And, though it is right to speak decidedly of the comparative unimportance of forms of prayer, it does not by any means follow that they are entirely unimportant; still less that we can dispense with them. It should be regarded as a solemn duty-and it is one which easily commends itself to the conscience and the judgment-to throw the spirit of supplication into the most rational forms which our knowledge enables us to create. It is surely a mistake to force ourselves to pray for things which do not impress us as fit objects of deliberate desire. Liberty in this respect should be allowed to individual consciences; and at the same time it might be hoped that tolerance, a reverent tolerance unmixed with contempt, should be shown by more cultivated and philosophical minds towards the humbler prayers of the more ignorant.

For they who recognise in any degree the nature and relation of man as a son of Gol can scarcely fail to admit, that it is well for a man to bring all his thoughts, whatever they are, into the presence of his unseen Father. It is better, a thousand times better, that he should put the most foolish and irrational desires into prayer, than that he should throw himself into the same desires without remembering God. Not that no praying can be bad.

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may be bad, it can hardly be good, when it is addressed to a capricious being, to a tyrant who may be coaxed or soothed or bribed, in order to obtain some private advantage. And there is room for earnest thought and endeavour in the effort to keep the image of the Fatherly will of God pure and clear before the mind. But, if it be remembered who and what God is, then, I think, it may be said without limit, it is good for a man to bring all his desires to God and to turn them into prayers, that God Himself may teach him what desires are worthy of a child of His, and from what he needs to be purged.

After all, I may seem to have evaded the question as to the efficacy of prayer. Can we expect that God will do what

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we ask any the more for our asking? Are we ready to bring this question to the practical test of experiment? confess to a shrinking from such an inquiry, as from one which it is neither reverent nor useful to prosecute. But that this feeling may not be reasonably attributed to the consciousness of a bad case, we are bound to try to justify it. Let due consideration, then, be given to the fact, that prayer, when it comes to be regarded as efficacious-that is, as a machinery for securing results-is beginning to pass into a hurtful and irreverent superstition. No doubt we here confront a paradox. We are taught to believe in the efficacy of prayer; we may be satisfied that prayers have brought down definite blessings from heaven but, the moment we begin to act in a business-like manner upon a theory of the efficacy of prayer, we cease to pray acceptably. This, let it be borne in mind, is not a mere makeshift of an argument, introduced to cover a weak point; it is a first principle in the doctrine of prayer. If, therefore, specific fulfilments were fixedly or even abundantly assigned to human prayers, a great evil would almost inevitably be created. Prayer would cease to be, in the deepest and truest sense, the prayer of faith, and would become the prayer of calculation; and the spirit of it would evaporate. I should be sorry to say that no good is done by appeals to instances of prayers answered by direct gifts; we have some such appeals in Scripture. But I think a reverent mind must experience some shock to its delicacy from a contact with such appeals; I can almost imagine that it would rather hear nothing of such answers. It scarcely raises our idea of the character of God, to be told that He has caused some little thing to come to pass just because Soand-so asked Him. What we want to feel assured of is, that God hears our prayers; that if we pour out our hearts before Him in childlike hope, He is pleased, and helps forward the cause into which we have thrown our sympathies. In this way, we may thankfully believe that our prayers are always

HAVING for the last twelve years been brought, by my calling, into daily intimate communion with "the workingclasses" in London, and having, of course, heard or read many opinions about them -from that of enthusiasts, who admire them as the hope of the country, the order which combines the experience of toil with the intelligence of virgin philosophy, to that of self-contained philanthropists, who sigh over them in tracts or on platforms as godless and heathenI may say that the few thoughts I here venture to set down are the result of observation which has been, I believe, at least unprejudiced and patient. There are a number of phases in the character of working people which no other class seems to me to exhibit. They are in a state or simmer of transition, which turns up every now and then a trait so pure and promising that those who watch the seething pot of their society with hope pick it out and hold it up at once, crying, "See what these people are made of; how sweet and wholesome!" while others, who continue their suspicious inspection, need only wait a little longer to gather a sample which is obviously worthless or offensive. No doubt in general society you may find specimens of all sorts, but the peculiarities to which I allude are shown by working people as a class. To take a familiar instance: what with demagogues, imperfect knowledge of political economy, and unchecked licence to complain, we might expect riots to accompany destitution, and yet the Lancashire operatives displayed the most remarkable collective endurance of hardness England has ever seen. Had analogous distress fallen upon any other class, had its whole business shrunk unexpectedly away and left it settling slowly down into the slough of despair, while the rest of the community was working with briskness and profit upon hard ground, had the occupation of No. 75.-VOL. XIII.

lawyers suddenly gone, or tithes ceased, there would have been probably a tinge of bitterness in the wail from the sufferers which we did not hear from those on whom the cotton famine fell. I doubt whether attorneys and clergymen would have been so patient as the spinners. On the other hand, to take an example which shall not twit them with offensive vice, what a serious defect of character is seen in the improvidence of the working classes! How small a proportion avail themselves of the means within their reach to secure a provision during sickness or old age! They are generally acquainted with these means, they are incessantly reminded by the example of their fellows how miserably homes are broken up by a few months' illness of the bread-winner, they talk with abhorrence of the workhouse into which their elders, long and steadily employed and paid, disappear; and yet, as a class, they stubbornly decline to adopt simple precautions against the evils they dread. Probably they are encouraged in their tenacity of this vice by the doings of some philanthropists, who address themselves to the relief of all kinds of destitution, however caused; so difficult is it to do real good, so hard to carry out the love of One who restored the use of diseased limbs and senses, and thus put the sufferers in the way of earning their own bread, but who gave no money to the beggar. Thus He did the will of His Father, who permits the idle and extravagant, of all degrees, to smart for their vice. When we are told to take no thought for the morrow, we must recollect that it is the duty of today to put a shilling into the Post-office Savings Bank.

I have glanced at the patience and improvidence of working people as a class, because it helps us to understand the opposite estimates of their character which we so frequently hear from those

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me now bear glad witness to some of their virtues. I do not think I shall be misunderstood, or show that I am affected, or charged with too favourable prejudices, when I say that they are remarkably courteous; and explain what I mean. As a clergyman I have had to call thousands of times upon utter strangers among the working people. I cannot remember any instance in which I have been treated with rudeness, except when I have been inconsiderate, or professionally intrusive, myself. Of course I except boys; for, however great friends you may be with young people generally, you cannot escape some wanton impertinence from street imps, bursting with irreverent wit. But they are rude to each other, every one, and all. Their ill-behaviour is chiefly the result of sheer animal spirits, and the fact that their playground is the street. Boys must be at high jinks sometimes; and when they are let out of the workshop, or are enjoying any parenthesis of escape from supervision by their immediate and admitted superiors, they let off steam. A model boy, who never dirties his fingers or tumbles his hair, who always "rebukes" his fellows for departures from his code of morality, who appears in favourable aspects, under initials, in a tract, is often more radically and exquisitely offensive than one who thinks aloud, freely, about any person or occurrence, whether it be a tipsy old woman on a stretcher, who is being borne, as in a living police funeral, to her temporary home in the station, or a duchess whose carriage is blocked on its way to a drawing-room, and "dominated" by some urchin on a lamp-post. I except street-boys, who are unfeeling; I except encounters in a mob; and I repeat that I can recall no instances of unprovoked ill manners in any of the genuine working-classes, throughout numberless personal communications with them. They are naturally courteous. No doubt, if you were to call just as the family were sitting down to dinner or tea, and still go in though you found them thus engaged; if you were to open the door

without knocking, or ask impertinent questions about the goodman's or goodwife's ways and means, or begin to read a chapter from the holy Bible apropos to nothing at all, simply because you assumed that a strange bootmaker's family needed conversion, you might expose yourself to a rough hint that your company was undesirable. But if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to pay you a visit, and remark that your doorstep was not so clean as it might be, or ask you what your income was, or how much you had paid for your child's funeral, and what you had got for dinner, you would try to convey to his Grace your sense of the mistake he made in affecting an interest in your concerns. And when a clergyman, or visitor bent on amateur proselytism and elevation of the masses, forgets his manners, as the Archbishop of Canterbury never would his, what wonder if he gets a rap on the knuckles from a carpenter who does not know how to reply to an impertinence with indirect and polished coolness? I will give an instance of the courtesy shown by the working classes. When the volunteer movement began, in 1860, a number of working-men came to me with the request that I would assist them in forming an artisans' corps, by lending them my schoolrooms and accompanying their request to the authorities for enrolment and permission to wear a characteristically cheap uniform. This involved numerous meetings, deputations to the Lord Lieutenant and the War-office. We waited on Lord Salisbury's representative. We waited in Pall Mall. We were left to cool for some time. We were on two or three occasions politely snubbed. I was present at the interviews, and talked with the men after them. We had several public meetings, and heard freelyuttered sentiments. At last, with the aid of hired instructors, about 120 men were drilled in our schoolroom. Now comes my instance of courteous consideration. During that whole winter, though I mixed freely with the men, I never heard an oath. They knew how to swear well enough, and I dare say many of them swore among themselves,