all the gracious fruits and the saving influences which proceed from this religion. We bless Him for the new spirit which it has spread abroad in this sinful world, for the lofty principles by which it strengthens the will of man, and for the noble deeds to which it has given birth. We bless Him for all the benevolent institutions which He has started into being, in all the fields of its victory and triumph. We bless Him for all the Christian houses, hospitals, homes for little orphan children, refuges, reformatories, houses of mercy, and asylums, into which have been gathered the sick and the emaciated all over the globe, in all the ages of the Faith. We bless Him for all the generous enterprises which the Christian religion has started into being for the bodily relief and the temporal welfare of our fellow-creature. We bless Him for all the philanthropic schemes by which the drunkard is made sober and saved, the outcast Magdalen is made pure in both body and soul, the poor slave is emancipated and becomes a man, the leper is cared for, and his sorrow and desolation mitigated, the prisoner is blessed, the sailor rescued, and the crippled and the diseased are cured.
And while indeed "holding the Head," even the Lord Jesus, as the fountain of all bodily as well as all spiritual good to man, we bless God, also, for all the noble men and women who in all the ages of Christianity have drank in fully the spirit of our common Master, and have gone about among widows and orphans, among the sick and the diseased, the blind, the lame, and the deaf, imitating the Lord's example, "doing good to men." Blessed and merciful spirits!
