had in a few months a small sum laid by, and now began to think he would like some more fixed mode of life. One of the Committee had remarked him from the day he entered the school, and, having received an excellent character of him from the master, resolved to take him into his house as a page. I am happy to say he has had no reason to regret this step, as John continues to give satisfaction, and is likely to prove a useful and faithful servant. And now, dear reader, have I succeeded in interesting you for these poor homeless creatures? If so, I hope your interest will extend beyond a mere expression of sympathy as you lay down this paper, and that you will try to help the hands of those who are labouring so unceasingly for the souls, as well as the bodies of the thousands who are living and dying around you. If you cannot offer yourself as a teacher, you may ask others to do so. If you cannot send them money, you might collect clothes, which are most acceptable; and, above all, you can ask God to send down His blessing on the labours and liberality of those who are thus spending themselves in His service. In conclusion, I would say, who can be associated in a work like this without being reminded of what God has told us in His Word is the state of each by nature? Loathsome and repulsive as the term may be, has not Jehovah declared that our best righteousness is but as filthy rags in His sight, till clothed upon with His everlasting righteousness, which is the fine linen of the saints?-Ragged School Union Magazine. FRUITS OF THE LONDON CITY MISSION. Ar the London City Missionary Meeting the Rev. William Arthur, in the course of a most admirable speech, said: I hardly know in what particular aspect first to look at the Society. It is a Free Library Society. There are your 73,000 books distributed during the year, lent for reading among different portions of the poor. Why, that alone ought to excite the sympathy of any man that knows how much good may be done by the reading of a good book. Then, again, it is a great Tract Distributing Society. Then, again, if it were only a Visiting Society, paying innumerable visits of kindness,-if it were nothing else, it ought to move us all. And then, again, look at it simply in its aspect of KINDNESS AND RELIEF TO THE POOR. Take, for instance, one scene that is sketched in the Report for the previous year, a scene occurring in one of our familiar thoroughfares during the time of the cholera. There you see, going up Shoreditch, a poor mechanic out of work, who has just left his home because there is nothing there to sustain him a moment longer. He is carrying in his arms a motherless child, the mother of which has just died of cholera in that miserable home; before him is borne an eldest daughter, smitten with the cholera too, and being carried to the work-house; behind him two little children are following; and this broken-hearted family have one friend with them,that friend is the City missionary. As they are going on to seek admission into the workhouse, the landlord is coming to what was a while ago his home; he seizes on everything that is there; he sells it, and all their earthly goods bring the landlord five shillings. In the meantime, the family and the missionary enter the workhouse; and there that eldest daughter dies of cholera in the arms of the City missionary. Now, suppose that this Society were doing nothing whatever more than to administer solace such as this,-sending a friend to the poorest of the poor in the day of their utmost destitution, that alone would be an aspect of the work which ought to appeal to us all. But another of those scenes, occurring that year, shows how much further the benefits of the Society go. One day, in the autumn, a missionary called on a poor man, who had recently been a drunkard, recently a swearer and boxer; and he asked this man how he was going on; and from those lips he heard the words, "Ah! I am trying now to serve God as faithfully as formerly I served sin." He left that man, and in ten hours afterwards he was in another world. Multiplying cases of that kind surely is one of the greatest and most blessed works that any of us can do. I was very much touched lately with the tale that I heard with regard to A POOR CHILD. One night, after ten o'clock, a poor woman came to the gate of the Training College in Horseferry-road, Westminster, and knocked. The man was disturbed from his slumber, and was rather cross. He asked her what she wanted, and she said she wanted her little girl; that the little child attended the infant-school, that she herself had been out to work, and the person who attended the child when she was away told her that she had not come home. The man told her to go about her business, thinking she was in liquor. He said that they had no children there at that hour, but that they had all gone long ago. The poor woman went with her tale to the station-house, but without success. By and by, when the man went to clean out the school in the morning, he found a little girl about four or five years of age playing with the forms. "How is it you are here?" said he. "Oh!" said she, "I have had such a nice night in the gallery." "Such a nice night in the gallery! Have you been here all night?" "Yes, I have been here all night; and it has been so pleasant, and so nice!" "But how is this?" "Why," she said, "school is so nice, that last night, when we were going out, and I should have gone home, I hid under the bench; and I have had such a nice night here in the gallery." I do not wonder that the poor man was so melted that he took the child home, and, instead of being content to give her what he had for his own breakfast, he went out and bought cakes for her, and made the best treat for her that he could. But just imagine a thing that a child calls home, and yet that thing is so miserable and desolate that a child would rather hide under a bench, and spend a whole dark, cold night in a large and lonely room, than go to what she called home! You have, then, 11,000 such children gathered up during the year, and brought into school. Surely that work alone, if there were nothing else, is something in which the hearts of every one of us ought very greatly to rejoice. There is another branch of the work that has struck me very much. I allude to THE MISSION TO THE CABMEN. What an astonishing statement that is in the Report of 1855, that one-third of the cabmen of London are now not working upon the Lord's-day; that even of the 2900 and odd who have licenses for seven days in the week, upwards of 1000 of them do not use their licenses on the Lord's-day, but take the advantage of that day of rest. This single fact alone ought to make us feel, that even in the streets and upon the cabs there is some blessing shed by the labours of this City Mission. Then another very extraordinary feature of the movement of the Society was also mentioned in that Report, and therefore ought to be alluded to here; I mean the LABOURS IN PUBLIC-HOUSES, preaching the Gospel in bar-rooms, distributing God's Word to men in the act of drinking, talking to them about their souls, when they are over their cups. I find in the Report of that year, that by one City Missionary, in public houses alone, 20,000 people had been pointed to the Lamb of God. The Lord be with that brother, whoever he may be! And others are labouring in like fields, going into houses where the people are actually engaged in all that is bad and promotive of badness, and yet causing them to receive these, it may be the first, impressions that will lead them to everything that is good. I know not how we can more directly or more universally affect the Christian world, than by promoting the interests of this City Mission. Let us look at her in her twenty-first year, WHAT HAS SHE DONE? There she is, sitting amidst the Institutions of our land, and she may take her seat now in the family circle of those that are venerable and honoured. There come all the beauties and the ornaments of our Lord,-our home work, our foreign work, works of benevolence to the body, works of benevolence to the soul. They are a lovely company, and they may ask this new sister that has just attained her majority, What is thy work, and what thy labour? In this one year there have been 153 shops closed, where last year every one was open; there are 500 human beings, it may be, who have a Sabbath now, who had no Sabbath before. Again you ask,-Is this all? No; there are 263 families made out of those who last year were no families. Thanks be to God for that! Is that all? No; here are 410 houses, where there is an altar to-day, where there was no altar twelve months ago. Then there are 817 lips that have been this year led for the first time to drink of the wine that shows forth the Lord's death. And then, beside all this, here are 600 and odd drunkards who, thank God, have put their hands to the solemn covenant that they will drink no more, and are living according to it. Besides that, there are some of those whom the Master would not have despised. Here are 565 women, who last year were at the worst point to which woman can go; and now some of them are at their homes, and others of them are in asylums, and the rest are all set out upon a new way. And then here are the little children, the 11,564 children, who finish this family group. Then I say to the London City Mission,-God bless thee, with that family around thee; those reformed drunkards, those recovered prostitutes, those hapless children gathered into schools! It is a family on which the blessing of Heaven is sure to descend. Go on,go on and prosper; may thy strength be a thousand times more than it is, and may the Lord's hand be laid bare on your behalf! To these stirring sentences from Mr Arthur, we add the following words from the Report of the Society : Twenty-one years since there existed in London no London City Mission, no Church Pastoral-Aid Society, no Additional Curates' Society, no Scripture-Readers' Association, no Country Town Mission Society, no Ragged-School Union, no Open-air Mission Society, no Society for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Poor, no Model Lodginghouses. Who can look back on the past, and compare it with what now is to be beheld, without praise to God for the advance which has been made? Could all the fruits which have resulted from the formation of the London City Mission during its minority be presented at this time to this meeting-could only all those who have been reclaimed from ruin and converted to God by its instrumentality be here assembled what heart could but bless the God of all grace that this Society was originated! But these cannot be all assembled here. Nor, if they could, would this spacious hall itself at all suffice to receive the numbers. Let us, therefore, carry forward our hopes, and look to the period when we shall behold, before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, a great multitude which no man can number, as the fruits of City Mission efforts, of all orders of degradation and neglect, and misery and ruin, yet crying with a loud voice, Salvation to our God, which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb! HYMN. And have we heard the joyful sound? And shall we not to all proclaim His boundless grace, His mighty name? Eath God to us His glory shown,- O Saviour, who for all hast died! Send forth Thy light: display Thy power; In every land Thy Word be sown ; |