was abundant, the principle of all helping in a common work was recognised.  The early Christians in Rome were marked out from all other forms of so-called religion, because they had one peculiar superstition.  They sought out the poor and ministered to their wants.  The same practical characteristic will be discerned in every age of the Church’s history.  Independent of the more formal aspects of Lay-help represented by the Reader and the Deaconess, we shall find that in the Early Church after Apostolic days had passed there was a large band of willing workers ready in Christ’s Name to do service to their brethren.  Since that time every season of religious awakening has brought with it a quickening of the spirit of service.  The religious confraternities of Vincent de Paul, the self-devoted labours of the Wesleyan local preachers, the good works of Hannah More, Elizabeth Fry, and Howard the philanthropist, are but varying features in the same great picture.  The mode of action might be different, but the aim in view was essentially the same, and the spring of action in all these self-undertaken labours was the love of Christ in the heart of those who gave themselves.  Only a short time ago I saw somewhere an account of a missionary meeting.  One and another was asked what he or she could give to the cause of Christian Missions, and certain sums were promised.  At last one young man rose at the end of the room.  “What will you give?” said the president of the meeting.  “Myself,” was the laconic, but courageous reply.  We want more of this spirit, and I think it is among the most hopeful signs of a far from hopeful age that there are many of our young men ready when the question is put, “What will you give to God?” to answer with an unfailing heart and unfaltering tongue—“Myself.”

While, however, I thankfully acknowledge the growth of this spirit of service, I do not think all sufficiently realize their responsibility.  In religion we are fearfully apt to catch at a proxy when we can, and I can imagine some, to whom the very existence of a Diocesan Association of Lay-helpers may act as a sort of indirect excuse for doing nothing themselves.  “There are the Lay-helpers of the diocese; they number 1000 and upwards.  They undertake Lay-work, and I am quite content to let them represent the Lay element in Church works.  If you want half-a-crown or five shillings, come to me; but don’t ask me to leave my arm-chair after my Sunday’s dinner to go and teach in a close school-room.  Let these Lay-helpers, overlooked as they are sure to be most efficiently by the clergy” (for objectors of this kind are clad in an armour of impenetrable politeness and gracefully-fitting amiability)—“let them distribute our alms, but don’t ask me to go up one of those dark creaking staircases—don’t ask me to do violence to my nasal organs by sending me into a room which reeks with the combined perfume of soap-suds and beef-steak.  My duty as a Churchman can never require this.  I am an advocate for helping the poor, but this is going a little too far.”  Now there is a Book which it is the fashion to “handle freely” now-a-days, which seems to me to run entirely counter to the view which I have ventured to describe.  I read there that “the Son of man . . . gave to every man his work” (St. Mark xiii. 34); and again an Apostle tells us, “Let every man prove his own work” (Gal. vi. 4); and in the last chapter of this same Book I find the saying, “Behold I come quickly; and My reward is with Me to give every man according as his work shall be” (Rev. xxii. 12).  I merely give these as samples of the kind of teaching we get in Holy Scripture.  Whether it is the Divine Master, or the busy practical Apostle of the Gentiles, or the rapt St. John who speaks—all tell us the same thing.  With one consent