fore, not detain you with any observations, further than to say that it is the wish of our own dear friend, Mr. Pennefather-and I am sure my own heart, and your hearts, will go with it-that this meeting should be a meeting of special prayer; that there should be mingled with the suggestions that our brethren may make petitions for wisdom and for power, and holy desires for the pouring forth of God's blessed Spirit upon the masses, that we may see a vaster work done for God, and for the salvation of souls, than we have hitherto been privileged to see. We have amongst us this afternoon several gentlemen who have taken a leading part in this work. It is my privilege to be able to call upon some of them to introduce the subject to our notice this afternoon. After those whom I shall ask to speak have made their remarks, I will then ask those amongst you, who think they have any really valuable suggestions to make, to speak briefly, and to the point; but after the opening address, I trust that the suggestions, or the words which our brothers may be inclined to speak, will be included in the space, say, of five or six minutes. I will now ask our friend, Mr. Smithies, to say a few words to you. Mr. SMITHIES, editor of The British Workman, then spoke :

My dear Friends,-It somewhat takes me by surprise that our worthy chairman has asked me to speak first, as I anticipated that our friend, the Rev. Mr. Davidson, who has been conducting services at the Agricultural Hall during the last few months, would have been allowed to be the chief speaker, and that

It may be, my dear

if any spare time remained I might have added a few remarks to fill up the time. I am, however, urged to speak first, and I do it with the understanding that, knowing that this subject is so great, and that my heart is so full with regard to it for I have seen very much since we last met in this room-that the chairman will promise me that he will stop me when I have gone to the limit of my time, otherwise I shall not feel at liberty to go forward. friends-probably it will be the case-that something I may say this afternoon will be but a repetition of what I named last year. I cannot remember what I then said; I made no notes of what took place last year; but the general impression on my mind is that the chief portion of my address-if such it might be termed—had reference to the Sunday-morning breakfast amongst the poor. On that occasion I had to tell you that it was an experiment, which had been tried for the first time during the previous winter. To-day I can tell you that it has been tried during a second winter, and that I have to thank God for results greater even than those which I knew of when we met in this room last year; and if anything is now being laid upon my mind more than another with regard to the best means of reaching the masses, it is that I am driven back more and more to the simple teaching of the New Testament; to the plan adopted by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself. And, as we were told this morning in those remarks about His words and wisdom, I believe we find in every case that Jesus administered to the bodily wants, and

He relieved the sufferings of those who came to Him before He spake to them about their souls. We met -my friend Edward Jackson and myself-last winter, on thirteen or fourteen Sabbath mornings, with over 13,000 of the poor of London. I would here mention, my dear friends, what I was not prepared for myself. We had an application from an earnest missionary, labouring in connection with the Presbyterians, that we should have a meeting near King's Cross. My reply to him was that we desired to go into the very worst districts, where the people were literally starving, where they would have no breakfast if it were not for the food we took to them; and that the neighbourhood of King's Cross was not the locality that we were in search of. To my astonishment he turned round to me and said, "Mr. Smithies, in six hours I will find 800 men, any Sunday morning you like, within a stone's throw of King's Cross Station, who never, or but only rarely, break their fast on a Sabbath morning." I was not prepared for that in the centre of London. We had a meeting, and I found, to my sorrow, to my consternation, that he was true in his remarks, that even there we could gather together on the Sabbath morning some 800 poor fellows. We had at the last meeting there not 800, but a full thousand, and hundreds asking for admission, with no room, and no bread for them. We have found out, my dear friends, this very sad fact which we, as professing Christians, never ought to forget, that in this great London, different almost from every other place in the land, that day which you and I regard as the

brightest and the best of the seven, the happiest day, the sunniest day of the week, is to a large mass of our fellow-men and sisters the hardest day of all the seven. For on other days they can get what they call odd jobs; they can go to markets and other places, and by carrying baskets or fruit, or holding a horse, earn a penny or two-pence. But this day, the Lord's-day, the brightest day, the day that, as I have said, you and I love so much, is the hardest day to thousands in our great city. I have, therefore, been taught— despite my original strong feeling on this question, of fear that we might, whilst seeking to do good, be really doing harm, by doing on the Lord's-day work we ought not to do I have been taught a lesson I never learned before: that I have been thirty years in learning that we may, after administering by the aid of a little bread and tea to the bodily wants of the poor, secure from them a ready hearing for almost anything we like to say to them. I forget whether I named it last year, but at one of these meetings I learned a lesson which I would wish to commend to you, my dear friends; it may be worth remembering. I named in this place last year that we had striven on all occasions to prevent the possibility of the appearance of any sectarian feeling or view, and I think, with the exception of my friend the Quaker's coat, no one could tell whether the speakers were Churchmen, Congregationalists, Wesleyans, Baptists, or members. of any other denomination. That I believe has been a charm and a power that God has given us, especially amongst the poor. They had felt that we had not

come to promote any sectarian object, but to promote their spiritual welfare. At the close of one meeting I made a remark to the minister in whose place the meeting was held. I said, "Have we not some Irish. here this morning?" "O yes; you have nearly a hundred." "But," I said, "not Roman Catholic ?" "Yes;" he said, "you have upwards of eighty Roman Catholics this morning." Now I am thankful that not a word was there said that could have aroused the hostility or prejudices of our poor Roman Catholic brethren.

But it was a very instructive lesson to find in a gathering of that kind that we could have so many of the poor Irish present. Some one said he believed when the breakfast was over they would all go; but not a man or woman stirred from their seats. I cannot explain it; I only give you the fact; I have never seen, never in the whole course of my life, anything like such results following as have followed these Sabbath meetings amongst the poor.

The encouragement we received led to another effort amongst perhaps the very lowest of the low in London. One morning Mr. Jackson, the thieves' missionary, called upon me, and said, "You have often expressed a desire to invite some thieves to meet you to tea. Now," he said, "you have a good opportunity; just now Lord Kimberley's Bill, his proposed Act, is causing consternation amongst the thieves throughout all the East of London, and this is the time to meet them if you wish to do so." "How many will your room hold ?" I inquired. The reply was, "Sixty." "Very well, then; invite sixty; all