The clergy are at once servants of the altar, preachers, teachers, almoners, leaders in all kinds of societies and clubs, and providers of amusements and recreation.  The people look on, hold out their hands, receive, at first indifferently—­but presently, one by one, awaken to a new sense.  As they receive they cannot choose but to discover that these ladies have given up their luxurious homes and the life of ease in order to work among them.  They also discover that these young gentlemen who ‘run’ the dubs, teach the boys gymnastics, boxing, drawing, carving, and the rest, give up for this all their evenings—­the flower of the day in the flower of life.  What for?  What do they get for it?  Not in this parish only, but in every parish the same kind of thing goes on and spreads daily.  This—­observe—­is the last step but one of charity.  For the progress of charity is as follows:  First, there is the pitiful dole to the beggar; then the bequest to monk and monastery; then the founding of the almshouse and the parish charity; then the Easter and the Christmas offerings; then the gift to the almoner; then the cheque to a society; next—­latest and best—­personal service among the poor.  This is both flower and fruit of charity.  One thing only remains.  And before long this thing also shall come to pass as well.

Those who live in the dens and witness these things done daily must be stocks and stones if they were not moved by them.  They are not stocks and stones; they are actually, though slowly, moved by them; the old hatred of the Church—­you may find it expressed in the working man’s papers of fifty years ago—­is dying out rapidly in our great towns; the brawling is better, even the drinking is diminishing.  And there is another—­perhaps an unexpected—­result.  Not only are the poor turning to the Church which befriends them, the Church which they used to deride, but the clergy are turning to the poor; there are many for whom the condition of the people is above all other earthly considerations.  If that great conflict—­long predicted—­of capital and labour ever takes place, it is safe to prophecy that the Church will not desert the poor.

Apart from the Church what machinery is at work?  First, because there are so many Catholics in the place, one must think of them.  It is, however, difficult to ascertain the Catholic agencies at work among these people.  The people are told that they must go to mass; Roman Catholic sisters give dinners to children; there is the Roman League of the Cross—­a temperance association; I think that the Catholics are in great measure left to the charities of the Anglicans, so long as these do not try to convert the Romans.