nearly all the mill people have their homes.  I wish you would note first the distance from B street and the churches to this tenement district.  It is nine blocks—­that is, a little over a mile.  To the edge of the tenement houses farthest from our own church building it is a mile and three-quarters.  And within that entire district, measuring nearly two by three miles, there is not a church building.  There are two feeble mission-schools, which are held in plain, unattractive halls, where every Sunday a handful of children meet; but nothing practically is being done by the Church of Christ in this place to give the people in that part of the town the privileges and power of the life of Christ, the life more abundantly.  The houses down there are of the cheapest description.  The people who come out of them are far from well-dressed.  The streets and alleys are dirty and ill-smelling.  And no one cares to promenade for pleasure up and down the sidewalks in that neighborhood.  It is not a safe place to go to at night.  The most frequent disturbances come from that part of the town.  All the hard characters find refuge there.  And let me say that I am not now speaking of the working people.  They are almost without exception law-abiding.  But in every town like ours the floating population of vice and crime seeks naturally that part of a town where the poorest houses are, and the most saloons, and the greatest darkness, both physically and moral.

“If there is a part of this town which needs lifting up and cleaning and healing and inspiring by the presence of the Church of Christ, it is right there where there is no church.  The people on B street and for six or eight blocks each side know the gospel.  They have large numbers of books and papers and much Christian literature.  They have been taught the Bible truths; they are familiar with them.  Of what value is it then to continue to support on this short street, so near together, seven churches of as many different denominations which have for their members the respectable, moral people of the town?  I do not mean to say that the well-to-do, respectable people do not need the influence of the church and the preaching of the gospel.  But they can get these privileges without such a fearful waste of material and power.  If we had only three or four churches on this street they would be enough.  We are wasting our Christianity with the present arrangement.  We are giving the rich and the educated and well-to-do people seven times as much church as we are giving the poor, the ignorant, and the struggling workers in the tenement district.  There is no question, there can be no question, that all this is wrong.  It is opposed to every principle that Christ advocated.  And in the face of these plain facts, which no one can dispute, there is a duty before these churches on this street which cannot be evaded without denying the very purpose of a church.  It is that duty which I am now going to urge upon this Calvary Church.