tendency to cause weariness and depression, or possibly to convey the idea that the lesson is coming to an end before its time. The object and aim of the lesson were chiefly to rising of another sun to rule the day. And what a day this was to be !-the day of the Resurrection of Christ from the dead. There were early visitors at the tomb, who rose before it was light, intent on some errand. They were timid, trustful, and good. "Who were they? and why had they come? "St. Luke says they had brought spices, which they had prepared; and for the use of spices, see 2 Chron. xvi. 14, to which the children should refer and read. "Then came a great earthquake-the earth being all alive and giving up her dead; and the same things happen as in Acts xvi. 26, to which again the children refer. "An angel of light descended and rolled back the stone from the door of the sepulchre. His authority for what he did and his defiance of the powers of darkness may be expressed in that word 'sat-he sat upon the stone, like His Master, who was sitting in the heavens laughing' at the impotency of those who would keep Jesus in His grave (Psalm ii. 4). The appearance of the angel was a terror to the watchers. They had found their task too hard for them." A FEW REMARKS FROM A LADY. teach the power and glory of the Resurrection. This great act was the climax of Christ's work: it was the miracle which declared Him "to be the Son of God with power" (Rom. i. 4). For the sake of clearness in the teacher's own mind, Mrs. Lewis's notes show that the lesson may be divided into five parts, which were not, however, set forth as such to the children under the heads of first, secondly, etc. These general divisions were-I. Death; II. Life Hidden; III. Life Manifested; IV. Life Imparted; and V. Lessons of Life. At the outset the attention of the class was arrested by picturing out the scene of the Resurrection. "The background is very dark, and in the distance rises a cross-now empty-standing between two others. A funeral proceeds, and mourners follow. "Why, here is a strange thing: the crucified 'malefactor' is being buried as a king; 'great precautions' too are being taken to keep this dead man in his grave (see St. Matt. xxvii. 62-66; and also St. Luke xxiii., 50-56, which the children should refer to and read). "Passing on now to the second division-Life Hidden (see St. John xii. 24)-the forefront of the picture becomes light, forming a great contrast to the dark background. The dawn appears, the token of the EXPERIENTIA DOCET. "The wages of sin is death," said the teacher solemnly. "Death is the punishment for disobedience. Jesus took the sting from death. God was satisfied with what Jesus had done for us, and rolled the stone away and let Him out. 'Now let us go on a little further; read the next verse all together. The angel instructed their faith in Christ's own words (see St. Matt. xvi. 21; also St. Mark ix. 10). He also confirmed it by showing the empty tomb, 'Come, see the place where the Lord lay.' You children say sometimes, 'You do not believe a thing,' Ah! I see by a smile that you do. You say. Seeing is believing! So the angel was good enough to say, 'Come and see.' "But he gave them something to do. Ah! that is the way when you begin to wonder and doubt: get to work. He gave the women a commission (see seventh verse): Go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead.' Thus these women became apostles to the Apostles-a great honour to woman. She was the first to transgress, but the first to publish the remedy for sin in a risen Saviour. 666 "Now, why did he say," continued the teacher, "Lo! I have told you?' It means this: 'I have delivered my message to you; see that you carry it out;' and the women hurried away at once-as you do to your mother when you have good news. "And they had such a reward! What was it? Jesus appeared to them. We do not know how He looked; but how did He treat His friends? I have heard of a lady who became rich, and treated her bosom friends so coldly, that they said, 'Oh! we shan't go to see her any more.' But how differently did Jesus treat His friends! He said to them, 'All hail!' And oh, what a beautiful meeting that was! "Where had Jesus been all this time? On the spot, no doubt, but hidden to earthly sight. Now His life was manifested to them. He was the Living One (Rev. i. 18), and He was seen by the women-where? In the path of duty. Learn, then, that Jesus is nearer to us than we think when we are doing our duty. "All hail!' are words of cheer-meaning, 'Peace, or Rejoice; there is no cause for fear; and He told them (verse 10) to instruct His brethren to go to Galilee, where they should see Him. He had never called them brethren' before. Then why now? (Rom. viii. 29.) To show that He was forgiving and tender with those who had deserted Him. These devoted and faithful women must then be sisters of Jesus (see St. Matthew xii. 50). "Now, why was Galilee appointed as the place of meeting? He had predicted it (see St. Matt. xxvi. 32), and it was probably a more retired spot for the Shepherd to meet His flock. "The verses also are full of hope in death for the believer in Christ. He gives the blessed hope.' To the ancient saints death and the grave were full of horror and uncertainty. Our Saviour has abolished death by destroying him that had the power of death: that is, the devil' (Hebrews ii. 14). "How was this done? Christ, in dying for sin, paid the sinner's debt. As the sinless one, Jesus Christ had no business with death, which is the wages of sin, yet He lay in the grasp of death in the prison of the grave; but on the third day God sent His angel to open the prison door and discharge the prisoner, who had paid all, to the last farthing. Satan has now failed. Are we afraid of the old serpent without his sting? "Satan cannot keep us in the grave, for he is bound himself. The grave is now a 'sweet bed of rest' to the believer (1 Thess. iv. 14). Jesus says, 'Because I live, ye shall live also' (St. John xiv. 19). 'Christ the firstfruits, then they that are Christ's at His coming' (1 Cor. xv. 23). The great sheaf has been waved before the Throne as the "earnest" of the mighty harvest' (Macduff). "Now, dear girls, the all-important lesson is, Are you view of certain passages; others give additional hints which teachers may use; and the impression of the whole proceeding is that an intelligent young teacher might pick up a number of very useful ideas and hints for the following Sunday's work, not only of what to say, but how to say it. So, at least, thought the lady who had been present for the first time. "Yes, I think I shall be able to do better now," she said to her friend as they left. "I can see my way more clearly. I must give almost as much attention to the manner in which the lesson is delivered as to the lesson itself. I must try to make it interesting and real. Yes, I will not give up my class just yet, at least." THE COUNTRY PARSON'S LIFE. A TALK WITH THE REV. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D. DO not know a more delightful Such, at all events, were the thoughts that came into my mind as I stepped down from the carriage which had been sent to meet me, at the door of the rectory of Scarning, Norfolk, which is the very centre of that land of Arcady, with the dainty descriptions of which Dr. Jessopp has so delighted his London admirers, and over the surrounding parish of which he has for many years presided as rector-for he is that Shepherd of Arcady, concerning whose personality much has been conjectured, but of which in truth so little is really known. And how sweet a retreat! The grey old church tower hard by, rearing itself to the sunny skies, dominating the quiet churchyard, over the long grass of which waves of sunshine and of shadow are passing all day long. And the light is on the great fields stretching all round, streaming down upon the narrow lanes through which now and again a stray inhabitant of Arcady, regardless of the world of stress beyond him, takes his slow and leisurely way. For it is still a quiet and a simple life for many of them, despite the changes wrought even in the most secluded country districts by the advent of the School Board teacher and his many new-fangled theories and ideas. And the Shepherd himself- -an ideal country parson-a tall, slight, handsome, silvery-haired man high up in the sixties, but yet in the prime of his busy and scholarly life. Of all men whom I have met, Dr. Jessopp struck me perhaps as being the most thoroughly a type of his class. He is to his finger-tips the cultured, broad-minded, highly bred clergyman of whom one reads now and again and whom one now and again comes across in real life. A man of wide experiences, of many friends, with a mind stored not only with the ordinary treasures of the high scholarship, but with innumerable bits of outof-the-way knowledge which are ever ready to his hand, and which are forthcoming on a tongue of singularly rich and vigorous expression. And his surroundings are so in harmony with the man himself and the golden courtly life of which he is so richly the inheritor. The charming ivy-covered old house, with the beautiful grounds and smooth green lawns around it, the deep cool staircase, the stately library lined from floor to ceiling with the books which form the collection of a lifetime, and from the oriel windows of which one catches an occasional glimpse of a sun-flecked, shadow-swept garden it is all so quiet, so old-world, so thoroughly Englishyou feel that still, within those walls, despite the growing sameness and monotony of life which my friend Mr. Stead denies, and which nevertheless is surely coming, there is yet a beautiful variety left in the world. And there is the Lady Shepherd herself, whom her husband describes far more accurately than I may venture to do, as the neatest and the most passionately loyal person in the whole world, and whose collection of autographs is her pleasure and pride. As we wandered through the pretty gardens or sat in his beloved library-Dr. Jessopp and I-we discussed the curious effects of civilisation upon the parishes and the dwellers in the parishes of rural England. In Norfolk, perhaps less than elsewhere, you find little to disturb the conviction that Hodge is Hodge a rather mindless person, with but little individuality to differentiate him from his brethren. I am well aware that in the south he is supposed, and especially by his great discoverer, Mr. Thomas Hardy, to be widely different-a man of like passions with his more highly educated and more fortunately placed brethren Mute Miltons, potential Cromwells. But in East Anglia he is a very literal unimaginative person indeed, and I do not know that Dr. Jessopp said much to alter that idea. "However much the School Board may have improved them intellectually-and undoubtedly it has effected a great work in that respect--the Norfolk labourer remains a singularly stolid and unimaginative person. Nor has he seriously improved in his mental attitude towards the great social questions of the day. He seems incapable of striking out a line for himself. But education strongly tells, and especially amongst the women, who stay longer in the schools. I wish it were possible to establish lending libraries more frequently than is the case at present; but our distances are too great. Books would be a better influence than certain newspapers, from which they draw all their politics, hot and strong. Books would widen their outview, which at present is still narrowly selfish; they have no care for anything but their own interests. Every big burning question of the day is seen through their own glasses-How will it affect me?' If the carrying of any public measure meant a shilling a week extra in their pockets they would vote for it at once. You cannot realise how the world and its mind is focussed in the little country hamlet. The English parish, like King Arthur's Round Table, is but a 'mirror of the great world beyond."" "But what." I asked, "are the chief influences for good in rural England, Dr. Jessopp; for surely there are some?" "Well," he replied, "speaking from my own experience, I should say that, in the first place, there is the clergyman, who to a greater extent than ever is taking the place of the absentee landlord as a man of position and of culture, and who is the only man who must spend in his parish all that he gets out of it, and a great deal more besides. Here, for instance, is a parish of 3,000 acres, and I'll be bound that not €100 of the rent paid ever returns to the parish. While the landlords' rents go out, the clerical incomes stay in the parish. The rectors' wives keep, as it were, registry offices, to which the village girls come for situations. The feeling, therefore, that was so strong against the country clergyman only ten years ago is, I am convinced, slowly dying down. And then there is the influence of the schoolmaster. I cannot tell you what I feel as to that influence. Oh! that clergymen in general would trust their schoolmaster." continued the rector with great energy. "He moulds the people more than anyone I know. In this parish, for instance, in their education, in their pleasures, in their whole lives, he has his prominent share. The religious spirit, from one cause or the other, is slowly dying out in the agricultural labourer, and there is nothing to replace it. I would encourage anything, therefore, that would help to restore that spirit of piety which was certainly far more common thirty or forty years ago than it is today." "And as regards their outlook upon the world beyond, Dr. Jessopp-do they realise at all that idea of the nation within the parish,' of which a Shropshire vicar has written so eloquently?" 66 Ah!" slowly and thoughtfully replied my host, "that is a difficult question to answer. As I said before, a Norfolk labourer's view of the questions of the day is limited to how far they affect him personally. As I have said on paper, so I say again: the dwellers in the city cannot understand what is meant by a village community; and yet the thing exists even in this nineteenth century, when all our changes and reforms have done their best or their worst to obliterate every vestige of its ancient existence. You can never persuade a Norfolk man that it does not matter where he was born and where he is buried. He is for ever connected with his own parish. On the other side of the brook yonder there lies another parish; he entertains some contempt, some jealousy, some aversion for the dwellers in that parish. His view of the world is the same. Locally he is intensely patriotic : from a broader point of view, he doesn't understand what the word means; and that is where the difficulty comes in in dealing with the great labouring question. You cannot generalise, you must particularise and individualise; our country parishes are in danger of suffering from the philanthropic quacks who are going up and down with one panacea for all ills, but what is medicine to one rich man is poison to another. The dweller in Arcady is intensely individual, and he must be treated as an individual; broad lines of conduct are of no avail so far as he is concerned." "How different from Tennyson's theory, that the individual withers and the world is more and more!"" said I. "Quite true, so far as the world in general is concerned, and so far as the individual is regarded by the world; but not true in our rural districts, and quite untrue anywhere, as the individual is regarded by himself. It is only human nature that oneself is the most important person in the universe to oneself. My argument still holds good that nowhere is the selfishness of human nature more faithfully mirrored than it is in the country parish. Practically, however well it may sound in theory, there is no such thing as the 'Nation in the Parish.' As Mrs. Gamp observes," continued Dr. Jessopp, with that faculty of exactly appropriate quotation for which he is so delightfully remarkable, "we lives in a walley, and we must take the consekens." " And what do you consider the best qualifications for the clergy who have to deal with the dwellers in this 'walley,' Dr. Jessopp?". Emphatically that they should be better and more directly trained then they actually are-and more widely trained too. I don't despise Greek and Latin very far from it—and, indeed, I think the tendency of our younger clergy is not towards a very high classical attainment; but I do want to see a greater knowledge of social problems, of social economics and the like. To deal with these people you must be one of them. I always think of the old Oxford don preaching to a small country congregation from a manuscript sermon, a sort of dry theological essay, and who, after he had laid down the law pretty strongly, looking into the upturned and astonished faces of his audience, thus addressed them "Ah! I know what you're thinking about; but don't you turn round and quote Irenæus to me; it won't do.' No; the parson for the rural parish, and, indeed, for any parish, for the matter of that, in these days should be an example of devotion to his parish--of devotion that is qualified by what has well been termed 'sanctified common-sense.' It is complained that a country clergyman's life is 'lonely,' 'isolated.' Well, if it is so, it is the life of the very Christ Himself, who went through the villages, teaching, journeying towards Jerusalem-a picture of our life, teaching in the villages; but continually drawing nearer to our Heavenly Home. I have said somewhere in my writings, that when the new rector of a country parish locks himself in his church and tolls the bell, it has been said that it is his own passing bell that he is ringing. That he is shutting himself out from any hope of a further career on earth; that he is a man transported for life to whom there will come no |