effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of these outcast
classes. The rescued are appallingly few--a ghastly minority compared
with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss.
Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of
them in any way as separate one from the other, have cried out for some
more comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing crowds.

No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to
the rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations which
have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the
same billows of temptation washing over them. But, alas! with many
this seems to be literally impossible. That decisiveness of character,
that moral nerve which takes hold of the rope thrown for the rescue and
keeps its hold amidst all the resistances that have to be encountered,
is wanting. It is gone.
The general wreck has shattered and disorganised the whole man.

Alas, what multitudes there are around us everywhere, many known to my
readers personally, and any number who may be known to them by a very
short walk from their own dwellings, who are in this very plight! Their
vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that without
some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and
hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure
of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death will close upon then and
terminate their wretchedness. And all this will happen this very
winter in the midst of the unparalleled wealth, and civilisation, and
philanthropy of this professedly most Christian land.

Now, I propose to go straight for these sinking classes, and in doing
so shall continue to aim at the heart. I still prophesy the uttermost