It goes

and hedges. It looks after the greatest sufferers. for the lost sheep into the wilderness far away. No password is demanded at the door of its heart. To be unfortunate, and to bear the image of God, gives precedence over all other claims in the eyes of that charity which has been learned in the school of Christ.

We may trust that as Christianity prevails, as the Holy Spirit is poured out, when we get more religion and love the Lord better-when we truly give ourselves to the Lord, and practice our duties in accordance with the will of God, some antidote may be found for this gigantic evil, for this incubus on the Church, this strange graft on our poor, humble, loving, poverty-honoring Christianity.

Still more effectually has Christianity provided for the needy, in the terrific announcement it makes to every man that he is not, in the sight of God, the owner of what he possesses, but only a trustee, a steward, held by-and-by to a stern reckoning for his administration of the trust. It admits and defends his ownership in regard to all other men. Religion is no agrarian-no leveler. It holds sacred the rich man's rights. It forbids the most needy beggar to desire, much more to disturb his possessions. I think the true spirit of Christianity would have us to respect and honor the man whom God has deemed worthy of such a trust. But while the rich man is hedged around by so many safeguards and guarantees against all human interference, he is held to a most urgent and startling accountability to Heaven. This is a trite, common truth-every body knows it; but yet it is a truth that may, if any in the Bible will make men listen and tremble, be relied upon for the performance of that office.

It is all the same whether he have one talent, or three, or five, or ten. Not a farthing is his to squander upon his lusts, not a farthing to hoard to the endamagement of any one of the sons of men. The principle is all God's-the in

crease is his. Upon every dollar of his accumulation, in whatever protean form it finds investment, are enstamped the image and superscription of Jehovah. Over every door of entrance to his sumptuous mansion on the decorated walls of his gay saloons, is broadly inscribed, as with the hand of a man, "Not thine, but God's." The dainty viands that oppress his table have a voice that pleads eloquently for the poor; and that sentence from the pen of inspiration, “clothe the naked," may be read by the eye of faith, embroidered upon all his graceful drapery and precious garments. O! it is not a light thing to be intrusted with riches-to be the steward of an impartial, omnipresent, inexorably just God. Well did our Savior exclaim, How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven!" Methinks he might also have said, how honorably, how triumphantly shall he get there, how abundant the entrance that shall be administered to him-amid what applauses, what blessings shall he rise to his last resting-place, provided only he has grace to consecrate his all to Christ, and make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, who shall be ready, when he fails below, to receive him into everlasting habitations. Let him fully comprehend his mission; let him look out from the elevation on which the blessing of divine Providence has placed him, and see what good may be achieved, what miseries alleviated, what light diffused, what institutions may be established or sustained, to purify, to raise up, to illuminate, to comfort our depraved, degraded, dark, and suffering race; and I know not who may sow so abundantly for a glorious harvest. He may make such an outlay of his earthly treasure as shall produce to him in this world a hundred-fold more of satisfaction than the greatest wealth, selfishly spent or hoarded, can yield its proprietor, and "in the world to come life everlasting." But we must add, our Savior thought it was needful to announce that the rich man-opulent, but not charitable; ever gathering, but not scattering abroad—

the rich man, trusting in his riches, but putting no trust in God's law, shall hardly enter into the kingdom. It is a most responsible function, that of acting as God's almoner in this populous, perishing, poverty-stricken world. It is no sinecure, for it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful. To whom much is given, of him much shall be required. This oppressive responsibility no considerate man, chiefly intent on saving his soul, would much covet, though a good man may rejoice with trembling at the honor done him, in being made the depositary of so high and fruitful a trust. That the responsibility is not too stringent, we have good proof in the fact that the beneficent results are not, after all, over-plenteous. Yet we must admit that, in this great divine law, which holds every man accountable to God for the use he makes of every dollar, is a main resource and dependence for the world's distresses. The claims of charity are laid even now, and under the divinest sanctions, not literally at the rich man's gate, but at the door of his conscience. There are few who can always pass by on the other side. It must sometimes be felt that God is a spectator in this business. The connection between such a trust and the judgment-seat of Christ is not so shadowy and remote that man can continue always to overlook it. Here, then, is the storehouse and strong-hold of charity. As long as the land prospers, and either the Church or the world retains some fear of God, the streams of beneficence shall never become dry. In proportion as pure religion flourishes will the revenues of charity be multiplied from the same sources.

To every sincere Christian, the Gospel offers another motive to charity more powerful than the one just discussed, or any other addressed merely to his sense of religious or social obligation. Our adorable Savior has been pleased to inculcate this virtue with an emphasis and repetition quite unexampled in the New Testament. While he offers salvation to all in the Gospel which he came to promulgate on earth, he sig

nalizes with special favor the exercise of benevolence toward the ignorant, the poor, the down-trodden. He provides for all. The great ones of the earth have nothing to fear from him if they do their duty, but they whom he most cares for are the poor. The favorites of this genial system of mercy and of eternal love are the poor.

A cup of cold water, given in the right spirit, is promised a heavenly reward. "To visit the widow and the fatherless, and to live unspotted from the world," is a comprehensive formula that contains the sum and substance of pure religion. As the essential means of cultivating virtues of such transcendent excellence, Jesus did not threaten, but he promised his disciples, as an unfailing privilege, that the poor they should always have with them. Finally, the decisions of the last day are to turn upon the question of our practical benevolence. To have ministered to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, will be the righteous man's passport into the abodes of bliss, while the want of such virtue will constitute the ground of condemnation to the lost. In reckoning with his people, Christ assumes the poor man's obligations, and acknowledges every benefaction as conferred upon himself. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. He substitutes himself in the poor man's place. He regards himself as the beneficiary, and thus calls upon each true disciple to dispense his charities with such a grateful liberality and cordial good will as might actuate him, if it were made possible for him, to bestow some boon upon the crucified Redeemer himself. Thus is the most powerful motive known to the Christian economy enlisted on the side of charity; and Christ calls upon every sincere, loyal disciple to engage in doing good to the poor, by all their love and obligation to his own person and cause. In this all-powerful motive is found an ample remedy for the insufficiency of other motives Strong sympathy with human wants is a rare endowment,

but gratitude to Christ pervades and warms all Christian hearts. Not to love and to be thankful is to be no Christian at all. Pity for the poor acts feebly and uncertainly. This sympathy with Christ, the true beneficiary, in the view of the Gospel, is the controlling sentiment of all pious hearts, and that at all times. Mere natural sympathy is repelled and disgusted by the insensibility, and ingratitude, and debasement of the beneficiary; but upon this new and higher ground of action we have nothing to do with these, but our outlay of charity is to be proportioned to Christ's worthiness and our obligations to him. Here, too, we find a motive potent enough to overawe selfishness. This, we have seen, is commonly too strong for mere sympathy, which it fairly worries out of its enterprises. But love to Christ is stronger than even this master passion, which it overrules and gradually undermines in all regenerate souls.

Charity conducted on this evangelical principle becomes, not only a duty, but a privilege and discipline, adapted to all Christians, not to a few of special temperament and large means. All are under the same obligation to render the homage of duty and thankfulness to the adorable Savior, and all, the poor perhaps equally with the rich, need the moral culture imparted by the practice of active, habitual charity. The man who has a hundred dollars a year, no less than he who has one or ten thousand, is in danger of loving his money too well, and of falling into the deadly sin of covetousness. Hence the wisdom and necessity of the Christian maxim which enjoins upon all the duty of making material sacrifices for Christ's sake. This is the only revealed method of counteracting and mortifying that spirit of selfishness so fatal to piety. The love of God and the love of the world, Christ and covetousness, are antagonists that perpetually struggle for the mastery in the soul of even many believers, and the poor, no less than the rich man, is called upon, "according to what he hath," to engage in a sphere of activities so em