volution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the
neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.

"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had
rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them
from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the
fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it
fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of
a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the
Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class
in the community."

After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist
Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very
varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power.
The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It
has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schoell,
"a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."

[Illustration: The Nativity _Fra Lippo Lippi_]

A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this
poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.

CHRISTMAS-EVE

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
Five minutes full, I waited first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common's centre
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter.
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
Six feet long by three feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside--
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving.
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
That congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the main road, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,
--They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops shor