Another authority says that six Assembly Districts in New York City, with an aggregate population of 360,340 in 1880, had 3,018 saloons and thirty-one Protestant churches-a saloon to every 118 persons and a Protestant church to every 11,624 persons. In the Twentieth District there is said to be one Protestant church to

20,246 inhabitants, and a saloon to every 222. This is not quite as bad as Berlin, in many districts of which, according to Professor Christlieb, there was only one church for every 50,000 of the population.

We suggest the query whether there may not be in Berlin some Baptist, Methodist or other missions which have been ignored in some of those localities, owing to the strong prejudices of the State churches against these irregular interloping bodies, as they are inclined to regard them. And is it not possible that in some of the districts of New York just referred to, there may be German, Scandinavian, Disciple, African or other evangelical bodies performing good work for Christ in some unpretentious edifice, or in halls?

With due allowance, it still remains that there is an alarming destitution of provision for religious worship in large sections of our great cities. The greater destitution of Berlin does not help us.

We have said the number of the churches does not show all that is involved in the case. We are anxious to know how far the evangelical Protestant churches are reaching the people. Some elements in the case, we are fully aware, cannot be tested by any kind of statistics, and yet ye cannot dispense with statistics. They give us approximate ideas of things. The comparison of the number of the communicants with the population will help us somewhat. But only the data furnished by the six denominations referred to are obtainable, for these fifty principal cities, as follows:

Here is a very large actual increase-almost fivefold in 46 years. But it appears that these six denominations combined, steadily fell behind the populations of the fifty cities in each decade from

1840 to 1870; that from 1870 to 1880 they gained a very little on the population-.24 of one person-not a very flattering exhibit, certainly; but a great improvement upon the three previous decades, in each of which they lost on an average more than two persons.

Though there can be no comparison with the population in 1886, yet the rate of increase since 1880 has been a little better than from 1870 to 1880; the average yearly increase since 1880 has been eleven more churches and 2,177 more communicants than the average yearly increase of the previous decades.

It should also be mentioned that some of the most flourishing denominations-the Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, African, Methodists, Disciples, etc., etc., some of which during the last thirty years have had the greatest growths of their entire historyhave been from necessity left out of these calculations. If their statistics could have been included, the case would have looked still better.

When we consider that during this period in which we have been making these comparisons we have had immense additions of foreigners, full three-fourths of whom have been non-Protestant and count against us in our comparisons, that these six denominations fell a little behind the population from 1840 to 1870, will not seem strange. That they have gained a little on the population since 1870, is full of encouraging significance.

The numerous efforts for city evangelization, more extensively organized since 1870 than ever before, are developing encouraging results. The Young Men's Christian Associations and the powerful evangelistic labors of Messrs. Moody, Penticost, Jones, etc., have all contributed to this result. The relative decline of Roman Catholic immigration, and the large Protestant immigration since 1870, have also been helping factors.

While looking at the perils of the present time, let us not pessimise the situation. There is a judicial view of the case, which will not diminish our sense of present responsibility, but will give a healthier, steadier and more courageous tone to our It is very doubtful whether any such aggressive Christianity, in large cities, can be cited from the history of any of the previous Christian centuries; certainly not in the last two centuries, as we have witnessed in our large cities during the last forty-six years. The Protestant churches of the few cities in this country,

and in the larger and more numerous cities of Great Britain, and all other Protestant countries, during the last century, were in a low, cold, stagnant condition, wholly unaggressive. In the last half of the last century, there was a little waking up in Great Britain, but nothing like what we have witnessed here in the last fifty years. Had we possessed no more vital power than the churches of the last century, and of almost all of the previous Christian centuries, with the great tides of foreign immigration, Romanism, rationalism and socialism coming in upon us, we would have been utterly swamped, and our churches would have wholly disappeared from the cities. We must recognize the value of the breakwater, that has kept us from being submerged; the Eddystone light-houses that have stood firmly where dreadful waves have been breaking; the last havens maintained where stores and comfort and refuge have been offered to wild, venturesome voyagers. That under such circumstances these six denominations have increased their communicants nearly fivefold in forty-six years, and, in the last sixteen years, have begun to gain a little upon the fearful odds of the whole polyglot population, is occasion for thanksgiving and inspires. courage for the future.

We are learning that the large metropolitan cities contain not only the concentrated vices of the world, but also the intensest concentrations of good forces. While these large aggregations of evil have been gathering, we have also been organizing and centrating in the cities, great benevolent, philanthropic, educational and evangelizing societies and boards, for which only the feeblest parallels could be found from one hundred to two hundred years ago, and in many large cities no parallels at all.

When we become depressed and gloomy over the great corruptions of our large cities, and feel like sinking under the discouraging prospect, let us read what Leckey says about the great cities of Great Britain in the last century, and then turn to the still grosser condition of the cities of the European continent at that time. The evils we see in our American cities impress us deeply, because we see them in the background of the clearest Christian civilization that ever illumined the world. The old Roman world never looked so dark and revolting as it did after Christianity poured into it her divine illumination.

Where can we point, in long centuries, to religious triumphs, aside from those which occurred under the Wesleyan revival in

England, in the last century, that can parallel the spiritual achievements at the Five Points in New York, and in the slums of other cities, in the last fifty years? These dark haunts are darker and harder than the Feejee and Society islands in the days of their savagery; but Jerry McAuley and others, as imbruted as the demoniac at Gadara, have been lifted from their debasement and clothed in their right minds. Some of the grandest triumphs of the Gospel in this century have been achieved in American cities. What we want is greater faith in God and in His Gospel to save the vilest and worst of men. The cities are fields for the achievement of the sublimest results, and our Divine Saviour is able to save them, if His church will follow His leadership.

Let us join with Dr. Guthrie in saying: "I bless God for cities. I recognize a wise and gracious providence in their existence. The world had not been what it is without them. The disciples were commanded to begin at Jerusalem;' and Paul threw himself into the cities of the ancient world, as offering the most commanding positions of influence. Cities have been as lamps of light along the pathway of humanity and religion. Within them science has given birth to her noblest discovery. Behind their walls freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression. Cities have been indeed the cradle of human liberty. They have been the radiating, active centres of almost all church and state reformations.

"Having, therefore, no sympathy with those who, regarding them as the excrescenses of a tree or the tumors of a disease, would raze our cities to the ground, I bless God for cities."

Let the motto, then, of this Alliance be, capture and hold the cities for Christ, as the vital strategic points of His advancing kingdom.

BY REV. SIMON J. MCPHERSON, D. D.,
OF CHICAGO, ILL.

MR. PRESIDENT: No hater of the city can faithfully set forth its perils. Cherishing for the city the fondness of Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb, we may well thank God for its rich blessings. These, however, require neither vigilance nor restraint. They reveal themselves. They can do no harm. But perils love the darkness, and must be detected and faced before we can remove them. They thrive on our neglect. It is an ungracious task, which one dislikes, to speak of the perils without mentioning remedies. But perils are the symptoms of disease. Discovered perils are opportunities and incentives to disciples of the Great Physician. Thorough diagnosis must precede and determine the treatment which will cure.

Nor may the watchman who blows the trumpet and warns the people be a pessimist any more than an optimist. He must see and estimate the actual facts. Optimism begets false security and languid indifference; but pessimism leads to bitter despair of heart and nerveless paralysis of life. We need not believe that the city is wholly evil or that it monopolizes the perils of the hour, but we may well accept the literal accuracy of Carlyle's exclamation, "What a fermenting vat lies simmering and hidden in the city." The average modern city, doubtless, has far more than enough righteous men to save it from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; yet it contains, at the same time, the characteristic elements of their wickedness.

If our civilizations ever should perish, like those which have preceded, death would seem sure to begin, not with mere sluggishness of circulation at the extremities, but with failure at the vital centres-with fatty degeneration of the heart.

The city has always been the decisive battle-ground of civilization and religion. That capital fact puts awful emphasis upon both