aved?" We had to pay for this salvation
about _11,000,000l._ a year to the Church of England, and something like
an equal amount to the Dissenters. In fact every tub-thumper went about
preaching and ruining servant girls, and for this we paid over twenty
millions a year--more than the interest on the whole National Debt.
After this elegant exordium, Mr. Ramsey said he proposed to divide his
remarks under four heads. 1. Is Salvation necessary? 2. What are we to
be saved from? 3. What for? 4. How?

1. According to the Christian theory, God, after an eternity of "doin'
nothin'," created the world. He made Adam sin by making sin for him to
commit; and then damned him for doing what He knew he would do. He
predestined you--the audience--to be damned because of Adam's sin; but
after a time God "got sick and tired of damning people," and sent His
Son to redeem mankind.

This flower of rhetoric tickled Bethnal Green immensely; but Mr.
Harrington was equal to the occasion, and thundered out his orthodoxy so
successfully that Mr. Ramsey took a longer drink than usual, and
complained that he was not having "a free platform"--it was so he
dignified the rickety stool on which he was perched. He then meandered
into a long dissection of Genesis i., appearing to feel particularly
aggrieved by the fact of the moon being said to "rule the night," though
I could not see how this was relevant to the Christian scheme of
salvation; and a superb policeman, who had listened for a moment to Mr.
Ramsey's astronomical lucubrations, evidently shared my feelings and
passed on superciliously. I devoutly wished my duty had permitted me to
do the same.

The speaker then went into a long dissertation on the primal sin; the
gist of which was that though the woman had never been warned not to eat
of the Forbidden Fruit, she had to bear the brunt of the punishment.
Then--though one is almost ashamed to chronicle such a triviality--he
waxed very wroth because the serpent was spoken of as being cursed above
all "cattle." Who ever heard of snakes being called cattle? He was
condemned to go on his belly. How did he go before? Did he go on his
back or "'op" along on the tip of his tail? These pleasantries drew all
Mr. Harrington's audience away except a few little dirty boys on the
wall. Mr. Ramsey clearly knew his audience, and "acted to the gallery."

2. But what were we to be saved from? Eternal 'Ell-fire. This 'Ell-fire
was favourite sauce for sermons,