e way in which such a subject is treated within the
pale of the Establishment.

But the Sunday Evening Service at St. Paul's Cathedral is an answer to
all this. Let us see! On a cold winter evening, underneath its
magnificent dome, are seated some three thousand well-dressed people. On
the first occasion of holding evening service, the scene was rather
indecorous for Sunday evening. A large number of those who had been
unable to obtain admission to the service were lingering about the south
door, and as the carriages of the Lord Mayor and other civic dignitaries
were leaving with their occupants, the assembled crowd gave vent to their
feelings by unmistakable groans of displeasure, as if they considered
themselves to have been unfairly excluded. But this is over--the thing
has become a fact. The audience has toned down to the level English
standard of propriety. The sublime service, in spite of its length and
monotony, has been listened to with a patience almost devout; and the
choir, "200 trebles and altos, 150 tenors, and 150 basses," the largest
and most complete choir that was ever yet organised, has done its part to
heighten the rapture and piety of the night. A clergyman now ascends the
pulpit to preach. He is a popular clergyman--the crowd to-night is
larger than it has ever yet been--active, learned, industrious,
charitable, devout. He is the Rev. Canon Dale, rector of St. Pancras.
Yet what is his theme? The Church--the Mother of us all--the divinely
appointed means of man's recovery from the power and the consequence of
sin. Is not this a fatal blunder? What man wants is, not the Church,
but the message it proclaims--the voice itself, not the messenger--the
good tidings of great joy, not the human instruments by which they are
revealed to man.

But this service shows the strength of the church in the metropolis. The
reply to this, we fear, is unsatisfactory. The present able Bishop of
London is endeavouring to procure a union of the City churches. The
answers to the inquiries of the bishop made by the clergy present some
curious features. The Rev. J. Charlesworth, rector of the joint parishes
of St. Mildred, Bread-street, and St. Margaret Moses, replies in answer
to the bishop's interrogatories that the largest attendance at any of his
church services is ten, that his net income is 220 pounds a year, and
that the population is 258. The Rev. J. Minchin, rector of the joint
parishes of St. Mild