And this is a specimen of the neighbourhood. Reeking courts, crowded public-houses, low lodging-houses and numerous brothels are to be found all around. Even the cellars are tenanted. Poverty, rags and dirt everywhere. The air is laden with disease-breeding gases. The missionaries who labour here, are constantly being attacked by some malady or other resulting from blood poisoning, and their tact and courage are subjected to the severest tests. In going about these alleys and courts no stranger is safe if alone. Not long ago a doctor on his rounds was waylaid by a number of women, who would not let him pass to see his patient until he had given them money; and a bible-woman, visiting "Kent Street," was robbed of most of her clothing. Even the police seldom venture into some parts of the district except in company. Yet bad as it is there are elements of hopefulness which encourage us to believe that our work will not be in vain. Many of its denizens would gladly break away from the dismal, degrading life they are leading, if only a way were made for them to do so; as it is they are hemmed in and chained down by their surroundings in hopeless and helpless misery. Such is Collier's Rents. To describe the other two localities where our work is to be commenced, in Ratcliff and Shadwell, would, in the main, be but to repeat the same heart-sickening story. Heart-sickening but soul-stirring. We have opened but a little way the door that leads into this plague-house of sin and misery and corruption, where men and women and little children starve and suffer and perish, body and soul. But even the glance we have got is a sight to make one weep. We shall not wonder if some, shuddering at the revolting spectacle, try to persuade themselves that such things cannot be in Christian England, and that what they have looked upon is some dark vision conjured by a morbid pity and a desponding faith. To such we can only say, Will you venture to come with us and see for yourselves the ghastly reality? Others, looking on, will believe, and pity, and despair. But another vision will be seen by many, and in this lies our hope--a vision of Him who had "compassion upon the multitude because they were as sheep having no shepherd," looking, with Divine pity in His eyes, over this outcast London, and then turning to the consecrated host of His Church with the appeal, "Whom shall we send and who will go for us?" _October, 1883._ [Illustration: Decoration] Printers: WARREN HALL & LOVITT, 88, Camden Road, N.W.