of friendship or relationship, with her infant child, taken in, watched, and nursed, and tenderly cared for, weeks and months, till death mercifully released her from her sufferings, by a family who were themselves probably as destitute as any virtuous and industrious family among us. It was a lesson of Christian sympathy and self-sacrificing kindness which cannot be forgotten by those who saw it, and which will not be forgotten in the great day of account. We can give up some We are not all asked to make sacrifices like this. But we all of us can make some sacrifices. We every one of us can set apart something for the relief of others, and be ourselves not the worse, but the better, for it. luxury for the richer luxury of doing good. We can deny ourselves some little convenience or comfort, and enjoy a purer comfort in the satisfaction of seeking to do something for the relief of the suffering. If you can, it is better for you to administer the relief with your own hand. It may be to some poor relative, or suffering neighbor, — some one whom you have known in better days, or some destitute and helpless child. The kind act kindly done will do you good. The kindly intercourse thus begun will be a blessing to you. When the dark days come, and you are lonely or sick or needy, or in any way dependent, as we all are at times, on the sympathy and kind offices of others, that cup of relief which you have held out to one ready to perish will return, and God's blessing with it, to your own lips. Let every one of us give up something, retrench in our expenditures somewhere, for this object. The progress of luxury during the past quarter of a century has been almost without example. In our clothing, in the construction and furniture of our houses, there is five, and in some cases ten, times the amount laid out now that would have been thought necessary or proper by people holding the same relative position in the community twenty or thirty years ago. I speak not of one class, but of all classes, except the extremely poor. Of course, where there has been such a general in crease of expenditure, such a multiplication of articles deemed necessary to our comfort or respectability, we can fall back a little, and save something for charity without any very great personal sacrifice. This we all of us can do, if we once make up our minds that it is necessary to do it. But then great discretion is needed in order to know where we can make our retrenchments without aggravating the evil which we would alleviate. To cut off all superfluities at once, would be to reduce to beggary and want thousands of honest laborers, who depend on the production of these articles for their bread. The general giving up of a particular style of button has been known to bring distress. on a whole community. Wisdom, therefore, and a careful regard to the interests and wants of others, must be exercised by us in our retrenchments, and in everything that we do for the poor. There is a wise and liberal expenditure on the part of the prosperous, which is a more effective charity to those whom it reaches as the reward of their industry than the almsgiving which turns them into mendicants and takes away their honest self-respect. Above all things, we must beware of creating a class of professional paupers, or of teaching those who can work that it is easier to live without it. These habits of dependence, except when required by the severest necessities, are injurious in every way to those who allow themselves to fall into them. But there are cases of destitution, especially in times like these, which it is alike a privilege and a duty to relieve. And if-as is the fact with most of us - our incomes are seriously diminished by the general derangement of affairs, and it may seem difficult for us to meet the usual cost of living, let us determine by some means or other not only to do that, but also to lay aside something for those whose necessities are greater than ours. In the sense of personal independence which we shall thus cherish, and the sympathies which we keep alive for others, we shall have our reward. And we can do it, if the soul of generosity and Christian charity is in us. Sir Philip Sidney could give the water which his dying thirst was craving to the wounded soldier whose necessities were greater than his. The starving man has been known to give half his morsel to his starving neighbor. In that terrific scene on board the Central America, a scene whose horrors are relieved by the acts of heroism and nobleness which marked the conduct of the sufferers, there was hardly one who did not willingly give up his first chance and hope of escape to the women and children. And when, in the darkness of night, they were left, hundreds of them, struggling for life in the waters, there were men who would aid those around them, not only by encouraging words, but by giving up a portion of the plank on which their own hope of life depended. we can God be thanked for lessons like these of self-forgetting and self-sacrificing charity! We can do something, – even from our penury set aside something for those whose necessities are greater than ours. The family of whom I have spoken, who took into their cheerless and ill-furnished home a consumptive mother and her child, could task their already severely tasked strength, could add to the labors of the day and break their needed rest at night, to relieve the helpless and the dying. Do we sufficiently value the privilege of doing such things? Do we feel what a dignity and moral g andeur there is in denying ourselves that we may do something for the good of others! Do the young thus sustain their manly self-reliance, their sense of personal independence, and their recognition of the claims of all whose necessities are greater than their own? I will close my article by mentioning an instance of this self-denial which is quoted by Sidney Smith as an example of moral sublimity, and which I would commend especially to the young. "I remember," he says, "a very striking instance of it in a young man, since dead; he was the son of a country curate, who had got him a berth on board a man-of-war, as midshipman. The poor curate made a great effort for his son; fitted him out well with clothes, and gave him fifty pounds in money. The first week, the poor boy lost his chest, clothes, money, and everything he had in the world. The ship sailed for a foreign station; and his loss was without remedy. He immediately quitted his mess, ceased to associate with the other midshipmen who were the sons of gentlemen; and for five years, without mentioning it to his parents, who he knew could not assist him, or without borrowing a farthing from any human being, without a single murmur or complaint, did that poor lad endure the most abject and degrading poverty, at a period of life when the feelings are most alive to ridicule, and the appetites most prone to indulgence. Now, I confess I am a mighty advocate for the sublimity of such long and patient endurance. If you can make the world stare and look on, there, you have vanity or compassion to support you; but to bury all your wretchedness in your own mind, — to resolve that you will have no man's pity, while you have one effort left to secure his respect, to harbor no mean thought in the midst of abject poverty, but, at the very time that you are surrounded by circumstances of humility and depression, to found a spirit of modest independence upon the consciousness of having always acted well;-this is a sublime virtue, which, though it is found in the shade and retirement of life, ought to be held up to the praises of men, and to be looked upon as a noble model for imitation." What this young man did for his own self-respect, and rather than be a burden to others, shall not we do for the relief of others? At least, shall we not do something, not only for ourselves, but for those around us? No matter how obscure or unknown the act, it will feed our own souls. It will call down upon us the blessing of God. It will be remembered in the great day when the Son of Man and all the holy angels shall come to meet us in the clouds of heaven. J. H. M. WANTS AND MEANING OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE SUNDAYSCHOOL SOCIETY, BOSTON, DECEMBER 2, 1857. BY REV. HENRY F. HARRINGTON. FELLOW SUPERINTENDENTS AND TEACHERS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL: - IF the prestige of this occasion were other than what it is, -if I were now opening my discourse to a circle of hearers unimpassioned and quiescent, merely curious to learn what amount of interest it may be possible for me, as an individual, to excite, in connection with a threadbare and lifeless theme, I should shrink from my position in undisguised dismay. But I am encouraged by the conviction, that I appear before you under far different auspices. I feel, with lively emotion, that common sympathies, intense and heartfelt, are circulating among you in advance, and kindly piloting my way. I feel that it matters little, though we be all mindful, that there is not a single topic in relation to Sunday Schools that has not been reviewed and re-reviewed before you, at various times and in various connections, in all the power and beauty of eloquence, and upon which exhaustive treatises do not exist on the shelves of almost every library. Novelty of speculation and displays of personal prowess are not what you desire. No; and if I have analyzed correctly the tone of feeling that usually prevails among assemblages of this character, made up of pastors, superintendents, and teachers, who have met together for mutual edification and encouragement as to their several relations to the Sunday School, you are uneasy during the discussion of questions that concern only the administrative or incidental features of the enterprise, although they may be perfectly pertinent and legitimate. You regard such discussions as a waste of precious time. You realize that all such minor problems will find a sufficient solution, whenever |