repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that they may find spiritual benefit and comfort. It is also to be incumbent upon them to seek out and relieve, to the utmost extent of their power, all persons afflicted in mind, body, or estate, of every party and nation, without distinction, who may be in want of assistance, temporal or spiritual. It is also, in a particular manner, to be their duty to attend punctually the work-house, bettering-house, and hospital every Sunday, to instruct, exhort, and comfort the numerous sick of every description in their several wards, and then catechise and teach the poor orphan children.

VII. The visiting committee is to meet every Sunday morning, at nine o'clock, when they are to receive their appointments from the president, and depart, in small bodies, to search for or visit their suitable objects of relief.

VIII. Women as well as men are to be admitted as subscribers, and religious women, on particular occasions of relieving females, to form part of the visiting committee; and the transactions of the society are at all times to be open for the investigation of the members.

IX. Members recommending objects of distress are to bring or send their names, places of abode, and other circumstances, in writing, that a visiter or visiters may be appointed and prepared to visit them.

X. Each of the subscribers is to pay two cents per week, being twenty-six cents a quarter, or more, as his circumstances and sense of duty may direct him. These sums are to be deposited in the hands of the treasurer, together with all donations from non-subscribers, collections, &c.

XI. Every member is to be at liberty, after giving previ. ous notice, to withdraw from the society, without assigning

any reason.

The committee of visiters consisted of twelve [?] besides the president, of whom five made a quorum for ordinary business. In relieving the needy they were to prefer persons in the greatest distress.

The institution continued for three years, and effected much good. Hundreds of the sons and daughters of afflic tion were every Sunday visited and relieved.

"A NEW law I leave you," says our dear and blessed Redeemer, "that you love one another." St. John also asserts, that "if we say we love God, and hate our brethren, we are liars;" again, Christ commands us to "be merciful, as our heavenly Father is merciful." But the most beautiful, appropriate, and conclusive passage of scripture which I can select to prove the execration in which the unfeeling devotee is held by the glorious Saviour, is the parable of the cruel servant, Matt. xviii. How many professors of religion would pass by a child of affliction, when going to meeting, without feeling a particle of pity warming their frozen hearts, or a motion of philanthropy moving their inactive hands; yet, if they neglect attending their social or sacramental meetings, they would feel conscious criminality; but alas! no sentiments of regret or condemnation do they even anticipate for the neglect of the duties of humanity. We find, by investigating the actions of most men, that blind self-love is the main-spring of not only all their actions, but even all their virtues.

Pure patriotism inspires the citizen to prefer the public good to his own private interest, from the sole love of his country. In like manner pure philanthropy will stimulate us to promote the good of our neighbour, though it may in some measure be detrimental to self, merely and purely from the force of our affection for him.

How many men can love nothing but what has, either negatively or positively, some reference to themselves. If the amiable virtue under consideration is not admired for its intrinsic excellence, it will not be practised by man for the benefit of his neighbours. Nor will they do good from the pure love of good. Philanthropy, above all other virtues, is amiable for itself; because, through its influence alone, we are capacitated to fulfil that golden rule, " As you would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." If we love it only for the good it may do us, we are not philanthropic, but rather politic. As it is unjust to love justice for the sake of reward, so, on the other hand, it is hypocrisy to love benevolence only for the advantages it may procure us.

Selfishness, or self-love, intervenes in our intercourse with God as well as men. Many, very many of what are called

exemplary Christians, are too prone to love the Almighty Parent of good only for the finite participation of his benefits, as the Jews followed Christ for the loaves and fishes. It is of the first importance that men make a distinction in the present case. By neglecting this precaution, many, I doubt not, have gone to hell, when they expected they were going direct to heaven; especially those who, to appearance, repented and got converted on a dying bed, or under the gallows. A drowning man, if he cannot grasp a plank, will catch at a straw in his dying moments. We should not only love the Divine character for what he does for us, but for what he is in himself. For instance, we will suppose a great, a good, and powerful earthly monarch in our presence spreads blessings and favours around him; he is the orphan's father, the widow's guardian, and the stranger's friend; he is for ever blessing and for ever blessed; in short, he is a true philanthropist; though I should not, in any sense, participate the plenitude of his liberality, yet surely I could not help admiring his bounty and loving his person, as well as revering his character. But if I were an object of his solicitude, and enjoyed his benedictions, my gratitude and veneration would be changed to the most refined affection. Wherefore, to love the immutable beneficence of Jehovah for its immense totality, is to love him for what we know of him, as well as what we feel of him. And this unsullied love, which I fear few know or care any thing about, dilates, elevates, transports, and gives a kind of immensity to the soul, the magnitude, plenitude, and purity of which, language is not sufficiently copious to depicture. Where pure philanthropy is admitted to influence the actions of men, they perform noble deeds from noble motives; real pleasure accompanies them-glory and immortality is before them; but virtue, or the honour of God and happiness of man, is alone their object: finally, they do good for the sole love of good, and in so doing they aim at resembling God; consequently they please him, while he looks and sees his image stamped upon them, I mean his moral likeness, because in no sense can we resemble God so much as in philanthropy. And as an earthly father would delight to see his own image stamped upon his children, and be disgusted to see them in the likeness of a monster, so in like manner does God delight to see his creatures impressed

with his own philanthropic likeness, and not the malicious, the voracious, the selfish image of the devil.

The reason of one individual's belief differing from that of another, is according to the difference of their education; the prejudice of which is almost invincible. The nations of antiquity, as well as those of modern times, have adopted the most contrary notions respecting religion, diametrically opposite to each other; yet, the inhabitants of each think they are correct, and condemn the others of unbelief. God could not possibly give us intelligence, without giving us liberty: an independent mind and freedom of will, are inseparably connected; destroy the one, and the other ceases; nor can it, in the nature of things, any longer exist. It is equally evident, that God could not, without infringing our liberty, have hindered us by force, from abusing it. He exhibits truth before our intellectual eyes, in so clear and transcendent a manner, that none but the wilfully blind can possibly mistake it. He displays his sovereign beauty and attractive charms, so that none but the ungenerous can help admiring them; he exhibits the infinitude of his Divine philanthropy to the indiscriminate view of saint and sinner, sage and savage, reverend-men and lay-men; so that none but the most ungrateful can help seeing, feeling, and adoring the same.

He has, in the plenitude of his liberality, provided a resplendent palace, in a luxuriant garden, majestic and magnificent, for the accommodation of his intelligent creatures; he has extended above us a canopy of the purest azure, spangled with golden stars; he spreads around us curtains of fleecy silver, blended with crimson and variegated with a thousand tints; beneath our feet this terrestrial garden he has sprinkled with violets, damasked with roses, and carpeted with flowers intermingled with the gay verdure of spring! The sun, in the centre of our sacred canopy, darts down his enlivening, exhilarating rays, tips the silver curtains of the sky with a golden gleam, and bids the warblers of each vernal grove swell their various and harmonious notes, while the wood-land monsters roar out their great Creator's praise. He finally makes the glowing buds to blossom, and the blushing fruit to ripen. Thus, our gracious Creator has plentifully and profusely bestowed every blessing that can cheer the heart, and command the gratitude of man. But, alas! the lords of the

creation too often not only degrade themselves below the brutes, but also introduce in the gardens and palaces, with which God has graciously accommodated them, human slaughter, undistinguished carnage, dying groans, instruments of torture, the dire machinery of hell, with which man pursues his brother, thirsting for his speedy destruction, and never gives over the savage chase, till death delivers his helpless innocent victim from the ravages of his insatiate fury, his unrelenting despotism. Hence, cruel man has metamorphosed this sublime palace of God to a slaughter-house; this supreme and superlative garden to an hospital; the abode of sickness, sorrow and death. Thus,

"Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn."

Pure benevolence encircles all mankind in one kind em. brace; and is not condensed, or circumscribed in the narrow circumference of self. Arise! immortal and immutable Architect of Nature! dispel the lowering gloom of intellectual darkness which beclouds the mind, and destroy the malevolence which impregnates the heart of man. Hush to eternal silence the rude alarms of war! and transfuse into our breasts the gentle, the mild, the harmonizing, the Christianizing love of God and man. May the narrow dispositions, the contracted feelings, the bigoted and besotted understandings of all who call upon thy benevolent name, but not in sincerity, may they be swallowed up by a diffusive, extensive, dilating, and in one word UNIVERSAL PHILANTHROPY.

The benevolent or malevolent writer, not only benefits or injures his fellow-creatures in the present, but also in succeeding generations. The unhappy prostitution of genius is not confined to the giddy and the gay, the florid and volatile; if great gifts are thrown away by such characters, for the attainment of things which should be wholly indifferent to them, it is what we may expect to result from the wrong association of ideas, and an ill-governed consciousness. But when we see men of talents, worth and distinction, become the slaves of pride and vanity, we lament their degeneracy with a mixture of pride and indignation. When we see a man of science courting the plaudits of fools, and virtually