finish his apprenticeship as a copperplate printer, and succeeded. But though encouraged in well-doing by his pious master, and soon able to earn good wages, he resisted counsel, and debased himself so much, as to be allured by fifty per cent. more wages to work on the Lord's day in another establishment in London. He had no interest in his home or in his family, and was rapidly ruining himself. Often remembering the lessons of other days in the midst of his ungodliness and misery, his experience then is thus described: "My mind was never at rest, but I carried about with me a conscience that was a very hell." Truly "the way of transgressors is hard." Roger Miller found it so. His unbelief, Sabbath-breaking, and immorality, soon brought him to the depths of poverty. He felt his woe, tried to reform, failed, and fell from every depth into a "lower still."

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But God had mercy upon him, and plucked him as a brand from the fire." The means were simple, but they were divine. An aged woman met him, as he was on his way to spend the Sabbath in dissipation, and gave him a tract-"A Wonder in Three Worlds." That night he read it, went to a place of worship, was moved by the exercises of devotion, awakened by a sermon from Eph. ii. 1, and went home pardoned and accepted in Christ! The slave was free from his galling yoke! the prodigal was in his Father's arms! Thus he reflected on the occasion: "On the contemplation of the mercy of God towards me, that I am still on praying ground, and pleading terms with Him, I am overpowered with gratitude,

This was in December 1837, and in September 1838, after

suitable trial, he was admitted to the fellowship of the church. He was now a Christian.

He became a useful Christian immediately after his conversion. His wife was his first-fruits, but his children became his cross. He established prayer-meetings and Bible classes, visited the sick, and laboured for the Lord.

His old missionary longing revived, and he sought a connection with the London City Mission, which he obtained in 1840. His district was Broadwall, Lambeth,-a den of wretchedness and sin, “inhabited chiefly by the lowest order of shoemakers, coal-heavers, dustmen, costermongers, small hucksters; and several of the courts particularly were tenanted by young thieves and prostitutes."

Out of seven hundred families only eighty-eight professed to attend a place of worship, and one hundred and seven were totally destitute of the word of God. In such a locality there was much to contend with. Every case he met was of the most distressing kind. Sin in its most revolting form, and the effects of sin, in their hardening, degrading, and miserable work, were there. In one house he met with the wreck of a spendthrift, who had squandered upon his evil passions a fortune of £14,000 in twelve years. In another, a girl, devoted to infamy by an unnatural mother for £10, was hurrying on to a painful death. In a third a family were found in nakedness and destitution, the parents drunk, though winning twenty-five shillings a-week. But Mr. Miller went among the people with the gospel of Jesus, endeavoured to speak kindly to gain their affection, and to win them to the Lord. For the children he instituted schools; for the aged, cottage meetings; and thus brought many under the blessed influence of the gospel. It required great courage to enter the houses where the most abandoned lived, for some declared they would kick him out; but Mr.

Miller was brave, and feared no danger. He resolved to try the very worst places, and generally found access to the hearts of the wretched inmates.

"During the first year of his labours," we are informed, "twenty-eight persons, most of whom had been flagrantly immoral and irreligious, were reformed; sixty-five induced regularly to attend public worship; five were introduced to Christian churches; and thirteen more in health, and four in affliction and death, were brought to what appeared a saving knowledge of the truth; twenty-nine copies of the sacred word were distributed, and upwards of 16,000 tracts put into circulation." Other years were similarly fruitful. The district improved under his faithful labours, and souls were added to the Church of Christ.

Besides the regular and systematic visitation of Broadwall, as the agent of the London City Mission, Roger Miller was ever carving out schemes of usefulness for the elevation of the degraded masses. The unfortunate and fallen females who infest the streets of the metropolis engaged his compassion and earnest efforts. It is believed that no fewer than 5000 houses of ill fame exist in London; and, though the number cannot be accurately ascertained, that there are at the very least 10,000 females connected with them. Some writers even in medical journals estimate the number at 80,000! Many of them are under twenty years of age. Their average life in this condition is only three or four years, when they sink into the grave. What a supply must keep up this stream of "immortal sewerage" in such a city! What wrecks of character, broken hearts of parents, unblushing sin, must be caused ere the tens of thousands who now parade the streets have been made openly profligate! No one can pass through some of the principal thoroughfares of London at night without being convinced of this. So great

is the evil, that a writer in the Lancet lately protested, "in the name of common decency, against the deliverance of one of the largest and most important thoroughfares for five or six hours every night to the sole use of prostitutes and their companions. It is well known to every inhabitant of London that no person can at these times pass through the Haymarket without seeing and hearing an amount of appalling wickedness, unparalleled in any city in the world. Shops, taverns, cafés, brilliantly lighted saloons, as specially devoted to the use of the courtesans as the Stock Exchange is to that of the merchant, are allowed to remain open throughout the night."

Roger Miller resolved to do what he could to save the souls of those thus rushing to ruin. His was not a philanthropy that was consumed in tears; it wrought reform. He induced a few female friends to distribute tracts among these poor girls, and to exhort them to abandon their course of life. This being successful, he formed "the Southwark Auxiliary to the London Female Mission," which proved a valuable help in this work. He thus became known as a friend of the unfortunate, and not a few applied to him and were restored to their friends, or placed in an asylum. Some

"Sick of life's history,

Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurl'd, —

Anywhere, anywhere,

Out of the world,"

and were about to commit suicide, he delivered, and brought to the feet of Jesus, to illustrate along with himself that "the grace of God was exceeding abundant." In the third year of his labours eighteen had been restored, fifteen of whom were doing well. In one court of fifty families,

almost every one of which had ill fame and was a den of thieves, at the end of three years there were but five abandoned women remaining. Some of these became sincere penitents, and returned to society to occupy respectable and useful positions. Corresponding to the hardened depravity they showed in a course of sin, did they reveal devoted attachment to the Saviour. She that had been forgiven much loved much, like the woman that was a sinner, who washed the Saviour's feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head,-whose touching story the sacred record perpetuates for the encouragement of the fallen, and which a poet has thus beautifully described :

:

"She sat and wept beside His feet; the weight
Of sin oppress'd her heart: for all the blame,
And the poor malice of the worldly shame,
To her was past, extinct, and out of date.
Only the sin remain'd,-the leprous state.
She would be melted by the heat of love,
By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove
And purge the silver ore adulterate.
She sat and wept, and with her untress'd hair
Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch.
And He wiped off the soiling of despair
From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.

I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears;
Make me a humble thing of love and tears."

One of Mr. Miller's efforts in connection with the Female Mission was, "to form associations of mothers, of unmarried women, and of girls, for the purpose of communicating information calculated to help mothers in training their offspring; to enlighten the mind, to save from temptation, and direct the energies of young women of good character; and to assist in training such as are growing up to womanhood in a manner that may render them a blessing to society." This is a most important exercise of Christian usefulness.