at the West end: the outside is poor, but the interior is very neatly, and seemingly newly, done up, the walls and ceiling being marked out with courses in imitation of masonry, the latter having the effect of an arch. The building is very pleasantly situated, and in summer when the casements are left open, and the refreshing breeze and song of birds allowed to enter, it gives you an admirable idea, surrounded as it is with cheerful villas and sylvan scenery, of an English village church. The congregation are numerous and respectable.

The text was from the 10th chapter of Luke, where the man journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho falls amongst thieves. I was very much pleased with the manner-earnest, spiritual, and yet practical-in which it was treated: there was no hair-splitting about the sermon the broad, beautiful and important doctrine of duty to our neighbour was urged in all its enlarged and Christian liberality. I confess I am myself much in favour of such occasional sermons: congregations require to be kept at times in mind of their worldly as well as their spiritual duties, and a good, searching, practical discourse, enables men to detect and discover spurious self-righteousness in themselves and others; for however pious they may fancy themselves, if they be not ready or be disinclined to do a service to a fellow creature, even at some cost "they deceive themselves," and their righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees-persons whose hypocritical self complacency and smooth-faced professional piety, which bore no practical fruit, our Lord seems to have lost no opportunity of unmasking and exposing. If hypocrisy, or self-righteousness, or unphilanthropic selfishness of any kind had to be illustrated, a Pharisee or a Scribe was for the most part selected as the exemplars. And the world is yet too full of these Pharisaical sort of people; they are, it is true, no longer to be seen walking abroad under flowing robes and wide phalacteries, but they may be still found clothed in broadcloth, and beneath many a

black coat and smooth exterior. The high road between Jerusalem and Jericho is not the only one on which your Levite and Samaritan may be met. We see those who commend themselves as holy, and deem themselves safe in spiritual matters-amongst the elect as one might say; yet who in their conduct are selfish and penurious, hard-hearted and incapable of a generous act, "passing by on the other side" sooner than put themselves to the slightest cost and trouble to do a service to a suffering or needy fellow-creature: while those at whom they shake their heads as sinners or Samaritans, are capable of the most generous conduct, and do the most disinterested acts even for the stranger, at the sacrifice of ease or the outlay of money. I find this circumstance has also struck the penetrating mind of Shaftesbury in his Inquiry Concerning Virtue. I know a freethinking philosopher is no authority on Christianity, but our own every day experience and acquaintance with the world will confirm the truth of his words so far as the following sentence is concerned. He remarks in the opening of the first Book, and while observing on the occasion of the inquiry, “We have known people who having the appearance of great zeal in Religion, have yet wanted even the common affections of Humanity, and shown themselves extremely degenerate and corrupt. Others again who have paid little regard to Religion, and been considered as mere Atheists, have yet been observed to practice the rules of Morality, and act in many cases with such good meaning and affection towards mankind, as might seem to force an acknowledgment of their being virtuous." I do not say that acts of almsgiving or good works do or will serve as a substitute for the higher and spiritual requirements of Christianity; for one of the noblest and most disinterested acts of almsgiving on record was performed by a Pagan, Solyman the Great, the redoubted antagonist of the third Crusade, who we are told ordered in his last will charities to be distributed to the poor, without distinction of Jew, Christian, or

Mahometan; "iutending by his legacy," says the historian, "to inculcate that all men are brethren, and that when we would assist them we ought not to inquire what they believe, but what they feel—an admirable lesson to Christians, though from au infidel.”* Almsgiving is not therefore Christianity, but it is an excellent addition to Christianity in fact true Christianity cannot exist without it; for the religion that will not prompt a man to serve his neighbour is unreal. "To set out virtue in words," says St. Cyprian, "and destroy the same in facts, is nothing worth:" (Nihil prodest verbis proferre virtutem, et factis destruere). And I find in the same Abridgment of the Sayings of the martyred Bishop of Carthage (that by Laziardius Celestinus) two or three others so pointed in their character, and so bearing on the subject, that I cannot resist quoting them. He says, "Let nothing sleep in your treasuries that may profit the poor" (Ne dormiat in thesauris tuis, quod pauperi prodesse potest). And again," He that giveth alms to the poor sacrificeth to God an odour of sweet smell" (Qui pauperi eleemosynam dat, Deo suavitatis odorem sacrificat). I shall conclude with one which possesses most ingenuity, and is an answer to those who quote large families as an excuse for not giving. "The more children and greater household that thou hast at home, the more cause thou hast not to hoard up but to disperse abroad, for that many sins are to be redeemed, many consciences are to be purged." (Quo pluris domi sunt tibi liberi, hoc plus tibi non recondendum, sed organdam est, quia multorum jam delicta redimenda sunt, multorum purgandæ conscientia).

Having detained you so long, I have nothing more to

*This is the same generous, valiant, and enlightened prince who, during his fatal illness, ordered his winding-sheet to be carried as a standard through every street of Damascus, while a crier went before the person who bore that ensign of mortality, and proclaimed with a loud voice, "This is all the remains of the mighty Saladin, the conqueror of the East."

tell you than that the Rev. W. R. Bailey is Perpetual Curate of Stapleton, and was the preacher on the present occasion.

Fishponds.

SOME patriotic and poetic "Exile of Erin," betaking himself into voluntary banishment from his "beautiful isle," composed a valedictory address to the fair city of the South, which began with the following words:

"Farewell to thee, Cork, and thy sugar-loaf steeple ;"* but the manner in which the spire of Fishponds is placed in its present pre-eminence is enough to elicit an epic in its praise, and that of its architect also. I perceive, too, to preserve so rare a design for the benefit of "future and imitative ages," they have constructed a lightning conductor, which is ingeniously carried down outside the edifice from apex to base-a somewhat singular circumstance, from which I conclude that the parish authorities-apprehensive lest the electric fluid, in envy of so fair a structure, should entertain a pointed and particular spite against the spire of Fishpondshave taken every possible means in their power to protect so sublime and symmetrical an object from the effects of "oak-cleaving thunderbolts."

Fishponds (so called, it is shrewdly conjectured by some eminent philologists, from its having been once the residence of fish) is a most miserable looking place

-so cold and cheerless, indeed, that a man instinctively buttons his coat and quickens his pace as he passes, through it. I met nothing whatever to interest me on

* Refineries would seem to be a fertile source for furnishing similies for the loftiest portion of ecclesiastical structures; for I heard an honest sugar baker once compare Redcliff spire to a titler-a loaf (I believe) with the cone cut off.