On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    laws , the administration of justice , and the worship of God * The feelings which arise are those of admiration and complacency - the associations suggested are those of civilization , refinement , taste , order , intelligence , enjoyment , grandeur , and prosperity . Turn ? aside but a little , and you come into close-built streets , and yet narrower lanes and alleys , where the dismantled dwellings bear every mark of populous wretchedness . There are noisome smells , and loathsome sights , and disgusting sounds , from which the senses shrink . Here , too ,

    we are aware that the outward appearance is aV true index of that which is within ; of a gradation whose highest point is the hard and ceaseless toil that humbles humanity into an automaton , with little more than the one sense of weariness and suffering , tworking for that which barely supplies sufficient strength to enable it to work on ; and the lowest point , a depravity whose depths the imagination cannot sound without pollution .

    Here the human form and face are withered by the grasp of physical evil . Disease abides in these lurking-places , driven thither like a wild beast to its lair , and sustaining itself till the season when it may again stalk forth to terrify . The schoolmaster who is most abroad there , teaches lessons of which ignorance is bliss . The very children are initiated into the arts of fraud , theft , and violence . Horrid tales are told of premature

    licentiousness . The Sabbath sun penetrates not through the mist of their miseries and abominations . To £ he higher orders of society they feel themselves slaves or enemies—perhaps both—and ever ripe and ready for vindictive hostilities . Intoxication , in its most maddening form , is the most coveted enjoyment . And in passing on , by haunts of wretchedness and dens of

    vice , the emotions which rise are those of pity , apprehension , disgust , almost despair of man ; the associations , those of barbarism , brutality , anguish , confusion , and guilt . Such are the extreme evils of poverty in cities , and such the appalling contrast which presents itself to the senses , the judgment , and the heart ,

    and which ought long ago to have raised the question , Must these things be ? in a voice of thunder , which would have enforced an answer . It is childish to shrink from the steady contemplation of the fact , that there are thousands upon thousands , in this vast and wealthy city , most wretchedly clothed , and fed , arid lodged ; ignorant and idle , dissolute and wicked ; some born in this state , and others pressed down into it from a better ; and , by their herding together , augmenting the contagiousness of the moral pestilence by which their souls are contaminated . It is worse than childish

    to fail at their depravity ; they do but fulfil the destiny which is imposed on them by society $ they do but exhibit the tendencies of the circumstances in which they are placed , and of which they are the victims . What may become their crime , was first their calamity . And there is no calamity like that of abandonment to physical privations , mental darkness , bad passions , corrupting associates * strong temptations , and the perpetual presence

    Untitled Article

    798 T 7 ie Claims of the Poor on the Followers of Christ .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 798, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/2/