that occasionally a head went down and the seat shook, as the amused party endeavoured, or professed to endeavour, to subdue untimely laughter.  I presume we have all seen those persons who deem it a mark of vivacity, or special brilliancy, to be unable to control their risibles in certain places.  It is curious how often the seeming attempt is, in a glaring way, nothing but seeming.  These parties perhaps did not break the Sabbath any more directly than the note-writers behind them, but they certainly did it more noisily and with more marked evidence of lack of ordinary culture.  The leader of the choir found an absorbing volume in a book of anthems that had been recently introduced.  He turned the leaves without regard to their rustle, and surveyed piece after piece with a critical eye, while the occasionally peculiar pucker of his lips showed that he was trying special ones, and that just enough sense of decorum remained with him to prevent the whistle from being audible.  Then there were, dotted all over the great church, heads that nodded assent to the minister at regular intervals; but the owners of the heads had closed eyes and open mouths, and the occasional breathing that suggested a coming snore was marked enough to cause nervous nudges from convenient elbows, and make small boys who were looking on chuckle with delight.

And thus, surrounded by all these different specimens of humanity, the pastor strove to declare the whole counsel of God, mindful of the rest of the charge, “whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.”  He could not help a half-drawn breath of thanksgiving that that part was not for him to manage.  If he had had their duty as well as his own to answer for what would have become of him!

Despite the looking at watches, the cases of which would make an explosive noise, and the audible yawning that occasionally sounded near him, the minister was enabled to carry his sermon through to the close, helped immeasurably by those aforesaid earnest eyes that never turned their gaze from his face, nor let their owners’ attention flag for an instant.  Then followed the solemn hymn, than which there is surely no more solemn one in the English language.  Imagine that congregation after listening, or professing to listen, to such a sermon as I have suggested, from such a text as I have named, standing and hearing rolled forth from magnificent voices such words as these:—­

“In all my vast concerns with thee,
In vain my soul would try
To shun thy presence, Lord, or flee
The notice of thine eye.

“My thoughts lie open to the Lord
Before they’re formed within;
And ere my lips pronounce the word
He knows the sense I mean.

“Oh, wondrous knowledge, deep and high! 
Where can a creature hide! 
Within thy circling arm I lie,
Inclosed on every side.”