From the day when we come to Him for rest, taking His yoke upon us, we give assent to the oneness of God’s people in Christ, and to the oneness of the work given them to do. We sing of the sacred tie that binds our hearts into one, we preach about it, we pray over it, in a theoretic way we believe it; but it seems as if it requires something like the fountains of the great deep to be broken up to make us practically realize all that the singing, preaching, praying and believing involve. Our loyalty to the Union slumbered and slept, as securely as the ten virgins, till the trumpet blew all over the land. Who then felt his life too dear to offer it for the Union? What lady’s hand was too delicate to scrape lint, make bandages, or pack boxes of home comforts for the boys at the front? How many timid hearts made themselves brave to endure the sight of horrible suffering, that they might minister and so help; but now we have grown careless and secure, as if we had no part in the work which the war left for us to do. In travelling through the southern part of this great commonwealth, along the highways and byways, over long reaches of dark country, the between places, outside and beyond the centres where mission and educational work is being done, we see the vast crowds of people “who have not come to their own;” people who have a triple hunger consuming them, the hunger of poverty, the hunger for knowledge and the hunger after righteousness. We are compelled to see ignorance, helplessness and consequent shiftlessness, contending hopelessly with the might and meanness of greed. This great need in a professedly Christian land--people perishing for lack of knowledge, where knowledge is a birthright--causes our hearts to burn within us, and we say, how long until the whole body of Christ feels this pain? Oh, if they only knew! And we take the task willingly of telling of it. Alas, they are so busy, the farm, the merchandise, the different enterprises of ecclesiastical masonry and millinery, and we find that the need is too far away for general sympathy.