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 overpopulation 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 20th, 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 to flatter me: and I have not come, with any affected coyness, to pretend

to disclaim your flattery, in order that it may be repeated. You have told me, in the frank spirit of Englishmen, that my ministry has done you good. Frankly, as an Englishman, I tell you with all my heart, I do believe it. I know that there are men who once wandered in darkness and doubt, and could find no light, who have now found an anchor, and a rock, and resting place. I know that there are men who were feeling bitterly and angrily, what seemed to them the unfair differences of society, who now regard them in a gentler, more humble, and more tender spirit. I know that there are rich who have been led to feel more generously towards the poor. I know that there are poor who have been taught to feel more truly, and more fairly towards the rich. I believe-for on such a point God can only know-that there are men who have been induced to place before themselves a higher standard, and perhaps I may venture to add, have conformed their lives more truly to that standard. I dare not hide my belief in this. I am deeply grateful in being able to say that, if my ministry were to close to-morrow, it would not have been, in this town at least, altogether a failure. There is no vanity in saying this. A man must be strangely constituted indeed if he can say such things, and not feel deeply humbled in remembering what that instrument is,

how weak, how frail, how feeble, by which the work is done. I desire to feel this evening far less the honour that may have been done to myself, than the opportunity that is given to us for meeting together in Christian union and brotherhood. We are met here to-night, a minister of the Church of England, a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, invited by young men, of that age at which it is generally supposed that the hot blood of youth incapacitates, or indisposes them towards religion. We are met here, many of those around me of the richer classes of society, invited by those who are in a humbler and far poorer class, and is it possible for me to see in a picture such as this, merely the prominent object of myself? Is it possible for me, as a Christian, to see anything in this—almost anything—except a foretaste of better and happier times? A pledge of a coming time, when that shall be realized, of which that which we now see is but the representation: like the ancient agapæ, or feasts of charity, in which the Corinthian churches, and many other churches, exhibited before the world the blessed fact of a Church, and of a Brotherhood existing here on earth. These signatures which are appended to this address you have given me, will be to me, I trust, in future times, in many a dark hour, a consolation and encouragement. For if I have been liable—and