ness. That visitor from God is a different messenger when it comes to the downy and curtained bed of the affluent, from whose comfortable chambers both light and weather are excluded, and on whose carpeted floor the foot falls without disturbing, and around whose pillow friends, physicians and nurses wait tenderly night and day; and when it comes to the straw pallet of the laboring poor, covered with a few insufficient rags which afford scanty protection from the cold wind that whistles through the crevices and broken glass, on which the suffering patient lies exposed to noise and intrusion, perhaps in the only room of the house, in which all the business of the family is transacted, and where neither quietness nor attendance can be secured. To such desertion does sickness introduce many; and to such would the ladies of this Society administer. They enter the apartment, and the scene changes. A comfortable bed is placed beneath the sufferers' aching limbs. Clean and warm clothing covers them, affording a luxury as efficacious as medicine. Little comforts, which the sickly fancy craves, and which poverty can seldom know, are placed by the bed-side; and the reviving or lingering invalid, seated at her own replenished hearth, is made to feel the double luxury of ease, and of gratitude to those who brought it. If a mother, she looks around mean time on her naked children, for whom she has no longer strength to ply the needle, and sees that the same kindness forbids them to suffer from her inability. Who does not feel that they do well who are useful thus? These are services in which it becomes woman to engage. This is her appropriate sphere. Who would not be gratified to know that his wife, or his sister, or his daughter, was engaged in such ministrations of love? Who would not esteem them the more lovely when they returned from these messages of charity? For where is it—if I may borrow a sentiment from another-where is it that woman is most truly an angel? Not where she is most frequently called so―in the splendor of high life, in the circle of fashion, weaving the graceful dance, and attracting crowds of attendant admirers, brilliant in her native beauty, sparkling with ornaments, and blushing at her own praises-No ; but when she goes out on errands of Benevolence, to cheer the

widow's heart, to dress the shivering limbs of the naked orphan, to watch at the pillow of the sick, and whisper consoling words to the heart of the desolate and friendless. There, occupied in the work of heaven, in the spirit of Jesus, she is indeed an angel-'a ministering angel.' The comforted sufferer looks up to her as such, and blesses her; and we may believe that the unseen messengers of heaven smile upon her and salute her as a fellow-laborer of love.

They have thus given you an example of usefulness. I said, also, that they present you an opportunity, by inviting you to join in their quiet, unostentatious employment. They solicit you to aid them in providing means for these charitable services, and to fill their hands when they go abroad on these purposes of benevolence. Their opportunities of doing good are more numerous than they have the means of answering; and not for themselves, but for the poor objects of their care, they have ventured to come up here, and while they seek the blessing of God, appeal to your sympathy for aid. They have taken the burden of the work; they undergo the toil; and it is not without reason that they look to others for means of adding to the comforts which they render. And you, who are able by a small exertion, to throw together this evening a sum which would afford ́essential relief to many, and who have not the leisure to search them out and minister to them in person, ought to rejoice in the opportunity of entrusting your alms to those whom experience has taught to apply them with the greatest kindness, fidelity, and effect. They have already been in many instances the willing and gratified almoners of some who possess the means but not the necessary time; and have been able for fourteen years to extend a relieving hand to those that were ready to perish. But they have at all times been obliged to pass by many more objects of interest and want, to whom they had no bounty to extend. Amidst all the pleasure of bestowing, they have experienced also the pain of refusing. It is for you, this evening, to diminish that pain, by enlarging their ability. In their behalf and for their sakes, and in behalf of those whose friends and visitors they are, I entreat you to enlarge their means. The season of wind and storm and pinching cold is hastening on ;

and many are they who must lie down in sickness on beds which give no warmth, and see their little ones half naked and half starved around them, to whom the charity of this evening may carry warmth, and clothing, and comfort. Let us then, before we retire to our own pleasant apartments and happy firesides, before we lie down upon our pillows in chambers where want and discomfort are unknown, let us send our messages of sympathy, through these ladies, to those who are unacquainted with our blessings. Let us do it as an offering of brotherly love; because nature pleads for them in our hearts. Let us do it as an offering of gratitude to Him who has appointed to us a more desirable lot. We shall feel the happier, as we lay ourselves to rest, and commit our spirits to the Protector of the night, in the reflection that this portion both of our time and of our sub stance have been usefully employed.

BY REV. JAMES KENDALL, D. D. PLYMOUTH, MASS.

ON MAN'S ACCOUNTABLENESS TO HIS CREATOR, AND A FUTURE RETRIBUTION.

ROMANS XIV. 12.

SO THEN EVERY ONE OF US MUST GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF TO GOD.

No doctrine is more clearly taught by revelation than our accountableness to God. In this respect, Christianity enforces and sanctions the suggestions and conclusions of reason and the light of nature. Every law promulgated by the great Founder of our religion, requires and lays us under obligation to obedience. But no law is of any avail without some sanction; and no sanction is so effectual as that, which promises a reward to the obedient, and threatens a penalty to the transgressor. But although the doctrine of a future retribution has generally been believed by those who take the bible for a guide, and embrace the doctrines which it teaches, yet different opinions have been entertained concerning the nature and duration of the future punishment of the finally impenitent. Some have supposed that the punishment of the wicked would be interminable; that sin, being an offence against an infinite Being, was an infinite evil, and if not repented of, required an infinite punishment; and that the scripture representations of the future condition of the wicked, taken in their obvious and literal sense, justified this opinion; and would not admit of a limitation to the sufferings of the wicked any more than to the happiness of the righteous.

Others, again, think that a perfect Being, who will judge the world in righteousness, will inflict punishment adequate,

and no more than adequate in degree and duration, to the offences of his creatures; but that neither the justice nor honor of the divine government, requires an eternity of torments for sins committed by frail and fallible creatures during a short period of probation, in a world too full of temptations, which they cannot avoid, nor always resist :— that such a punishment would be more than adequate to any offences of which mankind could be guilty. And as all the chastisements of heaven in this life are disciplinary, and designed to produce a moral reformation, so, reasoning from analogy, it is believed that the future sufferings of the wicked have the same design and the same tendency; and, that when the enmity of the sinner against the law of God is subdued, and a moral reformation takes place under the discipline and chastisement of the righteous moral governor of the world,-in other words, when the soul is fitted for the happiness of heaven, it will be restored to the enjoyment of it; and that this will be the condition ultimately of the whole human family. The advocates of this opinion believe that the language of scripture respecting the future destiny of the wicked, which is acknowledged to be in many instances very bold and highly figurative, does not necessarily authorize the belief of an eternity of suffering; but that when taken with proper qualifications and rightly understood, it is not inconsistent with the doctrine of a final restoration. It is further contended, that the tendency and moral effects of this view of the doctrine of a future retribution, are stronger and more powerful in restraining the wicked from corruption and vice, and producing in them the love of God and the practice of virtue, from the deeper conviction it produces, and the greater certainty it holds out, that the threatened judgment will be executed, than when the punishment is represented as so far exceeding the nature of the offence, as to leave the mind in doubt, if not impressed with the belief, that the threatening will never be carried into execution by a just and merciful God.

Another class of Christians have adopted a different opinion. They believe neither in the eternity of the future torments of the wicked, nor yet in their final restoration ;—but suppose that the punishment of the irreclaimable sinner will