on the top of the following page,
and which were "the palm tree," into "a green bay horse"; and, the
change being carefully made, the result on the Sunday following was that
the well-meaning clerk, studiously uttering each word of his Prayer
Book, found himself declaring very erroneous doctrine. "Hulloa," cried
he; "I must hearken back. This'll never do." Now I cannot call to mind
the name of the parish. It was not Chapel-in-the-Frith. Was it
Mottram-in-Longdendale? I really cannot remember. But these two old men
asserted that thenceforward it became a saying, "I must hearken back,
like the clerk of--."

I recollect preaching one weekday night (and people would crowd the
churches on weekday evenings fifty years ago far more readily than they
do now) at some wild place in Lancashire or Yorkshire, I think
Lancashire. I was taken to see and stand upon a stepping stone outside
the church, and close against the south wall of the sacred edifice, upon
which almost every Sunday the clerk, as the people were leaving church,
ascended and in a loud voice announced any matters concerning the parish
which it appeared desirable to proclaim. In this way any intended sales
were made known, the loss of sheep or cattle on the moors was announced,
and almost anything appertaining to the secular welfare of the
parishioners was made public. I do not state this to criticise it. It
was in some degree a recognition of the charity which ought to realise
the sympathy in each other's welfare which we ought all to display. It
was in those primitive times and localities a specimen of the
simplicity and well-meant interest in the welfare of the neighbour as
well as of oneself, although perhaps the secular sometimes did much to
extinguish the spiritual.

[Illustration: SUNDAY MORNING]

Few people now realise what a business it was to light up a church, say,
eighty years ago. But the worthy old clerk, in a wig bestowed on him by
the pious and aged patron, is hastening to illuminate his church with
old-fashioned candles, in which he is aided not a little by his faithful
wife, who, like Abraham's wife, regarded her husband as her lord and
responded to the name of Sarah. The good old man--and he was a good old
man--was perhaps a little bit "flustered and flurried," for the folk
were gathering within the sacred temple, and W.L. was anxious to
complete his task of lighting the loft, or gallery. "I say, Sally, hand
us up a little taste of candle," cried