parents at home to whom he has never said a word about Christ. There
is an old proverb, 'The shoemaker's wife is always the worst shod.'
The families of many very busy Christian teachers suffer wofully for
want of remembering 'he first findeth his own brother.' It is a poor
affair if all your philanthropy and Christian energy go off noisily in
Sunday-schools and mission-stations, and if your own vineyard is
neglected, and the people at your own fireside never hear anything
from you about the Master whom you say you love. Some of you want that
hint; will you take it?

But then, the principle is one that might be fairly expanded beyond
the home circle. The natural relationships into which we are brought
by neighbourhood and by ordinary associations prescribe the direction
of our efforts. What, for instance, are we set down in this swarming
population of Lancashire for? For business and personal ends? Yes,
partly. But is that all? Surely, if we believe that 'there is a
divinity that shapes our ends' and determines the bounds of our
habitation, we must believe that other purposes affecting other people
are also meant by God to be accomplished through us, and that where a
man who knows and loves Christ Jesus is brought into neighbourly
contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his
brethren's keeper, and is as plainly called to tell them of Christ as
if a voice from Heaven had bid him do it. What is to be said of the
depth and vital energy of the Christianity that neither hears the call
nor feels the impulse to share its blessing with the famishing Lazarus
at its gate? What will be the fate of such a church? Why, if you live
in luxury in your own well drained and ventilated house, and take no
heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at its back, the
chances are that seeds of the disease will find their way to you, and
kill your wife, or child, or yourself. And if you Christian people,