In the one, everybody, except the free-thinking cobbler, would at least have ...

In the one, everybody, except the free-thinking cobbler, would at least have called himself one thing or the other, and there were few families which were not sometimes represented at the Sunday service. In the other, great multitudes were as indifferent to the distinction as the inhabitants of Borrioboola-Gha.

It was to these masses that the Churches, often in unfriendly rivalry, had next to address themselves. In dogma there was little to choose between a worthy clergyman of an evangelical cast and a worthy dissenting minister.

Socially, by their University education, and their relations with the gentry, the clergy as a body stood in a class apart and, with the preachers who collected little congregations about them in hamlets and the back streets of towns, who ministered in Zoar and Bethel and Mizpah and Shebaniah, they had little in common.

But the ministers of the older bodies were often as learned as the clergy, and their congregations more exclusive than the mixed multitudes who, from habit as much as conviction, were gathered in the parish church.