every description, perhaps no city in the world could exhibit so extensive an accumulation of intense and unmitigated irreligion. Yet to this company thousands of young persons are coming annually from every county to obtain employment in shops and families; numbers of whom, it is to be feared, are speedily ruined in their principles by the innumerable incentives to vice which are obtruded on their notice. What is there on the other hand to lead them to the principles and habits of true religion? If they happen to be thrown among consistent Christians, they may doubtless find instruction and improvement; but for the most part they are either left entirely to themselves, or soon find out that the influence of their employers and companions is hostile to religion. The ministers of religion are disproportionate to the wants of the community, and their ministry is paralyzed by the circumstances under which they are placed. There is far less of pastoral inter

course among clergymen and their congregations than is desirable; and beyond their congregations their influence is but slightly felt. Myriads of immortal beings round us are living and dying without the semblance even of religion; and their children are growing up in their habits. An excellent police, aided by the military force and by capacious gaols, maintains an extraordinary degree of public order; but the want of principle to be found among multitudes in close alliance with drunkenness and want, is scarcely on that account less melancholy. By various enquiries I am led to believe that an immense majority of the operatives of London attend no place of worship, and are living without any public or domestic exercises of religion.

A church may be erected near them, and a flourishing congregation may be gathered within its walls, but it exercises no perceptible influence on them; they do not attend its worship, they never see its minister, and

are profoundly indifferent to its existence. In some few cases neighbourhoods have been improved by an effective ministry, but these instances are exceptions to the general rule. The public ministrations of the Establishment seem to me hardly to touch that portion of the community which is without the forms of religion; and I am inclined to think that this remark applies almost equally to the ministers of other denominations. On the other hand, this defect is not adequately remedied by the zeal of laymen. In very few instances do masters call their workmen together for reading and prayer; and the young men who are attached to great shops receive little guidance from their employers; who, provided they do the work assigned to them, are said to care very little whether they be moral or immoral, devout or profane.

Something has been done to disseminate a knowledge of the Gospel by the various associations for visiting the poor, and the

B

agents of the London City Mission have been pre-eminently useful in imparting religious knowledge to numbers of persons who were previously living in a total neglect of the means of grace. But they carry on their work under great disadvantages; the population which they instruct being so fluctuating that the influence of neighbourhood is scarcely known; and with respect to numbers, the missionary has continually to begin his labours afresh. Besides which, years of criminal excess, an habitual insensibility to all religious truths, oppressive cares and hopeless poverty, render many of the objects of his solicitude as impervious to religious feeling as almost any class which could be imagined. Perhaps these excellent men do more for the instruction of the poorest classes than any others: but much more powerful means must be devised before the metropolis can take its proper place as the centre of moral and religious influence to the British empire and to the world. To accomplish

this object, there must be a great increase of true religion through all grades of society, and therefore there must be a simultaneous increase of Christian influence upon old and young, upon rich and poor. The ministers of Christ cannot accomplish this alone: to act upon myriads who are without religious principle, the thousands who possess it must do their utmost. "Ye are the salt of the earth, ye are the light of the world," said our Saviour, not to his ministers alone, but to his disciples. Accordingly, what is mainly required for London, is an increase of spiritual religion among the true followers of Christ, with a corresponding sense of the obligation laid on each of them to enlarge and strengthen the kingdom of the Redeemer. Much zeal has been lately employed in the endeavour to multiply our sacred buildings and to increase the number of ministers; but has there been equal care taken respecting their qualifications? The clergymen mentioned by St. Paul, in his