Page:The English Peasant.djvu/217

 believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and its favourite hymn, "Just as I am, without one plea." This ministry, when exercised by a gentle, loving-hearted man, has calmed many a troubled heart, and such scenes as the following seem to suggest progress towards a real unity.

It is Sunday evening, the service is over, and the majority of the congregation have gone. The forms and seats are pushed back, and the little table, at which those who led the singing usually sat, is spread with a small white cloth, a bottle of wine, a large wine-glass, and a small plate of bread. The communicants gather round—old and young, poor and better off. Boys are there of eleven or twelve years of age, and one little girl about eight, two or three of the small maid-of-all-work type, making the number of the young an unusual and interesting feature. The pastor sits down among them, and reads the passage, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and entered into His glory? "Then singing and prayer and eating the bread, singing and prayer and drinking the wine, another hymn, the offertory, and benediction. Thus concludes this great act of Christian worship, in all its parts perfectly harmonious and beautiful, because the spirit which pervaded it was one of true adoration and love.

And yet such men, working day by day in God's name, and for the love of Christ, cannot be recognised and encouraged, because, providentially, they have been brought into the work by other channels than those of the Established Church; while on the other hand, they must be quite cast out of the synagogue, because they do not make election the beginning, middle, and end of all their sermons.

In the presence of such ignorance, superstition, immorality, bigotry, and consequent suspicion and disunion how can we be surprised that Romanism is replanting itself in the Weald? Although at present no effort is made at proselytising, it would be idle to suppose that the Jesuits have chosen this locality wherein to build two noble orphanages, and to found a nunnery on the site of an ancient archi-episcopal palace, without any ulterior purpose of propagating their faith among the people.

The nunnery is contiguous to the parish church, and being