The congregation of St Agatha's were a prejudiced people, and had long been established in their own ways. The previous vicar, who had a certain fame as an orator of the florid order and rose to be an honorary canon, was a churchman of the lowest depths, and did things which Father Jinks used to mention with a shudder. He preached in a black gown, and delighted to address religious meetings in unlicensed places without any gown at all; he administered the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper once a month, and preferred to do so at evening service; he delighted to offer an extempore prayer before sermon, and never concluded a discourse without witnessing against the errors of the Church of Rome; he delighted in a three-decker pulpit, and would occasionally, in visiting the church for a baptism, leave his hat on the communion table where there was no other ornament. In his early days the music was led by a barrel organ, which was turned by the clerk, and later, when a large harmonium was introduced, the Psalms were read--the clerk leading the congregation with a stentorian voice--and Moody and Sankey's hymns were freely used. It was understood that the Canon had received a sudden call to the ministry while engaged in commercial pursuits, and had not found time for a University education--the hood which he wore at marriages was an invention of his wife's--and he was therefore very careful to correct the inaccuracies of the accepted versions, saying, with much impressiveness, “In the original Hebrew of this Gospel,” or, “The Greek of Isaiah has it,” although, in order to prevent monotony he would next Sunday reverse the order of languages and again conform to traditional belief. Critical persons, connected by blood with the families of St Agatha's and attending services there on occasion, declared openly that the Canon was a preposterous personage and a wind-bag; but he had without doubt a certain vein of genuine piety, which unsympathising people were apt to call unctuous, but which was, at any rate, warm; and a turn for rhetoric--he was of Irish birth--which might not be heavily charged with thought, but was very appetizing to the somewhat heavy minds of St Agatha's parish. While he did not allow excessive charity to interfere with comfortable living, and while he did not consider it his duty to risk a valuable life by reckless visitation of persons with contagious diseases, the Canon, by his popular religious manner--his funeral addresses which he delivered at the grave, wearing a tall hat and swaying an umbrella, moved all to open grief,--and by his sermons,--an hour long and rich in anecdotes--held the parish in his hand and kept St Agatha's full. People still speak of a course of lectures on “The Antichrists of the Bible,” in which Rome was compared to Egypt, Samaria, Nineveh, and Babylon, and the strangers sat in the aisles; and there can be no doubt that the Canon convinced the parish