THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 73° 
either for accidents or diseases. If any one fell ill he 
had to be content with the workhouse doctor; if they 
required anything else they must go to the clergyman 
and get a letter of introduction or some kind of certificate 
for a London hospital, or any infirmary to which he 
happened to subscribe. The chapellers made no bones 
about utilising the clergyman in this way; they con- 
sidered it their right ; as he was the parish clergyman, it 
was his place to supply them with such certificates. 
There was no provision for the aged labourer or his wife 
when strength failed—nothing for them but parish relief. 
There was no library. There was no institute for the 
teaching of science, or for lectures disseminating the 
knowledge of the nineteenth century. Every now and 
then the children died from drinking bad water—ditch 
water; the women took tea, the men took beer, the 
children drank water. Good water abounded, but then 
there was the trouble and expense of digging wells; in- 
dividuals could not do it, the community did not care. 
Does it not seem strange? All this fervour and building 
of temples and rattling of the Salvation Army drum and 
loud demands for the New Jerusalem, and not a single 
effort for physical well-being or mental training! 
While these pranks are played at Bethel let us glance 
a moment in another direction down the same green 
country lane on the same bright summer day. Let it 
be late in the afternoon of the Sunday, the swifts still 
wheeling, the roses still blooming, blue-winged jays 
slipping in and out of the beech trees. These hazel lanes 
were once the scene of Puritan marchings to and fro, of 
Fifth Monarchy men who likened the Seven-hilled City 
to the Beast ; furious men with musket and pike, whose 
horses’ hoofs had defaced the mosaic pavements -of 
‘cathedrals. These hazel lanes, lovely nut-tree boughs, 
