Now, one thing we hold as settled by the whole design of Christianity, and amply confirmed by daily experience and observation of human nature, and that is, that to seek and save the lost, a _living_ agency is absolutely necessary. Religious tracts alone won't do. Far be it from us to write in an apparently slighting manner of what we so greatly value as good tracts, when we can find them. But, on the other hand, let us beware of exaggerating the power of such an agency, or demanding impossibilities from it. A great number in our large cities and manufacturing districts who require to be reclaimed from ignorance and vice cannot read at all. Those who can do so are yet so imperfectly instructed in the art as to be utterly unable to comprehend a continuous narrative of facts, far less any exposition of doctrine or duty; while those best able are not always willing to read anything of a religious character. The most efficient method, in our opinion, of making use of tracts in all such cases, is to read them, when possible, to others, and, if necessary, explain them, and _then_ distribute them. But what is a dead tract to a living person?--what is any description of Christianity on paper, as compared to the living epistle, which all men can read? _We want Christian men and women_; not their books or their money only, but _themselves_. The poor and needy ones who, in this great turmoil of life, have found no helper among their fellows; the wicked and outcast, whose hand is against every man's, because they have found, by dire experience of the world's selfishness, how every man's hand is against them; the prodigal and broken-hearted children of the human family, who have the bitterest thoughts of God and man, if they have any thoughts at all beyond their own busy contrivances how to live and to indulge their craving passions,--all these, by the mesmerism of the heart, and by means of that great witness, conscience, which God, in mercy, leaves as a light from heaven in the most abject dwelling on earth, can, to some extent, read the living epistle of a renewed soul, written in the divine characters of the Holy Spirit. They can see and feel, as they never did anything else in this world, the love which calmly shines in that eye, telling of inward light and peace possessed, and of a place of rest found and enjoyed by the weary heart! They can understand and appreciate the unselfishness--to them a thing hitherto hardly dreamt of--which prompted this visit from a home of comfort or refinement, to an unknown abode of squalor or disease, and which expresses itself in those kind words and looks that accompany the visit. They can perceive the reality of the piety, which also reads to them, in touching tones, the glory of Him who came to seek and save the lost; and their souls cannot refuse some amen, however faint, echoed by their very misery, and from their yearnings for a good they have never known, to that