These religious services were held, as a rule, from twelve-thirty to one-fifteen on the Sunday once a day only, (without any week-night meetings.) They were held at an hour when, in the old-days, the congregations would have been home, or going home, from their services. But this arranged lateness was due to the fact, that there had grown up in all sections of society an ever-increasing lateness of retiring at night, coupled with a growth of indolence caused by every kind of sensual indulgence, not the least of which was gluttony. Music of a sensuous, voluptuous character formed a chief part of the brief Sunday services, and every item was loudly applauded as though the whole affair had been a performance rather than a professedly religious service. Most of the interior arrangements in many of the old places of worship had been altered. The theatre style of thing--plush-covered tip seats, etc.--had taken the place of the old pews and the wooden seats. In many of these Sunday services, too, people of both sexes smoked at will--for smoking among women had become almost universal. There were no Bibles, or Hymn books, the odes, etc., were printed on double sheets, after the fashion of theatre programmes, and, like them, contained numerous advertisements of the Sunday matinees and evening performances at the theatres, music-halls, etc. All this had been brought about much more easily than would at first appear, until we remember one or two factors that had long been working silently, subtly among the attendants--mere church professors--of the various places of worship, such as, the insistance on shorter services, and fewer--for long, before the Rapture, the unspiritual had clamoured for a _single_ service of the week, that of a late Sunday morning one. Then for years, religious services (those of the Sunday) had grown more and more sensuous, unspiritual. Every real _spiritual_ doctrine had first been denied, then expunged from the _essay_ that had largely taken the place of the old-time sermon. Again, all spiritual restraints had now been taken away--the true believers, the Holy Spirit, every spiritually-minded, born-again pastor and clergyman. The new Religion (it could not be called a Faith) was a universal one. The powers of the Priest-craft had invented a religion of the Flesh, fleshy to a degree. Every type of indulgence was permissible, so that men everywhere gloried in their religion, "having a form--but denying God." The performances at all theatres, music-halls, etc., had grown rapidly worse and worse, in character,--licentiousness, animalism, voluptuousness, debauchery, these were the main features of the newer type of performances. Salome dances, and even the wildest, obscenest type of the "_can-can_" of the French, in its most promiscuous lascivious forms, were common fare on the varied English stages.