him dull, drowsy, idle, irritable, morose. There are many who are "the worse for drink," whose physical and mental strength is weakened, whose home is rendered unhappy, by drink, who never show the ordinary signs of drunkenness. They stop at the boundary where they know that further indulgence would endanger their self-control and expose them to contempt, but they have overstepped the confines of temperance, and though there be no outward evidence, the head is overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness. Any abuse of stimulants which unsteadies the hand, clouds the brain, sours the temper, is a form of drunkenness. A man who goes on sipping through the day, and every day, is a worse drunkard than he who at rare intervals takes at once a large quantity of intoxicating drink and is conspicuously drunk. There may be a gradual suicide as fatal as the sudden plunge or stroke. The dram small in quantity but continually repeated may be as deadly as the prussic acid or the pistol shot.

The extremists appear to forget that there are other intoxications besides that of alcohol, and that men can rant and rave on water as wildly as on wine. There is the intoxication of pride, of bigotry, wealth, station, authority, popularity, which boasts that it is "rich and hath need of nothing, and knoweth not that it is poor and blind and naked." It is possible to live in a "fool's paradise," and to despise and insult wise men outside it. Archbishop Magee, when Bishop of Peterborough, went to preach in a Staffordshire church,

and was informed by the vicar when they went to dine that there was only water on the table, but that he could have a little whiskey in his bedroom "to put his lips to," as Mrs. Gamp expresses it, "when he was so dispoged." The bishop remarked to a friend, who kindly repeated his words to me, "I shall ask my host to be my guest, and I shall say to him, There is nothing but whiskey on the table, but if you would like a little water, you can have it upstairs.'" In some cases there is no option

Water, water everywhere,

And never a drop to drink.

The visitor cannot be temperate, because there is nothing on which he can exercise his temperance, and so far from being converted to this hydropathic treatment, he feels much more inclined to forswear thin potations and addict himself to sack.

Persons who are intoxicated by false excitements are sometimes under a delusion that they possess exclusively the sober mind, as the Rev. Mr. Stiggins when he made the declaration, "This meeting is drunk.”

Persons who live among habitual drunkards are apt to fancy that all the world is drunk. There is a pathetic story that one of the best of men and most beloved of bishops was seated on a bench in some public grounds, and was talking to a little maiden who came by, some seven years of age. "I must go now," he said, "and you must help me to rise, but I'm afraid you'll find me very heavy."

"Oh no," she replied, "you're not half so drunk as father often is."

I abhor and deplore that sin of drunkenness which stupefies the brain, defiles the mind, petrifies the heart, cripples the body, and disfigures the countenance of the drunkard. Before the invention of the teetotal scheme, and since, I have given thought, time, and money to provide antidotes to drunkenness and substitutes for the public-house. I am an advocate for a reduction in the number of licensed houses, and for the supervision and management of the liquor business, as in Norway and Sweden, by the State. I believe that such an arrangement would prove in this country, as in those which I have mentioned, morally a blessing and financially a boon; but I despise self-righteous faddists, and feel towards them as F.M. the Duke of Cambridge, many years ago, towards a regiment which his Royal Highness reviewed and found to be so incapable that he gave an order (to no one in particular, and obeyed accordingly), "Send pioneers to the front. Let them dig a trench and bury the lot."

Let us eliminate the fanatics, with their autocratic arrogance and their impossible programme, and let all Christians who love their religion, and the common sense which is inseparable from it, unite in the endeavour, by their example and by their influence, to overcome evil with good. Above all, let them

Ask God for temperance, that is the appliance
Which your disease requires.

CHAPTER XIII

Clergy and Laity

An humble clergy is a very good one, and an humble laity too, since humility is a virtue which equally adorns every station of life.-SWIFT.

THE dean of a cathedral city and the squire of a country village, with " troops of friends," ecclesiastical and civil, and being moreover an old man, with the long experience of an active life, I am sometimes consulted by my brethren, clerical and lay, concerning those "unhappy divisions" which prevent the hearty co-operation of men who have the chief influence for good. For many years a rural dean, and having visited more than three hundred parishes (from the Land's End to the border) as a preacher-I state this, not to magnify mine office, but to justify my claims as a counsellor having closely studied the laws of our Church and the rubrics of our service, I have answered questions and given advice without hesitation and being privileged to know that my suggestions have been in some cases helpful, I venture to repeat them. They refer especially to doubtful disputations between squires and parsons, but they have a general application

to subjects of severance between the clergy and their congregations.

As a rule, when Christians who deserve the title, when gentlemen gifted with common sense, meet together, they desire to encourage rather than to provoke one another; in matters of minor importance they can even agree to differ. It is their desire to have in necessarariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. There are persons so wise in their own conceit that you cannot deal with them. "I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak let no dog bark." In removing a "three-decker " some years ago, the following lines were discovered written in chalk on a panel at the back of the pulpit previously hidden from view:

A proud parson and a silly squire

Caused me to make this pulpit higher;

and pride and ignorance, whether they combine or contend, will be condemned even by the village carpenter although they put money in his pocket.

Fifty years ago there was more sympathy than now. The priest and his patron had in many cases been at the same school and university, and a much larger proportion of the clergy belonged to the higher grades of society. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the parsons and the squires, however disgraceful the condition of the churches, however dull were their services and feeble their lays, they were more congenial in their manners and habits, likes and dislikes; there