The Conference Sermon was preached by the Rt. Rev. William Crosswell Doane, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Albany, in the Cathedral of All Saints, where the delegates attended in a body. The Bishop’s text was Matt. 25:36, “I was in prison and ye came unto me.” He said in part: “Almost by an instinctive impulse these words come first to the mind of the preacher at such a service, and by a striking and happy coincidence this service falls upon the Sunday when our Book of Common Prayer appoints for the second morning lesson the chapter which ends with this intense expression of our Lord, containing, I think, the seed principle upon which the noble work of this Association was founded and has been carried on. Last year the preacher took the earthly ministry of our dear divine Lord as the pattern of this work, ‘Who went about doing good.’ “I am only supplementing and carrying along the line of his thought when I ask you to think of the divine Master as giving not the pattern only, but the principle of your work. There is no contradiction in the double presentation of our Lord’s personality along this as along so many other lines. He is so essentially by His incarnation in our human nature that we bring Him to those to whom we minister in His name and find Him in those to whom we bring Him. And in either of these sides the truth is set forth and enforced that the object of all Christian service, whether it be the work of Christianity in religious teaching, or the work of Christianity in the administration of civic affairs, is not the violent denunciation or vindictive infliction of punishment upon a sinner, but the offer of help and the opportunity of reform. The Prison Reform Association may well claim that it describes and expresses in its name the purpose for which in Christian lands prisons exist. ‘He came not to condemn the world, but to save it.’ ‘The Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost.’ “Curiously enough, whatever technical differences may lie in the use of the various words prison and gaol and reformatory, there is one that stands out as having in its root meaning the very thought of that on which we are dwelling, because the penitentiary is certainly the place where men are led and drawn, through real penitence, to seek and find pardon and peace.