which, as a rule, is acquired after men have flung overboard the common idioms of secular life.  The salary of Mr. O’Dell is about 160 pounds a year, and although he would like more, he can make himself and Mrs. O’Dell, and the younger branches of the house of O’Dell, comfortable on that sum.  Some pastors gnash their teeth if their purse strings are opened for less than 300 pounds a year; Mr. O’Dell would purchase a pair of wings, and sing “’Tis like a little heaven below,” if his stipend was raised to that figure.  There is nothing very extraordinary in the preaching style of Mr. O’Dell.  It lacks the cunning of that rare old Baptist bird, who once went by the name of Birney, and it is devoid of that learned and masterly eloquence so finely worked by the last minister of the chapel, who used to read some of his sermons over to the deacons, before trying them upon the other sinners in the chapel; still it is sincere, straight-forward, and theologically sound.  It never reaches a point of raving, is never loudly pretentious, or ferocious in tone.  Mr. O’Dell will never be a brilliant man; but he is now what is often much better—­a good working minister.  He will never occupy the position of a commander, will never even be a lieutenant, but he will always be a good soldier in the ranks.  He has neither a lofty imaginative capacity nor a dashing ratiocinative faculty, but he has a clear sense of the importance of his pastoral duties, he goes easily and earnestly to work, makes neither much fuss nor smoke, and if he does now and then seem to pull queer faces in his sermons—­ give odd twists to some of his muscles—­that does not debar him from preaching fair even-sounding sermons, soothing to his general hearers and pleasing to those who have to pay him.  There are a few people whom Mr. O’Dell’s sermons fail to keep awake; but as such parties are probably better asleep than in a full state of consciousness, no great harm is done.  He has all sorts of folk to deal with—­men who are pious, and smooth creatures quietly given to humbug; people who practice what they are taught, and a few so wonderfully good that if they called a meeting of their creditors they would begin the business by saying, “Let us pray;” individuals who follow their duties calmly, and make no show about their work; and respectable specimens of indifference, who go to chapel because it is fashionable to do so.  But they seem all complacent, and the “happy family” element predominates.  Mr. O’Dell suits them; they suit Mr. O’Dell; and if he had only a fuller chapel—­a better salary, too, wouldn’t be despised by him—­he could send up his orisons with more courage, and preach to the sinners around him with the steam hammer force of a Gadsby.

No.  VI.

ST. GEORGE’S CHURCH.