I was kept in the city Saturday night by a legal appointment, and
went the next day to hear my old friend Thomas Lane preach. His text
was "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"

He depicted very graphically the condition of the poor in New York.
He is a man of warm sympathies, of a large and generous heart. He
mingles a great deal with the poor of his own congregation. To his
credit and that of his wife be it said, there are a good many poor
in his congregation. But he does not confine his sympathies to his
own people. He told us of that immense class who live in New York
without a church-home, of the heathen that are growing up among us.

"You need not go to Africa," said he, "to find them. They come to
your door every morning for cold victuals. God will hold you
responsible for their souls. Are you in the Sabbath-school? Are you
in the Mission-school? Are you in the neighborhood prayer-meeting?
Are you a visitor? Are you distributing tracts? Are you doing
anything to seek and to save that which is lost?" Then he went on to
say what should be done; and to maintain the right and duty of
laymen to preach, to teach, to visit, to do all things which belong
to "fishers of men." "There are a great many church members," said
he, "who seem to suppose that their whole duty consists in paying
pew rent and listening to preaching. That is not Christianity. If
you are doing nothing you are drones. There is no room in the hive
for you. The Church has too many idle Christians already. We don't
want you."

He did not argue. He simply asserted. But he evidently felt the
truth of all that he said. I believe I should have decided at once
to go into the Sabbath-school as soon as I came home, but for a