much as a family does for its devotions, not putting off their humanity in the least, considering it on the whole quite a delightful matter to come together for prayer and song and good counsel from kind and wise lips.  And if they are freer in their demeanor than some very precise congregations, they have not the air of a worldly set of people.  Clearly they have not come to advertise their tailors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms on the literary character of the sermon they may hear.  There is no restlessness and no restraint among these quiet, cheerful worshippers.  One thing that keeps them calm and happy during the season so evidently trying to many congregations is, that they join very generally in the singing.  In this way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force which escapes in all sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister trying to keep his congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand over the nose of a pump which another boy is working,—­this spirting impatience of the people is so like the jets that find their way through his fingers, and the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a wonderful likeness to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his hand away, with immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the officiating youngster.

How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common song of praise!  Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,—­and now and then an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury of a closing cadence that he holds on to the last semi-breve upon his private responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old Psalmist in the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the academic niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship out of our hands!

I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not laid down in as many details as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp.  Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion of any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common than all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them would amount to.  There are always many who believe that the fruits of a tree afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the composts with which it is dressed, though the last has its meaning and importance, no doubt.

Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections.  But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters.