The misfortunes of the poor do not end here. To make their degradation total, their name infamous, we have shut them out of our churches. Once in our Puritan meeting-houses, there were "body seats" for the poor; for a long time free galleries, where men sat and were not ashamed. Now it is not so. A Christian society about to build a church, and having $50,000, does not spend $40,000 for that, making it a church for all, and keep $10,000 as a fund for the poor. No, it borrows $30,000 more, and then shuts the poor out of its bankrupt aisles. A high tower, or a fine-toned bell, yes, marble and mahogany, are thought better than the presence of these little ones whom God wills not to perish. I have heard ministers boast of the great men, and famous, who sat under their preaching; never one who boasted that the poor came into his church, and were fed, body and soul! You go to our churches--the poor are not in them. They are idling and lounging away their day of rest, like the horse and the ox. Alas me, that the apostles, that the Christ himself could not worship in our churches, till he sold his garment and bought a pew! Many of our houses of public worship would be well named, "Churches for the affluent." Yet religion is more to the poor man than to the rich. What wonder then, if the poor lose self-respect, when driven from the only churches where it is thought respectable to pray! This class of men are perishing; yes, perishing in the nineteenth century; perishing in Boston, wealthy, charitable Boston; perishing soul and body, contrary to God's will; and perishing all the worse because they die slow, and corrupt by inches. As things now are, their mortality is hardly a curse. The Methodists are right in telling them this world is a valley of tears; it is almost wholly so to them; and Heaven a long June day, full of rest and plenty. To die is their only gain; their only hope. Think of that, you who murmur because money is "tight," because your investment gives only twenty per cent. a year, or because you are taxed for half your property, meaning to move off next season; think of that, you who complain because the democrats are in power to-day, and you who tremble lest the whigs shall be in '49; think of that, you who were never hungry, nor athirst; who are sick, because you have nothing else to do, and grumble against God, from mere emptiness of soul, and for amusement's sake; think of men, who, if wise, do not dare to raise the human prayer for life, but for death, as the only gain, the only hope, and you will give over your complaint, your hands stopping your mouth.