"At 9 came Sunday-School; and it made me indignant to be put into the
class with the village-children, as well as alarmed lest, by some
mistake of mine, I should be put below them.
"The Church-Service was a veritable Wilderness of Zin. I wandered in
it, pitching the tabernacle of my thoughts on the lining of the square
family-pew, the fidgets of my small brothers, and the horror of knowing
that, on the Monday, I should have to write out, from memory, jottings
of the rambling disconnected extempore sermon, which might have had any
text but its own, and to stand or fall by the result.
"This was followed by a, cold dinner at 1 (servants to have no work),
Sunday-School again from 2 to 4, and Evening-Service at 6.
The intervals were perhaps the greatest trial of all, from the efforts I
had to make, to be less than usually sinful, by reading books and
sermons as barren as the Dead Sea. There was but one rosy spot, in the
distance, all that day: and that was 'bed-time,' which never could come
too early!"
"Such teaching was well meant, no doubt," said Arthur; "but it must
have driven many of its victims into deserting the Church-Services
altogether."
"I'm afraid I was a deserter this morning," she gravely said. "I had
to write to Eric. Would you--would you mind my telling you something
he said about prayer? It had never struck me in that light before."
"In what light?" said Arthur.
"Why, that all Nature goes by fixed, regular laws--Science has proved
that.
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