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To you, who have been long convinced of the utility of these establishments, I am persuaded there is no occasion to use arguments in defence of them; yet if arguments were necessary, they might all be concentred in these short positions, viz. whether, in a Christian state, it were more proper that the children of the poor should be Christians or bar, barians; naked or clothed; instructed to earn their bread, by the arts of honest labour, or brought up in idle ignorance to become a burthen to the community.

To you, whose BENEVOLENCE is founded on the principles of reason, I am satisfied there is still less occasion for eloquence than for argument; yet, if eloquence were necessary, behold it there! Behold the supplicating looks of helpless innocence! how powerfully they plead what rhetoric can move like the distresses of innocence! If our tenderness is not awakened by those, will it yield to the power of words; to the animated colours of strong description, or the tuneful flow of polished periods? Yes, ye poor daughters of sorrow! born to no hope but the humanity of your fellow-creatures, your own miseries shall plead your cause-your own unhappy

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circumstances shall excite compassion in every gentle breast, shall call forth the tear from every tender eye, shall open every generous hand to contribute to your relief. We know that your resources are small, that the capital which supports you is extremely reduced, and that, for the principles of a virtuous and useful education, you depend, in a great measure, on the liberality of this audience. On their munificence you depend for those instructions that must save you from folly and from vice, and those industrious arts which must be your future support.

What joy must it be to every good mind, on such an affecting occasion, to exercise its benevolence! to indulge the sweetest of all passions, the tender delight of pity!

Let us, my friends, prove ourselves not to be destitute of humanity, by indulging it on the occasion before us. Let us invest the fleeting possessions of this world in the happy security of immortal life. Let us lay up our treasures in that safe repository, which is free from the inroads of the robber, and the rust of time. The works of charity alone are immortal. Other virtues shall die. Other excellencies shall decay with decaying nature. Dignity and learning, and arts, and honours, shall not outlast the beating pulse, nor survive the ruins

of the grave. Whether there be tongues, they shall fail; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but charity shall live for eversecure in the favour of that unchangeable Being, who has pronounced it the best of human virtues. To obtain the favour of that Being, how great were the emulation! What were the sacrifice of life or honour, of power or affluence, to be repaid by his supreme rewards! To receive the last, best gift of immortality from the divine bounty, and to be lodged in the bosom of everlasting love! when the cares, and fears, and sorrows that surround us are no more: then to exchange these regions of pain and poverty for the glorious inheritance of eternal life; when the Son of God himself shall repeat his invitation, saying, Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat; thirsty, and ye gave me drink; a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and clothed me.

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SERMON XIII.

THE EVANGELICAL CHARITY.

1 COR. xiii. 4, 5.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly.

WHATEVER arguments have been brought against the several outward circumstances and relations of facts in the history of the Christian religion, the force of its internal evidence could never be denied. Its enemies the most avowed have been obliged to acknowledge, that the moral spirit and tendency of its precepts imply a more enlarged benevolence, and a more exalted virtue, than any single adventurer in the regions of philosophy was ever able to strike out.

It has been allowed, indeed, by a Christian writer, that the collective virtues of the several philosophic systems might make up a

a Lactantius.

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