"The grand leading principle is to deal out to the hundreds and thousands of these districts a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let me tell you how low people may fall, even as it were in the centre of religious light, unless that truth is brought home to them personally and individually. Some years ago, when our commissioners were making inquiry into the mines and collieries of this kingdom, one of the commissioners--a most excellent man, and very anxious about the religious welfare of the community--told me himself that in one of the largest colliery districts of England, he descended into a pit, and spoke to the man there--a hard-working man; and being anxious to know something of his religious state, said to him, 'Do you know Jesus Christ?' 'No,' was the reply; 'does he work on the bank, or in the pit?' Such was the state of a man in the middle of one of the most populous districts in England, in the mines and collieries, the centre of hundreds and thousands so utterly ignorant of the first elements of religion that he had never heard the name of the Saviour of mankind. But if none go forth to the highways and to the hedges to gather them in; if there be none to invite them to places such as these; none to reveal to them the nature of sin and the fallen condition of man in his present state, they will certainly not learn it by intuition. Man has to preach the Gospel to man; and it is a sense of this duty that is occupying such men as Mr. Charrington and others in their endeavours to communicate to you the blessing God has so abundantly imparted to them. I am delighted to see such a meeting as this, because I see the enthusiasm with which you come: and when you joined in those hymns, I saw that you sang them from your hearts, that you knew what you were singing, and that the hymns were not merely exercises of music, but the expressions of true devotion. It is a mighty thing to have achieved such results in the wild and remote districts of the East of London, and would to God we had a hundred halls such as this! _where men of God should stand and daily preach the Word of God, and minister consolation to those who come_. Mr. Charrington has said that he desires a larger building, and so do you desire it, and so let every one desire it, and pray for it heartily, and do what in him lies to get it. Every person, I say, every woman, and every child may be a centre of influence. And recollect what that means. Your influence may be small, but if it be a centre it makes a little ring of itself, and these concentric rings one after another will at length cover the whole space of London, and will produce a feeling that will issue in the accomplishment of the prayer which Mr. Charrington has so