At a recent meeting of the promoters of the City Mission work, held at the Mansion House, it was stated that the 427 missionaries then employed by the society were chosen without distinction, except that of fitness for the office, from Churchmen, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Baptists, while the examining and appointing committee were composed of thirteen clergymen of the Established Church and thirteen Dissenting ministers. Anybody who is accustomed to visit the worst neighbourhoods of London will know that these missionaries go where the regular clergy cannot easily penetrate, and where even the parish doctor seldom lingers. Every missionary visits once a month about 500 families, or 2,000 persons. They read the Scriptures, exhort their listeners, hold prayer and Bible meetings, distribute copies of the Scriptures, see that children go to school, address the poor in rooms when they cannot persuade them to go to church, visit and pray with the dying, lend books, hold open-air services, endeavour to reclaim drunkards (1,546 were so restored during the last year), admonish and frequently reclaim the vicious, raise the fallen, and place them in asylums or induce them to return to their homes, and work constantly for the great harvest of God to which they are appointed. {247} Then there are special missionaries appointed to visit bakers, cabmen, drovers, omnibus men, soldiers, sailors, and foreigners of various countries. They also go to tanneries, the docks, workhouses, hospitals, and other places; and there is a vast harvest yet, without a sickle to reap even a single sheaf. When will the time come, that, to the means for carrying the sustaining comfort of the Word to men's souls, will be added some means of helping them to realise it by such temporal aid as will raise them from the want which paralyses and the degradation which benumbs? {248} GIVING THE FEEBLE STRENGTH.