ionable church in any city of our land that has not
within gunshot of its door great masses of starving, sinful,
poverty-stricken humanity. Crowded into tenement-houses, from the damp
cellars to the hot garrets, they make one wonder, not that they die,
but that they live. No eloquent discourse on the righteousness of
right and the sinfulness of sin; no well-balanced sentences of
prayers, sent up on perfumed air to our heavenly Father; no deep-toned
thunder set to music in hymns, ever reach their ears, or could, if
they did, carry consolation to the sorrowful, or curing to the sick.
And yet, from marble pulpits to velvet-cushioned pews, the work goes
on.

We beg pardon: it does not go on. The well-meaning divines complain of
non-attendance. They are startled by the fact that not one-tenth of
our population of sixty millions are really attending church-members.
What can be done to popularize the pulpit? There is but one way, and
that is to make the people desire to attend. Time was when the great
truths of Christianity were new to the human race. The multitudes were
eager to hear of the revelation, and the Church sent out its
missionaries to preach and teach mankind. So far as a knowledge of
these truths is concerned, the civilized people have been taught.
There is not a criminal in jail to-day but knows more theology than
St. Paul. The people are weary of this everlasting thrash of
theological chaff. The civilized world is fairly saturated with
preaching, which has come to be stale, flat, and in every sense
unprofitable.

Instead of asking the people to come to the church, let the church go
to the people. This is the secret of the sneers attending the Catholic
faith. There is, with it, very little preaching, but a great deal of
practice. Its orphan asylums, its homes for the aged poor, its
hospitals, to say nothing of its great body of devoted priests and
holy sisters of charity, tell why it is that its temples are thronged,
and its conversions almost miraculous.

It is a grave error to suppose that true religion is to be advanced
through the intellect. It makes its appeal to the heart. If it is not
a refuge to the woful wayfarers of earth, it is nothing. If the
sorrowful may not find comfort; they who are in pain, patience and
hope; if the poor may not get sympathy and aid, and the dying
consolation, it is of doubtful good.

As for the preaching, all that we can say is, that when one produces
evidence and proceeds