He depicted very graphically the condition of the poor in New York.  He is a man of warm sympathies, of a large and generous heart.  He mingles a great deal with the poor of his own congregation.  To his credit and that of his wife be it said, there are a good many poor in his congregation.  But he does not confine his sympathies to his own people.  He told us of that immense class who live in New York without a church-home, of the heathen that are growing up among us.

“You need not go to Africa,” said he, “to find them.  They come to your door every morning for cold victuals.  God will hold you responsible for their souls.  Are you in the Sabbath-school?  Are you in the Mission-school?  Are you in the neighborhood prayer-meeting?  Are you a visitor?  Are you distributing tracts?  Are you doing anything to seek and to save that which is lost?” Then he went on to say what should be done; and to maintain the right and duty of laymen to preach, to teach, to visit, to do all things which belong to “fishers of men.”  “There are a great many church members,” said he, “who seem to suppose that their whole duty consists in paying pew rent and listening to preaching.  That is not Christianity.  If you are doing nothing you are drones.  There is no room in the hive for you.  The Church has too many idle Christians already.  We don’t want you.”

He did not argue.  He simply asserted.  But he evidently felt the truth of all that he said.  I believe I should have decided at once to go into the Sabbath-school as soon as I came home, but for a little incident.

After church I walked home with Mr. Lane to dine with him.  Mr. Sower joined and walked along with us.  He is at the head of a large manufacturing establishment.  He is one of Mr. Lane’s warmest friends.  Mr. Lane believes him to be a devoted Christian.  “Well, parson,” said he, “I suppose after to-night’s sermon there is nothing left for me to do but to take a letter from the Church—­if you don’t excommunicate me before I get it.”

“What’s the matter now?” said the parson.

“I am neither visiting,” said Mr. Sower, “nor distributing tracts, nor attending a tenement-house prayer-meeting, nor preaching, nor working in a mission, nor doing anything in the Church, but going to its service and paying my pew rent, and sometimes a little something over to make up a deficiency.  The fact is every day in the week I have my breakfast an hour before you do, and am off to the factory.  I never get home till six o’clock, sometimes not then.  My day’s work uses up my day’s energies.  I can’t go out to a tenement-house prayer-meeting, or to tract distribution in the evening.  I can hardly keep awake in our own church prayer-meeting.  If it were not for Sunday’s rest my work would kill me in a year.  I sometimes think that perhaps I am devoting too much of my time to money-making.  But what shall I do?  There are four hundred workmen in the factory.  Most of them have families.  All of those families are really dependent on me for their daily bread.  It takes all my life’s energies to keep them employed.  Shall I leave that work to take hold of tenement-house visitation and tract distribution?”