PREFACE. OUR BIBLE-WOMEN AND NURSES have pursued this year their usual way among the London slums, the dwelling-places of the poor which honeycomb this luxurious and commercial city, where one-eighth of the population are said to depend upon the alms of the other seven-eighths, too often to their further degradation and misery. And we must witness that we still find THE BIBLE the best staff of help to raise the people from those gulfs of pauperism. If the fearful times are come when the scientific and the leisurely scoff at its revelations, and seek to unhinge the Divine cohesion of its various parts, we reverently mark how day by day the portions they reject continue to find access to those in whom God's image has been defaced by years of drink and dirt and crime. Our errand to these dens and deeps is never to pick out the nice clean women, who probably have been picked out before by some messengers from our many churches. Our errand is to the homes where the fathers are such as the children never wish to see again-where the husbands are said to have no more souls than pigs, and where all that keeps the crushed and downtrodden wives from despair is week after week the Bible-woman's prayer with her. Somehow or other the penny for the Bible is ready to welcome this kind and comforting visitor. And then comes the invitation once a week to the clean and quiet Mission-room, where the loving lady tells to the ear only used to blows and curses, nothing less than that "sweet story of old," which is "the balm for every wound "; there the poor wife learns at last to pray for him whom she had only hated and feared, to give him the soft answer-whether he deserves it or not-which some day turns away his wrath, and then perhaps a Tea-meeting wins his heart-or GOD takes him in hand and an accident or an |