THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 55 
It seems better than incense and scarlet robes, unlit can- 
dies 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- 
Jation. 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 ¢zeer church. ° 
If the word church means not a building, but a society, 
then this is the true country church. It is the society of 
