The Salvation Army people attempt nothing—­absolutely nothing in this parish.  There are at present neither Baptist, nor Wesleyan, nor Independent chapels in the place.  A few years ago, on the appearance of the book called the ‘Bitter Cry of Outcast London,’ an attempt was made by the last-named body; they found an old chapel belonging to the Congregationalists, with an endowment of L80 a year, which they turned into a mission-hall, and carried on with spirit for two years mission work in the place; they soon obtained large funds, which they seem to have lavished with more zeal than discretion.  Presently their money was all gone and they could get no more; then the chapel was turned into a night-shelter.  Next It was burned to the ground.  It is now rebuilt and is again a night-shelter.  There is, however, an historic monument in the parish with which remains a survival of former activity.  It is a Quaker meeting-house which dates back to 1667.  It stands within its walls, quiet and decorous; there are the chapel, the ante-room, and the burial-ground.  The congregation still meet, reduced to fifty; they still hold their Sunday-school; and not far off one of the fraternity carries on a Creche which takes care of seventy or eighty babies, and is blessed every day by as many mothers.

Considering all these agencies—­how they are at work day after day, never resting, never ceasing, never relaxing their hold, always compelling the people more and more within the circle of their influence; how they incline the hearts of the children to better things and show them how to win these better things—­one wonders that the whole parish is not already clad in white robes and sitting with harp and crown.  On the other hand, walking down London Street, Ratcliff, looking at the foul houses, hearing the foul language, seeing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous children in the mud, one wonders whether even these agencies are enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery.  This parish is one of the poorest in London; it is one of the least known; it is one of the least visited.  Explorers of slums seldom come here; it is not fashionably miserable.  Yet all these fine things are done here, and as in this parish so in every other.  It is continually stated as a mere commonplace—­one may see the thing advanced everywhere, in ‘thoughtful’ papers, in leading articles—­that the Church of Rome alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of pure devotion.  Then what of these parish-workers of the Church of England?  What of that young physician who worked himself to death for the children?  What of the young men—­not one here and there but in dozens—­who give up all that young men mostly love for the sake of laborious nights among rough and rude lads?  What of the gentlewomen who pass long years—­give up their youth, their beauty, and their strength—­among