ch, where,
if I found the sermon neither healing nor inspiring, I found the
prayers full of hope and consolation. They at least are safe beyond
human caprice, conceit, or incapacity. Upon them, too, the man who is
distressed at the thought of how little of the needful food he had been
able to provide for his people, may fall back for comfort, in the
thought that there at least was what ought to have done them good, what
it was well worth their while to go to church for. But I did think they
were too long for any individual Christian soul, to sympathise with
from beginning to end, that is, to respond to, like organ-tube to the
fingered key, in every touch of the utterance of the general Christian
soul. For my reader must remember that it is one thing to read prayers
and another to respond; and that I had had very few opportunities of
being in the position of the latter duty. I had had suspicions before,
and now they were confirmed--that the present crowding of services was
most inexpedient. And as I pondered on the matter, instead of trying to
go on praying after I had already uttered my soul, which is but a
heathenish attempt after much speaking, I thought how our Lord had
given us such a short prayer to pray, and I began to wonder when or how
the services came to be so heaped the one on the back of the other as
they now were. No doubt many people defended them; no doubt many people
could sit them out; but how many people could pray from beginning to
end of them I On this point we had some talk as we went home. Wynnie
was opposed to any change of the present use on the ground that we
should only have the longer sermons.

"Still," I said, "I do not think even that so great an evil. A
sensitive conscience will not reproach itself so much for not listening
to the whole of a sermon, as for kneeling in prayer and not praying. I
think myself, however, that after the prayers are over, everyone should
be at liberty to go out and leave the sermon unheard, if he pleases. I
think the result would be in the end a good one bo