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144 him change his opinion, or at all events his expression of it, when you get your claws into him. He does not, you will observe, seem to think the New Testament as immoral as the Old. This shows there is some hope for you yet; that, in spite of your being the "unchangeable," you improve as you go along. Peradventure, if you are spared to write yet another New Testament, you may have become as proper as the old maid I knew who blushed to look at even the naked legs of a table, and insisted that they should be draped. Keep an eye, O Lord, on that Canon Richards, of Swansea. Depend upon it, he cannot think over highly of you when he thinks so meanly of your Book. Whatever can it be he objects to? You may, in your divine wisdom, have, now and again, lapsed into the suggestively obscene; but then, in your Word, you make ample atonement for that by the pure and holy incidents connected with Onan, with Judah and the girl by the wayside, with Lot and his daughters, with the Levite and his concubine, and with the lass whose name was Tamar. The facts connected with these and many other sweet and elevated incidents should be carefully taught, illustrated by diagrams, etc., so that little children may be fitted to come unto thee, and so that thy name may be glorified. How didst thou, O Lord, come to make a canon of this man Richards? How didst thou manage to give him the impudence to consider thy Book obscene and calculated to corrupt the morals of the children of Swansea? Thou wilt, O Lord, as I have already hinted, have something to say to him some day. He evidently requires a long dose of brimstone, and to be brought into the refined society of the never-dying worm—a useful worm that, O Lord. Draw its special attention to the Rev. Canon Richards, of Swansea. But obscenity is not a subject upon which I delight to write; so, with these few words, I leave it and pass on.

Now for a more savoury subject. Thy son said, eighteen centuries ago, O Lord: "Go ye unto all the earth and preach the gospel to every creature." I should like to draw your attention to the fact that this order has not been obeyed to any very appreciable extent. Some few missionaries have obeyed the