The same day I attended Evening Service at St. Barnabas’, Pimlico, of which everybody has heard something. At this time Mr. Bennett had ceased to be the incumbent, and I was informed that the less defensible practices of this Church had been discontinued, in obedience to the injunctions of the Bishop. I cannot say I saw anything that need have given great offence, in ordinary times and circumstances: but I saw not a little which, in the time of apostacies and scandals, would more inevitably scandalize the weaker brethren, than would many far more serious sins against charity and brotherly kindness. Had these things been other than absolutely indifferent in themselves, or had they been less seemingly imitative of some ceremonies foreign to our primitive Catholicity, one might have said, at any rate, that they were quite as tolerable as the corresponding ultraisms of the opposing extreme in the Church. I certainly tried to feel both charity and fraternal sympathy for the brethren of St. Barnabas’, for I had heard them well-reported of for many good works. Yet, my impressions were not altogether favorable. On the whole, the effect was that of formalism beyond anything I ever saw in our Communion. The architecture was somewhat too highly charged with mediævalism for reformed Anglican worship, but would be not less inappropriate, in several particulars, to modern Romanism. It was antiquarian, rather than practical in any respect. The service seemed to be performed in the same æsthetic and almost histrionic spirit, even where the rubric was strictly complied with. One could not say just what was inexcusable, and yet felt that little was done unto edifying. The evil seemed to be that its _good_ was made to be _evil spoken of_, by the excessive and unnatural, if not unreal way in which it was exhibited. Good there was, undoubtedly, in the original idea of this Church, and one scruples to impeach the motive of such displays of zeal for the glory of God: but we have the positive rule of St. Paul, given by precept and example, that everything beyond what is the ordinance and custom of the Church, is to be subordinated to the great work of evangelizing men compassed with infirmities, and who oppose to the Gospel the divers prejudices of the Gentile and the Jew. I am very much afraid the contrary is the rule at St. Barnabas’. After the Evening Service, the congregation was dismissed without a Sermon. Although the assembly was far from large, and however true it may be that prayers are better than preaching, in certain circumstances, I certainly felt that a few words of exhortation might have added a spirit of reality to the solemnities, and could not have seemed out of place on the Lord’s Day, even at Evening Service. Still it is but just to say that the services are so arranged, in this church, as to secure an average both of teaching and worship, much greater than is usual elsewhere. With all