,CLOSED 1.11U1sCHES.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THR "SPECTATOR?'] Buts—There Is a growing tendency to ascribe everything to the war. Mr. I). McLean tells us in your issue of August 12th that "after some years' absence from England" he, too, found that churches in the City such as "little St. Ethelburga's or old St. Helen's" are open at midday for private prayer, and he promptly writes you a letter in which he infers that this is due to greater seriousness 'caused by the war. May I, as a daily sojourner in the City for the past forty years, inform Mr. Mclean that I believe for the whole of that time—certainly for the past thirty years— those two and many other City churches have been daily open for several houm for those who like to use them for private prayer? Probably your correspondept has been absent from England for more than fifty years, otherwise he might have made his discovery before. Whether we laity have made the use we might of the churches being so open is another question ; but it is hard on the clergy that Mr. McLean should write of people being "barred from their right" to use the churches, when the latter are open if only we would turn the handles and go in.-
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