Saved from what? Ignorance? Superstition? Bigotry? Or stupidity? From idiocy or imbecility? Or, are we to be saved from poverty, hunger, starvation, misery and wretchedness, distress and degradation? Barbarism, savagery, or uncivilization does not enter into consideration of these unfortunate conditions. They exist right in the midst of us, in the highest centers of human civilization. Of what good is the talking of spiritual welfare, salvation, and heaven to a hungry stomach? Of what good is it to grow eloquent over celestial conditions when the poor wretch has sunk into the mire of sloth and apathy, when darkness, misery, and disappointment hang over him like a pall at a funeral? Is this the man that is sinning--when tempted to steal some trifle to satisfy hunger? Self-preservation is the first law throughout organic nature. This poverty-stricken individual occupies the lowest strata of civilized life. He must be civilized--for the law makes him so. The starving must not eat, unless charity extends a helping hand. In the state of want and helplessness, all the inherent failings loom up into prominence, and aid to weaken the little resisting force remaining to withstand the temptation of wrongfully supplying his wants. The higher indulgences, either gustatory or sexual, are not within reach of the hungry and depressed; and salvation contemplated in the pleasures derived from overindulgence or excesses certainly does not apply to them. The class of persons in a position to satisfy both digestive and sexual pleasures we find in quite another catalogue of sinners. For some of these there is no salvation, for others there is what may be termed a reparatory saving power, viz., confession and atonement, for which the spiritual part of the body is not held responsible, but only the flesh. It is precisely the men who practice these flesh-begotten sins which the church from the time of St. Paul to the present period has been trying to save, with little or no success.