Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1871.

Proverbs xxii. 2. "The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the
maker of them all."

I have been asked to preach here this afternoon on behalf of the
Parochial Mission Women's Fund. I may best describe the object for which
I plead, as an attempt to civilise and Christianise the women of the
lower classes in the poorer districts of London and other great towns, by
means of women of their own class--women, who have gone through the same
struggles as they have, and who will be trusted by them to understand and
to sympathize with their needs and difficulties. These mission women are
in communication with lady-superintendents in each ecclesiastical
district. These are, I understand, usually the wives of small tradesmen,
or of clerks. They, again, are in communication with ladies at the West
End of London, who are willing to give personal help and money for
certain objects, but not indiscriminate alms. And thus a series of links
is established between the most prosperous and the least prosperous
classes, by means of which the rich and the poor may meet together, and
learn--to the infinite benefit of both--that the Lord is the maker of
them all. Considering this excellent scheme, I could not help seeing as
a background to it, a very different and a far darker scene. I could not
help remembering that during these very days, the poorer classes of
another great city had taken up an attitude full of awful lessons to us,
and to every civilized country upon earth. We have been reading of a
hundred thousand armed men encamped in the suburbs of Belleville and
Montmartre, with cannon and mitrailleuses, uttering through their organs,