for much private and public devotion; but, alas! I found what I might
easily have expected, that without spiritual vitality everything must be
dry and dead! Dry and dead indeed it was. The conversation of these
supposed ascetics was for the most part secular, and at the highest only
ecclesiastical. Their worship, on which a great amount of pains and cost
was bestowed, was but a form carefully prepared and carefully executed,
as if critics were present; yet it did not, and could not, rise to
spirituality. A lady presided at the organ, and had the teaching and
training of the choir. Much of her own personal and religious character
were imparted to the performances, which in tone and manner were
admirable and precise. She made the boys understand the sense of the
words they sang, till I have seen them even in tears during the singing.
The "chaste old verger" (as our reporter called him), who headed the
procession at least four times a day, up and down the church, was a very
important and successful part of the machinery, and from him, up to the
highest official, everything was carried out with exact precision.

But oh, how unsatisfying and disappointing it was!--to a degree which I
was ashamed to own! How could I be so foolish, to give up a living,
where there was vitality, though it was rough, for a superficial and
artificial semblance of religion? In the book of Ecclesiastes we read,
that "a living dog is better than a dead lion;" and though I had often
quoted this saying, I never felt the truth of it so deeply as now. The
dead lion and the dead elephant are quite immovable things for a live
dog to bark at or fret about. It was a hard and trying time to me in
that place. I could not see my way, or understand at all what was the
Lord's will towards me. While in this state of mind I had a vivid dream.
I thought that the ornamental iron grating, which was for ventilating
the space under the floor of the church, was all glowing with fire, as
if a great furnace were raging there. I tried to cry "Fire!" but could
not. Then I ran into the church, and saw it full of people reverently
absorbed in their devotions. I tried again to give the alarm, and cry
"Fire! fire!" but I could not utter a sound. When I looked up, I saw
thin, long, waving strings of fire coming up among the people through
the joints of the floor. I called attention to this, but no one else
could see it. Then I became frantic in my gesticulation, and at last was