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Untitled Article
to be supposed that a time will ever arrive when inequalities of condition will cease to exist , or when the accidents of life , and even the power of the elements , shall no longer occasion misfortune and want ; but the progress of civilization , the improved character of governments , the diffusion of knowledge , and tliose
juster moral and religious views which may ultimately be expected to result from it , afford reasonable ground for hope that the most fertile sources of poverty may in time be so far diminished as to relieve society from that mass of wretchedness which has hitherto crushed its energies , and to make that , which has hitherto been the attribute of an immense class , a merely accidental variety in
the situation of individuals . We cannot refrain from alluding with peculiar satisfaction to the introduction prefixed to this book by Dr . Tuckerman , of Boston , as teaching the purest and most enlightened spirit of Christian philanthropy . This excellent and benevolent individual has devoted himself to a ministry of a peculiar but most important nature , and one which the acknowledged
deficiencies of our existing religious institutions render the more necessary in the midst of an extended population . Divested of the charge of a particular congregation , and relieved from the calls of stated duty , he has taken upon him the holier and more arduous duty of ministering to the abandoned and friendless poor , seeking them out in their own homes , counselling and comforting them
with the advice of a friend , and endeavouring to attach them again , by the ties of a restored worth and respectability , to the general communion of civilized humanity from which they had been severed . To this work he has consecrated the best powers of a vigorous and well-cultivated mind ; and though he modestly professes himself merely the pioneer of the regular ministry ,
seeking the lost sheep that he may restore them to the fold , yet his work is infinitely more arduous , and demands far higher endowments of the heart and the head , than are needed in the stationary pastor and preacher . There are hundreds adapted to the respectable fulfilment of the duties of the latter office , for one who is equal to the devotion , the singleness of mind , the steady , tranquil enthusiasm of benevolence , and the clear insight into the wants
and capabilities of human character , which are indispensable to the successful discharge of the functions of ( he former . Assisted by a very considerable share of public sympathy , and countenanced in his labours by the municipal authorities of his native city , Dr . Tuckerman has succeeded in warding off , to a considerable extent , those frightful evils of pauperism and crime which
have hitherto trodden close on the heels of advancing civilization , which were such a deformity in the great and luxurious cities of the old world , and to which the poor-laws of our own country , instead of opposing any effectual obstacle , have proved , on the contrary , only an incentive and a nutriment . In his Introduction to this work of De Gerando ' s , Dr . Tuckerman has dwelt forcibly
Untitled Article
Educated Classes to the Poor . 731
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 731, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/71/
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