While an abnormal agency, like the Salvation Army, may do some useful service among the occupants of the slums, the greater work of reaching and evangelizing the immense mass of plain, humble working people must be done by the churches themselves.  What do the dwellers in the by-streets and the tenement houses need?  They need precisely what the dwellers in the brown stone houses on fine avenues need—­a sanctuary to worship in, a Sunday school for their children, a preacher to give them the Gospel, and a pastor to visit them and watch over them—­in short, a spiritual home.  As for bringing the poorer class of the back streets into the elegant churches on the fashionable avenues it is an absurdity, both geography and human nature are against it.  The plainly dressed laborers of the back districts could not come to the fine churches on Fifth Avenue, or similar streets, because these edifices are already occupied by their regular pew holders; they would not come, for they would not feel at home there.  Since the humbler toiling classes will not come to the sanctuaries occupied by the rich, the only true Christian policy is for the rich churches to build and maintain plenty of attractive auxiliary chapels in the regions occupied by those humbler classes.  Not mean and unattractive soup-house style of chapels should they be, either—­they ought to be handsome, cheerful, well-appointed sanctuaries, manned by godly pastors who are not above the business of saving souls that are clad in dirty shirts.  And that is not all:  the members of the wealthy churches which rear the auxiliary chapels should personally go and attend the services and Sunday schools and weekly meetings in the chapel—­not go in costly raiment that touches the pride of God’s poor, but in plain clothes and with a hearty democratic sympathy in their whole bearing.  To reach the masses we must go after them—­and then stay with them when we get there.  If broadcloth religion waits for poverty and ignorance to cross the chasm to it, then may they at last come to be a menace to the safety of society—­with imprecations on it for criminal neglect.  Christianity must build the bridge across the chasm, and then keep its steady procession crossing over it with bright lamps for dark homes, and Bibles for darker souls, and bread for hungry mouths, and, what is best of all, personal intercourse and personal sympathy.  The music of a Christmas carol would be very sweet in poverty’s garret; the advent of the living Jesus in the persons of His true-hearted followers would be a “Merry Christmas” all the year round.

Brooklyn is not a city of slums, nor does it abound with the sky-scraping tenement houses, like those in which the myriads of New York live, but we have a large population of wage-earners of the humbler class.  These mainly occupy streets by themselves.  In order to do our part in giving the bread of life to these worthy people, Lafayette Avenue Church has always maintained two, and sometimes three, auxiliary