Wanted.-A pastor.  He must be irreproachable in his dress, without being an exquisite; married, but without children, young, but with great experience; learned, but not dull; eloquent in prayer, without being colloquial or stilted; reverential, but not conventional; neither old nor commonplace; a brilliant preacher, but not sensational; know every one, but have no favorites; settle all disputes, engage in none; be familiar with the children, but always dignified; be a careful writer, a good extempore speaker, and an assiduous and diligent pastor.  Such a person, to whom salary is less an object than a “field of usefulness,” may hear of an advantageous opening by addressing Wheathedge, care of “The Christian Union,” 27, Park Place.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Our Prayer-Meeting.

One thing we have gained by losing our pastor-the promise of better prayer-meetings.

Not that he was recreant in his duty.  He performed it only too well.  We learned to depend on him.  He suffered us to do so.  It was only by a delicate irony that the prayer-meeting could be termed one of the “social meetings” of the Church.  A solemn stillness pervaded the room.  No one ever spoke after he entered the awful presence, unless he rose, formally addressed “the chair,” and delivered himself of a set address.  Occasionally one bolder than the rest spoke in a sepulchral whisper to his neighbor-that was all.  In other social meetings the ladies, according to my observation, bear their full burden of conversation.  In our prayer-meetings no woman ever ventured to open her mouth.  In fact, I hardly know why they were called prayer-meetings.  We rarely had any greater number of prayers than in our usual Sabbath service.  Yes, I think we usually had one more.

The minister entered solemnly at the appointed hour, walked straight to his desk, without a word, a bow, a smile of recognition; read a long hymn, offered a very respectable imitation of the “long prayer,” gave out a second hymn, and called on an elder to pray, who always imitated the imitation, and included in his broad sympathies all that his pastor had just prayed for-the Church, the Sabbath-school, the unconverted, backsliders, those in affliction, the President and all those in authority, the (Presbyterian) bishops and other clergy, not forgetting the heathen and the Jews.  Then followed a passage of Scripture for a text from the pastor, with a short sermon thereafter.  Nor was it always short.  I fancied he felt the necessity of occupying the time.  It was not unfrequently long enough for a very respectable discourse, if length gives the discourse its respectability.  Then we had another prayer from another layman, and then the invariable announcement, “the meeting is now open,” and the invariable result, a long, dead pause.  In fact, the meeting would not open.  Like an oyster, it remained pertinaciously shut.