their lovers--and took their
places decently in the ancient pews. The clerk read the beautiful
prayers of our Church, which seem more beautiful at Christmas than at any
other period. For that very feeling which breaks down at this time the
barriers which custom, birth, or wealth have erected between man and man,
strikes down the barrier of time which intervenes between the worshipper
of to-day and the great body of worshippers who are at rest in their
graves. On such a day as this, hearing these prayers, we feel a kinship
with the devout generations who heard them long ago. The devout lips of
the Christian dead murmured the responses which we now murmur; along this
road of prayer did their thoughts of our innumerable dead, our brothers
and sisters in faith and hope, approach the Maker, even as ours at
present approach Him. Prayers over, the clergyman--who is no Boanerges,
or Chrysostom, golden-mouthed, but a loving, genial-hearted, pious man,
the whole extent of his life from boyhood until now, full of charity and
kindly deeds, as autumn fields with heavy wheaten ears; the clergyman, I
say--for the sentence is becoming unwieldy on my hands, and one must
double back to secure connexion--read out in that silvery voice of his,
which is sweeter than any music to my ear, those chapters of the New
Testament that deal with the birth of the Saviour. And the red-faced
rustic congregation hung on the good man's voice as he spoke of the
Infant brought forth in a manger, of the shining angels that appeared in
mid-air to the shepherds, of the miraculous star that took its station in
the sky, and of the wise men who came from afar and laid their gifts of
frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the child. With the story every
one was familiar, but on that day, and backed by the persuasive melody of
the reader's voice, it seemed to all quite new--at least, they listened
attentively as if it were. The discourse that followed possessed no
remarkable thoughts; it dealt simply with the goodness of the Maker of
heaven and earth, and the shortness of time, with the duties of
thankfulness and charity to the poor; and I am persuaded that every one
who heard returned to his house in a better frame of mind. And so the
service remitted us all to our own homes, to what roast-beef and
plum-pudding slender means permitted, to gatherings around cheerful
fires, to half-pleasant, half-sad remembrances of the dead and the absent.

From sermon I ha