healed them."

She had up to this time been uttering maxims with regard to the equality, of the human race; but she had not "laid her hands" upon the negroes. I do not say but that this is fanciful; yet it strikes at the deep root of it all, for the great difference between His love of the human race and ours, the great difference in the way He stated the Brotherhood of the Race is this, that His was real, and true, and deep, and full of kindly sympathy. It was not standing apart from them; but mixing with them, and being one with them; and therefore it is, that what we are now to do is, to put our hands on our fellow-men, and touch the littleness and vulgarities of their daily life. It is just that which this institution desires to do, in building for them a Home. It has long appeared to me that Christianity is a true medium between those two opposite extremes, Spiritualism and Socialism. The spiritualist maintains that man may make his circumstances, and so it takes no account whatsoever of the circumstances by which the man may be surrounded; it believes that the Spirit, which is of God, may rise above those circumstances. On the other hand, it is a great maxim of Socialism that circumstances make the man. And so, the very author of Socialism tells us that, if we have efficient laws and altered Social regulations, we shall have true and right

men; and if we will but take away all the temptations to vice, we shall have no vice. These are the two extreme systems; Christianity does not steer the via media between these two extremesno truth does. Christianity states the truth, by stating both extremes. It is the spirit of Christianity, that man makes his circumstances, and, besides, that the circumstances make the man. The Scriptures, interested principally with our spiritual nature, are also interested with our physical nature; and the Redeemer of the soul is declared to be the Saviour also of the body. It appears to me that the grand consummation, for which all are waiting, the Kingdom of Christ set up on earth, never can be established till we have reached this conviction; and all the outer and inner life must work together, until we have done all that in us lies, not only to preach and teach the truth, but to take away the hindrances which stand in the way of truth. And what is the life of the poor man in his cottage?

Before a mixed audience, I cannot go deeply into the details of this. I have seen a family of nine, father and mother, grown-up sons and daughters, with but one sleeping-room, and in that sleeping-room only two beds. I will not go into the result; before a Christian assembly they are not to be named. But what is Purity, what

is Modesty, what is the Christian Gospel preached to such a family as that? It may appear to some, that to have gone into all these large principles is something like magniloquence; for, after all, when we speak of what we have done, we have only built apartments for ten families and seven single persons. But the rest is to come; and it is a great thing to have established a standard, to have set up before our poorer brethren a specimen of a higher and better mode of living. Political economists say, the evil of the country is over-population consequent on improvident marriages. This is partly true, but their remedy is insufficient. There is no difficulty in preventing improvident marriages among the upper classes; and for this reason-they know what comfort is -and they will not, except there is very small self-control, marry and sink in the scale of society. But the poor man often feels that he can sink no lower. Why then, he might ask himself, should I not marry? And when this morning I saw the Building in Church Street, with every window curtained, and the whole aspect so different from the buildings around, the thought suggested itself to my mind, and it must also have suggested itself to the minds of those who accompanied me, It is impossible that those who live in this locality, and look at this building, should be

satisfied with the state in which they are now living. They will aspire to higher things. We are bound, every one of us, to pledge ourselves to use our best exertions to effect the prosperity of such an Institution as this Society for improving the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes.

A SPEECH

In reply to an Address presented to him by One Hundred Young Men of his Congregation, at the Town Hall, Brighton, April 20, 1852.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,-I should be guilty of affectation if I were to disguise the satisfaction and deep gratefulness which I feel for the Address which you have just presented me. No one can feel more deeply than I do, the deficiencies, the faults, the worthlessness of the ministry of which you have spoken so kindly and so warmly. Whatever eyes have scanned those deficiencies, I will answer for it that none have scanned them so severely as my own. Others may have detected its faults more keenly, no one has felt them as bitterly as I have. And yet, for all this, I shall not for one moment disguise my belief that much of what has been said to-night is true. We have not come here to bandy compliments with one another. You have not come