to be damned if the humblest Christian fails in his duty. The onward movement of the good cause loses a portion of its momentum if a single heart or a single hand be withdrawn from the work. Every twinkling star gives its ray to the glories of a brilliant night: so let every converted soul indulge in the noble ambition of holding forth the word of life. Let him soar bravely up to his place in the Gospel firmament. Let him give out the light that is in him. Let him become a luminary, and pour his borrowed beams all around him upon the darkness of this world. V. THE GOSPEL THE BASIS OF CHARITY.* And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God.-2 Cor., viii., 5. THIS text refers to a transaction very honorable to the infant churches of Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor. Judea, in common with some other parts of the Roman empire, had been visited by dearth and consequent scarcity. In such a calamity the persecuted Christians were likely to be special sufferers, deprived as they were of the sympathy, and exposed to the violent enmity of their Jewish countrymen, as well as of the Roman government. Under these circumstances, the disciples of Christ, in several of the neighboring countries, resolved to send them pecuniary assistance. More than a year had elapsed since these charitable collections were commenced, and the apostle Paul, who had been the prime mover in the enterprise, now desired to see the business completed, and the amount contributed sent to the sufferers. He refers, in terms of the highest commendation, to the liberality that had been displayed. The young churches had * Preached on Sunday, December 17th, 1848, on the Anniversary of the Youths' Missionary Society of the Vestry Street Church. quite exceeded his highest anticipations, both in the sum contributed and in the spirit with which they had given. Our text announces the secret of this gratifying success. These liberal brethren, better than the apostle's most sanguine hopes, in the first place gave their own selves unto the Lord, and then to this good work of charity, according to the will of God. Here is disclosed the true ground of all efficient charity. It is a religious obligation resting on the will of God. Humane feelings, or sympathy with the woes of the unfortunate, are, on various accounts, wholly inadequate as motives to beneficence. Men are very unequally, as well as sparingly, endowed with sympathy. Some find a positive gratification in the contemplation of suffering, and the exhibitions of cruelty; while the large majority look with singular indifference and apathy upon all the forms of distress and misfortune that do not infringe upon their own enjoyments, or invade the narrow circle of their own relatives and familiars. Of those who are most liberally endowed with the kindly emotions of pity, few acknowledge in the transient sentiment any authoritative call to action. They proceed no farther than to give some moderate indulgence to so creditable a feeling, and some words of condolence, or some tears to the sufferer; a method of dealing with these tender emotions most calculated to harden the heart and dry up the fountains of sensibility; for it is a fundamental law of our being, that the sympathy which does not find an outlet through some channel of beneficent action flows back upon its sources, and congeals about the well-springs of humanity and compassion. Without dwelling farther upon this view of the subject, we are also to consider that charity, not acting on Christian principle, is liable to be disturbed and counteracted by selfishness, the strongest and most universal of human propensities. What we give to others, either in effort or money, we subtract from our own means of enjoyment or aggrandizement, and self-love is likely to watch over such disbursements with a vigilance and strict economy little favorable to the claims of suffering humanity. In this unequal struggle between sympathy and covetousness-between one of the feeblest impulses and the most powerful of our passions-the final issue can not be doubtful. In such conflicts the worse principle is sure to obtain the mastery, favored as it always is by the conditions which human depravity imposes upon our efforts toward a virtuous life. It is another drawback upon charities which have no sounder basis than mere human instincts, that these emotions can be effectually awakened in favor of such objects only as are contiguous or near to us, and such as appeal strongly to our sensitive nature, while invisible or distant sufferings, and moral wants, really the most urgent of any known to humanity, make but a feeble impression, or, what is more usual, are wholly overlooked. The tender sensibilities of our nature instinctively shrink away from communion with painful or disgusting scenes, while poverty, suffering, ignorance, vice, the most fit and needy objects of charity, as naturally fly the presence of opulence, comfort, and refinement. The destitute poor are to be found by those who have the nerve to look for them in hovels and garrets. Ignorant, rude vulgarity herds with its like in by-ways, while he who would rescue the wretched inebriate from the ruin that impends over him must direct his feet to dark back rooms and reeking cellars. There, and not in sunlit apartments, that front upon the thoroughfares of respectable business and honest citizens, may he find the gross appetite that quaffs the inebriating bowl and the profounder guilt that fills it. This mutual, strong repulsion between the fit objects for philanthropic effort and the humane feelings to which they appeal for succor, tends naturally to subvert the proper ends of charity, and does unquestionably exclude from the field of beneficent ef forts a multitude of persons by no means deficient in the endowments of a constitutional sympathy. It is no less true that the misfortunes and vices which interpose this great barrier between these victims and the compassion of their fellow-men have, in many instances, a direct tendency to degrade and deprave the sufferer, till the contemplation of his character and condition provokes indignation and disgust rather than sympathy. Ignorance, and poverty, and disease, tend of themselves, in the absence of religious principle, to vulgarize the sentiments and lower the dignity of a human being; and when the results and concomitants of low vices and gross habits, as they often are, they lose their power to awaken pity, which is wont to reserve its tears for innocent, or, at the least, for interesting sufferers. Even a few instances of ingratitude, the most common fault of unworthy beneficiaries, are enough to freeze up the charity which springs from mere natural sympathy. But the insufficiency of sympathetic feeling as the motive and basis of active charity is yet more apparent in the narrowness of its sphere of operation. Pity is moved by the sight or the story of actual or apprehended suffering, by physical wants, by sickness, by bereavements and misfortunes, while it takes no cognizance of that large class of far more pressing evils which are unattended by bodily or mental pain. It is a truth familiar to all, that the victims of many kinds and degrees of misfortune and suffering become insensible by use and habit. The sensibilities become hardened-the organs grow indurated. Even hunger, and thirst, and exposure, and poverty are constantly losing their power to annoy the sufferer, who finds, at least, a partial protection in the discipline of patience and submission to which he is subjected. It is thus that we become reconciled to the ills of our fellowcreatures. Our sympathies, like their susceptibilities, gradually lose their edge and vivacity. They become accustomed to endure, with diminished sensibility to pain and inconven ience we to look on with slight emotion or absolute indiffer ence. But by far the larger portion of the ills of humanity, and those which appeal most strongly to benevolent interference, are quite unattended with physical or mental suffering. The victims are well content with their condition, and would be loth to accept the boon which charity offers. They do not ask our interference. They repel our offers of help. They esteem it no mercy that we come into the secret place of their sorrows. Intemperance, in its earlier stages, carries its devotees through successive scenes of exhilaration and festive delights, that often awaken envy rather than pity. The hereditary bondman, bereft as he is of the most precious immunities of our common humanity, often knows little of physical ills, and not unfrequently exhibits such indubitable evidence of thoughtless contentment as quite robs mere physical sympathy of its vocation. So, also, the children of vice, or ignorance, or orphanage accustomed to neglect and insubordination to follow no law but impulse, and to seek associations and morality in the streets, acquire a keen relish for the sort of life they lead. Their tastes and habits are in harmony with their condition. They love their hopeless lot, and submit reluctantly to the guiding hand that volunteers to rescue them from impending ruin. In cases of this sort, there is no physical suffering such as is most potent to evoke strong sympathy and conciliate the charitable offices which are wont to originate in such a source. Most of all, the stranger to Christ, the decent man well to do in the world, at ease in his possessions, with a seared conscience and a hard heart, the rejecter of Christ, or he who has never heard the name of Christ as a Savior-most of all does he spurn the message of mercy with which Jesus bids us approach him. Now it is difficult, under circumstances like these, to work with any degree of earnestness or success. We can hardly, in the presence of so much contentment and |