, we go
home again, we have a pleasant Sunday-school, we are all comfortable and
well clothed here; we enjoy our services, we are not disturbed by the
sight of disagreeable or uncongenial people. But is that Christianity?
Where do the service and the self-denial and the working for men's souls
come in? Ah, my dear brothers and sisters, what is this church really
doing for the salvation of men in this place? Is it Christianity to
have a comfortable church and go to it once or twice a week to enjoy
nice music and listen to preaching, and then go home to a good dinner,
and that is about all? What have we sacrificed? What have we denied
ourselves? What have we done to show the poor or the sinful that we
care anything for their souls, or that Christianity is anything but a
comfortable, select religion for those who can afford the good things of
the world? What has the church in Milton done to make the working-man
here feel that it is an institution that throbs with the brotherhood of
man? But suppose we actually move our church down there and then go
there ourselves weekdays and Sundays to work for the uplift of immortal
beings. Shall we not then have the satisfaction of knowing that we are
at least trying to do something more than enjoy our church all by
ourselves? Shall we not be able to hope that we have at least attempted
to obey the spirit of our sacrificing Lord, who commanded His disciples
to go and disciple the nations? It seems to me that the plan is a
Christian plan. If the churches in this neighborhood were not so
numerous, if the circumstances were different, it might not be wise or
necessary to do what I propose. But as the facts are, I solemnly believe
that this church has an opportunity before it to show Milton and the
other churches and the world, that it is willing to do an unusual thing
that it has within it the spirit of complete willingness to reach and
lift up mankind in the way that will do it best and most speedily. If
individuals are commanded to sacrifice and endure for Christ's sake and
the kingdom's, I do not know why organizations should not do the same.
And in this instance something on a large scale, something that
represents large sacrifice, something that will convince the people of
the love of man for man, is the only thing that will strike deep enough
into the problem of the tenement district in Milton to begin to solve it
in any satisfactory or Christian way.

"I do not expect the church to