I used now to wander about in the fields and woods, with a book in my hand, at which I often did not look the whole day, and which yet I liked to have with me.  And I seemed somehow to come back with most upon those days in which I did not read.  In this manner I prepared almost all my sermons that summer.  But, although I prepared them thus in the open country, I had another custom, which perhaps may appear strange to some, before I preached them.  This was, to spend the Saturday evening, not in my study, but in the church.  This custom of mine was known to the sexton and his wife, and the church was always clean and ready for me after about mid-day, so that I could be alone there as soon as I pleased.  It would take more space than my limits will afford to explain thoroughly why I liked to do this.  But I will venture to attempt a partial explanation in a few words.

This fine old church in which I was honoured to lead the prayers of my people, was not the expression of the religious feeling of my time.  There was a gloom about it—­a sacred gloom, I know, and I loved it; but such gloom as was not in my feeling when I talked to my flock.  I honoured the place; I rejoiced in its history; I delighted to think that even by the temples made with hands outlasting these bodies of ours, we were in a sense united to those who in them had before us lifted up holy hands without wrath or doubting; and with many more who, like us, had lifted up at least prayerful hands without hatred or despair.  The place soothed me, tuned me to a solemn mood—­one of self-denial, and gentle gladness in all sober things.  But, had I been an architect, and had I had to build a church—­I do not in the least know how I should have built it—­I am certain it would have been very different from this.  Else I should be a mere imitator, like all the church-architects I know anything about in the present day.  For I always found the open air the most genial influence upon me for the production of religious feeling and thought.  I had been led to try whether it might not be so with me by the fact that our Lord seemed so much to delight in the open air, and late in the day as well as early in the morning would climb the mountain to be alone with His Father.  I found that it helped to give a reality to everything that I thought about, if I only contemplated it under the high untroubled blue, with the lowly green beneath my feet, and the wind blowing on me to remind me of the Spirit that once moved on the face of the waters, bringing order out of disorder and light out of darkness, and was now seeking every day a fuller entrance into my heart, that there He might work the one will of the Father in heaven.