rtist. For
years Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy
representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant,
proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would
one day succeed.

There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by the
widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been
Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate
compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was
so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white
tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with a
red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down this
staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns and
purple wings.

Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand
that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early
Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of
adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing
the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our
added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a
Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the
first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other
world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in
an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels,
had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on
the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught
them as by parables, never misunderstood--as did certain of His
followers--their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that
it was good.

The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary;
and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which
Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these
festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of
the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and
blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews were
strewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snow
in Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring in
their character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns the
Sunday School