miserable maintenance; and no benefit or advantage accrues, or can possibly accrue, to the person who confines them.

Men are often urged to deal thus severely with others, by the grief and anguish which attend the disappointment they meet with in their just expectation; and being themselves sufferers, they think no treatment too bad for those to whom they impute their own distress. But could men consider calmly how much misery they bring into the world, and how many must partake in the sad effects of their resentment, I am persuaded that humanity and compassion, virtues to which this country never was a stranger, would in great measure prevent this evil.

When the father of a poor family, who have nothing to depend on for their subsistence but his labor and industry, is torn from them, what can the poor widow and orphans do? For a widow she is, and orphans they are, to all the intents and purposes of sorrow and affliction. It is well if they take no worse employment than begging; oftentimes they are tempted to pilfer or steal, or to prostitute themselves for bread; and happy is it for them, if they meet with no worse fortune than to fall into your hands to be corrected and reformed.

In the mean time the wretched father sees himself undone, and his family dispersed and ruined. His spirits sink under sorrow, and despair eats out his strength and life; that should you in time relent and release him, it is ten to one but the relief comes too late. He is no longer the same man; before his imprisonment he was active and strong, and had spirit to go through his labor; now he is broken in mind and body, and not able to improve to any advantage that liberty which at last you are willing to allow him.

Would not any one who considers this, be apt to imagine that no man lies in prison but for some great debt; that it is impossible that any one should use another thus cruelly for a trifle? And yet, in truth, the case is quite otherwise there are few, in comparison, who lie for great sums; the far greater number are confined for trifles, for such sums as must be reckoned by pence, and not by pounds. It is true they are commonly confined at the suit of those who are almost as poor as themselves; and the poverty on the one side is often urged as a justification of the severity used against the other. But alas!

what relief is it to one poor man to undo another? What comfort is it to torment a wretch whose misery can yield you no profit or advantage?

Whether I have justly represented the consequences of this case or no, you, who have the poor orphans of this city under your care, and you, whose charitable work it is to correct and reform the vicious and profligate, are best able to say; for you know all the distresses of the poor, and the causes from whence they spring; and, to your honor I speak it, you have provided for every evil of life a proper remedy or a proper comfort. But I need not be your orator; your own deeds will speak for you far better than I can. The report now to | be read will show both the nature and the good management of the several charities under your direction.

Here the report was read.

The account now laid before you is capable of raising very different sentiments in the heart of a Christian. It is a melancholy thing to hear the poor orphans in one place, the profligate vagrants in another, the lame and impotent in a third, and the distempered in mind in a fourth, reckoned up by hundreds and by thousands. To what miseries is human life exposed!

But still, in the midst of these calamities, there is reason to bless and adore the goodness of God, who has put it into the hearts of his servants to provide comfort and relief for these sons and daughters of affliction.

The richest among us, when he views these misfortunes, sees nothing but what he is liable to himself. Examine the condition of these orphans, many of them perhaps born in the midst of plenty, though now they live on charity. There was a time perhaps when their fathers as little thought they should be beholden to an hospital for the maintenance of their children as we may think it at this day.

Other calamities make no distinction between rich and poor; we have no inheritance in the use of our limbs and senses, but enjoy them by the good pleasure of him who gave them. And whenever these misfortunes overtake us, our riches make but little difference in the case: a rich distracted man and a poor distracted man are very near on an equality; and as far as

the power of imagination goes, they often change conditions; the poor man fancying himself to be a prince, whilst the rich one pines and torments himself with the all-fears and anxieties

of poverty.

Since then you are so nearly related to all the miseries now placed within your view, need I say much to move tenderness and compassion towards a case already so much your own? This is a cause which nature will plead for in every heart not made of stone. But there is one still greater Advocate to plead this cause, even he who died for our sins, and rose again, for our justification. These orphans, these diseased in body or in mind, nay, even the profligate wretches who are brought to you for punishment and correction, are his care; and whatever charity you bestow on them, he will reckon it as done to himself, and acknowlege it in the sight of men and of angels, when he shall come again to judge the world in righteousness.

SUMMARY OF DISCOURSE X.

MARK, CHAP. III.-VERSE 24.

THOUGH the words of the text are read in the gospel, yet they have not their authority merely from thence; since an appeal lies to common sense and experience for the truth contained in them.

As observations of this kind depend on a great number of facts, so are there in the present case a great number to support it. We have examples of our own growth.

The late unhappy times of Charles the First were attended with this peculiar felicity, that no foreign nation was at leisure to take advantage of our divisions. But though there was no such enemy to ruin us, yet ruined we were. Such is the malignity of intestine division !

When national quarrels grow extreme, and appear in arms, it is easy to foresee their sad consequences; and whoever looks back with partial or impartial eye on the years of distress under which this country labored in the late times, will see enough to convince him how fatal a thing it is for a kingdom to be divided against itself: it will be therefore of little use to enlarge on this part of the argument.

But there are other evils less discernible, which spring from the same bitter root, and naturally prepare a way for the greater mischiefs which follow.

National divisions are sometimes founded in material differences, sometimes owe their rise to accidents; but all divisions, how different soever in their commencement, grow in their progress to be much alike; and there are evil effects which may

generally be ascribed to them all, as the fruit they naturally produce.

I. The zeal and warmth which attend public quarrels, are apt to get possession of men's minds and affections so far as to render them in great measure unable to form a right judgment of things and persons; and without this it is impossible for men to be of any service to their country; since a foundation for public good can never be laid in a wrong judgment of things and persons: this topic fully treated.

II. One great guard to virtue, and placed in the minds of men by the hand that formed them, is the sense of shame when we do ill; of the same kind, and a twin of the same birth, is the pleasure arising from the praise of having done well: but to make these natural passions of any service to us, they must be kept true to their proper objects, good and evil; and whenever the judgment is so corrupted as to lose sight of this difference, the love of praise and the fear of shame will become not merely useless, but mischievous and destructive; which must be the case when a false standard is set up. This applied to a nation or kingdom divided against itself.

III. When praise and reproaches are distributed with so little justice, it has another very ill effect in hardening men against reproach, even when they deserve it most: this point enlarged on.

IV. It is a farther aggravation of this evil, to consider that such infamous conduct seldom fails of being successful; for when the malignity of intestine division is far spread, it becomes a shelter for all iniquity: party zeal usurps the place of Christian charity, and covers a multitude of sins: men then trust their hopes and fortunes to the merit of their zeal, and this seldom fails them; for,

V. As credit and reputation, the natural rewards of virtue, are perverted and misapplied by the blind spirit of division, so are the rewards which the public has provided and destined to