State after the pattern of that divine man, Jesus--how different it would be from this in spirit and in form! Taking all this whole State into account, things, on the whole, are better here, than in any similar population, after all these evils. I think there can be no doubt of that; better now, on the whole, than ever before. A day's work will produce a greater quantity of needful things than hitherto. So the number of little ones that perish is smaller than heretofore, in proportion to the whole mass. I do not believe the world can show such examples of public charity as this city has afforded in the last fifty years. Alas! we want the justice which prevents causes no less than the charity which palliates effects. yet, the unnatural disparity in man's condition: bloated opulence and starving penury in the same street! See the pauperism, want, licentiousness, intemperance and crime, in the midst of us; see the havoc made of woman; see the poor deserted by their elder brother, while it is their sweat which enriches your ground, builds your railroads, and piles up your costly houses. The tall gallows stands in the back-ground of society, overlooking it all; where it should be the blessed gospel of the living God. See Then What we want to remove the cause of all this is the application of Christianity to social life. Nothing less will do the work. Each of us can help forward that by doing the part which falls in his way. Christianity, like the eagle's flight, begins at home. We can go further, and do something for each of these classes of little ones. we shall help others do the same. Some we may encourage to practical Christianity by our example; some we may perhaps shame. Still more, we can ourselves be pure, manly, Christian; each of us that, in heart and life. We can build up a company of such, men of perpetual growth. Then we shall be ready not only for this special work now before us, to palliate effects, but for every Christian and manly duty when it comes. Then, if ever some scheme is offered which is nobler and yet more Christian than what we now behold, it will find us booted, and girded, and road-ready. I look to you to do something in this matter. You are many; most of you are young. I look to you to set an example of a noble life, human, clean, and Christian, not debasing these little ones, but lifting them up. Will you cause them to perish; you? I know you will not. Will you let them perish? I cannot believe it. Will you not prevent their perishing? Nothing less is your duty. Some men say they will do nothing to help liberate the slave, because he is far off, and "our mission is silence!" Well-here are sufferers in a nearer need. Do you say, I can do but little to Christianize society! Very well, do that little, and see if it does not amount to much, and bring its own blessing-the thought that you have given a cup of cold water to one of the little ones. Did not Jesus say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me?" Since last we met, one of our number* has taken that step in life commonly called death. He was deeply interested and active in the movement for the perishing classes of men. After his spirit had passed on, a woman whom he had rescued, and her children with her, from intemperance and ruin, came and laid her hand on that cold forehead whence the kindly soul had fled, and mourning that her failures had often grieved his heart before, vowed solemnly to keep steadfast for ever, and go back to evil ways no more! Who would not wish his forehead. the altar for such a vow? what nobler monument to a good man's memory! The blessing of those ready to perish fell on him. If his hand cannot help us, his example may. *Nathaniel F. Thayer, aged 29. 60 A SERMON OF THE III. DANGEROUS CLASSES IN SOCIETY.-PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON "If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?"-MATTHEW Xviii. 12. WE are first babies, then children, then youths, then men. It is so with the nation; so with mankind. The human race started with no culture, no religion, no morals, even no manners, having only desires and faculties within, and the world without. Now we have attained much more. But it has taken many centuries for mankind to pass from primeval barbarism to the present stage of comfort, science, civilization, and refinement. It has been the work of two hundred generations; perhaps of more. But each new child is born at the foot of the ladder, as much as the first child; with only desires and faculties. He may have a better physical organization than the first child-he certainly has better teachers: but he, in like manner, is born with no culture, no religion, no morals, even with no manners; born into them, not with them; born bare of these things and naked as the first child. He must himself toil up the ladder which mankind have been so long in constructing and climbing up. To attain the present civilization he must pass over every point which the race passed through. The child of the civilized man, born with a good organization and under favourable circumstances, can do this rapidly, and in thirty or forty years attains the height of development which it took the whole human race sixty centuries or more to arrive at. He has the aid of past experience and the examples of noble men; he travels a road already smooth and beaten. The world's cultivation, so slowly and painfully achieved, helps civilize him. He may then go further on, and cultivate himself; may transcend the development of mankind, adding new rounds to the ladder. So doing he aids future children, who will one day climb above his head, he possibly crying against them, that they climb only to fall, and thereby sweep off him and all below; that no new rounds can be added to the old ladder. Still, after all the helps which our fathers have provided, every future child must go through the same points which we and our predecessors passed through, only more swiftly. Every boy has his animal period, when he can only eat and sleep, intelligence slowly dawning on his mind. Then comes his savage period, when he knows nothing of rights, when all thine is mine to him, if he can get it. Then comes his barbarous period, when he is ignorant and dislikes to learn; study and restraint are irksome. He hates the school, disobeys his mother; has reverence for nobody. Nothing is sacred to him-no time, nor place, nor person. He would grow up wild. The greater part of children travel beyond this stage. The unbearable boy becomes a tolerable youth; then a powerful man. He loves his duty; outstrips the men that once led him so unwilling and reluctant, and will set hard lessons for his grandsire, which that grandsire, perhaps, will not learn. The young learns of the old, mounts the ladder they mounted and the ladder they made. The reverse is seldom true, that the old climbs the ladder which the young have made, and over that storms new heights. Now and then you see it, but such are extraordinary and marvellous men. In the old story, Saturn did not take pains to understand his children, nor learn thereof; he only devoured them up, till some outgrew and overmastered him. Did the generation that is passing from the stage ever comprehend and fairly judge the new generation coming on? In the world, the barbarian passes on and becomes the civilized, then the enlightened. In the physical process of growth from the baby to the man, there is no direct intervention of the will. Therefore the process goes on regularly, and we do not see abortive men who have advanced in years, but stopped growth in their babyhood, or boyhood. But as the will is the soul of personality, so to say, the heart of intellect, morals, and religion, so the force thereof may promote, retard, disturb, and perhaps for a time completely arrest the progress of intellectual, moral, and religious growth. Still more, this spiritual development of men is hindered or promoted by subtle causes hitherto little appreciated. Hence, by reason of these outward or internal hinderances, you find persons and classes of men who do not attain the average culture of mankind, but stop at some lower stage of this spiritual development, or else loiter behind the rest. You even find whole nations whose progress is so slow, that they need the continual aid of the more civilized to quicken their growth. Outward circumstances have a powerful influence on this development. If a single class in a nation lingers behind the rest, the cause thereof will commonly be found in some outward hinderance. They move in a resisting medium, and therefore with abated speed. No one expects the same progress from a Russian serf and a free man of New England. I do not deny that in the case of some men personal will is doubtless the disturbing force. I am not now to go beyond that fact, and inquire how the will became as it is. Here is a man who, from whatever cause, is bodily ill-born, with defective organs. He stops in the animal period; is incapable of any considerable degree of development, intellectual, moral, or religious. The defect is in his body. Others disturbed by more occult causes do not attain their proper growth. This man wishes to stop in his savage period, he would be a freebooter, a privateer against society, having universal letters of marque and reprisal; a perpetual Arab, his rule is to get what he can, as he will and where he pleases, to keep what he gets. Another stops at the barbarous age. He is lazy and will not work, others must bear his share of the general burden of mankind. He claims letters patent to make all men serve him. not only indolent, constitutionally lazy, but lazy, consciously and wilfully idle. He will not work, but in one form or another will beg or steal. Yet a fourth stops in the half-civilized period. He will work with his hands, but no more. He cannot discover; he will not study to He is |