In the next sacramental duty he did not see his way so clearly as in the first. In the Church of England, the _Sacrament_, as it is emphatically called, must be administered three times a year, may be once a month, and cannot be unless there be a number of communicants. Giving the _Sacrament_ once a week is considered very High Church, and to give it every morning is going a little too far. Superstitious reverence and indifference keep the majority away from this rite, and few come, except they get a monomonia for manifesting their godliness in that special direction. This fact will account for Mr. Spencer's hesitation, when he took to Christianizing his flock by making them approach the Sacrament. He makes many promise to come, and gets a neighbouring clergyman to administer it in their own houses to some decrepid old people, who could not come to church. He preaches on this, and "hopes he has not been wrong;" he discusses the propriety of his proceedings with his older brethren in the ministry. The result seems to confirm him in his ideas, and he preaches a second time, and gives appendices to his sermon in every visit, about going to the Lord's Supper. He still "hopes he is not wrong." He works very hard at this point, however, and on the first Easter Sunday of his ministry, he gives God thanks and prays against pride, at having 130 communicants. There was another little incident on the same day as a set off to his success in beating up the parish; when he opens the sermon-cover from which he used to read his MS., he finds he had put the wrong sermon there, and had to preach extempore the sermon he intended to have read: of course, it was not to his satisfaction, though the people scarcely knew the difference. One sad event cast a cloud over the beginning of his clerical life: the sister he loved so much, and whose company and conversation he thought more than an equivalent for the gayest party, Lady Georgiana Quin, died in London. He was very much afflicted by it, and even in after-life he would be deeply moved when speaking of this sister. He {109} did not delay long in London, but came home in a day or two after the funeral.