SOME TALK WITH WITH

"THERE isn't any hotel here, and no inn either."

"What is to be done then?"

'See, over there's the vicarage: go and see the Vicar; he be the man to help you."

The rude village or hamlet high up amongst the Welsh mountains, and far out of the track of the tourist, offered much to gratify the sense of the picturesque and beautiful; but the afternoon was drawing on, and the feelings uppermost in the mind were associated with the servile wants of the body.

The vicarage seemed to offer a snug and pleasant shelter; and the vicarage was accordingly made for without further delay.

The vicarage gate, all overgrown with a twining verdant creeper, creaked, swung open, and fell back again; when the query arose: "but what of the Vicar? Will the Vicar relish the arrival of an unexpected hungry and wayvisitor at five o'clock

worn

p.m. ?"

"That is so, Vicar, and am here, sent by your own villagers, to beg an hour's rest."

"An hour's! no a night's, pray. The nearest town is fifteen miles away across the mountains.”

The Vicar's invitation, twice repeated in the same cordial tones, was too genuinely given to cause scruple in accepting it; and he led the way towards the open door of his cottage.

The Vicar's garden was wild, and delightful. A modern gardener would have said it had no order; but the eye of the artist would have wandered with pleasure over beds rich in the growth of old-fashioned flowers and plants, interwoven one with another, in one mass of colour and verdure. One side of the trellised porch was claimed by roses, pink and white; and on the other grew honeysuckle, and a creeper which was not familiar.

The Vicar, walking a little ahead, with the stoop peculiar to one who reads or thinks habitually in his walking, passed through the porch and into a small room which opened on the right of the en

trance.

["So the Vicar is a student, a Mountain hermit? a Welsh recluse ?"]

This, sotto voce, on seeing that the room was lined with books: Bookshelves packed to their utmost limits, occupied every wall, and, overflowing, had strewn some of their contents over the floor.

The most cursory glance was

sufficient to show that the sphere of his studies was a wide one; and this also was noticeable that every book appeared to have been handled; the newest not having found its way to the shelf until the owner had at any rate made acquaintance with its contents.

66

Here," said the Vicar, leading into another chamber on the first and highest story, "here I can stow you not uncomfortably I hope for the night. Come down when you please, and we will drink tea together." The raven was waiting outside for his master, and perched on his shoulder as soon as he returned to his bench in the garden.

The Vicar's face was of the finest Italian type: dark complexioned, with full broad forehead, delicately chiselled

nose, and a firm but soft and flexible mouth. By-andby he went round by the back of the cottage, and was heard giving directions to some one who answered in the tones of an elderly servingwoman, and whom he called Janet. Student though he evidently was, the Vicar did not seem to despise the things of the flesh, for his table was plentifully, though unpretentiously, furnished for the meal to which we presently sat down in company. Few travellers

in North Wales forget the trout freshly drawn from their home in the mountain streams; and it will suffice these to know that trout formed our chief dish.

One does not talk of much during the first hour or two of meeting with a stranger. The Vicar was not reticent, however, and gave promise of some agreeable talk when we should have ripened our acquaintance by some few additional hours. For the present it was pleasant to listen to his account of the year's gardening, commencing with the early tulips-of which he had reared some fine

On the way upwards to the village schoolroom, the Vicar fell in with several of his flock, for each of whom he had a special word. There was a venerable dame who came eagerly to bring the news that her son was on his homeward voyage from a recent scene of war. "He's not wounded, Vicar, and they've given him a medal." There was some agricultural gossip to be had from a farmer, who had "heard that Government was sending a gentleman out this way to learn about the bad times." And there were domestic details, a variety, to be discussed with several mothers and grandmothers. The Vicar's "talk," or lecture, was one of those happy conversational discourses, which come from the scholar, the man of the world, and the pastor combined; such words as flow easily from a richly stored mind in sympathy with its hearers,and which have a charm that belongs to no highly polished pulpit utterances. At first he took no text, but spoke a few general words; then turning to the well-thumbed Book at his hand, he seemed to open it and read at random : "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." A few shrewd remarks on the reaping of the fields around showed him to be acquainted with the more material meaning of his text, and he delayed a moment to criticise in a few brief words the address of a certain republican person who it seemed had been

busy recently in the neighbourhood perplexing the brains of the Vicar's parishioners with certain highsounding doctrines which, as the Vicar picked them to pieces, seemed to resemble those specious socialistic fallacies which in times of depression and ill-luck often fall with a cheering sound on the ears of the ignorant poor. But the Vicar had some logic, and made short work of the socialist person. His discourse was of a moral rather than of a theological character (perhaps because the day was a week day), and appeared to aim at giving a few practical hints on the doctrine of cause and effect, as illustrated by the necessary connection between a man's life here and the existence, whatever it might be, which was to follow. As their life now, so he said must of necessity be their life hereafter. Here they did but sow the seed, but that which was sown -and none else would be the harvest to be reaped hereafter. The tone of the speaker was different from what one would have expected to hear in such a place, before such an audience. It was not the conventional clerical lecture, but the speech of one who had reached a larger and more liberal sphere of religious thought, and who could yet shape his utterances to suit the simple understandings of a congregation of mountain peasants.

It was cool and quiet under the elms in the Vicar's garden, and the lamp twinkled brightly in his study window. A brook descending between steep and narrow sides down into the river below made music in the distance, and the sounds of the village, higher up amongst the mountains, were faintly echoed.

The Vicar's pipe gave out occasional fragrant puffs, and the Vicar seemed not uninclined for conversation.

"There was not a great deal of

theology in your address tonight.'

"No. I avoid it, especially in my week-day talks with my people, which indeed are only intended to be as lightly and informally instructive as I can make them."

"You have-am I right in thinking?-leanings towards a broader faith than is yet commonly received."

"Why, I would not willingly cut myself adrift from the old moorings; but one who has followed the thought of his age as closely as I believe I have, and who has allowed his own thoughts as much freedom of play as I permit to mine, can scarcely remain for ever riding at anchor in the same spot. The religious waters have been a good deal troubled lately; no one can say whither his bark is likely to be carried if he lets the rudder go; and perhaps they are the safest who choose to abide where they find themselves."

"I take it you are not one of those, however?"

To

No, I have let my boat sail; and do not know but I have come as near sight of land as one could hope to, seeing how little any of us know the road we traverse. leave metaphor, what a troubled spectacle is that which the Church presents in these latter days! Can we honestly say that we have a National Church? To me, the sects appear to be in a firmer and more healthful state than the mother Church. I hear less of criticism, of weakened faith, of doubts and disbeliefs, amongst them, than in the great body of the so-called National Church. Moreover, some of your sects have grown so big and strong that one would scarcely like in their hearing to talk of any "National" Church from which they were supposed to be excluded. Turn for a moment to Evangelicism, still the professed

faith of the majority in this country, and ask what kind of a spectacle it offers. Its teachers, if we except a few men of intellect and earnest faith, are not those who, if our clergy were elected by vote of their parishioners, would be chosen as the keepers of their spiritual condition. Too many of the older ones, in whom what enthusiasm they once had is dead, are but spiritless leaders, iterating doctrines which have lost their meaning to them; and the younger ones, crammed with principles, theories, dogmas, which they cannot apply, are unfitted by age, experience, or real religious feeling to serve as guides over the difficult paths of modern religious doubts. So long as it is possible for youths who lack all the essential qualities of religious teachers to become professors of the Church by hurriedly scraping through an examination in things of no use to them, and signing a set of articles which they are at liberty practically to renounce when signed, the Church will never regain her hold over an intelligent people. Do not mistake me the Church is not suddenly going to pieces. There are many strong bonds of authority, of superstition, of habit, aye, and of deep devotion also, which can and will hold her together; and, though she is even now changing her form, the change is happening so gradually that men will have become accustomed to her altered countenance before they know that it is not the old one which looked down on their fathers and their grandfathers before them. But see what wounds she has suffered already in her ancient body. Her dearest dogmas are not only questioned, but openly rejected. Nay, she is taunted with compelling men's consciences to a creed which, nominally based on love, lacks the real elements of humanity. She is

exclusive; she preaches of "elect; " she reiterates that "there are few that be saved." Talking greatly, and I believe earnestly, of love, she mocks love in the enforcing of her essential dogmas. And the dangers that threaten her are two and threefold. She has to face, with the blunted weapons of an antique armoury, the keener tools of science. She has carefully to watch the stray souls who are every day weakening her by falling away in distrust, or passing over in open rebellion to another side. And more than all, she has to reassure or combat those many of her own professors, whose faith in her, already shaken, is growing slacker and slacker each day, and who, though not yet acknowledged perverts, are somewhat lax in pricking consciences with the old arguments she would have them employ. The vessel, I say, will not sink; but there are some dangerous gaps in her side, and the troublous thing is that, amongst the clerical crew she carries, there are many who not only refuse a hand at the pumps, but stand by with some satisfaction, and watch the inrush of the waters."

"But do you not allow for the good which this particular form of religion has already done in the world?"

"Certainly I do. He would be unwise who should try to argue that away. It has produced some very noble types of men; it has produced heroism in devotion, in self-sacrifice, in love. It has given us many, in every walk of life, who have followed literally--somewhat too literally for their own worldly good-the precept of their first great Master to "forsake all and follow me"; many who have been most like Him in their intense human sympathy with the world. In sickness, whether of mind or body, amongst their own flocks