It would not be expected anywhere that New York would be called
a holy city, and yet that is what it was recently called by a
convert in one of its mission halls. A correspondent of the New
York _Tribune_ gives an account of a meeting he attended
on a recent Sunday evening in a gospel mission hall at No. 330
Eighth Avenue. A man with a pronounced foreign accent told the
story of his life at this meeting. At the age of eighteen, he
said, shortly after his arrival at a German university, because
of some fancied slight he was challenged to fight a duel with
one of his fellow students. In self-defense he killed the man,
and from that day had borne the sorrows of a homicide. Drink had
the mastery over him and he was far gone in dissipation when
he was shipped to Canada, where he still continued a life of
dissipation. To improve his business chances he came to New York
and took up residence in the Young Men’s Christian Association
Building in Twenty-third Street. Said the speaker: “A good
many talk about the wickedness of New York. I call it a holy
city, because in that little room, No. 653, in the Young Men’s
Christian Association Building, I lost the weight of sin which
had been pressing my life out for years and entered a new life
in which the past was blotted out.” Several months have passed
and the speaker has been led into new evidences of divine favor
and usefulness. This case illustrates the familiar fact that one
can find what he is looking for almost anywhere, especially in a
large city. If he is looking for a saloon or any form of evil he
will have little trouble in finding it, but if he wants to find
a church or some form of good, it will be found near at hand. A
holy man is holy anywhere, and to him even New York is a holy
city.--_Presbyterian Banner._
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=City Children=--See CHILDREN AND GARDENS.