It was a sight to see Powle Chapel at an afternoon service. Every pew was filled, and every eye was fixed on Parson Webster as he gave out the hymns line by line, verse by verse, for few of us could read, tho' most made a point of having a hymn book. Up in the loft was the music, the double bass, the viol, and the clarionet. Between Jim Wood--Jim o' Slack--who played the double bass, and his colleagues of the viol and clarionet contention had raged from the very foundation of the church at Powle. Jim o' Slack maintained that in every true view of harmony wedded to divinity, the notes of the double bass stood for the wrath of Jehovah, and were designed to inspire awe and inward quaking. The feeble and futile utterances of the viol and the clarionet, he conceded, might represent the tender qualities of mercy and compassion, and, as such, might be worthy of some consideration among the Methodies, whose spiritual food was as milk for babies, but in High Calvinism, Jim maintained, nought but the bulky instrument his soul loved could convey adequate conception of the majesty of God and the terrors of hell. It was grand to hear the singing. We all sang for our lives, and we all had a notion of singing in tune. Then the praying! oh! it was fine to hear little Parson Webster. How he rejoiced over the elect! How he lamented over the unregenerate! It was very comforting to hear, for we were the elect, the Erastians of the Church and the Arminians of the chapel in the valley we well understood to be those in outer darkness. With what a solid satisfaction, too, did the elders settle down to the discourse of an hour and forty minutes by the hour glass, which was the least we expected from Mr. Webster. I remember still his text of that very day, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Who could deny, he asked, the utter and natural depravity of man? Why only he who by the very denial stood confessed of the sins of arrogancy and self-sufficiency. Was not the natural man, since the Fall, prone to murder, lust, evil imaginings, covetousness, hardness of heart, vain glory, malice, and all unworthiness, all being, by nature, the children of wrath, and only that small handful of the dust of Zion, of all that great valley, called forth and justified before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. How awful, too, was the lot of those that went down quick into hell, whose steps took hold on the eternal fire whose flames were never quenched. But we were not of these, tho' on this we must not plume ourselves, for salvation was not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy, for the potter had power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour. I was very glad for my part to have been made a vessel unto honour, and of this there could be no reasonable doubt, for when my father, moved