You would then see a wide expanse of inhabited territory as large as Glasgow, and ten times the size of Bristol, from which no spires rose into the air indicating the locality of the houses of God,-the only great public buildings being theatres where hell itself would hold its Saturnalia of revelry, and balls of justice and enormous jails where terror repressed the excesses of violence and crime. You would have none of the buildings which Christian philanthropy erects for the solace of the miserable or the education of the young. You would have a city such as ignorance, atheism, and infidelity would make it. There you would see life gradually sinking into barbarism from the absence of the redeeming influence, and personal character brutalized by general drunkenness, debauchery, and falsehood. The ungodly portion of the community little know the benefits they derive from living among those who fear God and work righteousness. If the tares were gathered out from among the wheat, and stacked together now, even here they would take fire by spontaneous combustion of destructive passion, and blaze forth in a conflagration which would know no limits to its fury but the boundaries of so detestable a society.

All these elements of misery and ruin, however, exist scattered in London. There are a million persons, of age to frequent the house of God, who seldom cross its threshold. It is impossible to avoid the inquiry, why, with the light of revelation shining around them, do such enormous multitudes live in habits of fixed hostility or indifference to the Church and its ministers? To this question the answer must be returned, that there are two very different causes of the absence of this large part of the population from church on the Sunday. First, in some cases ignorance; and, secondly, in others. desperate wickedness. Multitudes live in the total neglect of religion from ignorance. Dr. Alford declares that the ignorance of the upper classes in all matters pertaining to the Scripture and Christianity is inconceivable; what then must be the ignorance of the lower classes? In order to form some conception of this ignorance, a well instructed person must imagine himself not to have enjoyed the benefits of a pious education in the home, the school, or the church; he must endeavour to fancy what his mind would have been in reference to religion if he had been deprived from his youth up of all these advantages; and, after performing this awful sum in moral and intellectual subtraction, he will have as a residuum an idea of the ignorance of myriads around us. It requires a very long line to sound the depths of this ignorance. Multitudes of these people know nothing whatever of history, or of the contents of the Bible. They have never thought on either religion or theology. Hence the unseen world, the Almighty God, Christ, Heaven, Hell, all appear unreal to their apprehensions "Darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people."

The

"Open-air Mission" mention in their tract, entitled "Street Sceptics," that an honest doubter once said to one of their preachers in Hyde Park," I have been trying to believe for these ten years; but there is a contradiction I cannot get over, and " (as the crowd listened) "it is this: we are told that printing was invented not five hundred years ago, and yet that the Bible is five thousand years old, and I cannot, for the life of me, see how this can be." "Nay," observes the writer, "the crowd did not laugh at this man. Very few in a crowd know much more than he did about the Bible. But how deeply they drank in a half hour's account of the Scripture manuscripts, their preservation, their translation and versions, their collection and transmission, and the overwhelming evidence of their genuine truth!"

Profound ignorance then is one chief cause of the indifference of the million to public worship or instruction. They do not possess that elementary knowledge without which it is impossible to desire more, and to feel an interest in the sanctities of worship. Many have enjoyed no solid instruction whatever in childhood, many have forgotten the little they then learned, and many have known Christianity only in forms which made no appeal to their understanding, their conscience, or their affections. They have known it only as a cold-blooded sacramentalism, or as an arrogant and rapacious priestcraft ;-or else they have heard of it only from those who preach the gospel as a "law" which irritates the corrup tion that it condemns. Hence they have turned away from an affair in which they felt no interest, to seek for excitements more germane to their character. Intoxicating drinks, theatrical entertainments, the society of the like-minded, the pursuits of trade, the pleasures of home such as they may be, the repose of the Sunday sleep, or the adventure of the Sunday excursion,-these are the sources of their happiness, and the substitutes for the religion which should give "pleasure for evermore."

Verbal description, however, avails but little to convey to the civilized classes an idea of the condition of the more degraded parts of London. It is only a visit by night to such districts as Shadwell or Whitechapel, which can afford a true notion of the terrible reality. Behind almost every public-house (many of them bear. ing names much honoured in the "religious" world) is a saloon where may be seen a promiscuous throng of men and women drinking and smoking and educating themselves for the works of darkness. In these awful assemblages, the aspect of the women is enough to break a heart of stone-so complete is the annihilation of every feminine grace and line of beauty. The faces of the women are hard, coarse, and ugly, to an incredible degree. It is sin in its final stage, from which even beauty has at length wholly departed. The accommodation for vice in connection with some of

these public-houses might have been arranged by the spirits of darkness themselves. The amusements of the neighbourhood indicate a degradation of mind which leaves one wondering whether there remain under such circumstances any of the "pleasures of sin." Penny gaffs full of boys and thieves, large halls full of drinking people of both sexes, listening to painted and bedizened girls singing low songs without a spark of wit to redeem them from contempt, theatres where the representation is said to include scenes of robbery and of every vice-such are the joys of this animalized population. Yet it is a population more amenable to the gospel than the higher circles of the West-end. The "Sailors' Institute," and the preaching of Richard Weaver and other Evangelists, are producing a sensible impression. If half-a-dozen of the ablest preachers in London were to combine to fill that neighbourhood with the sound of the gospel, they would certainly be listened to. We have beheld a large hall filled with persons of all characters, including the vilest, sitting melted and awestruck while listening to the gospel preached by a well-known earnest minister. From all we hear it is simply impossible to exaggerate the value of the theatre-services in such neighbourhoods as these.

But, besides the ignorant crowds, there are among the non-churchgoers the desperately wicked, the whole formidable array of persons who know something of truth and of Christianity, but have openly revolted against its sway; who have bid defiance to conscience, to God, to the Scriptures, and cannot plead ignorance as the excuse of their alienation. These are full of malicious misrepresentations and paltry slanders against both Christianity and its professors, ever trying to find rest in the various forms of infidelity and materialism, and exulting in the scandals that arise within the area of Christendom. This is the class, large, influential, and malignant, which thrives upon the misdeeds of nominal Christians, which draws its recruits from apostates and backsliders, and derives its apologies for hostility from the inconsistencies of "the saints." Miserable apologies they may be; but what language can express the guilt of those, whether ministers or laymen, who, by sins of sensuality, or sins of sordid avarice or injustice, or sins of bitter antagonism or ill temper, or sins of dishonest equivocation in the use of language, furnish the poison in which these enemies of religion dip their most destructive weapons of attack.

Such are the non-church-going multitudes; and now what are the means taken to persuade them to faith and repentance? In a city where each parish is equal to a considerable town, and where some of the parishes are equal in population to provinces and counties, it must be a matter of great interest to understand the spiritual forces which are going forth to battle with this extended array rampant heathenism,

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First must be mentioned the influence radiating from all the worshipping congregations within and without the Established Church. How great this influence is may be calculated from the fact that it has already reduced to some form or appearance of Christianity the other two millions of the inhabitants of London. From every one of the congregations thus gathered together there issues forth a stronger or less powerful influence for good upon the outlying multitudes. In proportion to the nature and measure of spiritual life enshrined in each congregation is the number and vigour of the workers whom it inspires and sends forth into the field. In some cases the per-centage of workers in a church is lamentably small; in others almost all the worshippers are active and aggressive evangelists. There is no surer test of the spiritual state of any people than the statistics of their personal activity in relation to home missions. Every living body, whether vegetable, animal, or spiritual, has the power of assimilating to its own substance foreign elements. Every true church of Christ is "making increase" by the absorption of souls from the surrounding neighbourhood. Where there is absolutely no social or individual endeavour towards instructing and converting the heathen around, there can be no spiritual life of the same kind with Christ's; for that was essentially a life of active love "seeking to save that which was lost."

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The organized operations of district visiting and Sunday-school teaching cover a large space of inhabited London. A perfect army of workers is occupied in felling timber on this Lebanon, in hewing stone in these quarries. Of every Christian name, of every variety of secondary persuasion, and of every rank from nobles to shoplads and parish apprentices, pious persons are thus aiming to advance the religious interests of their neighbours. Some in the office of Scripture readers, some as teachers in Sunday-schools, some as lady visitors of appointed districts, are pressing weekly upon the erring multitudes, and affording further instruction to those already won from the kingdom of darkness. The movements for "Church extension" are so many indications of the progress the regular army in the work of evangelizing, for such we may term the churches in the midst of us. The Bishop of London's scheme is likely to be attended with incalculable benefits to the population. In the same manner we regard the church-building projects of the Wesleyans, the Independents, and the Baptists, as certain to be the means of opening fresh fountains of salvation in the desert of ignorance and sin. He loveth our nation and hath built us a synagogue, has always been, and will always be, a natural and reasonable combination of statements. Among the Congregationalists ought to be noted with special pleasure and admiration the efforts of Mr. Samuel Morley and his friends, in the

erection of plain and serviceable buildings among the new popula tion of the suburbs of London, affording an example of enlightened zeal and wisdom in the distribution of resources, and of an exemplary anxiety for the highest interest of the people.

We may consider, then, that all of these agencies have overtaken about two-thirds of the population of the Metropolis. The remainder is abandoned to "irregular troops," to the efforts of bodies not in direct connection with the churches.

2. Of these THE CITY MISSION clearly takes the lead in activity, breadth of operation, and general success. The number of the City Missionaries is 380. The following is the tabular summary of their work for the year ending May, 1863, so far as figures can denote spiritual influences :

Unmarried couples induced to marry

Fallen females admitted to asylums, restored to their homes, or

otherwise rescued

247

1,018

It is the custom of some exalted intelligences, who publish chietly on the Saturday, to scoff a little at the proceedings and labours of the City Missionaries. We believe that depreciatory judgments of their character and endeavours arise in most instances from want of personal acquaintance with them or their work. Writing with more than a ten years' full knowledge of the labours and characte of the City Missionaries operating within the radius of a mile in one of the districts of London, we can testify that, according t their ability, there are no Christian workers more industrious, more willing, and more sincere, in the effort to spread true religion among the working people. They possess the unequivocal regar and esteem of the labouring classes. And no wonder, for they ar the friends of the working-man and of his children. They not on!