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"Whensoever ye WILL ye may do them good."-MARK xiv. 7.

p. 201.

NOTE TO THIS EDITION.

THERE are few subjects that have a closer relation to the peace and good order of society than the habits and habitations of those who are found in the lowly walks of life. Such of us as are called to take an active part in the management of our Refuges and Homes for the Poor and Friendless, and whose official duty it is to sit, week after week, and listen to tales of domestic wretchedness and suffering which are there recited, have some conception of the nature and extent of the evils and distresses of poverty and vice combined. But it is only those who go up into the narrow and dirty loft, or down into the damp and loathsome cellar, and learn by the sicken

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scale, until they are scarcely distinguishable
(except by form and articulate speech) from
the dogs, and pigs, and cats that dwell with.
them.

We have secular-schools and Sunday-
schools, churches, and ministers of the gos-
pel-an unfettered Bible, and liberty of con-
science, and yet hundreds of thousands of
men and women, youth and children, are
found on our soil as ignorant of God, of His
will, of the principles of moral duty, and of
their own immortal nature and destiny, as the
Hottentot or the Fijian. With all the op-
portunities and advantages of learning which
are within reach, boys and girls grow up
without a knowledge of reading or writing—
and their parents think almost as little of
their intellectual and moral improvement as
if they were horses or mules.

It is maintained that this condition of things is not inevitable. Important inroads have been made already upon this dark and revolting territory. The counsel and sym