in it; that is to say, I am not likening them to the spider, but their position to the position of the spider. Take, for instance, our great railroad network that extends through the United States of America. The man who presides in the midst of such a network cannot be expected to give such a proportion of his time to church work as many another man that is not encumbered with great public and world-wide interests. I have found that the most effective men and women in Christian work are the very people that are drawn from the working class. I say this, not by way of invidious distinction, but simply because people need to be told the fact oftentimes how much real merit there is in men and women who have not enjoyed the privileges of a first-class educational culture.

man.

This co-operation between the Church and the masses, founded upon sympathetic contact, may be easily brought about, if we are willing to use the means by which the end is secured. The motto of the Church in these days ought to be, "Identification with the People." In the life of noble Lord Shaftesbury-a name the mention of which must make every noble heart in Britain and America beat sympathetically, we read of his profound interest in man as man. One who had been released from prison was told that he would find in Lord Shaftesbury a sympathising friend and helper. The ex-convict went to the noble lord for advice, and he became from that hour a new He entered into business, and by-and-by became a prosperous man in the midst of the city; supporting his family, attending upon the ordinances of religion, and leading in many Christian activities in the Church to which he belonged. A friend inquired how all this great change had come about. His reply was: "I owe it all to Lord Shaftesbury. I forget what he said to me, but I do remember one thing. He put his hand on my shoulder and said: John, by the grace of God we will make a man of you yet.' It was the touch that did it." Here is a man on this platform, whose name is historic in the Presbyterian Church, and who is one of our most eminent teachers and clergymen. He told me to-day that on a certain occasion, when he was attending one of Richard Weaver's meetings, he was asked to go into the inquiry-room and speak a few words to seven young men who sat there waiting for counsel; and that years afterwards a young man on his dying bed sent for him. "You don't remember me," said the young man, "but I remember you. In that inquiry-room you put your hand on my shoulder and your arm around my neck, and to that I owe the fact that I came to Jesus as I was."

We want contact; not kid-glove contact either, for the kid glove is a non-conductor. It does not conduct, but hinders, sympathy. You have got to go down among the people, be one with

the people, and be identified with the people. In the City of Philadelphia there stands a church attended by 1800 people, largely composed of the working classes. A successful merchant, doing business on as large a scale as, perhaps, any man in the United States of America, comes in among those poor people, and you would never know that he owned a dollar, or that he was conducting a business so colossal. He is one of them in counsel, and one of them in action, and you could find no distinction between him and them in airs of superiority. A man in Cincinnati built a mission-chapel for the poor, and he could scarcely get any one to go into it. One would have supposed that, written over the door, were the words : "This is for the poor." Then he took sittings in it for himself and family, and from that hour its success was assured.

There is no trouble about the poor identifying themselves with the rich, if the rich identify themselves with them. They want such identification. A certain church, built for the accommodation of the rich, was styled a "Pullman Palace Car Church "-the poor were made to feel that they were not wanted there-the lame, and halt, and blind were not expected to ride to heaven in that car. We want a passion for souls. Sir William Hamilton declared that there was nothing on earth great but man, and nothing in man that is great but mind. The moment we begin to apprehend the dignity and majesty and grandeur of the soul, distinctions pass away; these wretched barriers between man and man become utterly insignificant and vanish into nothingness. Thomas Chalmers never was so lovely in the eyes of those who knew him best, whether in the professor's chair or in the pulpit, as when he clambered up five staircases in order to speak words of comfort and preach the Gospel to poor outcasts in an attic, and forgot his own dignity and culture in his passion for souls. When Mr. M'All first went to Paris, he entered Belleville, the home of Communism, out of which issued the mob with their petroleum jars in one hand and pistols in the other. When he penetrated into that region of mobocracy and set up his first salle, he knew no French but two sentences. He could say "God loves you" and "I love you." But on those two sentences, as pillars that sustain a magnificent arch, he has built the most marvellous mission work among the poor and the outcast that, I believe, the eighteen Christian centuries have ever seen. I feel as though I were to-night touching a million springs of church life, and I am exceedingly desirous that, in the fear of God, I should lay my hands right on those marvellous springs. With deference to the presence of men of superior age and wisdom, I want to say that I am profoundly satisfied that the Church of Jesus Christ needs to come back in these days

to a pure, primitive, Apostolic, and Scriptural pattern, and that Christian ministers must lead the way in reaching the masses. Beloved brethren, you cannot bridge the gulf between the Church and the people by sending out your select men and women to do the work. You must go yourselves. When the common people see the ministers of Christ step down from the loftiest pulpits, and from the highest social and ecclesiastical position, and go into the slums and the market-places, to the street-corners, the theatres, the concert halls, into the tenement houses, the garrets, and the cellars, in order to reach the labouring classes, the poor and the outcast, it will present an argument for the supremacy of the love of Christ in the heart, and of the true democratic spirit of the Church, that no other logic can so effectively prove.

Dr. CAIRNS, Edinburgh (United Presbyterian Church of Scotland), had for his special topic, "Christian Liberality." He said :-I cannot proceed to my subject without expressing my profound and entire concurrence in the principles which have run through and set on fire the last address, and the adoption of which would revolutionise our home missions. I believe that, by the blessing of God, the day is not far distant when such principles will be carried into effect. I am the last to utter a single sentence against any class. I rejoice and bless God for all that is good, noble, and devoted in all classes, from the highest to the lowest; but we must never forget that the great masses of the population belong to what we cannot help calling the lowest class, and that most of those whom the Christian Church is organised to reach belong to the working class. We must make provision for them in our churches, as I believe we have hitherto not done. We must go to them and give them the right hand of fellowship, whatever our position or social standing may be. This is a movement which, if carried out with wisdom, as well as with zeal and fervour, will, by the blessing of God, I believe, solve the great problem which is before us in connection with home and city missions.

With regard to the topic of Christian liberality, I speak of that as quite within the lines of Dr. Pierson. Here is a field where the highest aristocrat, the wealthiest millionaire, may unite himself most cordially with the poorest of the poor. Here is a field where all are equal, all are welcome. The collection-box is both aristocratic and democratic. If we would cultivate this grace of Christian liberality more, and apply this truly democratic principle, we should be better able to reach the poor, remembering that "the Lord is the maker of them all." In connection with this subject of Christian liberality, I

will briefly state my impressions, and to some extent my ideas, drawn from that grand Missionary Conference held in this metropolis a few weeks ago, and which I had the privilege of attending for four days. I rejoice to have been at a meeting like that, so world-wide and so truly catholic, bringing so many fresh ideas and new facts to bear upon the future of Christian Missions. What I learned, first, from the Conference was that we cannot expect Christian liberality, that we cannot expect the devotion of the soul first of all, and then the devotion of money and other means to be given to the cause of God, upon any other basis than that of our grand Presbyterian theology. If we are to find a gospel that is to create and produce Christian liberality, we have not to invent, we have not to improve it, but we have to transmit it. Here we find the grand spring of all liberality

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all."

I learned this, secondly, from that Missionary Conference, so grand and impressive, that we must make the Christian Church at home live in the atmosphere of missionary and evangelistic work, if we are to increase and extend its influence. It is not by her eloquent preaching-though nothing can be more important or necessary in its own place; it is not by profound learning, it is not by attempting (to use an Americanism) to run the Christian Church as you run a business; but you must rise above mere business principles, and bring the souls of those you address into contact with the living truth. In that atmosphere alone will the sagacity of the ablest business man, the eloquence of the most eloquent preacher, and the learning of the most profound scholar, take effect. You cannot pos

sibly have financial success permanently, and, in the best sense, in the Christian Church, unless you develop Christian liberality in this style, and this style alone. Lastly, I learned from the Missionary Conference what a grand result has already followed from the comparatively humble beginnings and scanty opportunities of the Christian Church. We have, at this day, £2,000,000 as the annual revenue of all the missionary societies represented in those meetings. That is a grand result; but has it come up to what it ought to have attained? Preaching last year one of the sermons for the London Missionary Society in this city, I rejoiced in learning that its income amounted to £100,000 per annum. But in the course of my residence in London at that time I wandered away one morning into the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and there I saw, in Rotten Row, an exhibition of

equestrian skill and many other qualities that were in many ways interesting and attractive, which awakened my curiosity as to the comparative expense of such a display with what I heard was the income of the London Missionary Society. I was given to understand, though it may have been overstated, that the annual keep of a hundred horses that were cantering and galloping up and down was at least £100,000, equal to the whole income of the London Missionary Society for a year. I stand in this great city of London and ask if these things are true-ought these things so to be? I would not lay any arbitrary interdict upon the expenditure of the wealthy. I leave Christians in that high rank of society to judge for themselves in what way they think best to spend the means God has intrusted to them; yet, if the Christian Church were in the state it ought to be, in London, Edinburgh, New York, or any other part of the world, ought there to be such a flagrant disproportion between the vast amounts spent on luxury-often in horse-racing, gambling, drinking, and other things that do harm to soul and body-and the comparatively miserable £2,000,000 given for the cause of Christ to the missionary societies throughout the world? Would it be too much to expect the people of this country to spend £120,000,000 per annum for the circulation over the entire globe, among rich and poor, of the glorious Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? (Applause.)

The Clerks announced that Rev. Dr. J. H. WILSON, Edinburgh, and Rev. GEORGE WILSON, Edinburgh, whose names occurred in the programme of this evening, had been providentially prevented from being present.

The meeting now adjourned.