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    Untitled Article

    armed with the weapons of its holy conquest ; with the means at command which may minister at once to bodily and mental wants , revive the droops ing frame , and remould the softened heart . Our religious instructions necessarily dwell much in generalities . It can scarcely be otherwise ; and they are addressed to those who can for themselves make the requisite application . But in this mission every thing must be individualized . Each mind and character must be probed , and dealt with according to its peculiar state . There must be the specific instruction , direction , warning , consolation , which the case requires . That voice which in the gospel speaks from heaven to universal man , must narrow its declarations into the form , " I say unto thee . " Thus best can the neglected soul be won , and the fountains opened of penitential tears , and the light of divine knowledge be

    gradually let in upon the darkened mind , and strength from on high be imparted for conflict with temptation , and beings of mere animal existence become instinct with spiritual life , and behold their God , so long and so utterly unknown , and feel his peace shed abroad in their hearts , and , in a moral sense , the wilderness and the solitary place be made glad , and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose .

    Now let it not be said that all this is very good , and beautiful , and desirable , but that it is not practicable ; for it has actually been done . Dr . Tuckerman , of New England , a man of superior mind and attainments , as well as of a benevolent zeal most ardent and persevering , has been for several years thus engaged at Boston , and with such success as amply to warrant , and imperatively demand , a repetition of the experiment in this

    country . Hundreds of wretched families have been relieved , instructed , and gladdened , by his paternal visits . Children have been snatched from the very jaws of destruction , redeemed from the otherwise inevitable doom of vice and crime , and afford the fair promise of being useful , respectable , and happy members of society . Unexpected comfort , like an angel descending from heaven , has reached those who had passively resigned themselves to a despair with which it seemed vain longer to struggle . The

    intemperate and profligate have been reclaimed . And by means of his reports the rich have been scarcely less benefited than the poor by his labours : the knowledge of what poverty is , has been brought home to them ; a new road has been opened from one extreme of society to the other y and opinions and feelings have in consequence arisen , which cannot but accelerate the progress of society towards the forms it must assume under the full influence of Christian principles .

    That America is not England , and Boston is not London , and what has succeeded there may yet fail here * is a very obvious objection ; and so are many other objections , on the difficulty of finding such agents as are needed , and on various points of detail which might be mentioned . But because they are points of detail , not affecting the principle of the mission , I shall not enter upon a discussion of them which would lead us astray

    Untitled Article

    802 The Claims of the Poor on the Followers of Christ .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 802, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/6/