With one or two others we knelt together in a small side room to invoke a blessing on the service in the great hall, and he prayed most fervently.

The Earl of Shaftesbury was not only the author of great reformatory legislation in Parliament, and the acknowledged leader of the Low Church Party in the Established Church.
He was also a leader of city missions, ragged schools, shoe-black brigades, and other organizations to benefit the submerged classes in London.

He once invited all the thieves in London to meet him privately in a certain hall, and there pleaded with them to abandon their wretched occupation, and promised to aid those who desired to reform.

He was fond of telling the story of how, when his watch was stolen, the thieves themselves compelled the rascal to come and return it, because he had been the benefactor of the "long-fingered fraternity." The last time that I saw the venerable philanthropist was just before his death (at the age of eighty-four years).

He was presiding at a convention of the Young Men's Christian Association in Exeter Hall.