The New York City Midnight Mission.
WHILE the city reader is enjoying his sound sleep at night,—and undisturbedly so, till, perhaps, in his lighter slumbers he catches a refrain from the bird orchestra, just as the auroral light is flushing the eastern sky,—a mighty work is going on about him. At eight o'clock in the evening services are held in the Florence, Cremorne, Women's Night, and other missions. Exhortations are made, hymns sung, and poor sinners are brought to Christ. And this happens not now and then, but every night. At half-past ten o'clock the services—and there is never one that does not bring forth testimony to a saving gospel—are brought to a close, and then the night work commences. From eleven o'clock till the morning is proclaimed by the cry of the newsboys with the morning papers, evangelists walk the streets on their errands of mercy. Here a poor fallen woman—not one but a dozen of them—are stopped, spoken to, urged to reform, and then a card is given them giving the address of the mission with the remark, "Whenever you get in trouble or want to change your life come and see us." In this way the two classes of night walkers come to know each other. Nor is it strange to know that these evangelists are always treated with respect. No word of scoffing is ever addressed to them, and not only so, but they can enter and are welcome to the dives and vile saloons where they labor to recover the lost sheep. It is a beautiful work, this work of the midnight missions. It is a constant, never-ceasing work, and great is the sum of the good which it is doing. There is a dainty Christianity which knows nothing of this work; which rather skips an account of it in the daily papers, and only wants to learn and read about "a clean Christianity." "A clean Christianity," indeed! As if the Master came to save the refined, the righteous, the cultured, and did not stoop to the lowly, take sinning women by the hand, and say, "Go and sin no more." There is nothing like the blessedness of uplifting Christianity, which, like the Master, goes forth to seek and to save those who are lost. It is in such work that the power of a living gospel is seen, and it is such work that puts to shame the daintier work sometimes affected by the over-refined, who are careful for nothing so much as an irreproachable rhetoric, a polished exterior, and a "clean Christianity."—Christian at Work.