pitch; garrets of rooms with sloping rafters; cellars of rooms underneath the pavement; rooms overlooking low, miserable streets or foul mud yards; hopeless, cheerless, despairing rooms where wives strip their children piecemeal for the pawn-shop; where the furniture seldom consists of more than a broken table or backless chair; where the children, when a stranger knocks at the door, come across to him with starving eyes and ask, “Have you brought mother some bread?"—and where the blind, neglected, lonely widow sits upon an empty floor in a fireless room, during the dull November day, and mumbles hopeless assent when asked by the good-hearted missionary to join him in prayer to God that some miracle may be worked in order to lighten this unspeakable darkness.'" 1

The reporter thus describes some of the places as he himself saw them in company with the missionary :—

"We now arrive at a house where the staircase is so pitch-dark that I have to grope my way up on my hands and knees. This is one of the cheerful abodes where forty-seven human beings are packed into six rooms. It is one of the strangest experiences I have ever encountered. Here, in this hovel, children are about to be born; here men and women are dying; here new-born infants are yelling for food, guarded by baby nurses, whilst the expectant mother is off on some errand; here children of all ages and sizes swarm about the filthy floor with matted hair, and rags on their poor little bodies.

"We mount to the top of the house. We tap at a door, and it is opened. A picture-frame maker lives here, but he is out of work, as he needs must be, since, in the first place, he has pawned his tools to get bread; and, in the second, he has scarcely sufficient clothing to go out and search for employment. The wife is in bed, or rather she is rolled up on the floor in a filthy rug-for there is no bed-suffering from acute rheumatism. The fire is almost out, and one of the children, without any shoes or stockings, is hugging the cat that is kept to insure an absence of mice and rats for the sake of the wretched people compelled to lie on the floor. We hear no grumbling, no complaint, no execration, no despairing cry. Even these poor people, with their empty stomachs and their fireless grates, listen to a prayer when it is offered up, though it sounds strangely under such circumstances. Talk to these people of the workhouse and they will refuse to discuss the question farther. The workhouse means separation from 1 Daily Telegraph, London, November 21, 1883.

husband and child. They would rather starve or die here than that."

Such was the region in the midst of which an earnest man of God found himself stationed as a preacher of the gospel. The ordinary means of grace were found to be here, as they are everywhere when faithfully and prayerfully used, efficient. Mr. Brown proved to be a popular preacher. Multitudes came to hear him, and scores and hundreds, through his words and the Spirit's power, were born into the kingdom of God. But in a place like London, or indeed in any great city, large congregations may represent but small and limited sections of the people. So it was here this great and flourishing church, in all its religious work, did not touch nor approach a very large portion of the community. Not one of the very poorest class of the people who stood most in need of the consolations of the gospel - would ever think of attending any of its regular or irregular services; and those who did attend were a sifted and selected class composed of the most intelligent and well-to-do people of the community.

In the winter of 1879, when the length and severity of the season occasioned an unusual amount of distress, considerable sums of money were placed in the hands of Mr. Brown for the relief of the needy. The first plan adopted by him was that of distributing alms from his own home, but this soon proved impracticable. His door was continually besieged by throngs of applicants for aid, many of whom were quite unworthy of it, while the most deserving cases were the last to make their needs known. He accordingly employed two missionaries, who went from house to house through the most destitute streets, searching out the needy and supplying their wants in their own rooms. In this way he and his missionaries secured a welcome to about a thousand homes that had before been closed to Christ and Christian teachers. They thereupon resolved that "so open a door of usefulness should not be allowed to close." The matter was presented to the congregation and friends. They responded with liberal donations. The work which had been commenced as a temporary measure, to meet the exigencies of a severe winter, was accordingly established on a permanent basis, and has been constantly expanding from that time to this.

It is assumed that when people are suffering the bitterness of extreme poverty, their most pressing physical necessities must be relieved before their spiritual destitution can be successfully dealt with. It is also assumed that any system of relief work which

aims at anything less or lower than the conversion of those for whom it labors to the Lord Jesus Christ can give only a temporary and superficial sort of help. The plan is therefore adopted of first ministering to the immediate wants of the poor, feeding those who are found to be hungry and without food, clothing the tattered and half naked, furnishing coal to the shivering and fireless, redeeming from pawn artisans' tools, garments, and other necessities of life which famine has torn from them, providing medicines for the sick, and helping the unemployed to find work. Secondly, and simultaneously with their work for the relief of these physical necessities, it is the custom of the missionaries then and there to preach the Gospel to the neglected people. Into the midst of the want, squalor, and sunless sadness of their wretched homes is brought the story of Christ's redeeming love; the claims of God are personally urged; salvation by the only Saviour is freely and affectionately offered, and these heathen in the heart of Christendom are taught to commit themselves, with their wants, to the Fatherhood of God.

Nine missionaries who give their whole time to such work were, at last accounts, employed by this church. Not merely from house to house, but from room to room, they go, relieving the needy, visiting the sick, consoling the afflicted, and preaching the Gospel everywhere. Their energetic leader declares that a missionary of experience never stops to talk in the entries, never visits the lower rooms first, but goes to the very top of a house to begin his work with its inmates, and "prays his way down," leaving no apartment unvisited where it is possible to gain admission.

The missionaries, after spending most of the day in visitation, hold evening meetings for the benefit of the people among whom they have been working in four mission halls provided for the purpose. Each missionary has a regular personal and private interview with the pastor once a week, and each sends in a weekly report stating the kind and amount of relief given, the number and locality of calls made, and the meetings held.

Money is never given away, except in very special cases. All relief is supplied by tickets, which are orders on the grocers and shopkeepers, or on a central office, where tea and clothing are given out. As the tickets are given gradually, in connection with the calls, there is never a rush upon the central office. All garments given away are stamped with Mr. Brown's name, and therefore cannot be accepted at the pawn-shops. The church and its friends also sustain an orphans' home, and a seaside home for

the exhausted and for convalescents, besides a great number of clubs, societies, meetings, and classes such as have already been described.

The vigor and activity of the life enjoyed by the church is remarkable. No communion season passes none has passed during the twenty years of the present pastorate without accessions to its membership. On the occasion of our last visit, in July, 1886, we were informed that sixty persons were then waiting to be baptized within three weeks, which was said to be no extraordinary number. Most of these are not the fruits, or at least not the immediate fruits, of the mission work. It deals with persons so degraded that ordinary church services cannot effect them. They are lifted by degrees. They are first touched by the words of the missionary in their home, are then persuaded to visit the mission chapels, and are there lifted a step higher. They next learn to enjoy the prayer-meetings of the church, and are finally brought into the regular services of the Lord's house.

"Any week evening service," says the pastor, "there may be found at our tabernacle prayer-meeting those who used to lead drunken, abandoned, and, in some cases, indescribably vicious lives. We do not say that all these are truly converted, but, to say the least, it is a glorious change from street-walking and public-house fighting. There is no hopeless class. Christ wins them all."

One naturally asks how any church, and especially one SO largely composed of poor people, can possibly raise money enough to support such extensive missionary operations. In reply to this question, we quote again the correspondent of "The Daily Telegraph":

"You ask me where the money comes from with which I am able to relieve these sorrows of Shadwell. Well, I am oldfashioned enough to believe in prayer. I pray for these wretched people night and day, and as yet I have never prayed in vain."

The work is not advertised. No one but the Lord is ever asked for money or for help. Once a year the church appoints a day for receiving special thank-offerings to be devoted to the mission work. A week-day is set apart as thank-offering day. Due notice having been given, the church is open from early morning, when men are going to their work, until late at night, and all day long the pastor is present to receive in person each gift from the hand of the giver. The offerings are of all sizes: poor workingmen bring a shilling or two; children contribute

a few pence; widows offer their mite; and the few that are rich bring much. Each donor, whether his gifts be small or great, is properly credited with it in the books. As most of the people are poor, the greater proportion of the money raised comes in small sums of a few shillings each; but, taken all together, the thankofferings usually amount to several hundred pounds. Besides this, donations for the mission work pour in from all over Eng. land. Not a farthing of debt is ever incurred; yet means have never been lacking for the continuance and expansion of the work.

Christian workers in London have experienced the same difficulty in retaining their influence over the older boys of the Sunday-school that has perplexed so many of us here. Our attention was directed to one very interesting and successful effort to overcome this difficulty which is well worthy of study.

The Regent Square Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Oswald Dykes is pastor, had a flourishing mission, since then become a church, in Somerstown, a poor neighborhood in northwest London. Connected with this mission was a large Sunday-school composed almost entirely of artisans' children. Great numbers of small children and of larger girls attended the school; but the boys, after reaching the age of fourteen or fifteen, became possessed of the notion that they were too big for Sunday-school, and so left it, and were soon estranged from religious influences of all kinds, so that the work done for the boys' classes seemed like water poured on the ground. For the sake of saving these lads, after much thought and prayer, An Institute for Working Lads was planned and organized. It commenced very modestly with a small membership, and provided at first only a small room for reading and club room, a Bible-class, and one or two evening classes. But it grew and extended its operations rapidly. Commodious quarters in an old chapel were secured, — a gymnasium, a library and reading-room, and evening classes were successively added; games were provided, a regular ground for cricket and football was hired, meetings and entertainments of all sorts were held; and now the "top story of the Sunday-school," as the Oldenham Institute is sometimes called, is wonderfully popular. It has a membership of over four hundred, and the average small boy of that Sunday-school has no higher ambition than to become a member of it, a thing not allowed until he has reached the age of fifteen.

There are three Bible-classes in the week. A guild with daily