ductors of this Institution. It is enough for you, I make no doubt, to be informed on their authority, that the prices usually paid for that species of work, are not sufficient to provide food, (lodging, clothing, firing, and every thing else being left out of the question,) for a single individual; even supposing her to obtain constant employment, and to use her utmost diligence. What then is she to do? Reduced, as many applicants to this Institution have been, from a state of decency and comfort;-deprived, perhaps, but lately, of the guides of her childhood; or separated from the husband of her youth, and thrown at once upon such a world as this;-I repeat it, what is she to do? I am not calling for your sympathy towards one, who, in such trying circumstances, would abandon herself to hopeless sorrow, however heavily that sorrow may press upon her heart. I call upon you, only to give fair consideration to the case of a young female, who bears such sore bereavement with patient fortitude, and does all that the most rigid exacter of duty could demand. Well then allow that, deprived of those whose presence was all the charm of life to her, she yields to no tenderness of her sex, and listens to no soft pleadings of nature; but, with trembling hands, and weeping eyes, and bleeding heart, she betakes herself to her tasks,

her daily tasks;-what I contend for is, that she cannot, by any exertion, by any working, or overworking of her utmost strength, I do not say, maintain herself in decency-for that is altogether out of the question-but that she cannot keep herself above the most abject state of poverty, above hunger, cold, and nakedness.

“The cause which I knew not," says Job, "I searched out." You will not, then, refuse to follow me, while I would lead you, in thought, to the abode of wretchedness, in which one of those females, whom it is the object of this admirable Charity to relieve, is now living. There, as one of the governesses described to me, "sitting up a great part of the night, with bad light, and, in consequence, injured eyes, and with hands stiff with cold, for want of fire ;"-with all efforts, she cannot provide, for herself alone, the means of sustenance. If she has continued single, she may have, perhaps, a helpless parent; or if a young widow, one or more infant children: and for these she may feel far more than for herself. Her spirit may sustain her own privations: but a spirit wounded by the miseries of those she loves, by the complaints of comfortless old age, and by the cries of her little ones for food, when she has none to give them;-such trials it is hard for flesh and blood to bear.

It is true, that if she be a conscious heir of immortality, and strong in faith, she can do all things, through Christ that strengtheneth her ; that God, who is her high defence, is greater than all; and that none can pluck her out of her heavenly Father's hand. But oh! my brethren, how perilous is the condition of a female, whose armour is not of celestial temper, when beset by misfortune, deserted by all that is good and virtuous in society; and when her mind, bowed down and prostrate, has become passive to the assaults of fierce temptation! If possessed of personal attractions, and cursed, as, in her case, I may surely call it, with personal beauty, quickly as these frail flowers wither, and droop, and die, under the chill blasts of want and poverty; yet, while their short day lasts, she has agents of evil enough, to whisper to her, that out of all her misery there is a short and ready path—a path which, they omit to tell her, will shortly lead to depths still lower than the lowest she has ever trod, and from these depths in time, to depths unfathomable in eternity. No: the secret is kept back till her ruin is accomplished.

And

in the mean time, all she sees are promises of present ease, and gaiety and pleasure. Burthened with a load of misery, and solicited by strong temptation, may we not conceive the struggle of

her soul to vent itself, in some such thoughts and reasonings as these? "Wherefore is light given to her that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul? Surely, however kind and merciful God may be to others, he has forgotten to be gracious unto me; or he would not have cast out my feeble prayer, and laid upon me more than I am able to bear. And oh! what can religion be? Or what can that profession of it be, which every where abounds, when such wretchedness as mine, can go unpitied—when no man careth for my soul-no hand of mercy is stretched out, to still the throbbing of my heart, or to deal forth bread to my fatherless infants? Oh! how gladly would I, for those little ones' sake, devote my days and nights to incessant toil;-give no rest to these hands, or slumber to these eyes, if I could at least stop my children's cries for food! But it is in vain-I have not power or strength to do so. And will God be severe to mark what I have done amiss, if I turn in this last extremity, to those who alone will give me that protection and support, which his own Providence has denied me, in every other quarter?"

False and infatuated as such reflections are, can we wonder, that the woman who thus deliberates, should be lost? Surely it requires no prophet to divine how reasonings like these will end; or to

foretell that she, whose feet are stumbling on the brink of such a precipice, will lose her balance, and come down; that her reason will totter, and

let go the helm; and that, when she wakes from her delirium, she will find herself in the hands of those, whose triumph is in the fall of innocence, in the surrenders of conscience, and in the last expiring struggles of the soul. Yes: such are the men of pleasure-the men of honour -the men whose falsehoods no man dares to give the lie to the men who are favourites in what is called good society in this world! But their day is coming. They will soon awake to shame and everlasting contempt-they will soon be expelled from what is called good society, in the world to come-they will soon be driven from the assembly of the righteous, and congregation of the blessed, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.

But that day has not yet arrived. The Church is still militant here on earth. The warfare is still going on, and, to human eyes, with doubtful issue, between the powers of darkness, and the ministers of light-between the destroyers and the rescuers of immortal souls. Nor will it, I believe, know truce or intermission, till the present order of things, and dispensation of the world, are brought