ontact, and the migratory habits of the poor;
{167} but another very important factor in this alienation is, I
believe, the preoccupation of the church with material relief and with
those who clamor for it.

Some of the very poor are ready enough to connect themselves with the
church, but, attending its services and receiving its ministrations
with the one idea of getting assistance, it is not too much to say of
them that they are "pious for revenue only." And yet, in saying this,
it is necessary to qualify it at once by the statement that the fault
rests not so much with the ignorant poor as with the multiplied and
rival church agencies that tempt them to hypocrisy and deceit. If the
church could only have a good, wholesome, terrifying vision, and see
itself as the poor see it!

"A friend of mine," writes a London charity worker, "heard two very
respectable women talking. One said, 'Well, Mrs. Smith, how have you
fared this Christmas?' 'Oh, very badly; I had very little relief.'
The other replied: 'Well, Mrs. Smith, it is all your own fault; you
will go and sit in the side aisle of the church, where nobody ever sees
you. If {168} you would sit in front, you would be helped as we all
are.'" Writing of conditions too common in America, Rev. George B.
afford says: "Families transfer their connection from one church to
another, or, with an impartiality rare in other relations, distribute
their representatives among several Sunday-schools or churches, gaining
by pseudo-devout arts what they can from each: Methodist clothing;
Baptist groceries; Presbyterian meat; Episcopalian potatoes; Roman
Catholic rent; Universalist cash, available for 'sundries,'--all are
acceptable to the mendicant pensioner of religious charity. One
family, now at last well advertised, in an eastern city found its
numerous youthful progeny effective leeches as applied to the several
Sunday-schools among which they were distributed. The 'widowed' mother
underwent frequent conversion; the children enjoyed the benefit of as
frequent baptism. On a certain gathering of clergymen of different
churches, when one after another had told the story of his
discomfiture, all joined to congratulate the single representative of
the Baptist denomination present on his happy escape {169} from the
imposture, under which several others had in turn baptized the
children. But from him came the sad confession that he had baptized
the woman herself." [1] In my o