Dear reader, _true_ religion is _not_ gloomy. “Her ways _are_ ways of pleasantness, her paths _are_ peace.” No man, no woman, has chart or compass, or guiding star, without it. Religion is not a _fable_. Else why, when our household gods are shivered, do our tearful eyes seek only Heaven? Why, when disease lays its iron grasp on bounding life, does the startled soul so earnestly, _so_ tearfully, _so_ imploringly, call on its forgotten Saviour? Ah! the house “built upon the sand” may do for sunny weather; but when the billows roll, and tempests blow, and lightnings flash, and thunders roar, _we need the_ “_Rock of Ages_.” THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER. Do you call _this_ a church? Well, I heard a prima-donna here a few nights ago: and bright eyes sparkled, and waving ringlets kept time to moving fans; and opera glasses and ogling, and fashion and folly reigned for the nonce triumphant. _I_ can’t forget it; I can’t get up any devotion _here_, under these latticed balconies, with their fashionable freight. If it were a good old country church, with a cracked bell and unhewn rafters, a pine pulpit, with the honest sun staring in through the windows, a pitch-pipe in the gallery, and a few hob-nailed rustics scattered round in the uncushioned seats, I should feel all right; but my soul is in fetters here; it won’t soar--its wings are earth-clipped. Things are all too fine! Nobody can come in at that door, whose hat and coat and bonnet are not fashionably cut. The poor man (minus a Sunday suit) might lean on his staff; in the porch, a long while, before he’d dare venture in, to pick up _his_ crumb of the Bread of Life. But, thank God, the unspoken prayer of penitence may wing its way to the Eternal Throne, though our mocking church spires point only with _aristocratic fingers_ to the _rich man’s heaven_. --That hymn was beautifully read; there’s poetry in the preacher’s soul. Now he takes his seat by the reading-desk; now he crosses the platform, and offers his hymn-book to a female who has just entered. What right has _he_ to know there is a woman in the house? ’Tisn’t clerical! Let the bonnets find their own hymns.