which to build my visions, than London clay; and I can only regret it if its importance and capabilities are exaggerated by eyes which have been so long absorbed in otherworldly visions. At any rate, I can promise my reader that we shall be near that lowly vale where the pilgrims listened to the song of the shepherd's boy who "wears more of that herb called heart's-ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet," and where, as Mr. Bunyan states on good authority, pearls have been found.

THE CHURCH AUCTION

I WENT to seek an auction room, where, I had heard, some Cures of Souls were to be sold. The company was thin, and evidently had misgivings about the property. A Jew bid for one of the livings, but the smile that faintly showed itself on the faces present-caused possibly by the oddity of a Catholic duke selling a Christian Cure of Souls to a Jew -caused him to withdraw. The auctioneer could hardly have had much of that kind of property to dispose of, and perhaps he just a little overpassed the bounds of the sentiment around him when he accompanied his graphic picture of a parsonage and its lawns with hopeful suggestions that the aged clergyman, then in occupation, would soon be evicted by the summons to another world. It became, indeed, plain that the auctioneer was a bungler for this once, at least, and he did not succeed in selling, if I remember rightly, one of the livings.

At length the bidders fell away one by one, and the auctioneer departed. I lingered at the door, looking out on some persons who were carrying holly to the market, for Christmas was near, and upon some children, who had already managed to coax a few premature smiles out of

Santa Claus. Turning around, I found that a singular company had entered the room, and the auction was about to recommence. But this time it was a new auctioneer who had the matter in hand, a shadowy individual, with piercing eye and a low voice, a voice, however, insinuating and cunning enough. It was waxing toward the twilight of a foggy day, and the auctioneer seemed almost a phantom speaking to phantoms. Amid occasional murmurs, and with some pauses, he spoke somewhat after this wise:

"Gentlemen, the auctioneer who has just gone did not half know his business, or else he little comprehended the nature of the property he offered you. I take his place, and would remind you that this is no common lot. These churches have cost a great deal. Their founder had to be nailed on a cross that they might be built. Their walls are cemented with the blood of faithful hearts, the blood of confessors and martyrs. Thousands perished to put them in the state of repair in which I offer them to you. They are consecrated by centuries of sorrow and sacrifice; in them souls have inly burned with the flame of devotion, stricken hearts raised their supplications to One who alone could fathom their needs; souls have brought to those altars their burdens of sin and sorrow, and earnest minds aspired there to know the mysteries of life and death. Their bells have rung in merrily the happy and sad years of wedlock, and again have tolled above the sobs of mourners. Their spires have pointed grief and poverty from earthly struggle to eternal peace. All these have gone to swell the market value of the five Cures of Souls which the light of the blessed Reformation and the grace of the Duke of Norfolk enable me to offer you this day.

"What! does no one bid yet? Did I hear some one

muttering about money-changers scourged from the temple, or another call it outrageous that the Cures of Souls should be put up at auction? Gentlemen, we are not children; let us not refer to the childhood of the world for our precedents. We belong to a National Church which represents the apotheosis of decency. A whip of small cords, even for those who make the house of God a den of thieves, were vulgar and fanatical in these days. Above all, let us have no mawkish or hypocritical sentimentalism here. We are Englishmen, who know the pearl of price to be a pound sterling, and we pray that our Queen may live long in health and wealth. As for this church auction, permit me to remind you that it is no novel thing. The Christian Church of old was no sooner built, and the miserable scaffold at its base, on which its founder perished like a slave, raised to shine on its towers as the symbol of honour, than the imperial predecessors of his Grace our Duke put it up at auction. Truth bid for it; Justice, Humanity, Holiness, did the same; but Royalty and Superstition joined their purses and outbid the others. They have owned and conducted it to this day. Through them it is that the worshippers in it sit on cushions instead of on the cold hillside. It is due to them that the successors of wretched fishermen, following one who had not where to lay his head, do now get fine episcopal salaries and palaces.

"Gentlemen, it is a commercial age. Everything is in the market. What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take it. Observe those saw-grinders at Sheffield; their work demands that each shall live but half of his appointed years, and that the half he does live shall be passed in a dark and dismal Hades, bound, Ixion-like, around the grinding wheel. What wonderous muscles and sinews are there! All the skill of the world could not make

66

the least vein in him, or a drop of the red stream that courses through it. Myriads of ages contributed to give that flash to his eye; and every divine element of the Universe to organize that incomprehensible brain that thinks and feels behind all. What are these fine churches compared with that temple framed by God for his own abode, which without scandal is bought every hour by worshipful Cutlers and Colliers, and other Masters? Who that has a mother, or sister, or daughter, need be reminded of the sacred and tender emotions that cluster about the heart of woman? But pass through the Haymarket, or the distance is but little-hover with the crowd about the doors of the fashionable church where the millionaire buys his young bride, and tell me if womanhood is not in the market. Nay, gentlemen, repair to the pulpits themselves; is not every prayer, every sermon, bought and paid for? There is, indeed, an old story that the world once offered all its kingdoms if the founder of Christianity would only modify his ideas of worship, and that he refused; but we must await the results of modern criticism before crediting such preternatural narratives as that. At any rate, we have England to deal with, not ancient Judea, where, it has been truly said, 'they did n't know everything.' Does any man here believe that the thirteen hundred livings in the hands of the House of Lords, or the livings, representing an annual income of two millions sterling, subject to private patronage, are mainly disposed of to the humblest and devoutest clergymen, without reference to any earthly or political considerations? If so, let him move a return of the number of Liberal clergymen enjoying livings owned by Conservative landlords. Let him. explain why the clergy resist Irish disestablishment in a phalanx almost as solid as that with which the Dissenters,

reading the same Bible and worshipping the same Christ, advocate it, if he would show the Church pulpits unpurchasable by any interest. But I need not confine my statement to any one Church. Look abroad through Christendom, and decide whether the scholarship, the ability, the ingenuity, and the eloquence, which still maintain its dogmas, are not retained by fees. Does that learned Oxonian believe that the world was made in six days? Does he believe that on the seventh day God rested, and was refreshed after the fatigue of creation? Does he believe Athanasius, when he says Christ is Almighty God, rather than Jesus, when he says, 'My Father is greater than I'; and does he believe that all who adhere to the latter belief shall without doubt perish everlastingly? Does he believe that God has prepared everlasting fires, that he sends millions into the world knowing that they will eventually burn in the same, and that among those who will suffer that vengeance are all disbelievers of the orthodox creed? Does he believe that Newton, Hume, Channing, Franklin, Schiller, Goethe, Comte, Mill, Carlyle, Emerson, Mazzini, Garibaldi are all destined to be damned, and that the generation they have been somehow empowered to train is to follow them to perdition? Does he believe that God has assigned as the one Plan of Salvation a scheme which the majority of the best brains constructed by himself find utterly incredible,—a scheme which the chief men of Science find contradicted by every fact of nature, and the jurors of Philosophy find revolting to reason? If the scholarly graduate does not believe this, why does he preach it? Has he not been knocked down at the bid of some grand Abbey, or Chapel, or Cathedral? Has he said, 'Get thee behind me,' to Promotion? What has poor undowered Heresy to offer the young minister?

1