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y-eight years of his episcopate, of which no less than 107 were in London. Lay organization may be said to have commenced but recently. The first District Visiting Society of which I have heard, writes Mr. Bosanquet, was founded in connexion with St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, of which Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, was visitor. The Parochial Women Mission Fund was established in 1860. This association does not send its agents into any parish without a written application from the incumbent, who selects both the agent and her lady superintendent. There are now about 100 agents at work in London, acting chiefly in the capacity of Bible-women. For the young men connected with the Church there is a Church of England Young Men's Society in Fleet Street, with fifteen branches in London and the suburbs; of 200 members on the books, more than half are engaged as teachers in Sunday-schools or other lay work. Then there is the Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association, 21, Regent Street, formed in 1843, to distribute the contributions of charitable persons in such parts of the town as most need them, by means of the clergy and their district visitors. For that part of London which is in the diocese of Winchester there is the South London Visiting and Relief Association. How well laymen can work is understood in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, where more than 500 of the lowest and the poorest in that district may be seen any Sunday afternoon at two Bible-classes conducted by laymen. Another lay agency in operation is the Workhouse Visiting Society. In spite of all these organizations the Church of England as regards London has not yet fulfilled her mission. The harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few. Clergymen in the East say they would be glad of lay help from the West; but it does not come. In some parts of London there are parishes containing from 15,000 to 30,000 people, and in such a clergyman is almost unable to do his duty, in spite of his curates and paid lay agents. In most cases the number of visitors is quite insufficient. Mr. Bosanquet refers to a friend of his who had told him that some months after entering on a very poor cure in the south of London he had twenty-eight districts for visitors, but that twenty-seven were hopelessly vacant, and that the twenty-eighth was taken by his wife. This reminds me that some of the ladies of the clergy, especially in the East and poorer
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