on fine avenues need--a sanctuary to
worship in, a Sunday school for their children, a preacher to give them
the Gospel, and a pastor to visit them and watch over them--in short, a
spiritual home. As for bringing the poorer class of the back streets
into the elegant churches on the fashionable avenues it is an absurdity,
both geography and human nature are against it. The plainly dressed
laborers of the back districts could not come to the fine churches on
Fifth Avenue, or similar streets, because these edifices are already
occupied by their regular pew holders; they would not come, for they
would not feel at home there. Since the humbler toiling classes will not
come to the sanctuaries occupied by the rich, the only true Christian
policy is for the rich churches to build and maintain plenty of
attractive auxiliary chapels in the regions occupied by those humbler
classes. Not mean and unattractive soup-house style of chapels should
they be, either--they ought to be handsome, cheerful, well-appointed
sanctuaries, manned by godly pastors who are not above the business of
saving souls that are clad in dirty shirts. And that is not all: the
members of the wealthy churches which rear the auxiliary chapels should
personally go and attend the services and Sunday schools and weekly
meetings in the chapel--not go in costly raiment that touches the pride
of God's poor, but in plain clothes and with a hearty democratic
sympathy in their whole bearing. To reach the masses we must go after
them--and then stay with them when we get there. If broadcloth religion
waits for poverty and ignorance to cross the chasm to it, then may they
at last come to be a menace to the safety of society--with imprecations
on it for criminal neglect. Christianity must build the bridge across
the chasm, and then keep its steady procession crossing over it with
bright lamps for dark homes, and Bibles for darker souls, and bread for
hungry mouths, and, what is best of all, _personal intercourse and
personal sympathy_. The music of a Christmas carol would be very sweet
in poverty's garret; the advent of the living Jesus in the persons of
His true-hearted followers would be a "Merry Christmas" all the year
round.

Brooklyn is not a city of slums, nor does it abound with the
sky-scraping tenement houses, like those in which the myriads of New
York live, but we have a large population of wage-earners of the humbler
class. These mainly occupy streets by themselv