It is one of the most humiliating confessions that can be made, to say that these people cannot be granted room on our soil, with liberty and justice under our laws, with safety to ourselves. It is a still more humiliating confession to say that the attempt to Christianize them is a hopeless one. Is it so that in their case we have come to the end of our resources for securing men the exercise and enjoyment of their few inalienable rights under our Government? Then they are vastly less than we had thought. Is it so that the encounter of our Christianity with heathenism in the persons of a few score thousand pagans, here on our ground, within hearing of our Sabbath bells, is too much to be ventured, lest heathenism win the day? Then there is not enough to our Christianity to make it much matter. It is all absurd to say such things. It is not indeed to be questioned that the problem of dealing with this strange element thrown in upon us is a perplexed and difficult one; but it is not the first perplexed and difficult matter we have had to accommodate, nor is it the last. Our labors as a nation are not over. The time when there will be no perilous or incommoding exigencies arising to disturb our ease as citizens is far distant. Who thinks it not so is greatly mistaken. As other vexing problems in the past have been solved, so with patience this Chinese problem can be without sacrifice of principle. OUR CHRISTIAN DUTY. It is a work in which the state and the church must co-operate. But we are here to-day to look especially to the part which the latter has in it—as servants of Christ and as representatives of the Christian community to attend to the cry of the poor that comes to us from the Pacific coast, and to consider how we shall respond to it. The one thing which we are disallowed, be it first of all observed, is to deem that our principal duty in the premises is discharged by giving hard words to California. We are not to sit in judgment on California. We are not in a position to do so, and I trust we are not disposed to do so. There are reasons which the rest of the country does not perceive, certainly does not feel as California does, why the presence in her population of this unassimilated foreign mass is very undesirable and very trying. Not a doubt of it. I have heard Yung Wing himself say it. We may with propriety, in view of some reasons, on the other hand, that naturally enough we see more clearly than they do in California, plead with our fellow-citizens there to try and discern the larger aspects of the situation, and to bear whatsoever ills it entails upon them till they can be remedied in the way that is best for all of us and for all men. If I had the ear of the Irish citizens of California I would plead with them, as lately foreigners themselves, and as sons of a church that for more than five hundred years has befriended China through her missions, and is still doing it, to regard these new foreigners with more kindness.