A minister came to the Episcopal church, at Williamsport, Pa., to speak.

“Do you wish to wear a surplice?” asked the rector.

“Surplice!” cried the visitor.  “Surplice!  I am a Methodist.  What do I know about surplices?  All I know about is a deficit!”

The Scotch minister rose and cleared his throat, but remained silent, while the congregation awaited the sermon in puzzled expectancy.  At last he spoke: 

“There’s a laddie awa’ there in the gallery a-kissin’ a lassie,” he said.  “When he’s done ah’ll begin.”

A clergyman famous for his begging abilities was once catechizing a Sunday-school.  When comparing himself as pastor of the church to a shepherd, and his congregation to the sheep, he put the following question to the children:  “What does the shepherd do for the sheep?”

To the confusion of the minister a small boy in the front row piped out:  “Shears them!”

A small town boasts a female preacher.  One day when working in her study she heard a timid knock at her door.  Answering the summons she found a bashful young German on the step.

“Good-afternoon,” the preacheress remarked.  “What do you wish?”

“Do der minister lif in dis house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yess?  Veil, I vant to kit merriet.”

“All right; I can marry you.”

The lady’s hair is beginning to silver and the German glanced at it.  Then without comment he jammed his hat on his head and hurried down the walk.

“Will you be back?” she called.

“You gits no chance mit me,” he answered.  “I don’t want you; I haf got me a girl alreaty.”

A clergyman was spending the afternoon at a house in the English village where he had preached.  After tea he was sitting in the garden with his hostess.  Out rushed her little boy holding a rat above his head.  “Don’t be afraid, mother,” he cried; “he’s dead.  We beat him and bashed him and thumped him until”—­catching sight of the clergyman, he added, in a lowered voice—­“until God called him home.”

Two Irish women in the market place of Cork were talking of the new curate.

“Arrah, Biddy,” said one, “did ye hear him last Sunday when he preached on ’Hell’?”

“Faith an’ I did that same, and shure he might have been born and reared there, so well did he know all about it.”

An Episcopal rector and a Roman Catholic priest had neighboring churches and didn’t get along very well.  After some time, however, they got together and decided to bury the hatchet.

“For, after all,” said he of the Episcopal faith, “we are both doing the Lord’s work.”

“That is true,” said the priest.  “Let us therefore do his work to the best of our ability:  you in your way,” concluded the priest, and then added with a twinkle, “and I in his!”

See also Contribution box; Preaching.

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