ces of social life then--in the parlor, the
drawing-room, the saloon--special reference should be had, in every
arrangement, to the comfort and improvement of those who are least
able to provide for the cheapest rites of hospitality. For these,
ample accommodations must be made, whatever may become of our
kinsmen and rich neighbors. And for this good reason, that while
such occasions signify little to the latter, to the former they are
pregnant with good--raising their drooping spirits, cheering their
desponding hearts, inspiring them with life, and hope, and joy. The
rich and the poor thus meeting joyfully together, cannot but
mutually contribute to each other's benefit; the rich will be led to
moderation, sobriety, and circumspection, and the poor to industry,
providence, and contentment. The recompense must be great and sure.

A most beautiful and instructive commentary on the text in which
these things are taught, the Savior furnished in his own conduct. He
freely mingled with those who were reduced to the very bottom of
society. At the tables of the outcasts of society he did not
hesitate to be a cheerful guest, surrounded by publicans and sinners.
And when flouted and reproached by smooth and lofty ecclesiastics,
as an ultraist and leveler, he explained and justified himself by
observing, that he had only done what his office demanded. It was
his to seek the lost, to heal the sick, to pity the wretched;--in a
word, to bestow just such benefits as the various necessities of
mankind made appropriate and welcome. In his great heart, there was
room enough for those who had been excluded from the sympathy of
little souls. In its spirit and design, the gospel overlooked
none--least of all, the outcasts of a selfish world.

Can slavery, however modified, be consistent with such a gospel?--a
gospel which requires us, even amidst the highest forms of social
life, to exert ourselves to raise the depressed by giving our
warmest sympathies to those who have the smallest share in the favor
of the world?

Those who are in "bonds" are set before us as deserving an especial
remembrance. Their claims upon us are described as a modification of
the Golden Rule--as one of the many forms to which its obligations
are reducible. To them we are to extend the same affectionate regard
as we would covet for ourselves, if the chains upon their limbs were
fastened upon ours. To the benefits of this precept, the enslaved
have a natural cla