doning, and sympathetic Christ. Who knows but the city which has been the destruction of so many may be your eternal redemption?

A good many years ago, Edward Stanley, the English commander, with his regiment, took a fort. The fort was manned by some three hundred Spaniards. Edward Stanley came close up to the fort, leading his men, when a Spaniard thrust at him with a spear, intending to destroy his life; but Stanley caught hold of the spear, and the Spaniard in attempting to jerk the spear away from Stanley, lifted him up into the battlements. No sooner had Stanley taken his position on the battlements, than he swung his sword and his whole regiment leaped up after him and the fort was taken. So may it be with you, O stranger. The city influences which have destroyed so many and dashed them down for ever, shall be the means of lifting you up into the tower of God's mercy and strength, your soul more than conqueror through the grace of Him who hath promised an especial benediction. to those who shall treat you well, saying: "I was a stranger and ye took me in."

CHAPTER XXL

PEOPLE TO BE FEARED.

"Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it —Psalms lxxx: 12, 13.

By this homely but expressive figure, the text sets forth the bad influences which in olden time broke in upon God's heritage, as with swine's foot trampling, and as with swine's snout uprooting the vineyards of prosperity. What was true then is true now. There have been enough trees of righteousness planted to overshadow the whole earth, had it not been for the axe-men who hewed them down. The temple of truth would long ago have been completed, had it not been for the iconoclasts who defaced the walls and battered down the pillars. The whole earth would have been an Eshcol of ripened clusters, had it not been that "the boar has wasted it and the wild beast of the field devoured it."

I propose to point out to you those whom I consider to be the uprooting and devouring classes of society. First, the public criminals. You ought not to be surprised that these people make up a large portion in many communities. The vast majority of the criminals who take ship from Europe come into our own port. In 1869, of the forty-nine thousand people who were incarcerated in the prisons of the country, thirty-two thousand were of foreign birth. Many of them were the very desperadoes of society, oozing into the slums of our cities, waiting

for an opportunity to riot and steal and debauch, joining the large gang of American thugs and cut-throats. There are in this cluster of cities-New York, Jersey City, and Brooklyn-four thousand people whose entire business in life is to commit crime. That is as much their business as jurisprudence or medicine or merchandise is your business. To it they bring all their energies of body, mind, and soul, and they look upon the interregnums which they spend in prison as so much unfortunate. loss of time, just as you look upon an attack of influenza or rheumatism which fastens you in the house for a few days. It is their lifetime business to pick pockets, and blow up safes, and shoplift, and ply the panel game, and they have as much pride of skill in their business as you have in yours when you upset the argument of an opposing council, or cure a gunshot fracture which other surgeons have given up, or foresee a turn in the market so you buy goods just before they go up twenty per cent. It is their business to commit crime, and I do not suppose that once in a year the thought of the immorality strikes them. Added to these professional criminals, American and foreign, there is a large class of men who are more or less industrious in crime. In one year the police in this cluster of cities arrested ten thousand people for theft, and ten thousand for assault and battery, and fifty thousand for intoxication. Drunkenness is responsible for much of the theft, since it confuses a man's ideas of property, and he gets his hands on things that do not belong to him. Rum is responsible for much of the assault and battery, inspiring men to sudden bravery, which they must demonstrate though it be on the face of the next gentleman.

Seven million dollars' worth of property stolen in this cluster of cities in one year. You cannot, as good

It will touch your

citizens, be independent of that fact. pocket, since I have to give you the fact that these three cities pay seven million dollars' worth of taxes a year to arraign, try, and support the criminal population. You help to pay the board of every criminal, from the sneakthief that snatches a spool of cotton, up to some man who enacts a "Black Friday." More than that, it touches your heart in the moral depression of the community. You might as well think to stand in a closely confined room where there are fifty people and yet not breathe the vitiated air, as to stand in a community where there is such a great multitude of the depraved without somewhat being contaminated. What is the fire that burns your store down compared with the conflagration which consumes your morals? What is the theft of the gold and silver from your money safe compared with the theft of your children's virtue?

We are all ready to arraign criminals. We shout at the top of our voice, "Stop thief!" and when the police get on the track we come out, hatless and in our slippers, and assist in the arrest. We come around the bawling ruffian and hustle him off to justice, and when he gets in prison, what do we do for him? With great gusto we put on the handcuffs and the hopples; but what preparation are we making for the day when the handcuffs and the hopples come off? Society seems to say to these criminals, "Villain, go in there and rot," when it ought to say, "You are an offender against the law, but we mean to give you an opportunity to repent; we mean to help you. Here are Bibles and tracts and Christian influences. Christ died for you. Look, and live."

Vast improvements have been made by introducing industries into the prison; but we want something more than hammers and shoe lasts to reclaim these people.

Aye, we want more than sermons on the Sabbath day, Society must impress these men with the fact that it does not enjoy their suffering, and that it is attempting to reform and elevate them. The majority of criminals suppose that society has a grudge against them, and they in turn have a grudge against society.

They are harder in heart and more infuriate when they come out of jail than when they went in. Many of the people who go to prison go again and again and again. Some years ago, of fifteen hundred prisoners who during the year had been in Sing Sing, four hundred had been there before. In a house of correction in the country, where during a certain reach of time there had been five thousand people, more than three thousand had been there before. So, in one case the prison, and in the other case the house of correction, left them just as bad as they were before. The secretary of one of the benevolent societies of New York saw a lad fifteen years of age who had spent three years of his life in prison, and he said to the lad, "What have they done for you to make you better?" "Well," replied the lad, "the first time I was brought up before the judge he said, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself.' And then I committed a crime again, and I was brought up before the same judge, and he said, 6 You rascal!' And after a while I committed some other crime, and I was brought before the same judge, and he said, 'You ought to be hanged." That is all they had done for him in the way of reformation and salvation. "Oh," you say, you say, "these people are incorrigible." I suppose there are hundreds of persons this day lying in the prison bunks who would leap up at the prospect of reformation, if society would only allow them a way into decency and respectability. "Oh," you say, "I have no patience with these rogues." I ask you in reply, How