Much may be done to promote temperance; much more, I fear, than is likely to be done; that is plainly the duty of society. Intemperance is bad enough with the comfortable and the rich; with the poor it is ruin sheer, blank and swift ruin. The example of the rich, of the comfortable, goes down there like lightning, to shatter, to blast, and to burn. It is marvellous, that in Christian Boston, men of wealth, and so above the temptation which lurks behind a dollar, men of character otherwise thought to be elevated, can yet continue a traffic which leads to the ruin and slow butchery of such masses of men. I know not what can be done by means of the public law. I do know what can be done by private self-denial, by private diligence. Something also may be done to promote religion amongst the poor, at least something to make it practicable for a poor man to come to church on Sunday, with his fellow-creatures who are not miserable—and to hear the best things that the ablest men in the church have to offer. We are very demo cratic in our State, not at all so in our church. In this matter the Catholics put us quite to shame. If, as some men still believe, it be a manly calling and a noble, to preach Christianity, then to preach it to men who stand in the worst and most dangerous positions in society; to take the highest truths of human consciousness, the loftiest philosophy, the noblest piety, and bring them down into the daily life of poor men, rude men, men obscure, unfriended, ready to perish; surely this is the noblest part of that calling, and demands the noblest gifts, the fairest and the largest culture, the loftiest powers. It is no hard thing to reason with reasoning men, and be intelligible to the intelligent; to talk acceptably and even movingly to scholars and men well read, is no hard thing if you are yourself well read and a scholar. But to be intelligible to the ignorant, to reason with men who reason not, to speak acceptably and movingly with such men, to inspire them with wisdom, with goodness and with piety, to that is the task only for some men of rare genius who can stride over the great gulf betwixt the thrones of creative power, and the humble positions of men ignorant, poor and forgot! Yet such men there are, and here is their work. Something can be done for the children of the poor promote their education, to find them employment, to snatch their little ones from underneath the feet of that grim Poverty. It is not less than awful, to think while there are more children born in Boston of Catholic parents than of Protestant, that yet more than three fifths thereof die before the sun of their fifth year shines on their luckless heads. I thank God that thus they die. If there be not wisdom enough in society, nor enough of justice there to save them from their future long-protracted suffering, then I thank God that Death comes down betimes, and moistens his sickle while his crop is green. I pity not the miserable babes who fall early before that merciful arm of Death. They are at rest. Poverty cannot touch them. Let the mothers who bore them rejoice, but weep only for those that are left-left to ignorance, to misery, to intemperance, to vice that I shall not name; left to the mercies of the jail, and perhaps the gallows at the last. Yet Boston is a Christian city and it is eighteen hundred years since one great Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost! I see not what more can be done directly, and I see not why these things should not be done. Still some will suffer the idle, the lazy, the proud who will not work, the careless who will voluntarily waste their time, their strength, or their goods-they must suffer, they ought to suffer. Want is the only schoolmaster to teach them industry and thrift. Such as are merely unable, who are poor not by their fault we do wrong to let them suffer; we do wickedly to leave them to perish. The little children who survive are they to be left to become barbarians in the midst of our civilization? Want is not an absolutely needful thing, but very needful for the present distress, to teach us industry, economy, thrift and its creative arts. There is nature the whole material world-waiting to serve. "What would you have thereof?” says God. "Pay for it and take it, as you will; only pay as you go!" There are hands to work, heads to think; strong hands, hard heads. God is an economist: He economizes suffering; there is never too much of it in the world for the purpose it is to serve, though it often falls where it should not fall. It is here to teach us industry, thrift, justice. It will be here no more when we have learned its lesson. Want is here on sufferance; misery on sufferance; and mankind can eject them if we will. Poverty, like all evils, is amenable to suppression. we will. Can we not end this poverty-the misery and crime it brings? No, not to-day. Can we not lessen it? Soon as Think how much ability there is in this town, cool, far-sighted talent. If some of the ablest men directed their thoughts to the reform of this evil, how much might be done in a single generation; and in a century what could not they do in a hundred years? What better work is there for able men? I would have it written on my tombstone: "This man had but little wit, and less fame, yet he helped remove the causes of poverty, making men better off and better," rather by far than this: "Here lies a great man; he had a great place in the world, and great power, and great fame, and made nothing of it, leaving the world no better for his stay therein, and no man better off." After all the special efforts to remove poverty, the great work is to be done by the general advance of mankind. We shall outgrow this as cannibalism, butchery of captives, war for plunder, and other kindred miseries have been outgrown. God has general remedies in abundance, but few specific. Something will be done by diffusing throughout the community principles and habits of economy, industry, temperance; by diffusing ideas of justice, sentiments of brotherly love, sentiments and ideas of religion. I hope every thing from that the noiseless and steady progress of Christianity; the snow melts, not by sun-light, or that alone, but as the whole air becomes warm. You may in cold weather melt away a little before your own door, but that makes little difference till the general temperature rises. Still while the air is getting warm, you facilitate the process by breaking up the obdurate masses of ice and putting them where the sun shines with direct and unimpeded light. So must we do with poverty. It is only a little that any of us can do - for any thing. Still we can do a little; we can each do something towards raising the general tone of society: first, by each man raising himself; by industry, economy, charity, justice, piety; by a noble life. So doing, we raise the moral temperature of the whole world, and just in proportion thereto. Next, by helping those who come in our way; nay, by going out of our way to help them. In each of these modes, it is our duty to work. To a certain extent each man is his brother's keeper. Of the powers we possess we are but trustees under Providence, to use them for the benefit of men, and render continually an account of our stewardship to God. Each man can do a little directly to help convince the world of its wrong, a little in the way of temporizing charity, a little in the way of remedial justice; so doing, he works with God, and God works with him. X. PREACHED AT A SERMON OF THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. I SAMUEL VII. 12. HITHERTO HATH THE LORD HELPED US. A MAN who has only the spirit of his age can easily be a popular man; if he have it in an eminent degree, he must be a popular man in it: he has its hopes and its fears; his trumpet gives a certain and well known sound; his counsel is readily appreciated; the majority is on his side. But he cannot be a wise magistrate, a just judge, a competent critic, or a profitable preacher. A man who has only the spirit of a former age can be none of these four things; and not even a popular man. He remembers when he ought to forecast, and compares when he ought to act; he cannot appreciate the age he lives in, nor have a fellow-feeling with it. He may easily obtain the pity of his age, not its sympathy or its confidence. The man who has the spirit of his own, and also that of some future age, is alone capable of becoming a wise magistrate, a just judge, a competent critic, and a profitable preacher. Such a man looks on passing events somewhat as the future historian will do, and sees them in their proportions, not distorted; sees them in their connection with great general laws, and judges of the falling rain not merely by the bonnets it may spoil and the |