passage with the greatest "earnestness. The singing also is diffusive and congregational. There are no instrumental interludes between the stanzas of the hymn. There is no flourishing of trumpets in the playing of the organ, and nothing like executing music. Art is subordinated to devotion more than it is

with us. The choir is mixed up with the congregation, thus giving correctness and fire to the singing of all the people. I have never heard in Catholic countries, or in any part of the world, church music, that for beauty, animation, and fervor, at all equalled the choral singing in the public service of the great English cathedrals.

In closing this chapter, I would simply add that in speaking of the defects of the English Church, I have not had reference so much to the individuals composing that Church, as to the system itself which produces these defects. The faults of the Established Church, in whose body may be reckoned some of the most perfectly developed and beautifully symmetric Christian characters to be found on earth-these faults are inseparably connected with the working of a State Church. In the same manner much of the rigid controversial spirit of Dissent arises from its long continued and sincerely maintained hostile position; and in such hard soil have matured some of the richest and noblest spirits of the age.

CHAPTER IV.

ENVIRONS OF LONDON.

WHILE in London I made an excursion to Stoke Pogis, the much-bewritten scene of the most solemnly harmonious poem in existence. It was the favorite poem of Daniel Webster, in whose mind there was a vein of pensiveness, and its music soothed the weary statesman's dying hours. As was the case with Goethe, so it was true in a far more marked manner with Gray, that "nothing came to him in his sleep." He wrote, it is said, on an average about ten lines of poetry a day; three golden verses of "The Elegy on a Country Churchyard" a day, were surely enough for any man to have wrought. The village is situated near Slough, on the Great Western Railway. After leaving Slough one drives into a hedgefringed lane with tall elms on either side. Passing the entrance of Lord Taunton's Park, and turning into it by the side of a flower-embosomed cottage, the spire of the church comes in view; and traversing the trim lawn of the Park one arrives at the gate of the "Country Churchyard.' This ancient church is now, of course, more "ivymantled" than in Gray's time. It is built of flint