Dr. Stiggins:
"Adam Bede," and "Robert Elsmere"—to name the masterpieces of the last century—and not acknowledge that these great books are Puritan to the backbone? I can never look into certain of these pages without my mind being carried back to the days of my youth, when I worshipped in an old-fashioned church situated in a great manufacturing town in the north. It was not a beautiful and ornate building such as that to which my ministry is now given; for it bore on its grey stone front the inscription—Ebenezer, 1809—and in those days the sturdy Independents of the north were not much given to architectural adornment or æsthetic superfluity. No, it was a stern and rugged building, with plain windows and square doorway; but the memory of it is still sweet to me, and I shall never forget a series of sermons preached there, sermons about "Men who got on." The preacher took such examples as Jacob, David and Jehu; and he told the old-world stories with such simple directness in his plain Yorkshire speech that to me
140
