in the place. It was the ghost of what I knew in
youth. Long, long ago, there were just such old-fashioned meetings, with
just such sounding-boards over the pulpit, just such plain and high pews,
just such learned divines, just as deficient in all practical appeal. Up
in the window before me buzzed the very same bluebottle fly, only a
little more elderly and less active in consequence, which, in younger and
happier days, distracted the writer's attention, and interfered sadly
with what would have been otherwise a profitable opportunity. There are
no meeting-houses now. If you want to see one as they were, in all their
original nakedness and want of grace, go to Mill Yard, Whitechapel. We,
of course, have wonderfully improved, and yet I have a tenderness for the
old meeting-house. How learned were their ministers, how awful and
orthodox their deacons! With what fear did I eye the man who gave out
the hymn, and with what greater fear the watchful individual who poked up
with his long stick inattentive or sleepy boys!

But I return to Mill Yard. The Christian Church in our day has pretty
well agreed to get rid of or, at any rate, ignore what is read in the
Bible about the seventh day being "the Sabbath of the Lord your God." At
one time this was not so. Now the tide has receded and left the
Seventh-day Baptists stranded on the mud. In doing so, the Church, of
course, has increased the difficulty some feel about the Divine origin
and perpetual obligation of the Christian Sabbath. Archbishop Whately,
for instance, could reason with the Christian who had exchanged, in spite
of the literal command of God, the Christian for the Jewish Sabbath, but
his arguments would fail to touch the Seventh-day Baptist, who would
contend that he was doing that which God had commanded. But the fear of
this has not led Christians to abandon what, in the opinion of most of
them, is the apostolic plan of meeting on the first day of the week. It
is to be hoped the fund left for the benefit of the Seventh-day Baptists
is not a large one. The mouldy appearance of Mill Yard Meeting-house
indicates that it is not. But it is enough to retain at his post a
gentleman who, perhaps, would be more profitably engaged elsewhere.
Certainly it does seem like a waste of power to have a chapel and a
service lasting nearly a couple of hours for one grown-up adult male and
three adult females, excluding the chapel pew-opener. I must say, with
the e