a manner the most suited to popular apprehension; and, for that reason, they were emphatically glad tidings to the poor. Its duties are not delivered in a system built on abstract notions of the eternal fitness of things,-of the useful and the fair,-notions not void of truth, but intelligible only to minds highly improved by long habits of study and reflection. In the gospel, the duties of man are laid down in short, perspicuous, comprehensive precepts, delivered as the commands of God, under the awful sanctions of eternal rewards and punishments. The doctrines of the Christian revelation are not encumbered with a long train of argumentative proof, which is apt to bewilder the vulgar, no less than it gratifies the learned; they are propounded to the faith of all, upon the authority of a teacher who came down from heaven, "to speak what he knew, and testify what he had seen."

Again, the poor are they on whom the Christian doctrine would most readily take effect. Christ's atonement, it is true, hath been made for all. The benefits of redemption are no less common to all ranks of society than to all nations of the world; and upon this ground, the first news of the Saviour's birth was justly called, by the angels who proclaimed it, “glad tidings of great joy which should be to all people." Every situation of life hath its proper temptations and its proper duties; and with the aids which the gospel offers, the temptations of all situations are equally surmountable, and the duties equally within the power of the believer's improved strength. It were a derogation from the greatness of our Lord's work, to suppose, that with an equal strength of religious principle once formed, the attainment of salvation should be more precarious in any one rank of life than in another. But if we consider the different ranks of men, not as equally religious, but as equally without religion, which was the deplorable situa

tion of the world when Christianity made its first appearance, the poor were the class of men among whom the new doctrine was likely to be, and actually was, in the first instance, the most efficacious. The riches of the world, and the gratifications they afford, are too apt, when their evil tendency is not opposed by a principle of religion, to beget that friendship for the world which is enmity with God. The poor, on the other hand, excluded from the hope of worldly pleasure, were likely to listen with the more attention to the promise of a distant happiness; and, exposed to much actual suffering here, they would naturally be the most alarmed with the apprehension of continued and increased suffering in another world. For this third reason, the gospel, upon its first publication, was emphatically "glad tidings to the poor."

From these three considerations, that the gospel, in the matter, in the manner of the discovery, and in its relation to the state of mankind at the time of its publication, was in fact in a peculiar sense "glad tidings to the poor," the conclusion seems just and inevitable, that, in my text, and in other passages of a like purport, the prophets describe the poor, in the literal acceptation of the word, as especial objects of the Divine mercy in the Christian dispensation. And this sense of such prophecies, which so much claims the attention both of rich and poor, receives a farther confirmation from our Lord's appeal to his open practice of preaching to the poor, as an evidence to his contemporaries of his divine mission. "Go ye," he said to the Baptist's messengers, "and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM." Here "the preaching of the gospel to the poor," is mentioned by our Lord among the circum

stances of his ministry, which so evidently corresponded with the prophecies of the Messiah as to render any more explicit answer to the Baptist's inquiries unnecessary. This, therefore, must be a preaching of the gos pel to the poor literally; for the preaching of it to the figurative poor, the poor in religious knowledge, to the heathen world, commenced not during our Lord's life on earth, and could not be alleged by him, at that time, among his own personal exhibitions of the prophetical characters of the Messiah of the Jews.

Assuredly, therefore, our Lord came "to preach glad tidings to the poor." "To preach glad tidings to the poor," was mentioned by the prophets as one of the especial objects of his coming. To preach to them he clothed himself with flesh, and in his human nature received the unction of the Spirit. And since the example of our Lord is, in every particular in which it is at all imitable, a rule to our conduct, it is clearly our duty, as the humble followers of our merciful Lord, to entertain a special regard for the religious interests of the poor, and to take care, what we can, that the gospel be still preached to them. And the most effectual means of preaching the gospel to the poor, is by charitable provisions for the religious education of their children.

Blessed be God, institutions for this pious purpose abound in most parts of the kingdom. The authority of our Lord's example, of preaching to the poor, will, with every serious believer, outweigh the objection which hath been raised against these charitable institutions, by a mean and dastardly policy imbibed in foreign climes, not less unchristian than it is inconsistent with the genuine feelings of the home-bred Briton,-a policy which pretends to foresee, that by the advantages of a religious education, the poor may be raised above the laborious duties of his station, and his use in civil life be lost. Our Lord and his apostles better understood the interests

of society, and were more tender of its security and peace, than many, perhaps, of our modern theorists. Our Lord and his apostles certainly never saw this danger, that the improvement of the poor in religious knowledge might be a means of confounding civil subordination. They were never apprehensive that the poor would be made the worse servants by an education which should teach them to serve their masters upon earth, from a principle of duty to the great Master of the whole family in heaven. These mean suggestions of a wicked policy are indeed contradicted by the experience of mankind. The extreme condition of oppression and debasementthe unnatural condition of slavery, produced, in ancient times, its poets, philosophers, and moralists. Imagine not that I would teach you to infer that the condition of slavery is not adverse to the improvement of the human character. Its natural tendency is certainly to fetter the genius and debase the heart: but some brave spirits, of uncommon strength, have at different times surmounted the disadvantages of that dismal situation. And the fact which I would offer to your attention is this, that these men, cminent in taste and literature, were not rendered by those accomplishments the less profitable slaves. Where, then, is the danger, that the free-born poor of this country should be the worse hired servants, for a proficiency in a knowledge by which both master and servant are taught their respective duties, by which alone either rich or poor may be made wise unto salvation?

Much serious consideration would indeed be due to the objection, were it the object, or the ordinary and probable effect of these charitable seminaries for the maintenance and education of the infant poor, to qualify them for the occupations and pursuits of the higher ranks of society, or to give them a relish for their pleasures and amusements. But this is not the case. No

thing more is attempted, nor can more indeed be done, than to give them that instruction in the doctrines and duties of religion, to which a claim of common right is in some sort constituted in a Christian country, by the mere capacity to profit by it, and to furnish them with those first rudiments of what may be called the trivial literature of their mother tongue, without which they would scarce be qualified to be subjects even of the lowest class of the free government under which they are born, a government in which the meanest citizenthe very mendicant at your doors, unless his life or his franchises have been forfeited by crime to public justice, hath his birthrights, and is entrusted with a considerable share of the management of himself. It is the peculiarity, and this peculiarity is the principal excellence of such governments,-that as the great have no property in the labour of the poor, other than what is acquired for a time by a mutual agreement, the poor man, on the other hand, hath no claim upon his superior for support and maintenance, except under some particular covenant, as an apprentice, a journeyman, a menial servant, or a labourer, which entitles him to the recompense of his stipulated service, and to nothing else. It follows, that, in such states, every man is to derive a support for himself and his family, from the voluntary exertions of his own industry, under the direction of his own genius, his own prudence, and his own conscience. Hence, in these free governments, some considerable improvement of the understanding is necessary even for the lowest orders of the people; and much strength of religious principle is requisite to govern the individual, in those common concerns of his private life, in which the laws leave the meanest subject, equally with his betters, master of himself. Despotism,-sincere, unalloyed, rigid despotism, is the only form of government which may with safety to itself neglect the education of its infant poor.