half a Dissenter, feeling, for instance, much scruple as to the use of the cross in baptism, remarks in his ‘Diary,’ ’I shall never, I hope, so long as I am able to walk, forbear a constant attendance upon the public common prayer twice every day, in which course I have found much comfort and advantage.’[988] Some time before the century had run through half its course, daily services were fast becoming exceptional, even in the towns.  The later hours broke the whole tradition, and made it more inconvenient for busy people to attend them.  Year after year they were more thinly frequented, and one church after another, in quick succession, discontinued holding them.  It was one sign among many others of an increasing apathy in religious matters.  At places like Bath or Tunbridge Wells the churches were still open, and tolerably full morning and evening.[989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was kept up, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and the Bridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accounted by not a few of her neighbours, ’prude, devotee, or Methodist.’[990] At the end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still.  In the country they were kept up only ’in a few old-fashioned town churches.’[991] How much they had dwindled away in London becomes evident from a comparison between the list of services enumerated in the ‘Pietas Londinensis,’ published in 1714, and a book entitled ’London Parishes:  an Account of the Churches, Vicars, Vestries,’ &c., published in 1824.

Throughout the earliest part of the period, the Wednesday and Friday services, particularly enjoined by the canon, were held in the London parish churches almost without exception, and very generally in country parishes.[992] But as the idea of daily public worship became in the popular mind more and more obsolete, these also were gradually neglected and laid aside.  In the middle of the century we find many more allusions to them than at its close.  Secker, in his Charge of 1761, said there should always be prayers on these days.[993] John Wesley wrote, in 1744, to advocate the careful observance of the Wednesday and Friday ’Stations or Half-fasts;’[994] the poet Young held them in his church at Woolen;[995] they formed part of the duty at a church to which Gilbert Wakefield, in 1778, was invited to be curate.[996] James Hervey, at a time when his health was fast failing, said that he still managed to preach on Wednesday evenings, except in haytime and harvest,[997] &c.  In 1824 there were Wednesday and Friday services in only a small minority of the London churches.[998]