"Within a short time," says her biographer, 'a very short time, the whole scene was marvelously changed. Like the maniac of Geneseret, from whom the legion of devils had been cast out, these once wild and wretched creatures were seen neatly clothed, busily employed, arranged under the care of monitors with a matron at the head of them, comparatively speaking, in their right minds. Numerous were the throngs of well educated persons in that land, who pressed after her from prison to prison, and hospital to hospital, in order to learn from her example, the lesson of doing good to the most degraded and sorrowful of mankind." It only requires that we open the pages of history and read the brief record of philanthropy (and it will not take long to read the little regarding it; for the records of bloodshed and cruelty make up the bulk of human history, while a short page contains about all that is said of the work of the philanthropic—a divine book was written, it is true, giving a brief account of Jesus' superlative work of love, in the three years of his active ministry, on our planet. And I am sorry to have to confess that a very diminutive scroll tells all that his disciples have done, up to this hour following in his footsteps). I say that it requires only that we read this short record to be convinced that love can reform the erring, and that love will transform the world into an Eden of bliss.

IV. Count Rumford's Successful Experiment.

Benjamin Thompson (better known as Count Rumford) was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, March 26, 1753. By an accident of good fortune he became a resident of Bavaria, a German principality, in the year of 1784. The elector of that principality at that time was Charles Theodore a man of enlightened mind, whose ambition was to elevate the state and add to the happiness of the people over whom he reigned. He appointed Thompson (who received from him the title of Count Rumford) as his chief minister of reform, directing him to rectify whatever was wrong in public affairs. After reforming the army and improving immeasurably the condition of the people generally, he turned his attention especially to the unemployed poor and friendless outcasts. His biographer says:

"The number of itinerant beggars of both sexes and all ages, as well foreign as native, who strolled about the country in all directions, levying conrtibutions upon the industrious inhabitants, stealing and robbing and leading a life of indolence and the most shameless debauchery, was quite incredible." Count Rumford put an end to this evil by establishing with the aid of state funds, manufactories, furnishing employment to all these people able to work, and by organizing a system of public support of all the deserving and helpless poor. Two thousand six hundred of both sexes and various ages were gathered into one great industrial establishment in Munich and put to work in a single week after the doors of the manufactory were first opened. This institution was called the Military Work-House, because it was fitted up with money from the military chest and designed chiefly to supply the army with clothing, etc. Yet it was a vast shop of allwork. A suitable building was fitted up; a large kitchen and large hardened criminal, seeing the badge of her office in her uniform, would make way respectfully, and the lowest and most abandoned woman would find no ribald word at her command for one who comes thus in the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice. I have the testimony of a nurse of long experience that, in her professional dress, she would not fear to enter the worst Whitechapel den at any hour of day or night. If a hand were raised to harm her, a thousand would fly to her defense. The sacred cause she represents can hold in awe the brutal and depraved instincts of the lowest class of human beings, thus showing where the work of redemption must begin, and how it is to be carried on successfully.-Augusta Larned. (Leaves from a Foreign Note Book.)

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eating room, commodious bake house, work shops for carpenters, smiths, turners, and such other mechanics, were established and furnished with tools. Large halls were fitted up for spinners of hemp, spinners of flax, for spinners of cotton, for spinners of wool and for spinners of worsted; and adjoining each hall a small room was fitted up for a clerk or inspector of the hall. Halls were likewise fitted up for weavers of woolens, weavers of serges and shalloons, for linen weavers, for weavers of cotton goods and for stocking weavers; and workshops were provided for clothiers, cloth-shearers, dyers, saddlers, besides rooms for wool-sorters, wool-carders, wool-combers, knitters, seamstresses, etc. Magazines were fitted up for finished manufactures as for raw materials and rooms for counting houses, store rooms for kitchen and bake-house, and dwelling rooms for the inspectors and other officers. The whole edifice which was very extensive, was fitted up in the neatest manner possible. In doing this even the external appearance of the building was attended to. It was handsomely painted without and within, and pains were taken to give it an air of elegance as well as of neatness and cleanliness. The whole establishment was swept twice a day. Great pains were taken to promote the comfort of the people while at work, and to render the work agreeable to them. The rooms were well warmed in winter, well ventilated, pleasant and healthful all the time. As far as elegance was possible in halls devoted to work it was consulted, and the kindest usage was the order of the institution. The people arrived at the establishment at a fixed hour in the morning; they continued at their work till the hour of dinner, when they repaired to the dining hall, where they were furnished with a good dinner of white bread and fine rich soup, and after some hours of further work, they were dismissed as from any other manufactory, and had all the rest of the time at their own disposal. Besides the dinner hour, which was allowed as relaxation to all in the establishment, two additional hours, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, were allowed to the younger workers, during which they assembled in one hall and were taught reading, writing and arithmetic by a master paid for the purpose; and neither they nor the adults were overworked. All received good wages, which were regularly paid.

"By constant practice the workers soon became expert in their several callings, and in a short time it was no longer a mere benevolent institution; but the workers fully earned their wages. In the sixth year of its existence the demand upon it for goods amounted to half a million of florins, and the net profits to the State of the manufactory for the six years were one hundred thousand florins."

On the merits of the institution in reclaiming the formerly loathsome, vicious and wretched, to cleanliness, propriety, happiness (the point I have in view to illustrate) hear the words of Count Rumford himself. After alluding to the expertness of the various workers, he proceeds; "But what was quite surprising, and at the same time interesting in the highest degree, was the apparent and rapid change which was produced in their manners. The kind usage they met with, and the comforts they enjoyed, seemed to have softened their hearts and awakened in them sentiments as new and surprising to themselves as they were interesting to those about them. The melancholy gloom of misery, the air of uneasiness and embarrassment, disappeared little by little from their countenances and were succeeded by a timid dawn of cheerfulness, rendered most exquisitely interesting by a certain mixture of silent gratitude, which no language can describe. In the infancy of the establishment, when these poor creatures were first brought together, I used very frequently," he says, "to visit them, to speak kindly to them and to encourage them; and I seldom passed through the hall where they were at work without being witness to the most moving scenes. Objects formerly the most miserable and wretch

ed, whom I had seen for years as beggars in the streets; young women, perhaps the unhappy victims of seduction, who having lost their reputation and being turned adrift in the world without a friend and with out a home, were reduced to the necessity of begging to sustain a miserable existence, now recognized me as their benefactor, and with tears dropping fast from their cheeks, continued their work in the most expressive silence. If they were asked what the matter was with them their answer was 'nichtz' (nothing) accompanied with a look of affectionate regard and gratitude so touching as frequently to draw tears from the most insensible of the bystanders. Will it be reckoned vanity," he continues, "if I mention the concern which the poor of Munich expressed in so affecting a manner when I was dangerously ill? that they went publicly in a body in procession to the Cathedral church where they had divine service performed and put up prayers for my recovery; that four years afterward on hearing that I was again dangerously ill at Naples, they, of their own accord, set apart an hour each evening after they had finished their work in the military work house, to pray for me, a private person, a Protestant!"

Here was a successful practical solution of the great problem of the redemption of the people of a christian city and state from poverty and its resultant crime and misery, worked out a century ago by a benign German prince and his enlightened American adviser. If the clergy of Christendom since that day, had interested themselves in these great matters affecting the poor, as Jesus did while on earth, this noble example would not have been lost to the world for a hundred years; but it would by this time have been followed by every civilized state on earth, and poverty and consequent crime, and suffering, would to-day be practically put an end to in christendom.

V. Our Laws Outgrown.

Truly, Jesus interested himself in the affairs of the people among whom he walked. He even interfered to disperse a mob that had assembled to stone an erring woman to death. A dangerous experiment we would reckon it now, to try to break up a mob with the use of only kindly words of reason as weapons, when regiments of national guards, armed with breech-loading rifles and gatling guns, quail before their fury. But a word of genuine christian love and truth is mightier than an army with banners.

Why have we mob rule to-day in our country? The answer is: Our laws are outgrown. The gentle teachings of Christianity have lifted the masses above the barbarism of the mediaeval laws that yet mar our statute books and disgrace our country and age. Whittier says:

"Thank God that I have lived to see the time
When the great truth at last begins to find
At utterance from the deep heart of mankind
Earnest and clear, that all revenge is crime,
That man is holier than a creed-that all
Restraint upon him must consult his good,
Hope's sunshine linger in his prison wall
And love looks in upon his solitude.

The beautiful lesson which the Saviour taught
Through long dark centuries its way hath wrought
Into the common mind and popular thought;

And words to which by Galilee's lake shore
The humble fishers listen with hushed oar,
Have found an echo in the general heart
And of the public faith become a living part."

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So that now when men are tried for crime the jury pities them, since the punishments are barbarous, of the past, of the dark ages, too cruel to be inflicted by a people, with christian training, and the guilty are let go scot free, and ignorant, brutal mobs are left again to pelt them with stones, no Saviour being near to say, "He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her." Nor do our laws yet step in and declare, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." Let us have Christian and not Pagan laws, and they will be enforced. Let us have labor-reform schools for criminals, and let Sisters and Brothers of Mercy be allowed to go, as Elizabeth Fry went to Newgate, and labor among the fallen to lift them up, and juries will no longer hesitate to convict the guilty. Justice will be administered when Justice and Mercy walk hand in hand. Then there will be no longer occasion for mobs. They will disperse; for the voice of Jesus will touch their hearts and consciences who come to throw stones.

VI. Save the Outcasts.

Of all the miserable beings on earth those are most to be pitied who, in the weakness of inexperienced youth, are led astray, and then cast out where there is no hope-abandoned! Accursed be that most hateful word. It ought to be expunged from the human vocabulary! It never ought to be uttered! Let it disappear with the going out of the nineteenth century, along with war, along with cruelty, along with barbarity. I am commanded in my Bible that I love and that I take as the rule and guide of my life, actions, sentiments and love of man and woman-I am commanded to love my neighbor as myself. I shall, therefore, feel toward my neighbor's child as towards my own. My own child I will never abandon, but will everlastingingly cling to her with a tenacity superhuman; and I will never abandon any human being.

We must not condemn to despair the unfortunate daughters of sorrowing parents; but we must rescue them from misery-placing them in happy asylums, and pleasant schools, where when repentant, they may find hope-invite them to look joyfully upward, and forward to a happy future, they having buried their bad thoughts and bad actions so deep down underground that the loudest blast of Gabriel's trumpet will not resurrect them again as even shadowy remembrances. The united Christian people of our country can proclaim glad freedom to the enslaved of sin, can provide pleasant homes and remunerative work for the repentant, can and will crystallize the Sermon of Jesus on the Mount in the laws and in the institutions of our beloved country, designed by providence to make free, by her example, the whole world, from the thralldom of kings, and from tyranny of all kinds-to emancipate labor-to set the imprisoned in the world's bastiles all at liberty, and to inaugurate the blissful reign of Jesus Christ on earth. She will

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold,
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace."

"Ring in the valiant man and free,-
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land-
Ring in the Christ that is to be."

(In Part spoken at Humboldt, Iowa, October 3, 1875.)

"And he took the little children up in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them."-Mark, x-16.

I. The Christ Spirit.

May we not say truly that the present progress of the world is the outgrowth of selfishness of the struggle for wealth of enterprise? No I think we may not truly say so. But on the contrary, the real good is, I believe, the outgrowth of what is denominated "christian work"-the missionary spirit-the desire to help humanity-to save men from ignorance, vice, poverty and degradation-out of sympathy and love for our fellow men-the Christ spirit. At present there is individual effort in this direction, of isolated philanthropists, and associated effort of church and lodge. But soon it will be the great work of the state to do this office of charity and love. Even petty life insur ance companies will then cease to be, for the state will be the insurer and every individual of the state the insured. The people will act together (through law and institution) in all things for the general good. The state will become a fraternity.

Charity will be so organized and carried out that the helpless shall be surrounded with the sunshine of earth life. No little feeble Five Points Mission for destitute children, supported by private charity, will struggle for existence; but healthy establishments, supported by the bounty of the commonwealth, will abound. The state is able to institute model homes for orphan children, more pleasant and attractive than even the homes and firesides of the wealthy of today, so that parents may do well to visit them to learn how to make the parental home attractive to their little ones. *

How can our homes be made most pleasant? By their being built with an eye to one thing only-the gratification of children. Too often the family home is built to gratify vanity to make display of finery-anything but pleasure grounds for children. They are prisons

rather.

Most earnest thought and persevering endeavor should be directed both to the comfort and delight of children, and to their education. When mankind go to work in real earnest to make the little children happy the whole year round, what a pleasant world we shall have. Make every day Christmas for all the little ones of earth. If we only took the little children, as the state can do, all the destitute and orphans took them in our arms and blessed them with happy homes of comfort-laying our hands on their heads as true saviours, oh. would it not be well! The world belongs to the children. We hold it only in trust for the coming generations. Let us give them a blessed portion of it while they are helpless and need it. One child has as God-given a right to just as much of this world's goods as another. It has a right to all that is necessary to make it comfortable. Don't you, great strong man, withhold from the infants their right. God never gave the world to a few. Don't grasp by force more than your

*In advocating the common care of the little ones, who are left to battle for existence without parental care, I do not wish to be understood to say that homes in good families would not be preferable to public establishments, like the one at Five Points, New York, though nothing is more beautiful than was the appearance of the Five Points' Mission Home and School in 1888. I had the pleasure of visiting that home in September of that year, and great was my joy to see so many happy children there assembled and the little ones so tenderly cared for. May the blessing of Almighty God go with those who have undertaken to carry forward this most truly Christian work.