The great receipt for keeping the tone of piety sound and healthy doubtless lies in one word, WORK,—work in the cause of our suffering fellow-men. And it seems to me to be a proof of the reality of the danger which I have just been pointing out, that in some of these Communities the Sisters have begun to affect a life of entire seclusion from works of mercy, under pretence of a higher devotion. Does not this show that there is something in the moral atmosphere of these communities, to which the healthy, practical, sobering tendencies of work are uncongenial? I have spoken strongly in the Address on the great danger and mischief likely to accrue from making the purely contemplative or devotional life the ideal of high sanctity; and indeed I have desired to make the whole Address a protest against this false theory by assuming (what I know to be the case) that the Sisters of St. Peter’s Home are all busied in works of mercy, and giving them plain, practical counsels, such as would be equally applicable to all the work which has to be done by Christians in active life. These counsels are so commonplace that those who care to read them will probably ask for the reasons which justify me in publishing them. My only reason is, that the Founder of the Home pressed their publication, under the idea that it might be of some use in making the Institution known. As he is one of those munificent Benefactors of the Church, occasionally found among the wealthy Laity of this great City, to whom the Clergy at all events are bound to hold out the right hand of fellowship, I did not feel at liberty to decline his request when it was pressed upon me. In the vigilant superintendence of our Diocesan (who kindly permits me to inscribe these pages to him) we have every guarantee that reasonable people can desire for St. Peter’s Home being conducted on the soundest principles, for its members being kept in faithful allegiance to the Church of their Baptism, warned against and secured from those dangers to which the experience of the Church teaches that Religious Communities are exposed, and made a great blessing to those who are sheltered and tended in their quiet retreat, and to the poor and sick people in their neighbourhood. AN ADDRESS, _&c._ MY SISTERS IN CHRIST,