regret, that the labourer seemed in the background. He sat in the back
seats behind the columns, and near the door where he could hardly hear,
and where he had none of the comfort of the stove in winter. The bishop
feared his position was cold and comfortless, that he did not feel
himself to be a member of the Church, that he was outside the pale of its
society. He exhorted the country clergy to bring the labourer forward and
make him more comfortable, to put him in a better seat among the rest,
where he would feel himself to be really one of the congregation.

To those who have sat in country churches this circular read as a piece
of most refined sarcasm, so bitter because of its truth. Where had been
the clerical eye all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the
draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence that the clerical eye
was opened just at the moment when Hodge became a voter?

At Bethel Chapel between the services the cottagers, the farmers, and the
tradesmen break their bread together, and converse, and actually seem to
recognise one another; they do not turn their backs the instant the organ
ceases and return each to his house in proud isolation. There is no
dining together, no friendly cup of tea at the parish church. This Bethel
is, you see, the church of the poor people, most emphatically _their_
church. If the word church means not a building, but a society, then this
is the true country church. It is the society of all those who, for want
of a better expression, I may term the humble-minded, those who have no
aristocratic or exclusive tastes, very simple in their reading and
studies even if well-to-do, and simple in their daily habits, rising
early and retiring early, and plebeian in their dinner-hour. It is a
peculiar cast of mind that I am trying to describe--a natural frame of
mind; these are 'chapel people'--perhaps a phrase will convey the meaning
better than explanation. This is _their_ church, and whatever the