ask for novelty, and pine at this monotony of strain, I must ask you to consider before you complain. It is I who take my tune from your key-note; you have not varied the key, so how can I change the song? If you are tired of the old song, it is for you to change it; but until you have left off running over the gammut of your old vices, how can faithfulness forbear to sound forth the old warning? Some people are uncommonly fond of demanding novelty at the hands of others; but there are certain enjoyments of their own with which they are wonderfully contented, and which they have no disposition to change. I told you four years ago-three years ago two years ago— one year ago that the young man whose home solicitudes and boyish education might have taught him better principles and higher tastes, from the warehouse or the countingroom, was to be seen in singing-halls and dancing-rooms, "making night hideous" with unchastity, and day bitter with remorse-and he is there still. I told you that the shuffling wanton lurked about our streets with evil blandishment, and spread her netto catch unwary feet-and she is there still. I told you that the Sunday jacket of the Manchester artisan was dangling under the golden balls in Deansgate, while the proper wearer was lounging in the tap-room in his shirt sleeves-and it hangs there still. I told you that the poor man's wife was griped by the hunger of improvidence, and often by the more unnatural clutch of a drunkard, that she wept the long, long hours away, and that tears were the libation, and blows the penance of her life—and she weeps still. I told you that altar vows were broken, affections drugged to death or poisoned into hate, that cruelty and violence and savage wrong made households desolate-and it is so still. I told you that children were brought up in moral orphanhood, strangers to a father's counsels, and often even to a mother's natural love--and they are in this condition still. I told you that the tide of drunkenness rolled down in turgid waves along our streets, overflowing the thresholds of ten thousand homes,

bearing on its cruel current the elements of a misery like that of hell itself, sweeping away all comfort, happiness, affection, joy, morality, or holiness in its flow, and depositing at every poor man's door who is its victim the ooze, putrescence, and stagnation of ignorance, and idleness, and vice-and that tide is flowing still. It surges up against the walls of prisons, carrying on each wave a hundred drowned bodies of what had once been men, and stranding them upon the dungeon floor; it sounds the wail of its remorseless rush around our workhouses-and as each billow ebbs again, it leaves a freight of paupers high and dry upon the parish; it rolls up to the hospital door, and flings its shoal of premature emaciates on an untimely bed. The mother listens to the sullen murmur of that tide, and weeps; the wife beholds the thickened current, and feels as much a widow as the fisher's wife, whose eyes have seen her husband's bark founder in fifty fathoms of salt sea; the child hears the unceasing dash, and hears in it the key-note of the cry of early orphanhood. Humanity sees it, and its bosom swells with grief; Pity sees it, and its eyes fill over with hot tears; virgin Charity and angel Love look on and wring their hands as the River of Intemperance bears the immortal drownlings on, on, on, to the quicksands of perpetual thirst. And I tell you that river is flowing stillall these evils are rampant still-this perdition is abroad still. And yet you would chide me for harping on the old string. You would cry out for novelty; Oh men of Manchester, when you show your love of novelty-by trying the change of temperance, providence, gentleness, and religion-then it will be time for you to look for novelty in those who try to urge you to these things. When you have taken the beam out of your own eye, it will be time to see after the mote in the eyes of others. While the current flows in these infernal channels, philanthrophy and religion must pull against it. And, therefore, though I may be able now and then to rap out before you a "new note," I shall be faithless to my object, faithless to you, faithless to my

God, if it is not tuned to the "old numbers."

Sad numbers they are-and may be sadder as the season moves along-buit they need not be so sad as hard times may make them, if men will but be thoughtful and wise in time.

.

I can fancy some one saying that all that I have just uttered about the continuance of these vices and miseries is a virtual acknowledgment that all our lecturing has done no good. O but, thank God, it has done some good through His blessing. It has we have grateful reason to hope and to believe-done good in hundreds of instances; recruiting to the ranks of temperance and common sense many who knew nothing about either, and bringing to the house of God those who at one time spurned its services and derided its worshippers. If it had not succeeded in doing this in one single instance, that would be no argument against the propriety of the effort, and no reason why it should not be repeated; but I know the revelations of the last great day will show that He who "can make the weak things of the world to confound the mighty" has condescended to use even these rough means for His own glory; and I humbly pray that He will deign again to smile upon our forthcoming series of attempts, and give to this unpretending agency more laurels to cast at His feet to whom belongs the praise. If but one young man may be reclaimed to continence and induced to cool down his lusts; if but one poor drunkard be persuaded to quit the cup of his excess; if but one wife's heart be gladdened by a kinder word from her husband, or one child may know more of a father's natural regard; if but one ray be let in upon a workman's home; if but one outcast may be helped to take fresh heart, and, leaving the shadows of the past, take the candle of contrition to light the footsteps of the future-it will be a prize worth struggling for, and a hope worthy of the efforts of a life, to hear a labour, however hard, acknowledged with the widow's mite and the drop of cold water, when every man's work and life shall be put into the true balance, and when our stewardship shall be known, of what sort it is.

With this hope and prayer, then, and with, I am sure, a very earnest desire to be useful to the working man especially, I enter upon the course of addresses to which to-day's remarks are merely introductory. I do not doubt the kind attention and indulgence of my friends who come to listen-nor do I fear the abuse of those who merely come to sneer. Once more let me say, as I have so often said before, that I don't profess to be preaching on these occasions. These are not sermons, though my critics are often pleased to call them so. I don't believe in "funny sermons"-but in these addresses I have never professed to confine myself to strictly religious exhortation; but desire, in any homely and familiar way that comes first, to teach lessons of social wisdom and prudence, as well as spiritual truth. In the former of these endeavours, I shall not despise the occasional aid of such innocent humour as I may be able to use, in the hope that without compromising the solemnity of the higher themes of religion, I may, in a measure, by becoming all things to all men, by all means do good to some. if we don't understand each other, it is not my fault. Now, upon which of the "old numbers" am I to send forth my first" new note?" An incident which occurred to me this day fortnight reminds me of that too common, that comparatively universal, habit amongst our artisan population, of absenting themselves from all religious services, and idling away the hours of the Sabbath day. I had been preaching in the afternoon of the Sunday before last at Pendlebury, and as it was very fine, I thought I would walk at least part of the way home. So I strolled on towards Pendleton along the Bolton Road, until I came to that region of consummate civilisation called "Irlams-i'-th'-heights," and there I began to overtake two young men-apparently journeyman joiners, or something of that kind—who were lounging along without any apparently defined object in view except the very natural and proper one of enjoying a fine October afternoon. I found myself beginning

So now,

to try to speculate upon their probable employment, and endeavouring to read their dispositions out of the cut of their coats; and I had got near enough to see that the buttons of the velveteen coat of one of them were stamped with foxes' heads, something like a gamekeeper's apparel, and from the general appearance of the two pilgrims I began to fear that, wherever they had been, it certainly was not to church-when all my doubts on that score were set at rest by the apparition of a great blue pigeon coming fluttering apparently out of the small of one of the men's backs. I began to think the coat he wore must be a dove-cote; I had heard of a swallow-tailed coat, but never of a pigeon-tailed coat; canary waistcoats too were familiar to me, but to see carriers and tumblers and pouters come fluttering out of a man's back, as if he had just hatched an egg, was rather an extraordinary sight, and I could only account for it on the supposition that the man, in a spirit of rivalry, seeing his friend attired in a cut-away coat, was determined not to be outdone, but at once to instruct his tailor to make him a fly-away coat-and certainly if this was the case, the garment must have answered the wearer's most sanguine expectations. But when the surprise naturally resulting from such a startling circumstance had in some degree subsided, I could not keep my mind from dwelling upon the very prevalent habit amongst many men of this class of turning the Sunday into a sporting day; and I thought what a pity it was working men would not be persuaded to go to church or chapel. That man who carried these pigeons in his pocket could not have been to church, or he must have sat down upon them. We have heard of worshippers coming "like doves to their window," but not of their coming with pigeons to their pews; so I am afraid we must conclude that this young man had not been to church. Well, what of that? There is nothing so very vicious in taking a walk on a Sunday afternoon; and a man might even do a worse thing than fly pigeons on that day. No doubt about it. But