But the Free Churches, are not they the home of free thought? Are they not leaders in religious reform? Alas! they all have their dogmas and creeds to the believer in which they promise eternal life, while to the unbeliever, no matter how honest he may be, or how pure in heart and life, there is anathema maranatha. If the Church of England apes the Church of Rome, what are we to say of the conventicle, with its antiquated creed and its obsolete theology? Are they not still, in spite of their boasted freedom, under the rule of St. Augustine and the monks? Nor can it well be otherwise. You take a young man, ignorant of the world, unversed in human nature; you shut him up in a college with others as ignorant as himself. You teach him theological conundrums rather than real life. Can such as they minister to a mind diseased? Am I to be saved by listening to such as they? Ah, no! ‘In secret silence of the mind, My heaven, and there my God, I find.’ It was so with Rose as she wandered drearily from one church door to another, seeking rest and finding none. It was clear to her that there was no room for her in the narrow circle of the Churches. As long as you are an actress, as long as you get your living by following the stage, said they all, you cannot be a church-member, forgetting that the stage itself was, in a prior age, but the child of the Church. One day she tried the Quakers, but there the silence was too oppressive—nor did she feel called upon to make herself singular by a display of Quaker dress or Quaker speech. One Sunday she was in Edinburgh, staying at the house of one of the University professors. She had heard much of Scotch piety, and she wanted to see what it was like. A grand scientific gathering was being held, and the house was full of men of science. In the morning she went to church. Again she was taken to church in the afternoon, very much against the grain; but she was in Rome, and had to do as the Romans did. In the evening there was a dinner-party. As they repaired to the drawing-room, the lady of the house said: ‘It is very questionable whether we shall see any more of the gentlemen to-night. If they rise from the table sober, they will come into the drawing-room. If they take too much, they will go up by the backstairs to bed.’ The lady of the house said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but it shocked Rose to find that, in the city where the Sabbath is observed more strictly than anywhere else, this was how the Sabbath night was spent, and, naturally, she had little respect for the piety which could attend church twice a day on the Sunday, and make the Sunday night a convivial carouse. What was she to do? She went to many a Congregational, or Baptist, or Unitarian, or Episcopalian church in London, where she heard much that was helpful to her spiritual life—much that it did her good to hear. ‘You can’t join my church,’ said a popular divine to her. ‘Why not?