Again, public worship ought to be the highest and not the only expression of parochial family life. The assembled congregation is the symbol of an enduring Christian brotherhood, where mutual consideration, love and service form the unalterable watchwords. To-day this thought is much obscured by the parochial family having so little reality outside the church walls. This is especially applicable to city churches, where congregations gather from the remotest localities. The parish seems to be fast dying out and the congregation is taking its place. The people who worship in the same building neither know one another nor, in many instances, desire to. This is simply fatal to ideal public worship, one purpose of which at any rate is to quicken and seal the sympathy that already exists as the result of intercourse in the outside world. It is a grave responsibility for any one, for the sake of what he may deem to be larger spiritual privileges, to leave the church of the locality in which he lives and where his natural duties and friendships lie, to go to some distant place of worship where fellowship is impossible. Ideally the worshippers belonging to the parochial family are all known to one another and in frequent personal contact; they do not look to their clergy alone for spiritual help, but also to their fellow laymen. All too often the clergy are supposed to have the sole responsibility of spiritually aiding the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, whether they recognize it or not, have almost an equal responsibility. The clergyman does spiritual work, not because he is a clergyman, but because he is a Christian; though his special vocation determines the exact form his work should take. If there were more intelligent sympathy among the members of the congregation one with another, what strength would come to the penitent struggling to his feet, what added power to the faithful! Many fail, not because the clergy have been negligent, but because those who are termed the brethren have never extended a helping hand to support, to comfort, to cheer. If a congregation were alive to these responsibilities outside of the church, what a glorious time would be the gathering within its walls--inspiring, thrilling! Indeed, any one who tries to be unselfish and to act in the common concerns of life with reference to his neighbour's interests, any one who has elsewhere learned ever so little about intercession, cannot be unmindful when he comes to church of those who worship by his side, strangers though they be. By the exercise of sympathy, sympathy which he has learned to kindle with less at hand to quicken it to life than that given by the living, breathing forms near by, he can bring close to him his fellow-worshippers, moving into the shadow of their intercessions as well as calling them in to share his own. It will be noticed that the usual order has been reversed in the foregoing. Usually men are urged to