SEVEN PRINCIPAL LAWS OF HEREDITY. 221 



put down to one individual for visitation was only 

 two. The service of visitation was unpaid, as was 

 also that of general supervision ; but so was the 

 work distributed, that no busy merchant, no head 

 of a family, no matron with children under her 

 care, felt burdened. It is an easy possibility to lay 

 out work on a scale so large as to prevent its per- 

 formance ; but, if we were humbler in our pro- 

 gramme, probably the actual work performed, in the 

 visitation of our desolate quarters in cities, woulc 1 . 

 be more searching. Who visited these places ? The 

 best class of the community in Elbcrfeld. Little by 

 little it came to be a mark of good standing, to go 

 down among the poor, and attend to three or four 

 families as a part of the duties of the week. We 

 have persons who will rise and go out of an audience 

 if the topic of poor-relief is introduced too often. 

 They are silken, soft Christians, brought up in 

 kings' palaces ; and their religion consists chiefly of 

 enjoying the meeting on a Sunday. There is another 

 kind of meeting that occurs when one goes about 

 from house to house doing good, and this they do 

 not enjoy. Until American Christians learn to do 

 what German officials have taught average citizens 

 under the State Church to do at Elberfeld, there 

 will be no proper quickening here of our sense of 

 r ponsibility for the perishing and dangerous quar- 

 ters of great towns. There must be an institution 

 of a new order of nobility. It was instituted, in- 

 deed, when our Lord washed his disciples' feet, and 

 when he went about from house to house doing good. 



