The Mission, good as its influence may be, is not, it seems to me, an adequate expression of the idea which moved the promoters. The hope in the College when the first sympathy was roused was that all should join in good work, and the Mission is necessarily a Churchman’s effort. The desire was that as University men they should themselves bear the burdens of the poor--and the Mission requires of them little more than an annual guinea subscription. The grand idea which moved the College, the idea which, like a new creative spirit, is brooding over the face of Society, and is making men conscious of their brotherhood, finds no adequate expression in the district church machinery with which, in East London, I am familiar. There is little in that machinery which helps the people to conceive of religion apart from sectarianism, or of a Church which is ‘the nation bent on righteousness.’ There is little, too, in the ordinary parochial mechanism which will carry to the homes of the poor a share of the best gifts now enjoyed in the University. Imagine a man’s visit to the Mission District of his college. He has thought of the needs of the poor, and of the way in which those needs are being met. He has formed in his mind a picture of a district where loving supervision has made impossible the wretchedness of ‘horrible London’; he expects to find well-ordered houses, people interested in the thoughts of the day, gathering round their pastor to learn of men and of God. He finds instead an Ireland in England, people paying 3_s._ or 4_s._ a week for rooms smaller than Irish cabins, without the pure air of the Irish hill-side, and with vice which makes squalor hopeless. He finds a population dwarfed in stature, smugly content with their own existence, ignorant of their high vocation to be partners of the highest, where even the children are not joyful. He measures the force which the Mission curate is bringing to bear against all this evil. He finds a church which is used only for a few hours in the week, and which is kept up at a cost of 150_l._ a year. He finds the clergyman absorbed in holding together his congregation by means of meetings and treats, and almost broken down by the strain put upon him to keep his parochial organisation going. The clergyman is alone, his church work absorbs his power and attracts little outside help. What can he do to improve the dwellings and widen the lives of 4,000 persons? What can he do to spread knowledge and culture? What can he do to teach the religion which is more than church-going? What wonder if, when he is asked what help he needs, he answers, ‘Money for my church,’ ‘Teachers for my Sunday school,’ ‘Managers for my clothing club’? What wonder, too, if the visitor, seeing such things and hearing such demands, goes away somewhat discontented, somewhat inclined to give up faith in the Mission, and, what is worse, ready to believe that there is no way by which the best can be given to the poor?