suburban life which I cannot but regard as likely to prove deteriorative to some persons.

It is of immense service to many, who live in the localities where their daily toil is performed, that their life, as a whole, is passed in the same scene. The shopkeeper sells his goods to the people who know how he spends his evenings, what his sentiments are in politics or religion, and what kind of a man he is as a father and a husband. The two-fold life, which so many are now living, enables men to disconnect home and self from the whirl and toil of business. The eyes of friends and neighbours are not upon the man of business; and these eyes are of immense value to recall the recreant conscience to its rightful throne in the soul. I am thinking of the moral and spiritual bearings of this question.

There is another view of the two-fold life which has often impressed me. Suburban men are apt to divide their life into two great spheres of work and rest. The City is the place where they never rest, but always work; the suburb is the place where they never (or seldom) work, but always rest. Thus, with the exception of a few village shopkeepers, publicans, farmers, and labourers, all the suburban people are a restful class. They live en deshabille at home in gravest senses, even as they exchange the silk chapeau for a felt, the broad-cloth for a shooting jacket, and the delicate boot for hob-nails or slippers. In winter they dine or drink tea as soon as they are ensconced in the warm, curtained, well-lighted dining-room; and then unfold the Times and Punch, or the Saturday Review, or the Cornhill, and ask for music, and an occasional song. This over, and "hot water" brought in, the quiet household seeks deeper repose in bed.

In summer, dinner or tea over, the garden is inspected, the boys and girls play at croquet, the pipe or the cigar is engaged, the apples on the young espaliers are counted, the blight is to be smoked on the rose-bush, perhaps a little turn in the pony-chaise, perhaps not, for all is free and easy and unsettled;—and then,—when the stars are peeping out on the myriad homes of distant regions, as on the smiling gardens and meadows of the suburbs,—to bed in peace.

All this is very enchanting to the oft-weary man, who has to contend with the competitions and rivalries of a place like London, and fight hard against many “eating cares." Milton, who was then living in what will soon become a suburb of Town, seemed to understand it all when he sang in his L'Allegro :

"Come and trip it as you go,

On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee

The mountain nymph, sweet liberty;

And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreproved pleasures free;

To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled moon doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine."

But then, what about the distant city and its vast population, thronging its long streets, its dark, dull, dreary courts, living and sinning, and suffering and dying in its houses of want and woe? Is this man and his family, running away from the seething and erring mass of wretchedness, contented to leave those who cannot escape, to contend with it as they may; and the City Missionary and half-deserted ministry to discharge their functions as they can? I do not say that the man should not have left town for country; but I do say that there should be some means of linking town and country more closely together than they are.

What is the kind of ministry and the style of worship most sought and valued by these people? Not in every instance, of course, but perhaps very frequently. In one word, æsthetical preachers and worship. By all means a gentleman in the pulpit, and a choir around the organ or harmonium. Now, I think, I am æsthetical myself: I like gentlemen of the real sort, in pulpits and out of them; and I prefer good singing everywhere before bad. But this people, I hold, have taken up too frequently with things they do not half know how to value; they belong to the age of veneer and French-polish; and such sentiments as generally appertain to these things they have gilded and painted, and called them by new names. They have little culture, and their manners are as defective ofttimes as their pronunciation. I speak not of all.

If you want to form an estimate of the character of some suburban gentry, chat a little now and then, as you have the chance, with their sons and daughters. You will find the sons rather great in Punch and the Saturday; they can retail for your edification the news which they have culled from the Standard or the more eloquent Telegraph; they speak familiarly and affectionately of D'Israeli and Gathorne Hardy, and with equal familiarity and contempt also of Gladstone and Bright. There is something in the life and influence of the suburbs which manifestly tends to conservatism. It is, perhaps, the common result of success in the cases of men who have very greatly improved their position in the world, whether in town or country. It is only another development of the fact that old servants make bad mistresses. The stair we have just left is the one about which we care the least.

I have observed that the principal amusements of the suburban classes are cricket, croquet, and music; cricket for the lads, croquet for the lasses in summer, and music for both in winter. Perhaps they do these things in

earnest. Beyond, I know not what they accomplish. There is not prevalent amongst them generally that broad and true refinement which has always been the privilege of those who had the means of using it in the old City life of London and the large provincial towns. We read now and then in the biographies of departed worthies of the fine training which they thus obtained. Who that has been at all acquainted with the names of some of the most influential men and women of the last century does not remember the education (for it was really that) which was enjoyed by many well-known families in our large provincial towns? the contact of mind with mind, and the relation of all their minds to the influences which pervaded such a town, and which could never have been secured in mere village life. London suburban places suffer far more perhaps than the suburbs of smaller cities. The dwellers on the outskirts of a city, with a hundred thousand inhabitants, will have more identification with the varied life of such a city than those who mingle in some few only of the multitudinous paths which cross and recross the modern Babylon. An upstart politician, or a religious adventurer, in a city of this size, will be criticised and kept in check by the carpenter, who reads at home on evenings the books and magazines which he gets at the Mechanics' Institution. The tailor-apprentice will call the great draper's hopeful son to order if he begins to talk flippant D'Israelism; or if he perpetrates religious buffoonery before his fellows. His fellows are, indeed, the artisans and mechanics who have known him from a boy, and who are not awed into reverence because of the difference between broadcloth and corduroy. But in these London suburbs where is the mechanic? Perhaps not there at all; if he is, what does he know? or what chance has he of knowing anything? Newspapers do not abound-magazines are pretty nearly unknown-and the Mechanics' Institution is a town luxury for which he may not hope. Or, if perchance there is such a thing, how may we characterise it? Is there not a plentiful element of patronage? Are there not more than enough concerts for the poor? and Penny Readings, at which every man who lives in a villa is asked to read something, whether he can or not; and every lady who can squall a song is urged to do it for the people's benefit. The little tradespeople, who exist by the permission of their betters, the washerwomen, gardeners, small carpenters and shoemakers, perhaps go to be entertained by the great Londoners. If there is an independent artisan living in the village, for his own comfort he will, probably, keep away.

And is it any wonder with such a spirit abroad religious services should partake of the same coldness, meanness, and hollowness? Such society is to too great an extent a mixture of prosperous citizens and their dependents and it has in it many of the reprehensible aspects of feudal· isms; and these in an age when there is something far better than feudalism to be had for both rich and poor.

I am not saying that this suburban life may not be turned to good

account; nor denying that some do make the best uses of it. But it is to be feared that the above picture is too faithful in its representations of much of the society of our London suburban villages.

Ω.

SPIRITUAL INDIGESTION.

By John Todd, D.D.*

WE sometimes meet with one who has a fair appetite, no sallowness in the face, no alarming cough, no hectic flush on the cheek, and yet he gradually grows weak, and seems to waste away, we hardly know how. It is plain that he does not digest his food, and assimilate it with the system. Onehalf of what he eats, could it be made into flesh and bone, would make him a strong man. The physician perhaps prescribes stimulants, and they give a momentary renewal of strength, but it does not abide. The man wastes faster than he renews.

It seems to be so with some Churches. There is the Church in Oldenville, which I have known for more than a quarter of a century. They have had six pastors in a little more than twenty years, and are now without a pastor. These six men have carried there and spread over the people a great variety and a great amount of mind. Some of them have been eminent men, and none inferior. They have had the slow and the quick, the phlegmatic and the mercurial, the heavy columbiad and the light artillery. Sometimes they have taken stimulants, in the shape of revivalists and extraordinary measures-had spiritual spasms. But still the Church and congregation don't grow strong. There are good men among them— very good; but as a body, they are apparently weaker from year to year. They have had first-rate preaching as a general thing, but from some cause or other their spiritual digestion is not good. They don't grow strong, don't feel strong. A spiritual lassitude rests upon them, They have, I fear, depended upon stimulants too much. They seem to have forgotten that stimulants are for men " ready to perish," and tonics are not really food; that galvanising a man, though it may make him open his eyes for a moment, and even laugh, does not give him life. They want the power to digest all the good preaching which they have had.

Will the good people of Oldenville take it kindly if I give them a few hints how they may get out of this state; for unless they do get out, they will be as weak, to say the least, a quarter of a century hence as they are now. If I tell them some hard truths, I will try to tell them in a soft way.

1. Get you a pastor as soon as may be, but not in such a hurry that you take a man whom you have heard but once. The relation between

* From an admirable little volume, entitled "Hints and Thoughts for Christians,” published by Bemrose & Sons, 21, Paternoster Row.

pastor and people, like that between husband and wife, should be founded on acquaintance, esteem, respect, and love. Don't depend on hiring a preacher by the month, or by the year. Depend upon it, such a man, be he ever so good, will leave you at the first good call, or at the first cold wind that blows over and among you. He cannot have the power of a pastor, cannot feel like one, pray like one, act like one, be like one. No man but a pastor can pray with a pastor's heart. If you have ever known a Church and society grow, under this system of hiring different men and for short periods, your experience has been different from mine.

2. I would counsel you to get a young man for your next pastor. To be sure he will be a young man, and very likely he will make mistakes, and very likely you will miss that maturity of thought and teaching which you have had so long, and which seems to have done you so little good. But he will have courage, and he will have zeal, and he will not be trammelled by experience. and he will move onward. But there is a thought of more worth than all this, and that is, a young man can get at and influence the young as no other can. The youth loves to read Henry Kirke White because White was a youth, thought as a youth, and wrote as a youth. In many cases I should advise a Church to seek a full-grown, mature mind in their pastor. But you need a young man. And when you get him you must bear with him, make allowances for his inexperience, and feel sure that the wear and tear of life will make him conservative enough ere long. Remember that the three great laws of health are, plain diet, regular exercise, and the open air. Therefore don't put your minister up to make great mental strains, and to give you great "intellectual treats." If he gives you plain instruction, and not too much at once, it is all you require.

3. Encourage your minister, when you have one, to give you expository preaching one-half of every Sabbath. It will seem dull at first, but in a short time you will relish it—the sincere milk of the word. Don't wait for the milk to be made into butter and cheese. Take it as milk. You can digest this. You have had too much labored, anvil-wrought preaching. The stomach is in an abnormal state. Expository preaching will bring it back to a healthy condition. This is "the plain food which it seems to me you require.

4. Encourage and aid your minister to devote much of his thought to the young, the children and youth. Excuse me if I hint that he can make of these something which he cannot make out of you, something unlike you, if possible. Help him to gather them into the Sabbath-school, and into the Bible-class. Let him lay the foundation of what will, in fifteen or twenty years, become a strong and vigorous Church. His very youth will be an immense advantage to him here. It is his hope.

5. Then for "exercise" and " open air," the means are at hand. Come out more willingly, promptly, regularly, and cheerfully to your weekly prayer-meeting. Go to work in the Sabbath-school; help your minister to