If the church of that time was devoted to temporal uses, religious services were not confined within its walls. Alexander Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, writes home that he _exercises_ at the house of the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, every Saturday night. This "exercising," or hearing of the catechism, with prayer and song, in private houses, was a matter of necessity in days when a parish covered a space hardly to be crossed in a day's journey, with the roads or bridle-paths choked with undergrowth, and blocked by fallen logs. The Rev. Mr. Forbes seems to have been of a complaining nature, yet he rouses one's sympathy when he tells of the difficulties under which he labored. "My parish," he says, "extendeth LX miles in length, in breadth about XI." Over this distance were scattered some four hundred families, to whom he was expected to minister. "Sometimes," he goes on plaintively, "after I have travelled Fifty Miles to Preach at a Private House, the weather happening to prove bad on the day of our meeting so that very few met, or else being hindred by Rivers and Swamps rendred impassable with much rain, I have returned with doing of nothing to their benefit or mine own satisfaction." Few clergymen of that day and region took their duties so seriously. They were for the most part quite willing to have service read by some deputy-priest or layman in the "chapels of ease;" or if they must officiate, they chose some sermon from Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or, as a last resort, constructed one at small expense of labor on a scaffolding of headings resting on an underpinning of text. A fine example of this method of sermon-building I find in the discourse sent home by the pious Whitaker. He takes as his text, "Cast thy bread upon the waters," and expounds it after this fashion: "1. The dutie to be performed: _Cast thy bread._ Be liberal to all. "2. The manner of bestowing alms: By _casting_ it away. "3. What is to be given? _Bread_; all things needful, yes, and of the best kind. "4. Who may be liberal? Even those that have it. It must be _thy_ bread--thine own. "5. To whom we must be liberal: To all; yea to the _Waters_." This kind of sermon had the double advantage of being easy for the preacher, and restful to the congregation. It went along at a comfortable jog-trot, like a family horse, and the hearer was in no danger of being hurled over the head of revival eloquence into lurid threats of future punishment. If the preachers of the Church of England did not kindle spiritual ardor, at least they did not keep children awake o' nights, nor frighten nervous women into hysterics.