nothing ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can do
anything in the back streets of great cities so long as they are the
cesspools which they are now.

We came to the room. About a score of M'Kay's own friends were
there, and perhaps half-a-dozen outsiders, attracted by the notice
which had been pasted on a board at the entrance. M'Kay announced
his errand. The ignorance and misery of London he said were
intolerable to him. He could not take any pleasure in life when he
thought upon them. What could he do? that was the question. He was
not a man of wealth. He could not buy up these hovels. He could not
force an entrance into them and persuade their inhabitants to improve
themselves. He had no talents wherewith to found a great
organisation or create public opinion. He had determined, after much
thought, to do what he was now doing. It was very little, but it was
all he could undertake. He proposed to keep this room open as a
place to which those who wished might resort at different times, and
find some quietude, instruction, and what fortifying thoughts he
could collect to enable men to endure their almost unendurable
sufferings. He did not intend to teach theology. Anything which
would be serviceable he would set forth, but in the main he intended
to rely on holding up the examples of those who were greater than
ourselves and were our redeemers. He meant to teach Christ in the
proper sense of the word. Christ now is admired probably more than
He had ever been. Everybody agrees to admire Him, but where are the
people who really do what He did? There is no religion now-a-days.
Religion is a mere literature. Cultivated persons sit in their
studies and write overflowingly about Jesus, or meet at parties and
talk about Him; but He is not of much use to me unless I say to
myself, HOW IS IT WITH THEE? unless I myself become what He was.