man's existence. The only way to assist a working man is to enable him to assist himself. Let me press on you seriously the immense advantages you enjoy compared with your forefathers. Time was, and not very long ago, when such a meeting as this would have been impossible, and you could not make such a thing intelligible to men's minds. Remember how this mighty city has grown up; and all the Church of England, and all the denominations, if they could be brought to be of one mind would be wholly inadequate to the great spiritual work of this metropolis. _Now I delight to see these lay agents come forward and, like your friend, Mr. Charrington, act as auxiliaries and subsidiaries to the efforts of the ordained ministers to preach the word of God._ It is a great blessing when you see how hundreds and thousands are brought to come in the spirit of freedom and choice, to hear the Word of God, who could never have been coerced by any system of ecclesiastical discipline which even the Pope might endeavour to institute. All these considerations should impress on you a sense of the deep obligations under which you are: first to God, and then to these men whom God has raised up to conduct these various missions, and to sustain all these manifold efforts to propagate the Gospel. I am certain that I am within the limit when I say that there are at least 400,000 persons at the present time in this metropolis who would never have heard the Word of God but for the agency of such missions. Did these exist in former times? I recollect when we propounded nineteen years ago that the theatres should be opened for divine service on every successive Sunday, we were treated by some with scorn, by some with doubt (very sincere doubt), and by all with misgiving. What has been the result? Such gatherings as these. Thus the Gospel of God has been sounded out in the metropolis, and I, in going the rounds of our great cities in the dark hours of the night, have found that by such means as these many have come to know of the Gospel.