38
The recovery of men fallen from Christianity is far more difficult than the conversion of Indian tribes. In these towns there are gathered to a head all the most vivid and obstinate antagonists of the Gospel of Christ: lust of the flesh and of the spirit, beyond all imagination to conceive; apostacy and degradation of the moral being, division, and inveterate enmity, and withal a physical debasement which bars up the avenues of the spiritual life, and makes men unconscious of their immortality as "the beasts that perish:" these are the adversaries with which the Church must gird herself to contend. And let us not deceive ourselves by thinking that she can do this with anything less than her largest and most energetic force. It is not to be done by a handful of pastors without bond or head. Nothing short of the Church, in her fullest strength and unity, can avail. It is precisely in the great towns that the Church is the weakest; from the fact that but yesterday some of them were parishes with a small population, and a single pastor. They have suddenly swelled into populous cities; and the Church has not been able to keep pace with them. The spiritual economy of our large towns is a subject to be classed with that of colonization. It calls in first principles, civil and ecclesiastical, and it must be dealt with as a question of the first magnitude and most urgent importance. Every such town demands nothing less
