Looking back to “sixty years since,” I am struck with the difference between certain aspects of Metropolitan Nonconformity presented then, and others familiar now. Indeed, a similar state of things is obvious when we turn to the religious history of other great cities. Citizens then for the most part _lived_ in London. Westminster and the opposite side of the Thames saw, on Sundays and week days, in the same neighbourhood both the poor and rich. Thus pious families exerted an immediate and constant influence where they lived, and my remembrance of Metropolitan domestic life then is intensely gratifying. There were happy homes in London where now want and misery abound. Organised district work goes on, but it is a poor substitute for the presence of godly and philanthropic people in their own homesteads, coming in constant contact with those who needed sympathy and help. Efforts were not wanting for the benefit of London on the part of Christian people in general. The City Mission had then been recently founded, and students in Highbury College lent a hand in work amongst the poor. I remember a district in existence, called Saffron Hill, full of old tenements now swept away. Some fellow-students went with me to the spot on a Sunday afternoon, and we preached from a doorstep, while women looked down from their windows, and perhaps men below were smoking their pipes. Drury Lane was a dirty, neglected neighbourhood; and, in a room hired there, we conducted a service on Sunday nights. Sometimes disturbances arose, but the work went on. Nor were certain districts in the country round London neglected. There we preached and visited the aged sick, praying by the bedside, and ministering such instruction and comfort as we were able.