vidence of a humane and benevolent heart, prompting
its possessor to thoughts and deeds of charity.

2. Need I state to a christian assembly the necessity laid upon us all
to cultivate the character I have thus attempted briefly to describe? To
feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit and comfort the sick and
the afflicted, is incumbent upon every man endowed with moral
perception, but the obligations of the christian to pursue this course
of conduct, are most weighty and inalienable. He cannot shut out from
his attention the sufferings and misfortunes of his brethren of the
human family without renouncing his name, and without forfeiting his
rights to the hopes and promises of the gospel. Our religion is
emphatically the religion of love. Love is the end of the commandment,
the perfection of the christian character, and the most acceptable
offering we can present to Almighty God. Upon this principle the poor
have a claim,--a claim stronger than human law could establish upon
their fellow men. We are all the stewards and almoners of Providence,
and a rigid account will be demanded of those means which were given to
us in trust for the purposes of beneficence. Let the rich man ask
himself by what means he has been prospered in life, and inhabits the
splendid or the commodious habitation, while another has been condemned
to eat the bitter bread of poverty. He may reply that he has been
industrious and provident, that he has passed a life of anxious labor to
amass the wealth or the competency he enjoys. But can he forget that all
his success must at last be referred to the great disposer of events?
Can he be ignorant that it is God who has filled his basket and his
store, who has given the genial heat and refreshing showers to his
harvest, and guarded them from blasting and mildew, who has commanded
the favoring winds to blow upon his richly freighted vessels, and has
saved them from rocks and tempests, who has bestowed upon him his powers
of mind, and afforded him health and opportunity to employ them? Can he
be unmindful of all this when he beholds the fluctuations of prosperity,
and the sudden and unexpected manner in which it is both given and again
taken away? Surely then the thoughtful and conscientious man will esteem
his possessions, not so much a right which he has obtained as a trust
committed to him, and he will acknowledge that the strictest justice
approves what religion emphatically demands, that with