THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 55 



It seems better than incense and scarlet robes, unlit can- 

 dles behind the altar, and vacancy. Not long since a 

 bishop addressed a circular to the clergy of his diocese, 

 lamenting in solemn tones the unhappy position of the 

 labourer in the village churches. The bishop had ob- 

 served with regret, with very great regret, that the 

 labourer seemed in the background. He sat in the back 

 seats behind the columns, and near the door where he 

 could hardly hear, and where he had none of the comfort 

 of the stove in winter. The bishop feared his position 

 was cold and comfortless, that he did not feel himself to 

 be a member of the Church, that he was outside the 

 pale of its society. He exhorted the country clergy 

 to bring the labourer forward and make him more 

 comfortable, to put him in a better seat among the 

 rest, where he would feel himself to be really one of the 

 congregation. 



To those who have sat in country churches this cir- 

 cular read as a piece of most refined sarcasm, so bitter 

 because of its truth. Where had been the clerical eye 

 all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the 

 draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence 

 that the clerical eye was opened just at the moment 

 when Hodge became a voter ? 



At Bethel Chapel between the services the cottagers^ 

 the farmers, and the tradesmen break their bread to- 

 gether, and converse, and actually seem to recognise one 

 another ; they do not turn their backs the instant the 

 organ ceases and return each to his house in proud iso- 

 lation. There is no dining together, no friendly cup of 

 tea at the parish church. This Bethel is, you see, the 

 church of the poor people, most emphatically their church. 

 If the word church means not a building, but a society, 

 then this is the true country church. It is the society of 



