thieves, of course." I went down, and it was arranged that I was to take one friend with me, and that we were to wait on the thieves, and that no one was to be present making notes, and that there was to be no indication manifested of any intention of publishing anything that passed. I invited my good friend, Mr. Bevan Braithwaite, who is known to many of you as a minister of the Society of Friends, to accompany me, which he did. It was without exception the most remarkable meeting I have ever seen in my life, for the extraordinary consumption of provisions, I never saw anything like it, never. When my good friend, Bevan Braithwaite, came in, bearing, in his kind but stately manner, a large dish piled up with sandwiches, before he got half-way through the room all had disappeared. We were astonished; we could not understand it; we thought they must be pocketing, but we could not detect the slightest case of the kind.

However, after the provisions were all gone, we began to feel a little anxious, somewhat fearful that the experiment--and it was indeed a very special experimentthat the experiment might fail; but after the meal was over, we sank down, as the Friends say, into a silent meeting. I have been in some Friends' meetings when there have been solemn times of silent prayer, but I have yet to go to the Friends' meeting where the powerful presence of the Spirit was felt more than it was felt amongst these sixty-five poor thieves. And when we sang and prayed, it was almost more than we could do to give utterance to the words and feelings of our hearts. We had an audience that night, my dear

friends, as attentive as that which is now present here. I must not detain you with the details of the result, but, to show you that there is room for encouragement, I would say to you, my dear brothers and sisters, go forward and try what can be done in your own localities. Two meetings were held-a second on the Sabbath morning, at which there were ninety present and then we tried a very curious experiment. Very few of the thieves were married, but we gave them credit for having wives; we said we should like to meet their wives that night at tea, and would give each man a ticket for his wife, or sister, or female friend; and at night we had the room filled with the wives, and sisters, and friends of these poor thieves. Mr. Jackson called upon me lately, and told me that out of these ninety poor fellows whom we then met, thirty-seven are now either emigrants in Canada, doing well there, or on shipboard as sailors, or earning their living by honest industry in the streets of London-thirty-seven out of that number. Perhaps I ought not to sit down without reading a letter, which almost providentially I have got in my pocket, from one of those poor fellows. It is almost impossible for the thousands of poor thieves who are now in the East of London ever to live honestly in this country; as a rule, no one will employ them, for they have got no character, and if they get employment, the police are down upon them almost instantly. They will go into the shop where one of these poor fellows may be engaged, and say, "Do you know you have got a jailbird?" It is perhaps their duty to do it, but it is

hard. Some of these poor fellows I believe in their hearts are yearning to retrace their steps, are yearning to do right for the future; and when the question is put by them to us, "How can I earn an honest living?" I mourn over the inability that I have felt over and over again to answer that simple, straightforward question; a question which Christian England ought to be able to answer to the thousands who are now asking it. There are, I believe, my dear friends, now in the East of London, this very day, thousands of these poor fellows. I believe, if you would find the means, that by to-morrow morning I could find from two to three thousand of those poor thieves willing to come forward, who would thankfully accept from you the means of living rightly for the future.

But is there any fruit from our labours? Can we trust, can we rely, can we hope for fruit amongst these? I will read a portion from two letters which have come from Canada from two out of those thirtyseven whom we first met in those thieves' meetings. The morning after the meeting a number of them came to Mr. Jackson, and said, "Can you help us to live right? We want to give up thieving, but how can we do it?" A few friends came forward and assisted pecuniarily, and we took some of these poor fellows and provided lodgings for them, and found them food and clothing, and some employment, and we kept them thus for three months to test them before sending them out to Canada; and now within three months after their arrival these two letters have come to hand. These are two letters from poor fellows who have cost

this country for years pounds upon pounds in our prisons, and various other ways; and for £8 a-piece they have now been started for life; and I believe, my dear friends, that there never was a better investment of £8 than this. Talk of dividends, talk of high returns, talk of good investments, I never knew £8 better invested than in helping this poor fellow out of the gutter; and I have reason to hope, and Mr. Jackson has too, that he is a converted character. We trust his heart has been changed as well as his life, and that he is doing well, not only for this world, but for that which is to come.

Mr. Smithies read portions of two interesting letters which he requested should not be reported.

Mr. AITKEN said: We are all much obliged to Mr. Smithies for what he has told us. I am sure the narrative he has given us will have its weight with each of us according to our opportunities, and I trust that according to the openings which may occur to us individually we shall all seek to give our aid likewise. The Rev. THAIN DAVIDSON then spoke :

I almost fear, my Christian friends, that after the very interesting address you have heard from my friend, Mr. Smithies, you will not feel so much interested perhaps in what is more purely spiritual; and yet I think you will agree with me that if we can, with the blessing of God, reach the hearts of men without these physical appliances, we ought to be all the more grateful for the blessing. Our kind friend, Mr. Pennefather, asked me to come here to-day. It is my first visit here, and I assure you that it is with

very great pleasure that I find myself in this Hall, of which I have heard so much in times past. He asked me to come and say a few words about the spiritual destitution of London, and also to mention a few things which might occur to me about the effort which has been made during the past twelve months in the Agricultural Hall, and which has been attended, under God, with so very much encouragement and success. I think we must all feel that this question is the most important which can engage the attention of the Christian and of the philanthropist, that it is the most serious problem which God is at this time giving to the Christian Church to solve:-how we are to bring the influences of the pure Gospel to bear upon the hundreds and thousands of our fellow-countrymen, whom no Christian agencies at present touch; who are living practically as far from the influence of Christianity as if they were in the neglected parts of India or Japan. Confining ourselves to London, what a picture we have here of heathenism, applying that term, as I think we shall all be agreed in doing, to those of our fellow-creatures who are living without any recognition of God, without any hope in the world, without any observance of His own precious day. It just occurred to me to-day that if, on a clear day like this, one of you were to go and stand upon the top of the dome of Saint Paul's, what a wonderful picture you would have on every side. You would behold 120 square miles of dwelling-houses, occupied by a population numbering now about three millions, to which by birth an immortal soul is added every five

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