prosecute with vigour that excellent scheme în which you have already shewn so much laudable zeal, and have made so successful a progress. I need not add, that I mean the scheme of a provision for the more comfortable support of ministers? widows and orphans.

This particular subject has the easiest and happiest connexion imaginable with the general one I have been discussing; as it is both a worthy and benevolent undertaking itself, and is designed for the relief of those persons who have shewn themselves to be actuated by the same excellent sentiments; of persons who have not lived to themselves, but to society; who have entered into the social connexions of life, and who have exposed themselves and families to peculiar hardships in conse quence of those honourable connexions.

If any set of duties shine with peculiar lustre and make a greater figure than the rest in our holy religion, they are those of humanity and compassion. Through all the books both of the Old and New Testament, they are the most frequently, and the most earnestly inculcated of any particular duties doubtless, because they are of the strongest obligation in themselves, the finest exercise for our faculties (having the greatest tendency to advance the perfec

perfection of our nature) and the best adapted to promote the ease and happiness of mankind in ge

neral.

The Divine Being himself is always represented as taking particular notice of the treatment which the poor and distressed meet with. He hath stiled himself the father of the fatherless, and the widow's God: and therefore when we undertake those humane and kind offices, we may with more propriety than in any other sphere, consider ourselves. as acting the glorious part of God's deputies, and as stewards of the divine grace and goodness here below.

If we be obliged to contribute of our substance: to the relief of the distressed, much more is it incumbent upon us not to withhold our labour and our interest, in the prosecution of proper schemes for their relief. And the method in which it is proposed to relieve the distressed persons we have now under consideration is one that is quite free from all the difficulties which lie in the way of common charities (though the objections to common charities have no weight in this particular case) and a method which is, in all cases, the most eligible, when it can be pursued with effect; namely, to put those persons whose circumstances

are distressing, or liable to be so, in the way of relieving themselves. It is to exert our humanity in the way of encouraging, if not industry, at least frugality.

This, consequently, is a method which will relieve the minds of the distressed of a burthen which is often less tolerable than most kinds of calamity, namely, the sense of dependence and obligation. It may be a false kind of delicacy which makes some persons so extremely sensible upon these occasions; but it is a sensibility which only the most amiable and deserving persons are subject to; and there is certainly a peculiar propriety in attending to this circumstance in the case before

us.

Who are, generally, the unhappy widows whose case we are now considering, but persons who have been brought up in easy and genteel circumstances, and whose small fortunes, joined to the income of their husbands, and managed with great frugality, have been just sufficient to bring up a family in that decent and reputable manner, in which a regard to their station in life, and to the congregations in whose service their husbands were engaged, are universally acknowledged to require. These unhappy persons, therefore, are reduced a

once,

once, upon the death of their husbands, and the great reduction, if not total ceasing of their incomes (which is the immediate consequence of that event) to one of the most distressing situations that can occur in human life.

Here is to be seen the deepest affliction for the loss of that companion and friend for whose sake they had sacrificed perhaps better prospects, and situations in which it would have been more in their power to support themselves and families in the like circumstances; the greatest indigence, to which they have never been accustomed, with which they are therefore wholly unprepared to encounter, and which, in their time of life, they are utterly incapable of remedying; and all this joined with that generosity of sentiment, inspired by their education, and cherished by the company and acquaintance they have always kept up, to which rereljef itself is distressing, unless conferred with the greatest prudence and delicacy.

To augment the distress of these disconsolate widows, they see nothing before them but a number of children educated in the same decent and frugal manner in which their parents were obliged to live, with expectations (if they be of an age capable of having any) almost unavoidably above their

rank

rank and fortune, wholly unprovided or, and des titute, in a great measure, of their father's interest and friendships, on which were founded all their expectations of being introduced with. tolerable: prospects into the world..

Here then, my brethren, are the worthiest ob.. jects of charity, and here is the most unexception. able and desirable method of bestowing it; so that no circumstance seems wanting to engage every benevolent and public-spirited person to join heartily in a scheme which is calculated for so excel lent a purpose..

Consider, my brethren, how many worthy per.. sons are anxious about the prudence and the vigour of your present resolutions; with what tender and heart-piercing concern the worthy and pious parent regards the wife of his bosom, and the chil dren of his love, when he feels the symptoms of his own declining nature, and dreads to communicate the alarming intelligence; and how earnestly he wishes it may be in his power to do something, while living, which, when he is dead, may be the means of providing a small substitute for the fruit. of his present labours; when alas, no substitute can be provided for himself, for his advice, his instructions, his consolations, the charms of his conversation,