all sinners, but no individual sins were ever confessed, and then
ensued a kind of dialogue with God, very much resembling the speeches
which in later years I have heard in the House of Commons from the
movers and seconders of addresses to the Crown at the opening of
Parliament.

In all the religion of that day nothing was falser than the long
prayer. Direct appeal to God can only be justified when it is
passionate. To come maundering into His presence when we have nothing
particular to say is an insult, upon which we should never presume if
we had a petition to offer to any earthly personage. We should not
venture to take up His time with commonplaces or platitudes; but our
minister seemed to consider that the Almighty, who had the universe to
govern, had more leisure at His command that the idlest lounger at a
club. Nobody ever listened to this performance. I was a good child on
the whole, but I am sure I did not; and if the chapel were now in
existence, there might be traced on the flap of the pew in which we sat
many curious designs due to these dreary performances.

The sermon was not much better. It generally consisted of a text,
which was a mere peg for a discourse, that was pretty much the same
from January to December. The minister invariably began with the fall
of man; propounded the scheme of redemption, and ended by depicting in
the morning the blessedness of the saints, and in the evening the doom
of the lost. There was a tradition that in the morning there should be
"experience"--that is to say, comfort for the elect, and that the
evening should be appropriated to their less fortunate brethren.

The evening service was the most trying to me of all these. I never
could keep awake, and knew that to sleep under the Gospel was a sin.