Page:Glimpses of Bohemia by MacDonald (1882).pdf/50

 now few of the men can be taken for military service. Mr. Karafiat was preaching a temperance sermon, which was listened to with the deepest attention. His kirk-session, he afterwards told us, are so keenly alive to the necessity of discountenancing drinking that they take on discipline all who are seen in the tap-room of an inn. We were struck by the great social gap between Mr. Karafiat, one of the most scholarly and cultured men either of us had ever met, and his people, who are comparatively uneducated, and all of the crofter class, earning a scanty subsistence from their little properties of from five to ten acres, eked out by occasional employment as woodsmen in the forests of the graf, whose huge estates surround this glen. But, notwithstanding, under the quickening and refining influence of God’s Spirit, a greater number of these men are capable of giving real help in the congregational work than is usually found in our congregations in Britain and America, Mr. Karafiat has evidently been useful, not only in promoting the spiritual, but also the temporal welfare of his flock, and his influence is extending over neighbouring pastors and people. Here at Lhota we found evidence of the good done through Pastor Schubert’s institution for girls at Krabschitz. Four girls belonging to this parish have now returned after undergoing training at the institution. One has married, and is not now able to undertake much work; one, while still in a hopeful way, appears to have scarcely sufficient decision to enable her to bear the cross in the way which work for Christ in such a community implies. The other two, however, are giving valuable assistance, both in Sabbath-school and sewing-class work, the latter being practical instruction in the use of the needle, which, it seems, the women sadly need. In the interval between the diets of worship on Sabbath, one of these girls was conducting a prayer meeting, with about thirty women, in the churchyard as we passed. If the institution sends but two such workers to every parish in Bohemia and Moravia, who can estimate the good which may result?

Mr. Karafiat certainly is a. man who “seeks souls for his hire,” and with whom one cannot be in contact without feeling something of the reality and power of practical godliness.