forms of novel, and poetry, and dramatic | ther, and this is the point at which he is entertainment. You would think if any mortified to find that his old coadjutors rething could bring the Christian at one with fuse to go along with him; and that instead the world around him, it would be this; and of being strengthened by their assistance, that in the ardent benevolence which figures he has their contempt and their ridicule; in novels, and sparkles in poetry, there or, at all events, their total want of sympawould be an entire congeniality with, the thy, to contend with. benevolence of the gospel. I venture to say, The truth is, that the benevolence I allude however, that there never existed a stronger to, with all its respectable air of business repulsion between two contending senti- and good sense, is altogether a secular bements, than between the benevolence of the nevolence. Through all the extent of its Christian, and the benevolence which is the operations, it carries in it no reference to theme of elegant literature-that the one, the eternal duration of its object. Time, and with all its accompaniments of tears, and the accommodations of time, forin all its sensibilities, and interesting cottages, is nei-subject and all its exercise. It labours, and ther felt nor understood by the Christian as often with success, to provide for its object such; and the other, with its work and la-a warm and well-sheltered tenement, but it bours of love-its enduring hardness as a looks not beyond the few little years when good soldier of Jesus Christ, and its living the earthly house of this tabernacle shall be not to itself, but to the will of Him who dissolved-when the soul shall be driven died for us, and who rose again, is not only from its perishable tenement, and the only not understood, but positively nauseated, by benevolence it will acknowledge or care for, the poetical amateur. will be the benevolence of those who have But the contrast does not stop here. The directed it to a building not made with benevolence of the gospel is not only at an- hands, eternal in the heavens. This, then, is tipodes with the visionary sons and daugh- the point at which the benevolence of the ters of poetry, but it even varies in some of gospel separates from that worldly benevoits most distinguishing features with the ex-lence, to which, as far as it goes, I offer my perimental benevolence of real and familiar cheerful and unmingled testimony. The life. The fantastic benevolence of poetry is one minds earthly things, the other has its now indeed pretty well exploded; and, in conversation in heaven. Even when the the more popular works of the age, there is immediate object of both is the same, you a benevolence of a far truer and more sub- will generally perceive an evident distincstantial kind substituted in its place-the tion in the principle. Individuals, for exambenevolence which you meet with among ple, may co-operate, and will often meet in men of business and observation-the be-the same room, be members of the same sonevolence which bustles and finds employ-ciety, and go hand in hand cordially togement among the most public and ordinary ther for the education of the poor. But the scenes, and which seeks for objects, not forming habits of virtuous industry, and where the flower blows loveliest, and the good members of society, which are the stream, with its gentle murmurs, falls sweet-sole consideration in the heart of the worldly est on the ear, but finds them in his every-philanthropist, are but mere accessions in day walks-goes in quest of them through the heart of the Christian. The main imthe heart of the great city, and is not afraid to meet them in its most putrid lanes and loathsome receptacles.

pulse of his benevolence lies in furnishing the poor with the means of enjoying that bread of life which came down from heaNow, it must be acknowledged, that this ven, and in introducing them to the knowbenevolence is of a far more respectable ledge of those scriptures which are the kind than that poetic sensibility, which is power of God unto salvation to every one of no use, because it admits of no applica- who believeth. Now, it is so far a blessing tion. Yet I am not afraid to say, that, re-to the world that there is a co-operation in spectable as it is, it does not come up to the the immediate object. But what I contend benevolence of the Christian, and is at vari- for, is, that there is a total want of congeance, in some of its most capital ingredients, niality in the principle-that the moment with the morality of the gospel. It is well, you strip the institution of its temporal adand very well, as far as it goes; and that vantages, and make it repose on the naked Christian is wanting to the will of his mas-grandeur of eternity, it is fallen from, or ter who refuses to share and go along with laughed at as one of the chimeras of fanatiit. The Christian will do all this, but he cism, and left to the despised efforts of those would like to do more; and it is at the pre- whom they esteem to be unaccountable peocise point where he proposes to do more, ple, who subscribe for missions, and squanthat he finds himself abandoned by the co-der their money on Bible societies. Strange operation and good wishes of those who effect, you would think, of eternity, to dehad hitherto supported him. The Christian grade the object with which it is connected! goes as far as the votary of this useful be- But so it is. The blaze of glory, which is nevolence, but then he would like to go fur-thrown around the martyrdom of a patriot

an orthography for wandering and untutored savages. They have given a shape and a name to their barbarous articulations; and the children of men, who lived on the prey of the wilderness, are now forming in

or a philosopher, is refused to the martyrdom of a Christian. When a statesman dies, who lifted his intrepid voice for the liberty of the species, we hear of nothing but of the shrines and the monuments of immortality. Put into his place one of those sturdy re-village schools to the arts and the decencies formers, who, unmoved by councils and of cultivated life. Now, I am not involving inquisitions, stood up for the religious liber- you in the controversy whether civilization ties of the world; and it is no sooner done, should precede Christianity, or Christianity than the full tide of congenial sympathy and should precede civilization. It is not to admiration is at once arrested. We have what has been said on the subject, but to all heard of the benevolent apostleship of what has been done, that we are pointing Howard, and what Christian will be behind your attention. We appeal to the fact; and his fellows with his applauding testimony? as an illustration of the principle we have But will they, on the other hand, share his been attempting to lay before you, we call enthusiasm when he tells them of the apos-upon you to mark the feelings, and the tleship of Paul, who, in the sublimer sense countenance, and the language, of the mere of the term, accomplished the liberty of the academic moralist, when you put into his captive, and brought them that sat in dark-hand the authentic and proper document ness out of the prison-house? Will they share in the holy benevolence of the apostle when he pours out his ardent effusions in behalf of his countrymen? They were at that time on the eve of the cruelest suffer-philosophy about them, as not to be repelled ings. The whole vengeance of the Roman power was mustering to bear upon them. The siege and destruction of their city form one of the most dreadful tragedies in the history of war. Yet Paul seems to have had another object in his eye. It was their souls and their eternity which engrossed him. Can you sympathise with him in this principle, or join in kindred benevolence with him, when he says, that "my heart's desire and prayer for Israel is that they might be saved?"

But to bring my list of examples to a close, the most remarkable of them all may be collected from the history of the present attempts which are now making to carry the knowledge of divine revelation into the Pagan and uncivilized countries of the world. Now, it may be my ignorance, but I am certainly not aware of the fact, that without a book of religious faith-without religion, in fact, being the errand and occasion, we have never been able in modern times so far to compel the attentions and to subdue the habits of savages, as to throw in among them the use and possession of a written language. Certain it is, however, at all events, that this very greatest step in the process of converting a wild man of the woods into a humanized member of society, has been accomplished by christian missionaries. They have put into the hands of barbarians this mighty instrument of a written language, and they have taught them how to use it.* They have formed

where the fact is recorded-we mean a missionary report, or a missionary magazine. We know that there are men who have so much of the firm nerve and hardihood of

from the truth in whatever shape, or from whatever quarter it comes to them. But there are others of a humbler cast who have transferred their homage from the omnipotence of truth, to the omnipotence of a name; who, because missionaries, while they are accomplishing the civilization, are labouring also for the eternity of savages, have lifted up the cry of fanaticism against them-who, because missionaries revere the word of God, and utter themselves in the language of the New Testament, nauseate every word that comes from them as overrun with the flavour and phraseology of methodism-who are determined, in short, to abominate all that is missionary, and suffer the very sound of the epithet to fill their minds with an overwhelming association of repugnance, and prejudice, and disgust.

We would not have counted this so remarkable an example, had it not been that missionaries are accomplishing the very object on which the advocates for civilization love to expatiate. They are working for the temporal good far more effectually than any adventurer in the cause ever did before; but mark the want of congeniality between the benevolence of this world, and the benevolence of the Christian; they incur contempt, because they are working for the spiritual and eternal good also. Nor do the earthly blessings which they scatter so

among the Eskimaux; the missionaries of Otaheite, and other South Sea islands; and Mr. Brunton, under the patronage of the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, who reduced the language of the Susoos, a nation on the coast of Africa, to writing and grammatical form, and printed in it a spelling-book, vocabulary, catechism, and some tracts. Other instances besides might be given.

the purer and the nobler principle which inspires them.

abundantly in their way, redeem from scorn effectually to your patronage. My time will only permit me to lay before you a few of their advantages, and I shall therefore confine myself to two leading particulars. I. The man who considers the poor, instead of slumbering over the emotions of a useless sensibility, among those imaginary beings whom poetry and romance have laid before him in all the elegance of fic

These observations seem to be an applicable introduction to the subject before us. I call your attention to the way in which the Bible enjoins us to take up the care of the poor. It does not say, in the text before us, Commiserate the poor; for, if it said no more than this, it would leave their neces-titious history, will bestow the labour and sities to be provided for by the random ebullitions of an impetuous and unreflecting sympathy. It provides them with a better security than the mere feeling of compassion-a feeling which, however useful for the purpose of excitement, must be controlled and regulated. Feeling is but a faint and fluctuating security. Fancy may mislead it. The sober realities of life may disgust it. Disappointment may extinguish it. Ingratitude may embitter it. Deceit, with its counterfeit representations, may allure it to the wrong object. At all events, Time is the little circle within which it in general expatiates. It needs the impression of sensible objects to sustain it; nor can it enter with zeal or with vivacity into the wants of the abstract and invisible soul. The Bible, then, instead of leaving the relief of the poor to the mere instinct of sympathy, makes it a subject for considerationBlessed is he that considereth the poor-a grave and prosaic exercise I do allow, and which makes no figure in those high wrought descriptions, where the exquisite tale of benevolence is made up of all the sensibilities of tenderness on the one hand, and of all the ecstacies of gratitude on the other. The Bible rescues the cause from the mischief to which a heedless or unthinking sensibility would expose it. It brings it under the cognizance of a higher faculty-a faculty of steadier operation than to be weary in well-doing, and of sturdier endurance than to give it up in disgust. It calls you to consider the poor. It makes the virtue of relieving them a matter of computation as well as of sentiment; and in so doing, it puts you beyond the reach of the various delusions by which you are at one time led to prefer the indulgence of pity to the substantial interest of its object; at another, are led to retire chagrined and disappointed from the scene of duty, because you have not met with the gratitude or the honesty that you laid your account with; at another, are led to expend all your anxieties upon the accommodation of time, and to overlook eternity. It is the office of consideration to save you from all these fallacies. Under its tutorage, at- Now, we do not deny that the members tention to the wants of the poor ripens of the Destitute Sick Society may at times into principle. I want, my brethren, to have met with some such delightful scene press its advantages upon you, for I can in to soothe and encourage them. But put no other way recommend the society whose the question to any of their visitors, and he claims I am appointed to lay before you, so will not fail to tell you, that if they had

the attention of actual business among the poor of the real and the living world. Benevolence is the burden of every romantic tale, and of every poet's song. It is dressed out in all the fairy enchantments of imagery and eloquence. All is beauty to the eye and music to the ear. Nothing seen but pictures of felicity, and nothing heard but the soft whispers of gratitude and affection. The reader is carried along by this soft and delightful representation of virtue. He accompanies his hero through all the fancied varieties of his history. He goes along with him to the cottage of poverty and disease, surrounded, as we may suppose, with all the charms of rural obscurity, and where the murmurs of an adjoining rivulet accord with the finer and more benevolent sensibilities of the mind. He enters this enchanting retirement, and meets with a picture of distress, adorned in all the elegance of fiction. Perhaps a father laid on a bed of languishing, and supported by the labours of a pious and affectionate family, where kindness breathes in every word, and anxiety sits upon every countenance-where the industry of his children struggles in vain to supply the cordials which his poverty denies him--where nature sinks every hour, and all feel a gloomy foreboding, which they strive to conceal, and tremble to express. The hero of romance enters, and the glance of his benevolent eye enlightens this darkest recess of misery. He turns him to the bed of languishing, tells the sick man that there is still hope, and smiles comfort on his despairing children. Day after day he repeats his kindness and his charity. They hail his approach as the footsteps of an angel of mercy. The father lives to bless his deliverer. The family reward his benevolence by the homage of an affectionate gratitude; and, in the piety of their evening prayer, offer up thanks to the God of heaven, for opening the hearts of the rich to kindly and beneficent attentions. The reader weeps with delight. The visions of paradise play before his fancy. His tears flow, and his heart dissolves in all the luxury of tenderness.

never moved but when they had something him into a thousand inconsistencies. He like this to excite and to gratify their professes to love the name and the semhearts, they would seldom have moved at blance of virtue, but the labour of exertion all; and their usefulness to the poor would and of self-denial terrifies him from athave been reduced to a very humble frac-tempting it. The emotions of kindness are tion of what they have actually done for delightful to his bosom, but then they are them. What is this but to say, that it is little better than a selfish indulgence-they the business of a religious instructor to give terminate in his own enjoyment-they are you, not the elegant, but the true represen- a mere refinement of luxury. His eye tation of benevolence-to represent it not melts over the picture of fictitious distress, so much as a luxurious indulgence to the while not a tear is left for the actual starvafiner sensibilities of the mind, but according tion and misery with which he is surto the sober declaration of Scripture, as a rounded. It is easy to indulge the imaginawork and as a labour-as a business in tions of a visionary heart in going over a which you must encounter vexation, op- scene of fancied affliction, because here position, and fatigue; where you are not there is no sloth to overcome-no avarialways to meet with that elegance, which cious propensity to control-no offensive or allures the fancy, or with that humble and disgusting circumstance to allay the unretired adversity, which interests the more mingled impression of sympathy which a tender propensities of the heart; but as a soft and elegant picture is calculated to business where reluctance must often be awaken. It is not so easy to be benevolent overcome by a sense of duty, and where, in action and in reality, because here there though oppressed at every step, by envy, is fatigue to undergo-there is time and disgust, and disappointment, you are bound money to give-there is the mortifying to persevere, in obedience to the law of spectacle of vice, and folly, and ingratitude, God, and the sober instigation of principle. to encounter. We like to give you the fair The benevolence of the gospel lies in ac- picture of love to man, because to throw tions. The benevolence of our fictitious over it false and fictitious embellishments, writers, in a kind of high-wrought delicacy is injurious to its cause. These elevate the of feeling and sentiment. The one dissi- fancy by romantic visions which can never pates all its fervour in sighs and tears, and be realized. They embitter the heart by idle aspirations-the other reserves its the most severe and mortifying disappointstrength for efforts and execution. The ments, and often force us to retire in disone regards it as a luxurious enjoyment for gust from what heaven has intended to be the heart-the other, as a work and busi- the theatre of our discipline and preparaness for the hand. The one sits in indo- tion. Take the representation of the Bible. lence, and broods, in visionary rapture, Benevolence is a work and a labour. It over its schemes of ideal philanthropy-the often calls for the severest efforts of vigiother steps abroad, and enlightens by its lance and industry-a habit of action not to presence, the dark and pestilential hovels be acquired in the school of fine sentiment, of disease. The one wastes away in empty but in the walks of business, in the dark ejaculation-the other gives time and trou- and dismal receptacles of misery-in the ble to the work of beneficence-gives edu- hospitals of disease-in the putrid lanes of cation to the orphan-provides clothes for great cities, where poverty dwells in lank the naked, and lays food on the table of and ragged wretchedness, agonized with the hungry. The one is indolent and ca- pain, faint with hunger, and shivering in a pricious, and often does mischief by the frail and unsheltered tenement. occasional overflowings of a whimsical and ill-directed charity-the other is vigilant and discerning, and takes care lest his distributions be injudicious, and the effort of benevolence be misapplied. The one is soothed with the luxury of feeling, and reclines in easy and indolent satisfaction-the other shakes off the deceitful languor of contemplation and solitude, and delights in a scene of activity.-Remember, that virtue, in general, is not to feel, but to do; not merely to conceive a purpose, but to carry that purpose into execution; not merely to be overpowered by the impression of a sentiment, but to practise what it loves, and to imitate what it admires.

To be benevolent in speculation, is often to be selfish in action and in reality. The vanity and the indolence of man delude

You are not to conceive yourself a real lover of your species, and entitled to the praise or the reward of benevolence, because you weep over a fictitious representation of human misery. A man may weep in the indolence of a studious and contemplative retirement; he may breathe all the tender aspirations of humanity; but what avails all this warm and diffusive benevolence, if it is never exerted-if it never rise to execution-if it never carry him to the accomplishment of a single benevolent purpose-if it shrink from activity, and sicken at the pain of fatigue? It is easy, indeed, to come forward with the cant and hypocrisy of fine sentiment-to have a heart trained to the emotions of benevolence, while the hand refuses the labours of discharging its offices-to weep for

amusement, and to have nothing to spare for human suffering but the tribute of an indolent and unmeaning sympathy. Many of you must be acquainted with that corruption of Christian doctrine, which has been termed Antinomianism. It professes the highest reverence for the Supreme Being, while it refuses obedience to the lessons of his authority. It professes the highest gratitude for the sufferings of Christ, while it refuses that course of life and action, which he demands of his followers. It professes to adore the tremen- It must now be obvious to all of you, that dous Majesty of heaven, and to weep in it is not enough that you give money, and shame and in sorrow over the sinfulness add your name to the contributors of chaof degraded humanity, while every day it rity-you must give it with judgment. You insults Heaven by the enormity of its mis- must give your time and your attention. deeds, and evinces the insincerity of its You must descend to the trouble of examinawilful perseverance in the practice of ini- tion. You must rise from the repose of conquity. This Antinomianism is generally templation, and make yourself acquainted condemned; and none reprobate it more with the objects of your benevolent exerthan the votaries of fine sentiment-your cises. Will he husband your charity with men of taste and elegant literature-your care, or will he squander it away in idleepicures of feeling, who riot in all the lux-ness and dissipation? Will he satisfy himury of theatrical emotion, and who, in their self with the brutal luxury of the moment, admiration of what is tender, and beautiful, and neglect the supply of his more substanand cultivated, have always turned with tial necessities, or suffer his children to be disgust from the doctrines of a sour and trained in ignorance and depravity? Will illiberal theology. We may say to such, charity corrupt him by laziness? What is as Nathan to David, "Thou art the man." his peculiar necessity? Is it the want of Theirs is to all intents and purposes Anti-health or the want of employment? Is it nomianism-and an Antinomianism of a the pressure of a numerous family? Does far more dangerous and deceitful kind, than he need medicine to administer to the disthe Antinomianism of a spurious and pre-eases of his children? Does he need fuel or tended orthodoxy. In the Antinomianism of raiment to protect them from the inclereligion, there is nothing to fascinate or de-mency of winter? Does he need money ceive you. It wears an air of repulsive to satisfy the yearly demands of his landbigotry, more fitted to awaken disgust than lord, or to purchase books, and to pay for to gain the admiration of proselytes. There the education of his offspring? is a glaring deformity in its aspect, which alarms you at the very outset, and is an outrage to that natural morality which, dark and corrupted as it is, is still strong enough to lift its loud remonstrance against it. But in the Antinomianism of high wrought sentiment, there is a deception far more insinuating. It steals upon you under the semblance of virtue. It is supported by the delusive colouring of imagination and poetry. It has all the graces and embellishments of literature to recommend it. Vanity is soothed, and conscience lulls itself to repose in this dream of feeling and of indolence.

It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic emotion. It is an exertion of principle. You must go to the poor man's cottage, though no verdure flourish around it, and no rivulet be nigh to delight you by the gentleness of its murmurs. If you look for the romantic simplicity of fiction you will be disappointed: but it is your duty to persevere, in spite of every discouragement. Benevolence is not merely a feeling, but a principle; not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business for the hand to execute.

To give money is not to do all the work and labour of benevolence. You must go to the poor man's bed. You must lend your hand to the work of assistance. You must examine his accounts. You must try to recover those debts which are due to his family. You must try to recover those wages which are detained by the injustice or the rapacity of his master. You must employ your mediation with his superiors. You must represent to them the necessities of his situation. You must solicit their assistance, and awaken their feelings to the tale of his calamity. This is benevolence in its plain, and sober, and substantial reality, though eloquence may have withheld its

Let us dismiss these lying vanities, and regulate our lives by the truth and sober-imagery, and poetry may have denied its ness of the New Testament. Benevolence graces and its embellishments. This is true is not in word and in tongue, but in deed and unsophisticated goodness. It may be and in truth. It is a business with men as recorded in no earthly documents; but if they are, and with human life as drawn by done under the influence of christian printhe rough hand of experience. It is a duty ciple-in a word, done unto Jesus, it is writwhich you must perform at the call of prin- ten in the book of heaven, and will give ciple, though there be no voice of eloquence a new lustre to that crown to which his to give splendour to your exertions, and no disciples look forward in time, and will wear

music or poetry to lead your willing foot-through eternity.

steps through the bowers of enchantment. You have all heard of the division of la