laid upon us all to cultivate the character I have thus attempted briefly to describe? To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit and comfort the sick and the afflicted, is incumbent upon every man endowed with moral perception, but the obligations of the christian to pursue this course of conduct, are most weighty and inalienable. He cannot shut out from his attention the sufferings and misfortunes of his brethren of the human family without renouncing his name, and without forfeiting his rights to the hopes and promises of the gospel. Our religion is emphatically the religion of love. Love is the end of the commandment, the perfection of the christian character, and the most acceptable offering we can present to Almighty God. Upon this principle the poor have a claim,—a claim stronger than human law could establish upon their fellow men. We are all the stewards and almoners of Providence, and a rigid account will be demanded of those means which were given to us in trust for the purposes of beneficence. Let the rich man ask himself by what means he has been prospered in life, and inhabits the splendid or the commodious habitation, while another has been condemned to eat the bitter bread of poverty. He may reply that he has been industrious and provident, that he has passed a life of anxious labor to amass the wealth or the competency he enjoys. But can he forget that all his success must at last be referred to the great disposer of events? Can he be ignorant that it is God who has filled his basket and his store, who has given the genial heat and refreshing showers to his harvest, and guarded them from blasting and mildew, who has commanded the favoring winds to blow upon his richly freighted vessels, and has saved them from rocks and tempests, who has bestowed upon him his powers of mind, and afforded him health and opportunity to employ them? Can he be unmindful of all this when he beholds the fluctuations of prosperity, and the sudden and unexpected manner in which it is both given and again taken away? Surely then the thoughtful and conscientious man will esteem his possessions, not so much a right which he has obtained as a trust committed to him, and he will acknowledge that the strictest justice approves what religion emphatically demands, that with a bountiful eye we should look upon the poor and destitute.

Such is our solemn duty; and it is important that it should be regarded in this light. Beneficence should not be merely the overflowing of a generous heart. This would be an unsafe and uncertain ground on which to place the principle of charitable distribution. Interesting objects indeed might not suffer from it, the orphan, the afflicted widow, decayed and broken age. Cold and insensible must be the heart that could shut up its sympathies from such petitioners. True beneficence however, cannot always be a delight. "It is not," says a powerful writer,[8] "an indulgence to the finer sensibilities of the mind, but according to the sober declarations of scripture, a work and a labor, a business in which you must encounter vexation, opposition, and fatigue, where you are not always to meet with that elegance which allures the fancy, or with that humble and retired adversity which interests the more tender propensities of the heart, but as a business, where reluctance must often be overcome by a sense of duty, and where, though opposed at every step by envy, disgust and disappointment, you are bound to persevere in obedience to the law of God, and the sober instigation of principle." Is it not well then, my brethren, to establish beneficence upon the broad ground of christian obligation, rather than commend it to you by the high gratifications which it sometimes affords? Are not the interests of the poor in this manner more effectually secured? If the grand principle can be established in your breasts, that you are to do good not simply because you delight in this work, but because the dictates of justice and the laws of God require you to be charitable, will you not be preserved from the indiscretions of a heated benevolence on the one hand, and from the cruelty and consequent punishment of selfishness and avarice on the other?

3. But are there then any demands made upon our charity, which when answered can yield us no reward or blessing? Surely not. Has it not already been declared that God demands of us no duty or sacrifice for which he does not offer us an abundant remuneration? And does he not emphatically pronounce his blessing upon the virtue I am now attempting to explain and enforce? "He that hath a bountiful eye shall be BLESSED." The scriptures are filled with motives, inducements, promises, encouragements, addressed to every generous, nay to every interested feeling. The merciful man doeth good to his own soul.[9] He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.[10] If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.[11] Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.[12] Are there not then abundant rewards promised to deeds of beneficence?—rewards, how far transcending our best services, how more, infinitely more than adequate to our most painful labors, our greatest sacrifices. God has a right to all we have, for he only lends us all, yet he condescends to receive a portion from us again, as if a favor were conferred upon himself, and he has put in his stead the sick, the naked, the hungry and the afflicted, and says, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.[13] And not only does he condescend thus to accept our charitable deeds, but gives them his blessing and reward. Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.[14]

While then, my brethren, we have every encouragement to persevere in works of beneficence, though they may be accompanied with labor, and be repaid with human ingratitude, let us be duly thankful that there are other occasions on which we can discharge duty, and at the same time open a source of the purest and noblest gratification. Yes—painful as may be some of those walks of