any other form of charity, concerning hospitals there can be none.  Every farthing bestowed on them must go toward the direct doing of good.  There is no fear in them of waste, of misapplication of funds, of private jobbery, of ulterior and unavowed objects.  Palpable and unmistakeable good is all they do and all they can do.  And he who gives to a hospital has the comfort of knowing that he is bestowing a direct blessing on the bodies of his fellow-men; and it may be on their souls likewise.

For I have said that these hospitals witness silently for God and for Christ; and I must believe that that silent witness is not lost on the minds of thousands who enter them.  It sinks in,—­all the more readily because it is not thrust upon them,—­and softens and breaks up their hearts to receive the precious seed of the word of God.  Many a man, too ready from bitter experience to believe that his fellow-men cared not for him, has entered the wards of a hospital to be happily undeceived.  He finds that he is cared for; that he is not forgotten either by God or man; that there is a place for him, too, at God’s table, in his hour of utmost need; and angels of God, in human form, ready to minister to his necessities; and, softened by that discovery, he has listened humbly, perhaps for the first time in his life, to the exhortations of a clergyman; and has taken in, in the hour of dependence and weakness, the lessons which he was too proud or too sullen to hear in the day of independence and sturdy health.  And so do these hospitals, it seems to me, follow the example and practice of our Lord Himself; who, by ministering to the animal wants and animal sufferings of the people, by showing them that He sympathised with those lower sorrows of which they were most immediately conscious, made them follow Him gladly, and listen to Him with faith, when He proclaimed to them in words of wisdom, that Father in heaven whom He had already proclaimed to them in acts of mercy.

And now, I have to appeal to you for the excellent and honourable foundation of St. George’s Hospital.  I might speak to you, and speak, too, with a personal reverence and affection of many years’ standing, of the claims of that noble institution; of the illustrious men of science who have taught within its walls; of the number of able and honourable young men who go forth out of it, year by year, to carry their blessed and truly divine art, not only over Great Britain, but to the islands of the farthest seas.  But to say that would be merely to say what is true, thank God, of every hospital in London.

One fact only, therefore, I shall urge, which gives St. George’s Hospital special claims on the attention of the rich.