than that which at once enlightens ignorance and relieves poverty, that implants virtue in the mind, and wards off the blasts of indigence that might destroy it in the bloom. Such is the charity of which an opportunity is now offered; charity by which those who would probably, without assistance, be the burdens or terrours of the community, by growing up in idleness and vice, are enabled to support themselves by useful employments, and glorify God by reasonable service.
Such are the general motives which the religion of Jesus affords to the general exercise of charity, and such are the particular motives for our laying hold of the opportunity which providence has this day put into our power for the practice of it; motives, no less than the hope of everlasting happiness, and the fear of punishment which shall never end. Such incitements are surely sufficient to quicken the slowest, and animate the coldest; and if there can be imagined any place in which they must be more eminently prevalent, it must be the place[1] where we now reside. The numerous frequenters of this place constitute a mixed assemblage of the happy and the miserable. Part of this audience has resorted hither to alleviate the miseries of sickness, and part to divert the satiety of pleasure; part because they are disabled, by diseases, to prosecute the employment of their station, and part because their station has allotted them, in their own opinion, no other business than to pursue their pleasures. Part have exhausted the medicines, and part have worn out the delights of every other place; and these contrary conditions are so mingled together, that in few places are the miseries of life so severely felt, or its pleasures more luxuriously enjoyed.
To each of these states of life may the precepts of charity be enforced with eminent propriety, and unanswerable arguments. Those whose only complaint is a surfeit of felicity, and whose fearless and confident gaiety brings
- ↑ Bath.
