Wentworth and Rose had resolved to become one in life, as they had been in years of struggle and endeavour. As she rose she dragged him upward and onward. God had come to him as his Father and his Friend. He was of no Church. He needed the aid of no priest. He distrusted the emotional sensationalism of what is called religious life. It had done little for him in the past—only helped him to his fall. Church members he had found no better than other men; church life just as worldly as that of the wicked. It needed not that he should enter man’s churches to see in all His glory and tenderness and love the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; Him who had wept over impenitent Jerusalem, and had tears and pity for such frail women as Mary the Magdalene; who had said as He walked the crowded streets of Jerusalem, beneath the proud pillars of the Temple itself: ‘Come unto Me all ye that are weary and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest’; the lustre of whose life and the music of whose voice had bettered and brightened all time and space. It was no Agnostic’s dream that had made Wentworth a new man, but a great spiritual reality, of which he felt as sure as he did of his own existence, as he wrote: ‘O Thou, the God of life and light, In whom all heaven and earth unite, Fain would I raise my humble voice And with all people round rejoice. ‘I cannot see Thee as Thou art, I only know Thee with the heart. All language fails me when I try To shadow forth Thy Deity. ‘I love, I worship, I adore— Can man give less, can God ask more? That love in life I would translate, And freely trust Thee with my fate.’ CHAPTER XII. IN LOW COMPANY. Nothing was blacker than the outlook in this land of ours fifty years ago. The parson droned away on Sunday, preaching a gospel which had not the remotest reference to living men, and good people sighed placidly as the preacher dwelt apparently _con amore_—and without the slightest sign of regret—on the torture and the flame to which the wicked would be eternally condemned. The hearer, if well to do, went home complacently to his Sunday dinner and glass or two of port; while the poor sinner preferred to sleep off the Saturday night’s debauch, leaving the missus and the children to go to a place of worship, on the condition that the dinner should not be forgotten. But it was chiefly the small shopkeepers who came to attend what were called the means of grace. I remember a parish clerk who made a point of attending the Wesleyan chapel in the evening. In time the old vicar died and a new one reigned in his stead. In his wisdom he proposed to have evening service in the parish church to hinder the sheep from roving in forbidden pastures. But said the parish clerk, when his vicar suggested the idea: ‘Oh no, sir; that will never do. You will deprive me of the means of grace altogether.’