The middle of the eighteenth century was just about the nadir of the moral and spiritual life of Great Britain. The stated churches, Established and Dissenting, were ahong dead, though there were a few live preachers, like Dr. Philip Doddridge at North ampton. Drink was absurdly cheap; you could get drunk for penny; what more could a man want? Sports were brutal; legal punishments made the people more brutal. Hanging was 'a common punishment for even "light offences" as we to-day would call them. In 1753 Arthur Young, the great agricultural authority said, "The sufferings of the poor are less observed than their misdeeds; they freeze and rot among themselves, and beg and steal among their betters." A terrible sentence is that. Wages were miserable. In 1764 a labourer within 20 miles of London got 10/9 a week, 10 miles from London 6/9. Smuggling—always a sign of bad laws—wag_ rife. Education for the masses hardly existed. It was a century great-in art and literature, but shocking in its neglect of the people. John Wesley and Taylor ''at seven o'clock walked. down Sandgate, the poorest and most contemptible part of the town.'"? He does this after a hundred miles ride. Surely the fire of God was in these two men, Why did they walk down Sand-gate? Not to "study the slums."' These two men were out to win r'andgate to truth, sobriety, clean-lines, godliness. I do not know how Sandgate stands now; it is. not a very aristocratic neighbourhood even yet. These two men went down Sandgate to create a moral and spiritual revolution in it, to win it for the kingdom of God, to make i, a home of decent Christian pebble. He and John Taylor went out to change the whole spirit and atmosphere bourhood, You would think, that of Sandgate and its coarse neigh-
it must have seemed a pretty hopeless task. even to two optimists as were these two men named John. They must, we think; have doubted their own optimism. To test this, let us try and imagine the churches and reformers of to-day brought up by the problem of Sandgafe and its appalling condition. The extreme' Socialists, Syndicalists, and madmen, who are doing their best to bolshevize the country, would hava thurled terrific rhetorical blasts a4 the wealthy and: governing-classes for their shocking neglect of Sandgate and its people No so the two Johns. We can imagine other people, earnest evangelicals, sowing Sandgate with tracts, that the people could not read. Others might have gone so far as building a mission hall and engaging a town missionary. Some ofthe great churches might have surveyed the ground and have decided to raise funds and found a "Central Mission" in Sandgate, and so attack the devil ruling there, in force with all colours flying. Some. might have arranged a process sion with banners, to make an impression. And certainly a good many, who talk about the "Social Gospel" would have said, "We must have an up-to-date ' Settlement.' Mere preaching of ser-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.