whole service were creaking; and I was reminded of Shakespeare's words, "Like sweet bells jangled, harsh, and out of tune."

I have often wondered why shoes do creak. It cannot be essential to them. Is it something in the leather, or something in the weather, or something in the wearer? And of course, chapel-going boots are not chosen for the sake of their creak; because it is inconceivable that men and women, who, when once they are seated in God's house, are as devout and earnest as any, should wilfully hinder the devotions of others. Would it be possible to make boots that move noiselessly? If so, the maker would confer an unspeakable benefit on many of his suffering fellow-creatures, and prevent many of those unpleasant interruptions which too often jar on the stillness of a Sabbath service. A friend of mine, who always locked her house up on Sunday morning, and sent her servants to chapel, was asked how she managed with her cooking. "Oh," she replied, “you must know that I have a religious oven." I would suggest the manufacture of religious boots, that will not creak as the wearer walks up the chapel aisle.

This matter, in some aspects, is simply humorous, and even ludicrous. But in other aspects it is grave enough to call for some very serious words. Creaking boots, and banging doors, and unsubdued voices, and unrepressed coughs, during "the assembling of ourselves together," are like "dead flies" in "the apothecary's ointment." Our Sabbath worship owes much of its permanent attractiveness and power to the nice adjustment of apparently trivial circumstances. There is nothing too august and glorious to be pressed into the use of worshipping Christians; but, at the same time, there is nothing too mean and common to deserve comely ordering and watchful attention. We may safely leave the larger elements of public worship to take care of themselves; let it be ours to care for those lesser details, which, while they help to make or mar the highest devotion, are yet, by their seeming pettiness, liable to be overlooked.

Two practical suggestions may be permitted me. First, that all persons not in their seats at the commencement of the service should not enter during prayer. This might be secured, either by a kindly intimation from the pulpit on behalf of minister and deacons, or by a card in the porch conveying the same wish. Secondly, let the deacons make it their duty to see that no interruptions whatever are allowed during the service. It is quite the exception that anything

of real importance needs to be communicated to the minister when once he is in the pulpit. Let us set our faces against everything that creaks and jars, lest, through some petty hindrance, we should fail to receive, in all their fulness, the "grace and peace" which "God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour," are waiting to bestow. A. SHORTMAN.

A V

VOICE FROM A MINISTER

MANSE.

WITH A

AM, myself, comfortably settled in a manse, which is admired and commended by all who see it. I shall not, therefore, be suspected of any personal motive when I plead for a manse in connection with every country church. I do so for the following

reasons:

1. Because suitable residences are frequently unavailable on the acceptance of pastorates. This may not apply to pastorates in larger towns, but it will to many in smaller towns and villages. A minister accepting the oversight of a church without a manse is ofttimes compelled to accept one of several undesirable alternatives. Either to take lodgings for himself and family until a suitable house becomes vacant, or go to lodgings himself, leaving the family behind; or take a house too commodious or too contracted for his requirements; or rent a suitable residence in an unhealthy part of the town; or go to an adjacent village. The latter necessitates a long walk in weather propitious or unpropitious, besides removing the under shepherd from the midst of his flock. In rare cases this difficulty is obviated by the officers of the vacant church paying the rent of a suitable house until the pastorate is accepted. But every church is not in a position to do this, even if they would.

On account, therefore, of the difficulty which many of our brethren have in obtaining a suitable house on their acceptance of a pastorate we plead for manses.

2. Because some landlords object to let their houses to Nonconforming ministers.

We cannot close our eyes to the fact that training and clerical influence have led some of our rural landlords to regard Dissenters as "schismatics," and "disturbers of the peace of the true Church."

They have been so powerfully influenced by the teachers of a certain school, that they decline to let their houses to Dissenters on the same ground that they object to let their farms to any who do not belong to the Established Church. In rural districts a very large percentage of the middle and better class of houses belong to landlords over whom the clergy have great influence. Consequently, where the landlords and clergy are united in their opposition to Dissent, it is the great exception, and not the rule, for a Dissenting minister to be the accepted tenant.

On account of known hostility on the part of landlords to Dissenters in general, and ministers in particular, we plead for manses on behalf of brethren who are called to labour under the shadow of this hostility, and consequently compelled to reside at an inconvenient distance or in an inconvenient house.

3. Because other landlords object to receive new tenants with large families. Some churches, by the bye, we have heard of who declined to give an invitation to a minister because his family was not small. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, ministers, as a rule, are "heads of families," and numbered amongst the blessed ones who have their “quivers full of them."

On behalf of our brethren whose olive branches are numerous, and on this ground have difficulty in obtaining a house from landlords who would ask the question,- How many children have you?"

we plead for manses.

4. Because the minister, as a tenant, may be removed at the pleasure of an uninterested landlord. The minister may be no sooner settled than the house may be sold from him, or required by the landlord for other purposes. The minister becomes popular and gains the affections of the people. By his general conduct and practical preaching the congregations at chapel wax whilst those of the parish church wane. This increase among the "schismatics" may be materially impeded where the village belongs to a particular class of men. For the clergyman may succeed, through the landlord, in disturbing the happy and prosperous settlement of the Dissenting minister.

On this account we plead for manses in connection with our country churches.

5. Because a manse gives social status to the minister and to the church with which he stands identified. Wages have so materially advanced that mechanics can now live in houses the

rental of which the pastors of our smaller churches could not pay. Let a minister, with four or five children and an income of £100 per annum, have to rent a house, the most he could pay would be the rental of a house, perhaps inferior in position and accommodation to that in which the mechanic lives. Now we have not long to live before we learn that false impressions are often produced, and erroneous conclusions drawn, from the position a minister takes in the town or village where he comes to reside. The difference between a minister living in a £20 house and one living in an £8 house is considerable in the social scale. Just as more beautiful and commodious buildings give position to churches, so do suitable dwellings, other things being equal, give social standing to our ministers.

For all these reasons we plead for our manseless ministers. The want can be easily met by united action. A church, with the help of friends, can erect a building which would be a benefit to themselves, and provide for their minister a house he could not rent on a salary of £100 or £120 per annum.

PRAYER.*

So,then, God bids you come often from the noise and strife and tumult

of life,-bids you to come even from the grandeur and circumstance of its public religious worship, and "shut the door," that you may pray to your Father in secret. It is there your truest life is lived. It is there strength comes for the toil and weariness of life. It needs not long for this—not long to gather round you that sweet sense of Fatherhood which shall make the whole day sacred, and your work a service to God. You know how, before you start away in the morning to your toil, you have only time, perhaps, for a loving word or two to your wife, and a hasty kiss for the little ones; but how much love you may put into those few words, and what sweet memory those little kisses leave all the day long! And so a moment or two of solemn speech with God, before the great tide of busy life flows in upon the soul, one short clasp of the Father's hand, one quick glance into His holy, loving eyes, will make the whole day sacred. We need no long prayers to bring us the sweet sense of God's Fatherhood, the hidden, secret communion of Him who is ever *Prayer, with a Discourse on Prayer. Third Edition. King & Co., London.

with us. I walk with my friend through a busy, bustling, crowded street, and though I speak no word to him, the close pressure of his hand upon my arm from time to time, tells me all I want to know. The little child, too, holding my hand through a long summer walk,— he looks up into my face now and then. I look down into his; and in that look, how much is said; what compact of trust and love; what bright assurance that all is fair and calm and pleasant between us ! So a good man walks with God.-REV. GEORGE DAWSON.

MR.

CHURCH NEWS.

R. ROBERT WILLIAM DALE, M.A., who has worthily received the title of D.D., has been delivering his course of lectures at Yale College. In the course of them he remarked that he had nothing to say but what was trite and commonplace, and he was increasingty disposed to value the trite and the commonplace, especially in everything that related to the practical ordering of life and the securing of the great ends of human existence. With Nathaniel Culverwell, he always "reverenced a grey-headed truth," and he thought they should be very cautious in diverging from the conclusions established by long experience and the general consent of wise men. He then proceeded to give some counsel to the students as to the work which lay before them. He thought that the earnest desire to be doing something toward lessening the sorrows and sins of men should occasionally master their intellectual enthusiasm. If, however, they were to be good preachers by-and-bye, it was necessary they should be hard students now. Their life at the university was not merely a decent path to the ministry, but a preparation for it; and their future strength and success would be largely determined by the intensity of their devotion to the pursuits which claimed not their time and labour merely, but their very soul, within those walls. Mr. Dale went on to speak of the relations of the minister to his congregation in respect to preaching. A good preacher was one whose purely intellectual interest in his work was keen, strong, and contagious. But the wants of the people should never be forgotten. To preach Sunday after Sunday without any sympathy with their sorrows and disappointments, their happiness, their hopes, their struggles with temptation, their failures and their triumphs; to preach as though preachers were not of the same flesh