and for many a day afterwards we dined together once a year. I think our last dinner was at Mr. Binney’s, who was at his best when he gathered around him his juniors, like himself, the subjects of old Coward’s bounty. It was curious to me to find how little appreciated was the good merchant’s grand bequest. I often found that in many quarters, especially among the country churches, the education given to the young men at Coward’s was regarded as a disqualification. It was suspected that it impeded their religious career, that they were not so sound as good young men who did not enjoy these advantages, that at other colleges the preachers were better because not so learned, more devotedly pious because more ignorant. It was held then that a student might be over-educated, and the more he knew the more his religious zeal diminished. In these days the feeling has ceased to exist, and the churches are proud of the men who consecrate to the service of their Lord all their cultivated powers of body and mind. The Christian Church has ceased to fear the bugbear of a learned ministry. One can quite understand, however, how that feeling came into existence. The success of the early Methodists had led many to feel how little need there was for culture when the torpor of the worldly and the poor was to be broken up. The Methodists were of the people and spoke to them in a language they could understand. Learning, criticism, doubt—what were they in the opinion of the pious of those days but snares to be avoided, perils to be shunned? For good or bad, we have outgrown that. CHAPTER VII. LONDON LONG AGO.