Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/425

Rh can befal it, than for our governors to hearken to the counsels of such orators as Tiptop, though encouraged by all the Plushes in England, each with a company of puffers and smokers about him."

"But Dick," said he to me, "what is the use of a Church, my friend, if people are tired of it, and won't go to it?"

To this I answered, "You might as well ask, what is the use of our Saviour's precepts, if people are tired of them and won't obey them? You will not, I suppose, say, that the holy rules of the Gospel ought to be publicly set aside, merely because they are so generally neglected?"

"No," he replied, "of course I do not mean that."

"Well then," said I, "neither should you affirm that it is the duty of the Church to withdraw or alter her rules, merely because people are weary of complying with them."

"That may be true," he answered, "but you must remember that the Church herself did not mean that the Service should be so long. What we have all at once, was formerly divided into two or three parts, as I have understood. Why should it not be so again?"

"What you say is, I believe, no more than the truth," I replied; "I have been lately reading a little book upon the subject, and from that I understood that there were first the early morning prayers—then, perhaps, after two or three hours, the Litany—and then again, after a short interval, the Communion Service, including a sermon of considerable length, (an hour possibly) and afterwards the administration of the Sacrament. But this last service alone, would be much beyond Mr. Tiptop's limit of forty minutes; and in this way, 'the spirit of the age' would be more opposed even than it is now."

"O," he said, "I never thought of having the Sacrament administered every Sunday."

"Then," replied I, "you forgot one of the principal intentions of the Church in having the Services so divided. If the Bishops and clergy thought well, I do not deny that it would in many respects be edifying, if this ancient custom in all its parts could be revived; but yet I will tell you plainly, that I do not think it would have the effect you seem to imagine, of bringing