But it is not to ministers alone, that cities present large fields for exertion. Private Christians also have abundant opportunities for usefulness. In the walks of business, the influence of one inflexibly just man is felt as far as his name is known. If Christians, in our cities, would conduct themselves agreeably to the Bible, how awful to the wicked would be their example! What reformations would be wrought among the worldly and profane! How many haunts of poverty and wretchedness would be searched out! How many souls, once in communion with the saints, would be brought back from their wanderings! How many children, rescued from vice, would be brought to the Sabbath school; and there, perhaps, be taught of God to become themselves angels of mercy! How many meetings for prayer and exhortation would every week be sustained among the poor and the wretched! How many of these degraded immortals might be rescued from temporal and eternal darkness, to become lights in the world, and stars in the kingdom of our Father's glory! What field then offers so rich and large an harvest to faithful labour? The same exertion, that would instruct hundreds in the country, may reach thousands in the city. Public sentiment has too long checked the movements of sympathy for these congregated thousands. A voice, almost unbroken, has sounded out; 'Peculiar and insuperable difficulties prevent a general revival in cities: such are the occupations, such the habits, such the temptations, and such the superabounding iniquity, that it were visionary to hope for any general and powerful work of mercy.' Well, then, had we not better give all up; and let human nature here sink into its natural channels; and let multitudes before our eyes continue to crowd the gates of the second death! O God, forbid such cowardice, cruelty, and treachery in thy servants! No; we will not thus surrender immortals. While there is grace or even nature in our hearts, we will not. We have, indeed, heard of difficulties, till the heart is pained, and the soul is wearied. But where are these insuperable difficulties to be found? Not in the Scriptures of God, surely; not in the result of apostolic labours; but in the unbelief and inaction of modern Christians. "God is no more hostile to cities than to villages: his Spirit is as free, and his offers of salvation as full, to the people of the crowded city, as of the open country." Let the advantages then be embraced. Let the power be concentrated. Let the sacramental host arise; and the work is done. And instead of being overwhelmed with shame and deserved reproach, we may joyfully say to such as pass by; "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof; mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever." "Then the sons also of them that afflicted Zion shall come bending unto her;