is commonplace and conventional.  He rises to invoke the blessing of God.  If he goes to the throne of God he goes alone.  We go no farther than the pulpit.  We tell one another afterwards that he is eloquent in prayer, or that his prayers are very common.  If his style is solemn, we condemn him as stilted.  If it is conversational, we condemn him as too colloquial and familiar.  He reads a hymn.  We compare his elocution with that of our own favorites, or with some imaginary ideal, if we have no favorites.  He preaches.  We can, any of us, tell you how he does it.  But what he says, there are not half a dozen who can tell.  Does he tell us of our sins?  We do not look at our own hearts, but at his picture, to see if it is painted well.  Does he hold before us the cross?  We do not bow before it.  We ask, is it well carved and draped?  The Judgment is only a dramatic poem; the Crucifixion only a tableau.

So, though we have preaching, we have no Gospel at Wheathedge.

Perhaps the lack of the parish is quite as painfully felt in other departments as in the pulpit.  The Church is without a head.  It flounders about like a headless chicken; excuse the homely simile, which has nothing but truth to commend it.  When Mrs. Beale died last week, we had to send to Wheatensville to get a minister to attend the funeral.  When Sallie D. was married she sent there, too, for a minister.  He was out of town, and the ceremony came near being delayed a week for want of him.  The prayer-meeting lags.  Little coldnesses between church members break out into open quarrels.  There is no one to weld the dissevered members.  Poor old Mother Lang, who has not left her bed for five years, laments bitterly her loss, and asks me every time I call to see her, “When will you get a pastor?” The Young People’s Association begins to droop.  Even the Sunday-school shows signs of friction, though Deacon Goodsole succeeds in keeping it in tolerably good running order by his imperturbable good humor.  One advantage we have gained by this interregnum-only one.  Even Mr. Hardcap is convinced that pastoral labors are not so unimportant as he had imagined.

For myself, I am in despair.  I made no very serious objection to being put on the supply committee.  I fancied the task a comparatively easy one.  I had understood that there was no lack of ministers wanting places.  There is none.  We have applications three or four deep, of all sorts and kinds, from parishless clergymen.  But such a jury as the Wheathedge congregation affords, I never saw and hope never to see again.  I only wish there was some law to treat them as other juries are treated:  shut them up in the jury-room till they agree on a verdict.