e the world, and purchase the
salvation of its tenants by the sacrifice of his Son, to take no further
interest in it, but leave it subject either to fixed law or blind
chance! Indeed the God who provided for the wants of his people in the
wilderness is a God who changeth not. The principles which once guided
him must guide him to-day and forever. There never has been a time when
to the open eye it was not clear that he provides for every want of his
creatures. Did chance or the unassisted powers of man discover coal,
when wood was becoming scarce? and oil and gas from coal, when the whale
was failing? Cowper's mind was clear when he said:--

"Deep in unfathomable mines
With never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his gracious will."

If in his temporal affairs God cares for man, much more will he do for
his soul. Great multitudes of young men came to be congregated in the
cities, and Satan spread his nets at every street-corner to entrap them.

In 1837, George Williams, then sixteen years of age, employed in a
dry-goods establishment, in Bridgewater, England, gave himself to the
service of the Lord Jesus Christ. He immediately began to influence the
young men with him, and many of them were converted. In 1841, Williams
came to London, and entered the dry-goods house of Hitchcock and
Company. Here he found himself one of more than eighty young men, almost
none of them Christians. He found, however, among them a few professed
Christians, and these he gathered in his bedroom, to pray for the rest.
The number increased--a larger room was necessary, which was readily
obtained from Mr. Hitchcock. The work spread from one establishment to
another, and on the sixth of June, 1844, in Mr. Williams's bedroom the
first Young Men's Christian Association was formed.

In 1844, one association in the world: in November, 1851, one
association in America, at Montreal; in December, one month after, with
no knowledge on the part of either of the other's plan, one association
in the United States, at Boston. Was it a mere hap that these two groups
formed simultaneously the associations which were always to unite the
young Christian men of the two countries, and to grow together, till
to-day the little one has become a thousand?

Forty years ago, one little association in London: to-day Great Britain
dotted all over with them; one hundred and ninety in England and Wales;
one hundred and seventy-e